Liberal Suicide March  —  It was interesting to watch the Republican Party lose touch with America.  You had a party led by conservative Southerners who neither understood nor sympathized with moderates or representatives from swing districts.  —  They brought in pollsters to their party conferences …

Bowing to Veto Threat, Senate Blocks Money for Warplanes  —  WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 58-40 on Tuesday to strip $1.75 billion for seven more F-22 fighters from a military spending bill, handing President Obama a crucial victory in his efforts to reshape the military's priorities.

Gates Says He Is Outraged by Arrest at Cambridge Home  —  Prominent Black Professor Says He Will Use Experience to Further Academic Work  —  Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's most prominent scholars of African-American history, cast his recent arrest in his home in Cambridge …

Health-Care Firms Have Supported Lawmakers Debating Reform  —  Key Senator Baucus Is a Leading Recipient  —  As liberal protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of landmark health-care legislation …

Benjamin: Too Heavy to Be Nation's Top Doc?  —  Leading Experts Say Dr. Benjamin, Though Stellar Nominee, Gives Wrong Message  —  Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, Obama's pick for the next surgeon general, was hailed as a MacArthur Grant genius who had championed the poor at a medical clinic she set up in Katrina-ravaged Alabama.

The Fed's Exit Strategy  —  The depth and breadth of the global recession has required a highly accommodative monetary policy.  Since the onset of the financial crisis nearly two years ago, the Federal Reserve has reduced the interest-rate target for overnight lending between banks (the federal-funds rate) nearly to zero.

More Disapprove Than Approve of Obama on Healthcare  —  President is rated higher on international than on domestic issues  —  PRINCETON, NJ — As the debate over healthcare reform intensifies, the latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds that more Americans disapprove (50%) than approve (44%) …

Cantor: Set Mideast policies in ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition  —  WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told Christian Zionists that U.S. policies in the Middle East must be “firmly grounded” in Judeo-Christian principles.  —  “Reaching out to the Muslim world may help in creating …

AP NewsBreak: Palin implicated in ethics probe  —  ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by accepting private donations to pay her legal debts.  —  The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin …

Sex and power inside “the C Street House”  —  Sanford, Ensign, and other regulars receive guidance from the invisible fundamentalist group known as the Family  —  Editor's note: Sharlet is the author of the bestselling “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.”

Most will carry Obama press conference; time shifted after NBC balked  —  UPDATED: After some hesitation and a time shift, three major broadcast networks have agreed to carry Barack Obama's latest primetime news conference.  —  The event was announced Friday afternoon as Obama battles …

VPOTUS, overheard: ‘Many beautiful women’  —  From Peter Spiegel's pool report from Kiev:  —  VPOTUS and Yushchenko were seated a table in the back of the pub with their two translators, the mayor and vice mayor of Kiev, and the head of the presidential secretariat....  Yushchenko was talking about Ukrainian churches.

Top Earners' Pay Erodes Social Security  —  Fund Expected to Be Exhausted in 2037  —  The nation's wealth gap is widening amid an uproar about lofty pay packages in the financial world.  —  Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S. …

Three Myths about the Consumer Financial Product Agency  —  This guest post was contributed by Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel and the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard University.  (Update: more on the case for a CFPA in her YouTube video, released yesterday.)

Huckabee event left candidate in the red  —  One of the most curious fundraising reports of the second quarter came from Republican Les Phillip, who is looking to challenge Rep. Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) in a top national race.  —  If you've heard of Phillip, it's probably …

Morning Bell: Obama Admits He's “Not Familiar” With House Bill  —  With the public's trust in his handling of health care tanking (50%-44% of Americans disapprove), the White House has launched a new phase of its strategy designed to pass Obamacare: all Obama, all the time.

Moderates Republicans and the GOP Field  —  For the second month in a row we found Sarah Palin as the most popular of the leading 2012 GOP hopefuls among moderate Republicans.  64% have a positive opinion of her compared to 57% for Newt Gingrich, 53% for Mike Huckabee, and 45% for Mitt Romney.

“Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the pain killer..”  —  He didn't really say that, did he?  I must say I was appalled when watching this ABC news clip of Obama making this ludicrous statement to the daughter of a now 105-year-old woman who needed a pacemaker (she needed the surgery at 99).

Jackson Browne Defeats John McCain  —  (McCain: Face the Nation, Karin Cooper; Browne: AP, Matt Sayles)  —  Singer Jackson Browne has won his copyright battle against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), getting an apology and an undisclosed sum of money from the 2008 presidential nominee …

Kristol: Shut Up, Obama Explained  —  “The time for talk is through.”  — President Obama, talking to liberal bloggers on a conference call Monday night.  —  The Democratic bills in the House and Senate are a thousand pages long.  They're still changing as committees try to mark them up …