Smiling GOPers Ought to be Frowning  —  Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny.  —  Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's …

House Democrats Want to Fund Health Care With an Ill-Advised Surtax on the Rich.  —  THERE IS a serious case to be made that the U.S. income tax system should become more progressive.  The average rate paid by the top 1 percent of households shrank from 33 percent in 1986 to about 23 percent in 2006.

OBAMA BOOED IN ST. LOUIS!... And Throws a Sissy Pitch (Video)  —  Barack Obama Booed at the All-Star Game in St. Louis On Tuesday!  —  And, he threw a sissy pitch:  —  It's going to be a rough 4 years.  He's only been in office 5 months and he's already getting booed.  —  ...And protested.

Bombshell: Orders revoked for soldier challenging prez  —  Major victory for Army warrior questioning Obama's birthplace  —  A U.S. Army Reserve major from Florida scheduled to report for deployment to Afghanistan within days has had his military orders revoked after arguing he should not be required …

Buchanan: GOP Needs More Race-Baiting, Not Less  —  A provocative article by Pat Buchanan argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans shouldn't worry about alienating Hispanic voters, they should just focus on getting white people to like them more: … And he sees race-baiting attacks as the way to do it:

Media jostled for access to Sanford  —  E-mails illustrate frenzy to be the first on the air or in print  —  National media blitzed Gov. Mark Sanford's staff, offering big ratings and, possibly, a sympathetic venue in an effort to land the first interview with the governor after his six-day trip to Argentina.

CFJ: Obama Is Putting a Terrorist On The Bench!  —  Yesterday, we noticed that the Committee for Justice had just unveiled two ads calling for Sonia Sotomayor's defeat - one contrasting her to Martin Luther King and the other claiming she wants to “take away your guns.”

Palin: All Tail, No Head  —  Sarah Palin's political action committee — SarahPAC — raised $733,000 in the first half of the year and is set to push past $1 million in the wake of the recent attention she's gotten herself.  On the one hand, this isn't that impressive.  Mitt Romney, for instance, has raised twice as much.

Key Obama advisers indicate openness to pushing health care reform through with just Democratic votes.  —  Bloomberg's Ed Chen reports that two of Obama's top advisers — Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod - “may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress …

Exclusive: In Speech, Hillary Will Push Arabs To Do More Towards Peace  —  In a major foreign policy speech this afternoon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will take direct aim at Arab states for not doing their part towards securing Mideast peace, demanding that “all sides” …

Port St. Lucie apologizes to Treasure Coast Tea Party  —  PORT ST. LUCIE — After a week of complaints about a sign at Freedomfest on July 4, city officials apologized to the Treasure Coast Tea Party.  —  “It was not our intent to interfere or cast dispersions on the tea party,” …

Dems reject palling around with Palin  —  Gov. Sarah Palin said last weekend that she'd be willing to campaign for some Democrats when she leaves office later this month.  —  She may not have many takers.  —  Interviews with a number of the most conservative Democrats in the House …

Universal Health Care Isn't Worth Our Freedom  —  What would Thoreau have made of the current debate?  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  People who seek the services of auto mechanics want car repair, not “auto care.”  Similarly, most people who seek the services of medical doctors want body repair, not “health care.”