It's Not An Option  —  Congress: It didn't take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House's “health care for all Americans” bill.  Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.  —  IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure

Romney Edges Palin, Huckabee in Early 2012 GOP Test  —  Palin's favorable rating stable after announcement of her resignation  —  PRINCETON, NJ — About one in four Republicans and Republican-leaning independents make Mitt Romney their top choice for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination …

Meghan McCain Will Be Heard  —  Call her the anti-Ann Coulter or an attention-seeking cynic, the daughter of the former presidential candidate is proving that you can rally for gay marriage and still be Republican.  —  “Does it sound campy to say I love gay men?” asks Meghan McCain …

DEM HEALTH RX A POI$ON PILL IN NY  —  TERRIFYING 57% TAX LOOMS FOR BIGGEST EARNERS  —  Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.

Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps  —  The inspectors general report ignores history and plays politics with the law.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda's inner workings …

AP IGNORES CRITICISM.... Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the House Democratic health care plan cost “$1.5 trillion.”  By the afternoon, the AP reporting didn't attribute the price tag to anyone; it just stated the figure as fact.  —  House Dems threw a fit, which was understandable …

CIA Assassin Program Was Nearing New Phase  —  Panetta Pulled Plug After Training Was Proposed  —  CIA officials were proposing to activate a plan to train anti-terrorist assassination teams overseas when agency managers brought the secret program to the attention of CIA Director Leon Panetta last month …

40 Years After Apollo 11 Moon Landing, It's Time for a Mission to Mars  —  On the spring morning in 1927 when Charles Lindbergh set off alone across the Atlantic Ocean, only a handful of explorer-adventurers were capable of even attempting the feat.  Many had tried before Lindbergh's successful flight …

Flexing Hillary's ‘muscles’  —  In advance of Secretary Clinton's speech yesterday, Clinton's aides appear to have pushed hard on a single theme: That the speech would be “muscular.”  —  The pre-spin was effective.  The word “muscular” appeared in my and Mike's stories describing the speech here …

Sotomayor hearings: Word count — Senators out-talk her 2 to 1  —  Yada yada yada.  According to some politics blog — we'll call it Top of the Ticket — that's been publishing the entire transcript of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination …

Ben Stein, predatory bait-and-switch merchant  —  How far has Ben Stein sunk?  Far enough that I feel compelled to resuscitate the Ben Stein Watch, just to share this unfunny and positively harmful TV ad which is now being aired:  —  “I went to freescore.com and found out my score for free” …

CIA Supervisor Claimed He Used Fire Ants On Detainee  —  A recently released legal memo describing interrogation techniques showed that Bush Administration lawyers had approved the use of “insects” in interrogations.  “You would like to place [Abu] Zubaydeh in a cramped confinement box with an insect …

Could we be wrong about global warming?  —  Could the best climate models — the ones used to predict global warming — all be wrong?  —  Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.  The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during …

Hillary Clinton almost out of the red  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Hillary Clinton is almost debt free from her failed bid for the presidency.  —  According to reports filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, Clinton's 2007-2008 campaign for the White House is now only $1.5 million in the red.

Sangow Bar Village  —  16 July 2009  —  On a per capita basis, Afghanistan is becoming more dangerous for British and American troops than Iraq ever was.  For those who fought in places like Anbar, Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and Nineveh, that's saying a whole lot.

The New Stars of the Blogosphere  —  Americans trying to understand the nail-biting financial trauma of the past several months are flocking by the millions to a surprisingly lively source of enlightenment: blogs written by economists.  —  Such blogs are thriving in this recession …

BofA Under Secret Sanction  —  Bank of America Corp. is operating under a secret regulatory sanction that requires it to overhaul its board and address perceived problems with risk and liquidity management, according to people familiar with the situation.  —  Rarely disclosed publicly …

Oh my: Obama drops nine points overall, 15 points among indies, in one month  —  Net approval: Down 15 points since June.  Net who say they'd vote to reelect The One rather than vote for someone else: A measly +3, down 13 points.  Number who say they're confident the stimulus will turn the economy around …

Sebelius laughs along at Palin joke  —  On the Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart turned to his guest, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and noted the obvious: she was the governor of a heartland state who left in the middle of her term “for a higher calling.”