Cantor Watched Britney Spears Concert During Obama Presser, Landrieu Denies Rumors  —  There was more than one whip at last night's Britney Spears concert in Washington DC.  —  Three GOP aides confirmed to the Huffington Post that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) …

Ed Henry's take on exchange with Obama  —  Ed Henry, CNN's senior White House correspondent, got a tough answer from President Obama when he asked Tuesday night why Obama waited days to express outrage on the AIG bonuses.  “Because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak,” Obama said.

Geithner ‘open’ to China proposal  —  Geithner, at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. is “open” to a headline-grabbing proposal by the governor of the China's central bank, which was widely reported as being a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar …

House Democrats Slash More Than $100B From Obama's Plan  —  Budget Leaders Refuse to Include More Funding for Financial Sector Bailout  —  House budget leaders today unveiled a $3.45 trillion budget blueprint for fiscal 2010 that slices more than $100 billion from the spending plan President Obama proposed last month.

Another Obama nominee withdraws  —  Chalk up another casualty in the Obama administration's attempts to staff federal agencies.  —  Jon Cannon, nominated to be the deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency, pulled his name from consideration today, citing questions over a non-profit …

Palin unplugged in speech to Alaska GOP dinner  —  (CNN) - Sarah Palin is teeing off on the media once again.  —  In a little-noticed speech to a GOP dinner in Alaska last week, Palin riffed for nearly an hour on a variety of topics — including her relationship with former McCain staffers …

The man who survived both atomic bombings  —  Japan has certified a man aged 93 as the only known survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both hit by atomic bombs towards the end of World War II.  —  Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb.

The Civil Heretic  —  FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country's most rarefied community of scholars.

Limbaugh An Issue in New York Special  —  Democrats are seeking to use conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh to rally their base in advance of next week's special election in New York's 20th district.  —  A new direct mail piece from businessman Scott Murphy's campaign features …

Cities Deal With a Surge in Shanty Towns  —  FRESNO, Calif. — As the operations manager of a outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck.  What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center.

Former CNN Anchor Moves to The Onion  —  In yet another sign that the line between real news and fake news is getting thinner, one of CNN's main anchors during the 1980s and 1990s, Bobbie Battista, has taken a step through the looking glass and can now be seen anchoring reports online for ONN, The Onion News Network.

Little-Known GOP Challenger Tops Specter In Primary, Quinnipiac University Pennsylvania Poll Finds; Support For Obama Plan Helps Among Democrats  —  Apparently paying a political price for his support of President Barack Obama's Stimulus Plan, longtime Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter …

My speech to Gordon Brown goes viral  —  The internet has changed politics - changed it utterly and forever.  Twenty-four hours ago, I made a three-minute speech in the European Parliament, aimed at Gordon Brown.  I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly …

MGM gets its ‘Stooges’  —  Penn, Carrey, Del Toro part of studio's plan  —  MGM and the Farrelly brothers are closing in on their cast for “The Three Stooges.”  —  Studio has set Sean Penn to play Larry, and negotiations are underway with Jim Carrey to play Curly, with the actor already making plans …

DOUBLE-DIPPERS  —  CITI, BOFA BUYING BACK LAUNDERED LOANS AT LOWER RATES  —  As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner orchestrated a plan to help the nation's largest banks purge themselves of toxic mortgage assets, Citigroup and Bank of America have been aggressively scooping up those same securities …

Democrats vs. Democrats  —  House Minority Leader John A. Boehner snarled at moderate Democrats Wednesday, but the real bite came from liberal groups frustrated by centrist opposition to Barack Obama's budget priorities.  —  As Boehner accused Blue Dog Democrats of being “lap dogs” for Obama …

Netanyahu, Lieberman ‘struck secret deal for West Bank construction’  —  Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a secret deal with Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman for highly contentious construction on West Bank land known as E1, Army Radio reported Wednesday.

Jindal defends those who want Obama to fail  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — It's OK for Republicans to want President Obama to fail if they think he's jeopardizing the country, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told members of his political party Tuesday night.  —  Jindal described the premise of the question …

New best friends have a great meeting of the minds  —  BARACK OBAMA delivered Kevin Rudd the ultimate compliment yesterday by citing the Prime Minister while defending his own approach to the global financial crisis.  —  During a live, nationally televised press conference that had been hyped …

A Conversation with Timothy F. Geithner  —  Speaker:  —  Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Department of the Treasury  —  Moderator:  —  ROGER C. ALTMAN: Good morning, everyone.  I'm Roger Altman, and welcome — (audio break) — on Foreign Relations and today's event featuring Treasury Secretary Geithner.

White House to Keep Agencies' Focus on Terrorism  —  WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is moving to solidify one of the most significant shifts of resources put into place under President George W. Bush: the transformation of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation …

Is it back to the Fifties?  —  “My mother is 75,” said Jon Stewart, the US late-night comedian, at the end of his already famous interview with Jim Cramer, the television stock market pundit.  “And she bought into the idea that long-term investing is the way to go.  And guess what?”

Clinton: U.S. Drug Policies Failed, Fueled Mexico's Drug War  —  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Mexico on Wednesday with a stark mea culpa, saying that decades of U.S. anti-narcotics policies had been a failure and contributed to the explosion of drug violence south of the border.

O'Reilly Lashes Back At ThinkProgress: 'They're Insects'  —  O'Reilly Lashes Back At ThinkProgress: 'They're Insects'  —  Tonight on The Factor, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly offered a host of attacks on ThinkProgress and Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta that were rich with irony.

Auto Task Force to Back More Loans, With Strings  —  President Barack Obama last month handed his auto-industry team a seemingly impossible task: to engineer the most complicated industrial restructuring ever attempted by the federal government, and to do it fast.

Obama's viewership declines  —  UPDATED: Most TV shows start strong in the ratings, then decline as their novelty wears off.  —  Apparently that trend also holds true for the president's primetime telecasts.  —  According to the national Nielsen ratings, Barack Obama's Tuesday-night press …

Treasuries Fall on Supply Concern as Seven-Year Sale Looms  —  Treasury 10-year note yields rose the most in more than two weeks after an auction of $34 billion in five-year notes drew a higher-than-forecast yield, spurring concern record sales of U.S. debt are overwhelming demand.