Top Items:
Media Matters / Media Matters for America:
Limbaugh: “The dirty little secret ... is that every Republican in this country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so; I am willing to say it" — *Siggggghhh* Rush is soooooo dreamy! And he has a fire in the belly! Who wouldn't love this guy?
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Think Progress:
Santorum At CPAC: ‘Absolutely We Hope That’ Obama Fails, ‘I Believe His Policies Will Fail’ — Just before President Obama was inaugurated, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh declared, “I hope he fails.” Though some Republicans have distanced themselves from Limbaugh's sentiment, conservatives at CPAC have fully embraced it.
Robert Travis Scott / New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Gov. Bobby Jindal fights back against those questioning points in his speech — BATON ROUGE — Gov. Bobby Jindal fought back Friday against reports by national media outlets and Democratic-leaning Web sites that he was inaccurate or untruthful Tuesday night in the Republican Party response …
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Robert Travis Scott / New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Louisiana to seek New Orleans-Baton Rouge passenger rail line …
Louisiana to seek New Orleans-Baton Rouge passenger rail line …
Scott Gutierrez / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Beating caught on police video — Tape shows officer kicking, striking teenager — A video showing a King County Sheriff's deputy pummeling a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell was released Friday over the strenuous objections of the officer's attorney. — The case goes beyond police misconduct …
Mark Silva / The Swamp:
Kathleen Sebelius: HHS secretary — Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas, has accepted President Barack Obama's nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services, White House sources are reporting this evening. — Obama plans to announce the selection on Monday, according to the Associated Press, citing a source.
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Marjorie Connelly / New York Times:
Ailing G.O.P. Risks Losing a Generation — Republicans have their work cut out for them. — Americans identifying themselves as Democrats outnumber those who say they are Republicans by 10 percentage points, the largest gap in party identification in 24 years.
David Mark / The Politico:
Romney wins CPAC straw poll — In one of the opening skirmishes in the long - and almost certainly bloody - GOP battle for the 2012 nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won the annual Conservative Political Action Convention straw poll Saturday.
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Al Giordano / The Field on the Narcosphere:
The New and Improved “Us vs. Them” Narrative — I haven't so far posted any of these weekly YouTube reports by the President that roll out each Saturday morning because, well, they're sort of ubiquitous already on the Internets and I figure folks come here for stuff you won't ordinarily read or see elsewhere.
Jon Chait / Washington Post:
Obama's Intelligence Blunder — Most of President Obama's “missteps” to date have been Washington peccadilloes of the “let's find something to complain about” sort. But Obama has made one major mistake that has attracted little public attention: his appointment of Charles Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
Peter S. Goodman / New York Times:
Sharper Downturn Clouds Obama Spending Plans — The economy is spiraling down at an accelerating pace, threatening to undermine the Obama administration's spending plans, which anticipate vigorous rates of growth in years to come. — A sense of disconnect between the projections …
Discussion:
The Corner, Commentary, TIME.com, Crunchy Con, The Caucus, Daily Kos, Vox Popoli, Associated Press, ParaPundit and Time
Mark Silva / The Swamp:
Obama: ‘Tougher for African Americans’ — “Tough times for America often mean tougher times for African Americans,” President Barack Obama says. “This recession has been no exception. The unemployment rate among black Americans is a full five points higher than the rate among Americans as a whole.”
Discussion:
The Politico
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Ombudsman / Washington Post:
The Heat From a Global Warming Column — Opinion columnists are free to choose whatever facts bolster their arguments. But they aren't free to distort them. — The question of whether that happened is at the core of an uproar over a recent George F. Will column and The Post's fact-checking process.
Matt Bai / New York Times:
Newt. Again. — FOR CONSERVATIVES, who have traditionally valued their grand theorists more than their campaign consultants, the buildings that house Washington's premier think tanks are like a second set of grand monuments, symbols of a movement built on brash ingenuity.
Discussion:
Think Progress, MyDD, TIME.com, Hullabaloo, American Power, The Politico, Lawyers, Guns and Money, Beltway Confidential and The New Republic
The White House:
Keeping Promises — In the Weekly Address this morning, President Obama explains how the budget he sent to Congress will fulfill the promises he made as a candidate. On fiscal responsibility, a fair tax code, a clean energy economy, real health care reform, and education, this budget sets out a new vision for our country.
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Faiz Shakir / Think Progress:
Coulter attacks Obama over Afghanistan: Putting more troops there is ‘insane.’ — During her speech at CPAC today, right-wing loon Ann Coulter said we owe “a thank you to George Bush for keeping us so safe.” That comment earned a rousing ovation from the audience of conservative activists.
Jesse McKinley / New York Times:
Struggling States Look to Unorthodox Taxes — In his 11 years in the Washington Legislature, Representative Mark Miloscia says he has supported all manner of methods to fill the state's coffers, including increasing fees on property owners to help the homeless and taxes on alcohol and cigarettes …
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias