Right demands tougher fight  —  Conservatives are demanding that Senate Republicans take a harder line on Sonia Sotomayor, with new signs of tension between the Hill GOP and elements of the Republican base over the direction the opposition should move in the Supreme Court fight.

Sources: No 3rd Governor Term For Pawlenty  —  Watch The News Conference LIVE On WCCO.COM At 2 p.m.  —  ST. PAUL (WCCO) ― Two sources have confirmed that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will announce that he will not seek re-election in 2010.  —  The sources confirmed …

CNN Poll: No frontrunner in GOP 2012 presidential race  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) - A new national poll of Republicans suggests that there's no front runner at this extremely early moment in the next race for the White House.  —  Three possible candidates are all bunched at the top of a CNN/Opinion Research

Obama to Name N.Y. Congressman the Army Secretary  —  Representative John M. McHugh, a Republican congressman from New York, will be nominated by President Obama to be secretary of the Army, according to officials, as the administration continues to reach into the ranks of the opposition for executive appointments.

CNN Poll: Many Americans hold unfavorable view of Muslim world  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Hours before President Barack Obama departs for a trip to the Middle East, a new national poll suggests that only one in five Americans has a favorable view of Muslim countries.

Obama says Iran's energy concerns legitimate  —  LONDON — President Barack Obama suggested that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful.  —  In a BBC interview broadcast Tuesday, he also restated plans …

Likud: US meddling in Israeli politics  —  Article's topics: Barrack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Rahm Emanuel, Moshe Ya'alon  —  US President Barack Obama's administration's criticism of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's policies has crossed the line into interfering in Israeli politics, top Likud ministers and MKs said Tuesday.

Palin links Tiller, Long slayings  —  Sarah Palin today picked up a widely heard theme on the right, using the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller to call attention to the murder of an army recruiter in Arkansas, allegedly by a self-styled Islamic militant:

The Quagmire Ahead  —  On Jan. 21, 1988, a General Motors executive named Elmer Johnson wrote a brave and prophetic memo.  Its main point was contained in this sentence: “We have vastly underestimated how deeply ingrained are the organizational and cultural rigidities that hamper our ability to execute.”

Cheney Edges Away From Claim That CIA Docs Will Prove Torture Worked  —  There's a very revealing moment buried in an interview that Dick Cheney gave to Fox News last night that really gives away his game plan on torture.  —  Specifically: Cheney seemed to edge away from the claim …

The 10 Hottest Liberal Women In Politics  —  After the debacle that was Playboy's Hit Piece On Conservative Women, I thought, “Someone should do this right.”  I mean, can't we simply admire the female form without being jerks about it...ehr, much?  —  So, I thought about doing a list …

A Conspiracy of Euphemism  —  The eight a.m. NPR news update today included word of the fatal shooting of one soldier and the wounding of another outside an army recruiting station in Arkansas.  The news reader, Nora Raum, outlined the incident and stated that the shooting appeared to have “religious motivations.”

New poll results are devastating for Obama's Gitmo plan  —  I've gotten a look inside the Gallup poll numbers showing that a majority of Americans oppose shutting down the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.  The numbers are stunning.  They show a strong and virtually across …

Turning Japanese  —  Japan's post-bubble policies produced a “lost decade.”  So why is President Obama emulating them?  —  The scenario was eerily familiar.  A long real estate bubble that had expanded extra rapidly for the previous five years suddenly burst, and asset prices came crashing back down to earth.

Seventh Circuit Rules That, Under Supreme Court Precedent, the Second Amendment Is Not Incorporated Against the States: The case is NRA v. City of Chicago, the challenge to the Chicago handgun ban.  The core argument: … I don't think this reasoning (from Judge Frank Easterbrook …

Why Don't MSNBCers Question “Morning Joe” About Abortion Doc Killings?  —  Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow devoted much of their MSNBC shows last night to the assassination of George Tiller.  Maddow actually led with a headshot of Michael Griffin, the first abortion-doctor murderer …

Pennsylvania Voters To Dem Establishment: Please Let Us Pick Our Senator  —  A striking number in a new poll that Susquehanna Research and Polling just sent over shows that an overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania Democrats want a Senate primary, despite the best efforts of the White House …

Chinese Company Said to Be Buyer of Hummer  —  GUANGZHOU, China — General Motors has reached a preliminary agreement for the sale of its Hummer brand of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks to a machinery company in western China with ambitions to become a carmaker …

ON SOCIALISM.  —  Jon Henke highlights a few people wondering “why everybody is afraid to use the S-word” to describe the government's investment in General Motors.  The easy joke is, doye, Saul Anuzis already decided that socialism was played and conservatives have to call Obama's policies “fascist.”

IN WHICH I APPARENTLY MAKE MEGHAN MCCAIN ANGRY.... I had an item yesterday noting that Dick Cheney's remarks on gay marriage may have a role in the party's debate over gay rights.  I added what seemed like a pretty uncontroversial idea — while Meghan McCain and Steve Schmidt were other Republicans …

Guantánamo Detainee Kills Himself  —  A Yemeni detainee at Guantánamo apparently committed suicide late Monday, military officials said in a terse announcement Tuesday.  —  The death was the first at the prison since President Obama took office, and detainees' lawyers …

AP: tech coming to stop “wholesale theft” on 'Net  —  It looks like the Associated Press is getting pretty close to deploying that ‘anti-misappropriation’ technology the news agency has been talking about.  Ars got an AP editor to give us some details.  —  Ever since the Associated Press warned …

Feds spike voter citizenship checks in Georgia  —  ATLANTA — The Justice Department has rejected Georgia's system of using Social Security numbers and driver's license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November's election.

The Deadly Toll of Abortion by Amateurs  —  BEREGA, Tanzania — A handwritten ledger at the hospital tells a grim story.  For the month of January, 17 of the 31 minor surgical procedures here were done to repair the results of “incomplete abortions.”  A few may have been miscarriages …