GOP to Michael Steele: Quiet About Rush Limbaugh or You're Fired  —  Apology to Rush Limbaugh aside, new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is coming under fire from his own GOP troops to shut up and focus on his job of organizing the party and raising money, not fighting with his own political kind.

A Moderate Manifesto  —  You wouldn't know it some days, but there are moderates in this country — moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates.  We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do.  We like his investments in education and energy innovation.

Wealthy Idiots Meet Idiot Reporter  —  I've seen a lot of dumb news reports in my life, but I'm not sure anything can quite match this one from ABC News.  The premise of the report is this: Barack Obama plans to raise taxes on people who make more than $250,000, so the reporter has gone …

Bullish Obama Suggests Nation Should Buy!  Buy!  —  President Obama told Americans to take a look at investing in the stock market this afternoon, a remarkable utterance for an American president, especially as the Dow Jones Industrial Average proceeds on its course Southward.

Zombie financial ideas  —  Calculated Risk looks at the latest plan floated by the Treasury — to make low-interest, non-recourse loans to private investors who buy bad assets — and immediately gets it: this is a plan to drive up the prices of toxic assets by creating a lot of moral hazard.

Extraordinary Measures  —  A new memo shows just how far the Bush administration considered going in fighting the war on terror.  —  In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside …

SNEAK PEEK AT THE NBC/WSJ POLL  —  From NBC's Mark Murray  —  Here's one set of numbers we're releasing before the entire NBC/WSJ poll comes out at 6:30 pm ET: By a 48-20 percent margin, Americans believe the Democratic Party would do a better job of getting the U.S. out of recession than the Republican Party.

Emblems to Stamp Projects Funded by the Stimulus Package  —  ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports:  —  Put a stamp on it — that's what the White House says.  —  President Obama announced today that his administration will begin stamping an emblem on projects funded by the economic stimulus package …

MTSU POLL: One In Six Tennesseans Admit To Telling Racist Jokes About The President  —  The newest poll on state and national issues in Tennessee is out from our friends over at Middle Tennessee State University complete with charts and graphs.  Some of the more interesting findings below.

Dems yank DC vote bill in House  —  It looks like voters in the District of Columbia will have to wait another week - and possibly a lot longer - to claim official representation in the House.  —  Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Tuesday night that the bill would not come …

White House Knocks Jim Cramer For Calling Obama Budget “Greatest Wealth Destruction By a President”  —  NBC's Tom Costello, on duty at the White House today, asked press secretary Robert Gibbs about some comments made by his CNBC colleague Jim Cramer.  On the Today show this morning …

Smear Itself  —  The paranoia of Stephen Walt rears its ugly head once again.  —  Ever since he co-authored the wildly hyperbolic tome The Israel Lobby, Stephen Walt has been on his best behavior.  He has authored a lot of staid hard-realist commentary about foreign policy and kept his fulminations about …

You're in the high rent district  —  Approximately 2% of the American households make more than $250,000 a year and (you may find this hard to believe) a very high percentage of these high-earning go-getting producers spend their days commenting over at Michelle Malkin's place …

Coleman camp asks that election result be ‘set aside’  —  Request was made as Franken's lawyers prepare to make their case.  —  For more than a month, Norm Coleman stressed flaws in Minnesota's election system.  —  And on Monday, Coleman lawyer Jim Langdon wrote the three-judge panel …

Afghan tech boom: Mullah embraces iPhone  —  KABUL (AP) — Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef is a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan.  He spent almost four years in Guantanamo.  He wears a black turban, has a thick beard — and is never without his Apple iPhone.