Rebuilding Something Better  —  Nearly six months ago, my administration took office amid the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression.  At the time, we were losing, on average, 700,000 jobs a month.  And many feared that our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

The Holder trial balloon: Abu Ghraib redux  —  (updated below - Update II)  —  Yesterday, I treated this new Newsweek report that Eric Holder is “leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices” as something to celebrate.

FOLKS: O, FOR SHAME!  —  'GIRL'S NO SEX SYMBOL!'  —  The Secret Service might want to put a new threat on its watch list: the mad-as-hell mama of the 17-year-old Brazilian beauty ogled by President Obama and French leader Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 summit last week.

She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It  —  SARAH PALIN and Al Sharpton don't ordinarily have much in common, but they achieved a rare harmonic convergence at Michael Jackson's memorial service.  When Sharpton told the singer's children it was their daddy's adversaries, not their daddy …

McCain: Palin not a quitter  —  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) defended his former running mate Sarah Palin on Sunday, saying she wasn't a quitter and that her decision to resign as governor was consistent with his own leadership qualities.  —  McCain said Palin did not tell him she was resigning …

GOP Responds To Cheney's Concealment Of CIA Program With Strawmen And Shrugged Shoulders  —  Earlier this week, seven House Democrats on the Intelligence Committee released a letter revealing that CIA Director Leon Panetta had “recently testified to Congress that the agency concealed information …

Teen Girl Falls In Open Manhole While Texting  —  Alexa Longueira Suffers Deep Cuts, Bruises After Landing In Raw Sewage, Blames DEP For Leaving Hole Unattended  —  NEW YORK (CBS) ― It was an accident waiting to happen — an open sewer and a 15-year-old girl who was texting while she walked.

Will ObamaCare threaten medical innovation?  —  Glenn Reynolds argues that the wait lines for treatments in a single-payer system are not the biggest concern.  In a Washington Examiner column, Glenn relates personal stories of how his family members have benefited from innovation in medical treatments …

Lawmakers reject tax to pay for health reform  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Sunday criticized a plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for a $1 trillion healthcare overhaul and warned Congress was unlikely to meet President Barack Obama's goal of passing the measure by August.

Why tide against Sanford ebbed  —  Governor's wife, political realities helped put calls for resignation to rest  —  The shock had subsided.  —  Then Gov. Mark Sanford set the scandal ablaze again, saying he considered his Argentine lover his “soul mate” and saw her more often than he originally had said.

In Supreme Court Pick Sotomayor, an Insider's Rise Meets an Outsider's Doubts  —  In Sotomayor, an Insider's Achievements Meet an Outsider's Insecurities  —  Within weeks of arriving in New Haven as a law student in the fall of 1976, Sonia Sotomayor fell in with a few first-year classmates whose ascent …