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.

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 …

Sotomayor Again Misstates Fundamental Rights Doctrine:  —  As she did yesterday, Sotomayor asserted that a right is “fundamental” if it is “incorporated” against the states via the 14th Amendment rather than that a right is incorporated against the states if it is fundamental.

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.

Another FBI probe involves Murtha  —  The Washington Post reports on a new FBI investigation into contract fraud involving an Air Force project run out of Pensacola AFB.  Prosecutors focused on at least one Congressional earmark of $8 million for the project, which funded not the stated purpose …

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 …

Chuck Todd's arguments against investigations  —  (updated below - Update II)  —  NBC's Chuck Todd — who, remember, is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions — was on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Tuesday discussing reports that Eric Holder is likely …

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Perlmutter part owns ‘green’ bank he helped  —  Provision in bill would aid family members, political donor  —  Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado inserted a provision into the recently passed House climate change bill that would drum up business for “green” banks …

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” …