The Seinfeld Hearings  —  How Senators could, but probably won't, make the Sotomayor confirmation a show about something.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  If you suspect this week's Senate confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor will be, like “Seinfeld,” a show about nothing, you are probably right.

Palin's Long March to a Short-Notice Resignation  —  This article was reported by Jim Rutenberg from New York and Serge F. Kovaleski from Wasilla and Anchorage, Alaska.  Jo Becker reported from New York and Kim Severson and William Yardley from Wasilla and Anchorage.

Obama Faces a New Push to Look Back  —  President Obama is facing new pressure to reverse himself and to ramp up investigations into the Bush-era security programs, despite the political risks.  —  Leading Democrats on Sunday demanded investigations of how a highly classified counterterrorism program …

Morning Fix: Five Senators to Watch on Sotomayor  —  The confirmation hearings for judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court begin today at 10 a.m. and, although the drama has largely been drained from the question of whether she will be confirmed (barring some disaster she will be on the Court) …

Hate Speech Against Malia Obama On Conservative Blogs Reported By Hate Speech Planting Journalist  —  We should've seen this coming: conservative blog Free Republic fired hate speech off at Malia Obama after this photo of her appeared, letting their commenters go to town.

Frenetic Pace, Packed Agenda Put West Wing Staffers Through Wringer  —  The White House mess — the military-inspired term for the West Wing cafeteria — opens at 7 a.m. each day.  And each day, there is a long line of hungry staffers who have already been at the office for well over an hour.

Ezra Klein, Concern Troll  —  Ezra Klein is concerned—or rather, he's “gripped” by an “unsettling thought”: … I agree with my distinguished colleague (and welcome him to the concern troll community).  He's woken to the realization that Obama is running into political difficulty …

Boiling the Frog  —  Is America on its way to becoming a boiled frog?  —  I'm referring, of course, to the proverbial frog that, placed in a pot of cold water that is gradually heated, never realizes the danger it's in and is boiled alive.  Real frogs will, in fact, jump out of the pot — but never mind.

Iran's Rumored Nicaraguan ‘Mega-Embassy’ Set Off Alarms in U.S.  —  MANAGUA, Nicaragua — For months, the reports percolated in Washington and other capitals.  Iran was constructing a major beachhead in Nicaragua as part of a diplomatic push into Latin America, featuring huge investment deals …

Sudan women ‘lashed for trousers’  —  Several Sudanese women have been flogged as a punishment for dressing “indecently”, according to a local journalist who was arrested with them.  —  Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, who says she is facing 40 lashes, said she and 12 other women wearing trousers …

Obama Rewrites the Cold War  —  The President has a duty to stand up to the lies of our enemies.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth.  President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.

Goldman Sachs Likely to Post Huge Profits, Analysts Say  —  Most of Wall Street, and America, is still waiting for an economic recovery.  Then there is Goldman Sachs.  —  Up and down Wall Street, analysts and traders are buzzing that Goldman, which only recently paid back its government bailout money …

BusinessWeek Said to Be Up for Sale by McGraw-Hill  —  BusinessWeek, the McGraw-Hill Cos. magazine that lost 30 percent of its advertising revenue in the second quarter, is up for sale, according to a person close to the situation.  —  McGraw-Hill hired Evercore Partners Inc. …

Web Traffic (or Lack of) May Be a Reason for a Columnist's Dismissal  —  The political columnist Dan Froomkin was hired by The Huffington Post last week, two short weeks after being fired by a more traditional Post, the venerable newspaper in Washington.  —  In his departure from The Washington Post …

The Wrath of Inhofe  —  My vision of less Star Trek blogging was somewhat undermined by the American Film Institute's decision to include Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as part of their summer “totally awesome” 80s movie series.  Naturally, I had to go over the weekend.

The Audacity of the Pope  —  Papal encyclicals are supposed to be written with one eye on two millenniums of Catholic teaching, and the other on eternity.  But Americans, as a rule, have rather narrower horizons.  As soon as the media have finished scanning a Vatican document for references to sex …