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 …

DEMOCRAT CARNAHAN DISMISSES BLACK MAN AT TOWNHALL  —  Yesterday, I attended a townhall meeting on healthcare with Representative Russ Carnahan, where he dissed this black constituent.  For those of you unfamiliar with Missouri politics, the new breed of Carnahans are those who are riding …

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 …

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 …

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.

Should The GOP Take The Birther Threat Seriously?  Rush Does....  That's the thesis of the First Readers of NBC News, after viewing this astonishing clip from a town hall meeting that Rep. Mike Castle held in Delaware for his constituents.  What's most notable, to me, at least …

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 …

Dobbs wonders whether President Obama is undocumented.  —  Today, Political Wire posted a clip of an episode of Lou Dobbs' radio show in which he not only questions President Obama's citizenship and promotes the bizarre right-wing “birther” theory, but also insinuates that Obama might be undocumented:

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.

DeMint: Obama ‘Played Right Into My Hands’  —  Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) stands by his comment that health care will be President Obama's Waterloo, a comment Obama derided in a health care speech yesterday.  —  “I think he played right into my hands,” DeMint told Neil Cavuto on Fox News this afternoon …

State budget deal reduces prison inmates by 27,000  —  The plan accomplishes this with a combination of measures, including having some prisoners complete sentences at home and shortening terms for those who finish rehabilitation programs.  —  Reporting from Sacramento …

‘Huckabee to air Fox News show from disputed East Jerusalem site’  —  Former U.S. presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee plans to broadcast his weekend show on Fox News from the site of a disputed Israeli construction project in East Jerusalem, a New York politician has told Haaretz.

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%) …

Mayo Clinic calls House plan bad medicine  —  Obama loses support on reform  —  A world-renowned clinic that President Obama held up as an example of good medicine said Monday that the American people would be “losers” under the House's health care proposal, joining the growing chorus …

Waterless urinals miss the mark?  —  State workers say new devices leading to splashes, stink  —  ALBANY — The Department of Environmental Conservation's effort to maintain eco-friendly bathrooms at its downtown headquarters has made quite a splash but not in the way the state intended.

Scarborough And Steele Spar In Heated Debate Over Health Care: Steele Tells MSNBC Host, ‘Spare Me’  —  Fresh off his comedic performance at the National Press Club yesterday, RNC Chairman Michael Steele again demonstrated this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe that he doesn't “do policy.”

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. …

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 …

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.”

“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).

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.

Why American drivers should learn to love the roundabout.  —  Here is a narrative that has been playing out over the last several years in any number of American towns: Traffic engineers notice that a particular intersection has a crash problem or is moving traffic inefficiently.

Senior Democrat says no consensus on health bill … WASHINGTON (AP) - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says House Democrats are struggling to reach consensus on overhauling health care, a divide that could delay House approval of a plan beyond lawmakers' scheduled vacation in August.

Why America Shouldn't “Buy American”  —  Is your iPod unpatriotic?  —  Its 451 parts are made in dozens of nations, and creating the little doodads employs thousands of foreigners.  Final assembly is done in China—a country that right-wingers and left-wingers alike fear is an economic threat to the U.S.

Obama: Health care shouldn't be political  —  President also addresses Brazil custody fight, Wall Street — and those jeans  —  President Barack Obama admitted that there is not enough money in the system to pay for medical coverage for the 46 million Americans who have none …