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 …

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.

Conservatives: Liz Cheney Should Run for Office  —  The hottest Republican property out there isn't former Vice President Dick Cheney but his daughter Liz, who has taken to the airwaves to defend her dad and the whole Bush administration on national security and Guantánamo Bay issues.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.”

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 …

“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.

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.

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?

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 …

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 …

OBAMA TO APOLOGIZE TO GERMANY FOR WWII?  —  The latest inconceivable Obamaction is yet another unbecoming apology in Europe, this time in Germany for WWII.  John Rosenthal suggests, “As bizarre as it may seem, President Obama's impending trip to Dresden suggests that German revisionists have a friend in the White House”.

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 …

Rush: Love tangle for Citigroup exec  —  It's no secret that Citigroup board Chairman Richard Parsons has been working for months to repair the financial giant.  —  But, until now, even his closest associates didn't know he also was wrestling with a personal crisis - how to tell his wife …

Supermax too full for Guantanamo detainees  —  Moving any large number of terror detainees from Guantanamo Bay to Colorado's Supermax would require either shuffling current residents out of the Florence prison or expanding its capacity and resolving a long-running battle over adequate prison staffing.

Animatronic Obama Going to Disney World With High-Tech Style  —  LOS ANGELES — Barack Obama was standing on a riser inside a warehouse here, delivering an inspirational speech about the blessings of freedom, when his left index finger began to twitch uncontrollably, unnerving his aides.

Creigh Deeds for Democratic Candidate for Va. Governor  —  WHO IS the best candidate for Northern Virginia?  Judge by appearances and there are two obvious possibilities in the Democratic primary for governor: Brian Moran, the former Alexandria prosecutor who served a dozen years in the House of Delegates …

Recession Turns Malls Into Ghost Towns  —  CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Malls, those ubiquitous shopping meccas that sprang up in the 1950s, are dwindling in number, with many struggling properties reduced to largely vacant shells.  —  On the low-income east side of Charlotte, N.C. …

In the Loop: A Gay Pride Party at the Baghdad Embassy  —  Change has certainly come to Baghdad.  And it appears that includes the U.S. Embassy, where they are holding what the invitation says is the first-ever U.S. Embassy Gay Pride Theme Party next Friday at Baghdaddy's, which is the embassy employee association's pub.