Obama's Interactive Town Hall Meeting  —  President Obama is trying to talk directly to the American people these days, making the case for his ambitious agenda in forums as varied as Jay Leno's late-night television show and a news conference on Tuesday.  Now Mr. Obama will have a chance …

U.S. Accused Of Killing 39 In Sudan Strike  —  A government minister in Sudan is accusing the United States Air Force of killing dozens of people in that north African country this past January - but the semi-official American version of the story is very different.

Bachmann Introducing Bill to Ban Use of Made-Up Global Currency  —  The madness continues as Michelle Bachmann introduces legislation that “would bar the dollar from being replaced by any foreign currency.”  —  What the Chinese were proposing, of course, was to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Rahm Emanuel's profitable stint at mortgage giant  —  Short Freddie Mac stay made him at least $320,000  —  Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up …

Steele On Rush Flap: “It's All Strategic”  —  Michael Steele just doesn't know how to stop.  —  Steele appeared on CNN this afternoon, and was asked by host Don Lemon whether he's ever considered running for president, and right off the bat he managed to give the sensible, correct answer …

Sources: Extensive regulatory overhaul planned  —  WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is proposing an extensive overhaul of financial regulations to increase oversight of such exotic instruments as credit default swaps that have been blamed for contributing to the worst financial crisis to hit the country in seven decades.

GOP gloves off for budget brawl  —  House Republicans have begun unveiling detailed alternatives to President Barack Obama's policies — a concerted effort to push back against Democratic efforts to label them “the Party of No.”  —  On Wednesday, it was a housing plan.

WSJ Says Bayh Wants to Shake Up Status Quo By Protecting Business Interests  —  Here's a curious report from The Wall Street Journal's Naftali Bendavid and Greg Hitt: … The presumption here being that over the past eight years, the political powerhouses in Washington were insufficiently solicitous …

Obama's bank plan could rob the taxpayer  —  The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value.

Cutting Deficit Will Require Tax Increases  —  The debate on the budget is phony, the howling on deficits a charade.  Few politicians want to acknowledge that if you really are concerned about long-term deficits, you have to support tax increases.  —  That's why the most significant moment …

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: XXVII  —  She said she'd turned down some of the federal stimulus money: … No, she didn't say she did. … But she did: … But she didn't:

Dems warn against first lady bill  —  House Republicans are pressing for a change in federal law that could force Michelle Obama and future first ladies to do more of their policy work in public.  But Democrats warn President Obama may take the attempt personally “as an attack on his wife.”

Is the Bonus Tax Unconstitutional?  —  The Supreme Court defers too much to Congress.  —  Bills now winding their way through Congress would tax between 70% and 90% of bonuses paid to any executive earning in excess of $250,000, if he or she is employed by a business that received more than $5 billion from U.S. bailout funds.

Learning How to Think  —  Ever wonder how financial experts could lead the world over the economic cliff?  —  One explanation is that so-called experts turn out to be, in many situations, a stunningly poor source of expertise.  There's evidence that what matters in making a sound forecast …

Why I Called Justice Scalia A Homophobe  —  While responding to questions from journalists about my characterization of Justice Antonin Scalia as a homophobe, I realized that the fact that I made that comment in conjunction with a potential lawsuit about the Defense of Marriage Act created …

Bold claims of stimulus jobs can't be measured  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  WASHINGTON - If space exploration were conducted like the job forecasts under the government's new stimulus law, man surely would have missed the moon.  But this isn't rocket science.

Obama 2.0 Volunteer Effort: Still a work in progress  —  Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee-based group that took over for Barack Obama's prodigious grassroots campaign organization released the results of their weekend canvassing effort in support of Obama's budget proposal.

Jindal Spurns Obama's Jobless Aid as Mayor Pleads ‘Help Me Now’  —  Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, cited fiscal responsibility when he turned down about $98 million in unemployment aid that was part of President Barack Obama's $787 billion federal stimulus package.

US deploys warships as North Korea prepares to launch missile  —  The US has deployed two warships with anti-missile capabilities in the waters off Japan as tensions mount over North Korea's plans to test-fire a long-range ballistic missile capable of striking Alaska.

AIG Fights a Fire at Its Paris Unit  —  Executives' Resignations Put Billions in Contracts at Risk of Default  —  Amid the flap over bonuses at American International Group Inc. two of the company's top managers in Paris have resigned.  Their moves have left the giant insurer …

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: FOURTH QUARTER 2008 (Final)  —  Corporate Profits, Fourth quarter 2008  —  Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 …

Domino's ads delivering for Gov. contender  —  Corporate CEOs aren't the most popular people right now, but one of them wants to make it very clear that he had no part in this whole bailout thing.  —  Domino's Pizza Chairman and CEO David Brandon has been on national television for two weeks touting the …

No, he can't  —  157 » Features » No, he can't  —  The wheels are already coming off Obama's Trojan horse revolution.  Will he, like Jimmy Carter, be seen as a one-term disaster?  —  Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect's blog  —  Barack Obama was always going to disappoint.

Clinton says US shares responsibility for Mexico's drug violence  —  The “insatiable” American demand for illegal drugs is part of the problem, she says, and hints at changes ahead in US drug-control policies.  —  MEXICO CITY -  —  The United States is at least as responsible as Mexico …