U.S. Commits Further $30 Billion to AIG: Sources  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government threw a new $30 billion lifeline to American International Group Inc on Sunday as the embattled insurer prepared to report the biggest quarterly loss in corporate history.

Web-Savvy Obama Team Hits Unexpected Bumps  —  Issues of Technology, Security and Privacy Slow the New Administration's Effort to Foster Instant Communication  —  The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government.

A Line Forms to Succeed Burris  —  CHICAGO — As Roland W. Burris, the junior senator from Illinois, took his first turn presiding over the Senate last week, hired staff members to fill his Washington office and announced co-sponsorship of a measure commemorating the role of slaves in building the Capitol …

Pelosi's list: Who's on her bad side?  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  Nancy Pelosi likes to keep lists.  —  As a young political protégé of her father, Baltimore Mayor Tommy D'Alesandro, the preteen speaker-to-be would spend hours leafing through …

Covering Obama, Pushy Jake Tapper Presses His Points  —  One year after joining ABC News, Jake Tapper kept pushing his bosses — “annoyingly, irritatingly, incessantly,” he says — to let him cover the unfolding 2004 presidential campaign.  —  “I might not have been ready,” he admits now.

Revenge of the Glut  —  Remember the good old days, when we used to talk about the “subprime crisis” — and some even thought that this crisis could be “contained”?  Oh, the nostalgia!  —  Today we know that subprime lending was only a small fraction of the problem.

RNC Chair Michael Steele on Limbaugh: 'Yes, it's incendiary.  Yes, it's ugly.'  —  Last night, RNC Chairman Michael Steele appeared on D.L. Hughley's show on CNN and disputed Hughley's statement that Rush Limbaugh “is the de facto leader of the Republican Party.”  “I'm the de facto leader of the Republican Party!”

New ‘Iron Curtain’ will split EU's rich and poor  —  Eastern European countries gave an apocalyptic warning yesterday of hordes of unemployed workers heading west as a new Iron Curtain divides rich from poor inside Europe.  —  Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall …

EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Hatch's secret drug firm links  —  Drugmaker money to Utah senator's charity escaped disclosure  —  The pharmaceutical industry that long has benefited from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch's legislative efforts has directed large sums of money to a charity he helped found …

The Obama Administration Double-Deals On Israel  —  Anti-Semitism, ‘Islamophobia,’ Durban II and the U.N.  —  Barack Obama just added double-dealing to his foreign policy repertoire.  On Friday, administration officials led many Jewish leaders to believe that the president had decided …

Obama faces test on gay military ban  —  It is precisely the sort of knife fight no president wants to get into, especially in his first 100 days.  But it seems that President Barack Obama is about to get dragged down the same dark alley as Bill Clinton when he was forced to confront …

Iran, the Jews and Germany  —  So a Jerusalem Post article says that I'm “hardly the first American to be misled by the existence of synagogues in totalitarian countries.”  —  The Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg finds me “particularly credulous,” taken in by the Iranian hospitality and friendliness that …

Hey, Bailout Snivelers: Hush.  You Don't Need It.  —  In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama declared that he was going to “speak frankly and directly.”  —  That's what I want to do as well.  I want to speak frankly and directly to the many people who have written …

Obama kicks up White House entertaining  —  WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House is the place to be on Wednesdays.  —  Since the presidency changed hands less than six weeks ago, a burst of entertaining has taken hold of the iconic, white-columned home of America's head of state.  Much of it comes on Wednesdays.

How Washington can prevent ‘zombie banks’  —  Beginning in 1990, Japan suffered a collapse in real estate and stock market prices that pushed major banks into insolvency.  Rather than follow America's tough recommendation - and close or recapitalise these banks - Japan took an easier approach.

Proposition 8 Goes Back to Court  —  This week, California's gay-marriage battle returns to the national spotlight.  —  The state's Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Thursday on whether an amendment passed by voters in November banning gay marriage should stand.

Moderate Dems confront Pelosi  —  In a private meeting last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi laid down a challenge to her moderate members who were complaining about a provision in the housing bill.  Stand up and air your grievances, she said.  —  A handful of those moderate members did just that …

Current GOP Strategy Echoes Kristol's 1993 Memo Urging Obstruction Of Dems  —  With the GOP gearing up to defeat President Obama's big-ticket initiatives, a lot of folks have been trying to track down a copy of the full memo that Bill Kristol famously wrote in 1993 urging Republicans …