Health Care Vote Illustrates Partisan Divide  —  WASHINGTON — A party-line Senate committee vote on legislation to remake the nation's health care system underscored the absence of political consensus on what would be the biggest changes in social policy in more than 40 years.

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 …

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 …

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.

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

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 …

The Sotomayor Hearings, Day Three  —  The Post asked legal experts to weigh in on the third day of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings.  —  Law professor and director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law

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 …

U.S. Foreclosure Filings Hit Record 1.5 Million in First Half  —  U.S. foreclosure filings hit a record in the first half, a sign that job losses and falling property prices deepened the housing recession, according to RealtyTrac Inc.  —  More than 1.5 million properties received a default …

Blue Dogs threaten to bring down Pelosi's healthcare bill  —  Centrist Democrats are threatening to oppose their party's healthcare legislation unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accepts changes that make the bill more to their liking.  —  Seven Blue Dogs on the House Energy …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Beck “lose[s]” his “mind;” screams at caller: “Get off my phone you little pinhead!”  —  From the July 15 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' Glenn Beck Program:  —  Please upgrade your flash player.  The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player.

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 …

Triumph of the will  —  In his post on President Obama throwing out the first pitch at the All Star game on Tuesday night in St. Louis, Paul noted the weird camera angle Fox used to show the pitch (video below).  Andrew McCarthy directs interested readers to the video posted here (24 seconds in) …

Why Poor Countries Won't Curb Emissions  —  And new U.S. tariffs won't make them.  —  If I were an environmental activist, I would be despairing right around now about ever getting meaningful action on global warming.  Over the last eight years, eco-warriors had managed to convince themselves …

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 …

JPMorgan Earnings Soar as It Finds Profit in Slump  —  NEW YORK — Even as it weathers the worst economic downturn in decades, JPMorgan Chase on Thursday announced a $2.7 billion second-quarter profit from stellar trading and investment banking results.  —  The strong showing may put to rest …

Los Angeles City College “Sexual Harassment” Policy Preliminarily Enjoined on First Amendment Grounds: The case stems from the incident in which a professor in a speech class refused to grade a student's presentation, apparently because of the religious nature of the student's presentation …

Rangel paid lawyers $928k in last year  —  Embattled House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, facing a multi-pronged investigation by the House ethics committee, shelled out nearly $280,000 to four different law firms over the last quarter, according to his newest campaign disclosure report.

Fed officials see higher unemployment  —  Federal Reserve officials see signs of a turnaround in the economy but expect unemployment to remain high through 2010, according to minutes of their June meeting released Wednesday.  —  The officials predicted a range in unemployment of between 9.7 …

Job worries for Obama at NAACP  —  President Obama's speech to the NAACP on Thursday will be an emotional and historic moment, but some members of the civil-rights group are looking for details on how the first black president will reduce unemployment rates for African-Americans.

House 2Q 2009 Fundraising Roundup  —  The second quarter reporting deadline for congressional candidates has now come and gone, so it's time for SSP to gather up all the noteworthy fundraising numbers for 2010's hot (and not-so-hot) House races.  —  Here's the full chart, but if you see anything we missed, let us know in the comments:

For Clinton, '09 Campaign Is for Her Turf  —  WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped back to center stage here on Wednesday to present an ambitious blueprint for America's role in the world, the State Department billed it as a major foreign policy address.