Governor Signs LD 1020, An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom  —  AUGUSTA - Governor John E. Baldacci today signed into law LD 1020, An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom.  —  “I have followed closely the debate on this issue.

Sessions would consider gay SCOTUS nominee  —  Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday he could consider a gay nominee for the nation's highest court.  —  “I'm not inclined to think that's an automatic disqualification,” Sessions said of a gay nominee.

Meltdown: Specter stands alone  —  Arlen Specter infuriated Senate Republicans when he bolted from their party last week.  Now he's alienated just about everybody in the Senate Democratic caucus, too.  —  Since declaring himself a Democrat last Tuesday, Specter has defied Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid …

Obama's Brave Burger Run; Even Takes Biden Along (And You Know How Risky That Can Be)  —  All D.C. is a-twitter with yesterday's big burger run by the White House's answer to the Venture Bros.  —  President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden jaunted off to an Arlington …

A Cheney Cover-Up?  —  Someone in the White House tried to deep-six Philip Zelikow's anti-torture memo.  Welcome to the latest Bush-era whodunit.  —  Post Comment  —  Who in the George W. Bush White House tried to shred a memo challenging the use of torture?

EXCLUSIVE: Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in jeopardy  —  President Obama's efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel's nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.

Too Much, Magic Bus  —  PajamasTV hasn't really been in the news since it hired Sam “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher to report on the war in Gaza, but it's still kicking.  Some of its most popular content is coming from black conservative comic Alphonzo Rachel, who sometimes appears as “President Zobama.”

Colin Powell Bashes Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and GOP  —  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has once again bashed conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh as well as Alaska Governor Sarah Palin while going a step further this time by piling on the GOP.

Tortured Logic  —  Hit me Bybee, one more time.  —  Remember the Rule of Law?  In the late 1990s, it was all the rage in conservative circles.  Having maneuvered Bill Clinton into a position where he could either lie under oath or suffer massive personal and political embarrassment …

A Complicated Question  —  I had dinner once with John and Elizabeth Edwards, when he first burst onto the national scene.  —  Looking across the booth at her grinning, boyish husband, she told me that it was irritating to be married to someone so comely who looked so much younger.

EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Limbaugh Mocks Recession During Speech To Wealthy Right-Wing Donors  —  Last night, Rush Limbaugh came to Washington, D.C. to address the President's Club Dinner, a meeting of wealthy donors and supporters of the Heritage Foundation.  The audience included Supreme Court …

The Confederate Legacy  —  Ed Kilgore has a very interesting post on a new trend sweeping conservative politics in Dixie—"sovereignty resolutions" that appear to assert states' rights to unilaterally invalidate federal action, a doctrine last seen in the hands of John C. Calhoun, the great antebellum theorist of white supremacy.

Eco-sailors rescued by oil tanker  —  An expedition team which set sail from Plymouth on a 5,000-mile carbon emission-free trip to Greenland have been rescued by an oil tanker.  —  Raoul Surcouf, Richard Spink and skipper Ben Stoddart sent a mayday because they feared for their safety amid winds of 68mph (109km/h).

The North Repopulates, Ctd.  —  Mark Steyn replies to Martin Walker:  —  Let's say you have 950,000 ethnic Europeans whose fertility rate is 1.3.  And 50,000 immigrants move in with a fertility rate of 3.5.  You'd have an overall fertility rate increase to 1.41, or almost 10 percent, entirely due to a tiny segment of the population.

The Price of the King's Shilling  —  Apparently, the $34 billion figure is good news because BAC has all those preferreds at Treasury that can be converted to common stock, leaving Treasury with $34 billion of common and $11 billion of preferreds.  But Joe Weisenthal asks a good question:

Chrysler + FIAT = Chooch!  —  Dan Gross, in a defense of the Chrysler deal's treatment of bondholders, writes … But Gross argues it's permissable in this case, if I understand him, because thanks to government bailout money the complaining “secured” lenders are doing better than they would have anyway.

EXCLUSIVE: Steele yields powers to foes in RNC  —  Accepts limits on spending  —  Capitulating to critics on the Republican National Committee, embattled Republican Party Chairman Michael S. Steele has signed a secret pact agreeing to controls and restraints on how he spends hundreds …

Old duds, Michelle still fab  —  Now that's how to dress in New York during a recession.  —  For her first visit here as First Lady, Michelle Obama recycled a wardrobe staple.  She shopped her closet and picked a Tracy Feith dress that she's worn before for a meet-and-greet at the U.S. mission to the UN Tuesday afternoon.

White House Cheat Sheet: Republican Recruiting Recovering  —  (Photo - Toni L. Sandys/ The Washington Post)  —  Republicans, out of power in Washington and struggling badly to find new leaders to match President Obama at the national level, are on the verge of a series of recruiting successes …

Climate Impacts of Waxman-Markey (the IPCC-based arithmetic of no gain) … The economics and the regulatory burdens of climate change bills are forever being analyzed, but the bills' primary function—mitigating future climate change—is generally ignored.  —  Perhaps that's because it is simply assumed.

DOING NOTHING ON CLIMATE CHANGE IS EXPENSIVE.  —  My new employers sure seem to spend a lot of time publishing columnists who are critical of climate science and then publishing op-eds and arguments that essentially trash the take of the original columns.  The latest example comes in response …

Elena Kagan, Radical?  —  Earlier this week, President Obama called Republican Senator Orrin Hatch to discuss the vacancy on the Court left by Justice Souter.  According to Hatch's office, the president “assured Hatch...that he would appoint a pragmatist, not a radical, to this important position.”