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.

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.

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 …

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 …

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.

Radio legend Paul Harvey dies at 90  —  Radio legend Paul Harvey, whose news and commentary segments always ended with his distinctive sign-off, “Paul Harvey....good day,” died today at the age of 90, ABC Radio Network reported Saturday.  —  He died Saturday at his winter home in Phoenix …

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.

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.

Barack Obama surrounding himself with spivs and chancers  —  GOOD thing for Barack Obama that he isn't George Bush.  He'd have been slaughtered for starting so badly that he's picking a Cabinet of tax cheats.  —  But a month since he was sworn in as President, Obama has lost not a fleck off his golden tongue.

The Trouble With State Government  —  I was talking to a libertarian-minded fellow at the Kaufman Foundation conference I was attending on Friday, and he asked me something like why does all this big government stuff have to be done at the federal level?  Couldn't we leave it all up to the states?

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.

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.

Rick Santelli's Planted Rant ?  —  I was interviewed by several journalists last week about Rick Santelli's Rant — my exact quote was it had a “Faux” feel to it.  (I haven't seen it in print yet)  —  What was so odd about this was that Santelli is usually on the ball; we usually agree more often than we disagree.