Sobbing Kindergarteners Snubbed for Steelers?  —  Kids locked out of White House; officials say they were too late  —  Thursday was supposed to be the highlight of the year for more than 100 kindergarteners from Stafford County, Va. They got up early and took a chartered bus to the White House for a school field trip.

The 10 punches Dick Cheney landed on Barack Obama's jaw  —  The spectacle of two duelling speeches with a mile of each other in downtown Washington was extraordinary.  I was at the Cheney event and watched Obama's address on a big screen beside the empty lectern that the former veep stepped behind barely …

NEPOTISM REIGNS.... Mid-day yesterday, I noticed that Mark Halperin had a headline that read, “Round 2: Liz Cheney vs Axe.”  Round 1, apparently, was President Obama and former Vice President Cheney, and Round 2's “Axe” refers to David Axelrod, Senior White House Advisor to the president.

McAuliffe, LU Democrats hold call on club ban  —  Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe held a conference call with reporters this morning.  —  Liberty University's Democratic party club president Brian Diaz and the club's staff adviser, Maria Childress, answered questions …

Steele: Obama ‘Was Not Vetted Because The Press Fell In Love With The Black Man Running For The Office’  —  Apparently unable to learn from egregious mistakes from the recent past, RNC Chairman Michael Steele once again took to the radio airwaves today as a guest host for Bill Bennett.

Bush: It's ‘liberating’ to be out of office  —  He gets warm welcome from group of graduating N.M. high school students  —  ARTESIA, N.M. - It was a humbling moment for the former commander in chief: President George W. Bush was walking former first dog Barney in his new Dallas neighborhood …

President Above-It-All  —  EDITOR'S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate.  For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext 246.  —  Put Barack Obama in front of a teleprompter …

U.S. to Steer GM Toward Bankruptcy  —  Filing Expected as Chrysler Set to Emerge  —  The Obama administration is preparing to send General Motors into bankruptcy as early as the end of next week under a plan that would give the automaker tens of billions of dollars more in public financing …

“I don't know why your husband doesn't put a gun to his temple.”  —  En route to pick up a tux for a wedding I'm attending this weekend, I flipped on the radio in my mother's car, found it tuned to the AM dial, and heard a host so petulant that he is an outlier even on talk radio.

Media Fawns Over Newt, Ignores Other Former Congressional Leaders  —  Steve Benen observes that these days Newt Gingrich is everywhere you look: … It's a really strange situation.  If were an editor looking for an op-ed from a conservative point of view about the California budget crisis …

Labs Contest  —  Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge  —  What it Is  —  Apps for America is a special contest we're putting on this year to celebrate the release of Data.gov!  We're doing it alongside Google, O'Reilly Media, and TechWeb and the winners will be announced …

Blue Double Cross  —  That didn't take long.  Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way.  Indeed, it's now clear that even as they met …

Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal  —  [Updated below - Update II (Interview with ACLU) - Update III - Update IV ]  —  In the wake of Obama's speech yesterday, there are vast numbers of new converts who now support indefinite “preventive detention.”

Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil  —  With Sleuthing and Satellite Images, Mr. Melvin Fills the Blanks on a Secretive Nation's Map  —  SEOUL — In the propaganda blitz that followed North Korea's missile launch last month, the country's state media released photos of leader Kim Jong Il visiting …

Some GOP-ers step away from Cheney  —  Dick Cheney's full-throated attack on the Obama administration has left congressional Republicans with a tricky decision: Do they embrace his critiques, even if it means aligning themselves with the most polarizing figure from the still-unpopular Bush administration?

Yossi Melman / Obama quashed Israel military option against Iran  —  Israel's military option against Iran has died.  The death warrant was issued courtesy of the new U.S. administration led by Barack Obama.  —  All the administration's senior officials, from the president to his vice president …

A Governor and His Veto Pen  —  Minnesota's illuminating budget brawl.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  'Minnesota nice" comes in two forms: the first, gracious hospitality; the second, smiling stubbornness.  Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty this week delivered his spendthrift legislature a humiliating taste of the latter.

NEWS FROM THE PLAIN DEALER  —  Headlines for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio  —  Waves of immigrants now calling Philadelphia home; new Welcoming Center idea behind the lure  —  Vacant homes.  Empty storefronts.  Ghostly streets.  —  In a scenario hauntingly familiar to Cleveland …