Steele backs off abortion remarks  —  RNC Chairman Michael Steele said today that despite telling an interviewer he supports “individual choice” and state-level decisions on abortion, he in fact opposes abortion and supports a Constitutional ban.  —  Steele said in a statement through an RNC spokesman:

Lamest billboard ever  —  I said last week that Democrat donors ought to question whether the DNC was using its money wisely by indugling in an anti-Rush Limbaugh billboard.  —  See, I told you so.  The Christian Science Monitor skewers the results: … FAIL.

2 arrests in Obama appointee's office  —  Federal agents this morning are searching the office Washington, D.C.'s Chief Technology Officer.  —  The search of the office at 1 Judiciary Square is part of “an ongoing investigation,” said a spokeswoman for the FBI's D.C. Field Office, Lindsay Gotwin, said.

Third Top Treasury Pick Withdraws From Consideration  —  Democratic sources say that H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.  —  It's the third withdrawal …

Pres. Obama Will Not Attend Annual Gridiron Dinner, First President Since Cleveland to Miss  —  A Gridiron Club member tells FBDC first that President Obama will not attend this year's dinner next Saturday, March 21st.  He will be the first president since Grover Cleveland not to attend the first Gridiron Club Dinner of his presidency.

Big Union Vows To Back Arlen Specter In 2010 If He Supports Employee Free Choice  —  This is big: Senior officials with the powerful AFL-CIO have privately assured GOP Senator Arlen Specter that they'll throw their full support behind him in the 2010 Senate race if he votes for the Employee Free Choice Act …

Congresswoman, Tied to Bank, Helped Seek Funds  —  WASHINGTON — Top banking regulators were taken aback late last year when a California congresswoman helped set up a meeting in which the chief executive of a bank with financial ties to her family asked them for up to $50 million in special bailout funds, Treasury officials said.

Clyburn: Zimbabwe crack “beyond the pale”  —  House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told me he thinks S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford's quip comparing President Obama's stimulus package to Zimbabwe's economic policies are “beyond the pale” — and suggested they might carry a racial subtext.

Laura Ingraham mocks Meghan McCain as being ‘plus-sized.’  —  Last night, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) daughter, Meghan McCain, appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show, where she continued to criticize Ann Coulter.  On her radio show today, Laura Ingraham responded to McCain's critique …

Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty  —  Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday to all the charges against him and expressed remorse for a vast Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of billions of dollars.  —  Standing before Judge Denny Chin in United States District Court in Manhattan …

BEHOLD, THE ‘NO COST STIMULUS’.... If you missed last night's episode of Sean Hannity's Fox News show, you missed a fascinating “discussion” between Hannity, Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.).  As the Fox News personality explained, Shadegg and Vitter have come up with a …

Winners and losers in the knock-down fight over Charles Freeman's aborted appointment.  —  Discomfiting as it is to say so, President Barack Obama was right to cut Charles Freeman loose—but not for the reasons that Freeman's foes might think.  —  It's always discomfiting when nominees …

Workers' Health Benefits Eyed for Taxation  —  Revenue Would Fund Expansion of Coverage  —  With President Obama's plan to tax the rich to pay for health care facing deep skepticism on Capitol Hill, key lawmakers are pressing a different way to raise money: taxing the health benefits workers receive from their employers.

Ross Douthat: the College Years  —  A look at the newest New York Times columnist's undergrad writing.  —  The New York Times reported yesterday that it had hired conservative Atlantic blogger Ross Douthat as an op-ed columnist.  Douthat, who will be one of the youngest—if not the youngest …

Columbia J-School's Existential Crisis  —  The media bloodbath hasn't made for happy days at Columbia Journalism School.  When the Times recently announced that its new, hyperlocal blog experiment “The Local” would be assisted by journalism students not from Columbia but from the City University of New York …

Army fired 11 soldiers in Jan. as openly gay  —  The Army fired 11 soldiers in January for violating the military's policy that gay service members must keep their sexuality hidden, according to a Virginia congressman.  Democratic Rep. Jim Moran said he has requested monthly updates …

Why Freeman himself was wrong about what his defeat signified...  There was a lot I didn't like about the Chas Freeman debacle, but the thing I did not like most was the degree to which it offered apparent support to the “theories” of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.

U.S. Jet Shoots Down Iranian Drone Over Iraq (Updated)  —  An American fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone as it was flying over Iraq, U.S. military sources in Baghdad tell Danger Room.  —  Details of the previously-unreported shoot-down, which occurred last month, are still sketchy.

Everyman Obama courts socialites  —  A workingman's White House cultivates Beltway ‘tastemakers’  —  While publicly identifying with the nation's have-nots, the Obama administration has been quietly cultivating the Beltway social elite behind the scenes.  —  Earlier this year …