memeorandum: Washington Sketch: Has Senate Building Become Funeral Home … (Dana Milbank/Washington Post)

11:55 AM ET, July 24, 2009

Top Items:

911, police tapes key in Gates case — Officials mull release of recorded evidence — Mounting pressure to get to the bottom of the controversial arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. is centering on recorded police tapes that may offer a dose of reality amid all the media and political noise.

Discussion: Wizbang and The Plum Line

a Phantom Negro / Salon:

Skip Gates, please sit down — You are suffering from what I call the “Ivy League Effect” … Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home in Cambridge, Mass., in 2008. — The Ivy League is not real life. College in general is not real life, and the Ivy League is a more fantastic version of college.

Discussion: Washington Post, The Opinionator, The Daily Dish, Pam's House Blend, Taylor Marsh and Boston Globe

ABCNEWS:

Gates Arrest — Case Heats Up As Police Organizations Criticize Obama For Jumping into the Controversy — The police sergeant who arrested Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week in his own home may be considering a defamation lawsuit against Gates who has implied his arrest was racially motivated.

Discussion: JONATHAN TURLEY, New York Post, On Deadline, New York Magazine, The Politico, Sister Toldjah, The Swamp and VDARE.com

Don Surber:

The Gates Rohrsach — The Boston Herald: “911, police tapes key in Gates case: Officials mull release of recorded evidence.” — The Boston Globe: “Accomplished, but not insulated: Some successful blacks find Gates's case all too familiar.” — All I know about Sunday's arrest …

Discussion: Boston Globe, Riehl World View, Boston Herald and Hot Air

New York Times:
Professor's Arrest Tests Beliefs on Racial Progress

Discussion: JustOneMinute, Boston Globe, Althouse and Gothamist

Denise Lavoie / Associated Press:
Cop who arrested black scholar is profiling expert

Discussion: Patterico's Pontifications, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Jules Crittenden, Left in the West, American Thinker, The Confluence, Matthew Yglesias, Michelle Malkin, theblogprof, And So it Goes in Shreveport, Riehl World View, JammieWearingFool and Pajamas Media

Washington Post:

Palin's Favorability Rating Drops as She Prepares to Leave Office, Poll Finds — As Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin prepares for the next stage of her political career, a majority of Americans hold an unfavorable view of her, and there is broad public doubt about her leadership skills and understanding …

Discussion: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Salon, The Moderate Voice, msnbc.com, PoliBlog, Brendan Nyhan, The New Republic, GOP 12, Anchorage Daily News, Wonkette, Top of the Ticket, Indecision Forever, Liberal Values, Below The Beltway, Firedoglake, The Page and MyDD

Gary Langer / ABCNEWS:
Sarah Palin's Hot Numbers Are Cooling Off

Discussion: Washington Post and Politics Daily

Amanda Carpenter / Washington Times:
Hot Button — More ethics claims — The Associated Press claims …

Discussion: palingates, Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis, SHANNYN MOORE, The Mudflats, Progressive Alaska and Firedoglake

Dana Milbank / Washington Post:

Washington Sketch: Has Senate Building Become Funeral Home for Health-Care Legislation? — Is this where health-care reform goes to die? — A thunderstorm rumbled over the Hart Senate Office Building on Thursday afternoon. Rain leaked in and dripped in the atrium to the ground floor.

Discussion: Christy Hardin Smith, Wake up America, Los Angeles Times and AmSpecBlog

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:
The Healthcare Timeout is Fine.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Washington Monthly, The Daily Dish and Tom Watson

Washington Post:
Health Reform Deadline In Doubt

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Note, The New Republic, NY Daily News, McClatchy Washington Bureau, TPMDC, Open Left, Matthew Yglesias, New York Times and Wall Street Journal

The Politico:
Blown deadline, blown chance?

Discussion: Washington Post, Daily Kos, RHRealityCheck.org, Campaign Silo and Hullabaloo

April Fulton / NPR:
Emanuel: Changes To Health System Take Time

Discussion: The Atlantic Politics Channel, The Swamp, Newsweek Blogs, Ben Smith's Blog, Taegan Goddard's …, The Page and Think Progress

Lois Romano / Washington Post:
Voices of Power: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Discussion: KeithHennessey.com, Crooks and Liars, Sweetness & Light, On Deadline and Glenn Thrush's Blog

ABCNEWS:
Exclusive: President Obama Pushes Forward on Health Care Pitch

Discussion: The Politico, Stop The ACLU, Newshoggers.com, The Note, Macsmind, Political Punch, The Atlantic Politics Channel and USA Today

Laura Meckler / Wall Street Journal:

Obama's Health Expert Gets Political — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's health-care plan is in jeopardy because of serious concerns that costs will spin out of control. As much as anyone, it's White House budget director Peter Orszag's job to save it.

Discussion: The Caucus, Weekly Standard, Vox Popoli and Pundit & Pundette

Byron York / Washington Examiner:

Obamacare haunted by unkept promises of stimulus — If Barack Obama fails to enact national health care, it will be because he sowed the seeds of his own demise last Feb. 17 — the day the president, surrounded by Democratic leaders, signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill.

Discussion: Media Blog

Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:
Why Obamacare Is Sinking

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Time, Angry Bear, Betsy's Page, The Note and Mediaite

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

Costs and Compassion — The talking heads on cable TV panned President Obama's Wednesday press conference. You see, he didn't offer a lot of folksy anecdotes. — Shame on them. The health care system is in crisis. The fate of America's middle class hangs in the balance.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, TalkLeft and The Treatment

Alex Koppelman / Salon:

No, Obama's grandmother didn't say he was born in Kenya — Among those on television who've been covering the sudden public resurgence of the Birther movement — but in a much more responsible way than Lou Dobbs — is MSNBC's Chris Matthews. The other day, he beat up pretty badly on Rep. John Campbell …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, The Huffington Post, Think Progress, Raw Story, Right Pundits, Nashville Scene, The Huffington Post and The Washington Independent

David Weigel / The Washington Independent:
McCain Campaign Investigated, Dismissed Obama Citizenship Rumors

Discussion: Latest Open Salon Blog, Taegan Goddard's …, Michael Calderone's Blog and Gawker

Rasmussen Reports:

Election 2010: California Senate — California Senate: Boxer 45%, Fiorina 41% — Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer leads former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in an early look at California's 2010 race for the U.S. Senate. — The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds …

Discussion: Scorecard's Blog, AmSpecBlog, RedState, Redhot, PrairiePundit and Real Clear Politics

Unfair Park:

How a Local Rally For Obama's Health Care Proposal Turned Into a Rally Against It — Local MoveOn.org members had penciled in on today's schedule a protest in front of Senator John Cornyn's Spring Valley Road office, during which they had hoped to pressure the senator to support President Barack Obama's public health care legislation.

Discussion: Michelle Malkin and Don Surber

Peter Baker / New York Times:

Obama Complains About the News Cycle but Manipulates It, Worrying Some — WASHINGTON — It has become his common lament. Challenged about difficulties with his economic or legislative programs, President Obama complains about the tyranny of “the news cycle,” pronouncing the words with an air …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Michael Calderone's Blog, Sweetness & Light and Mediaite

Charles Duhigg / New York Times:

Traders Profit With Computers Set at High Speed — It is the hot new thing on Wall Street, a way for a handful of traders to master the stock market, peek at investors' orders and, critics say, even subtly manipulate share prices. — It is called high-frequency trading …

Discussion: Achenblog, TPMCafe and MoJo Blog Posts

No Sheeples Here:

Never Interrupt This President While He's Making A Mistake — In the beginning there was HillaryCare. Back in 1993, according to an internal White House staff memo, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton's staff saw federal coverage of children as a forerunner to universal health coverage.

Discussion: PoliGazette, FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics

Scott Johnson / Media Matters for America:

Unlike Dobbs, some conservative media think birthers are “nutburgers” — SUMMARY: In contrast to Lou Dobbs, who recently promoted conspiracy theories about President Obama's birth certificate, numerous conservative media figures have dismissed and ridiculed the so-called “birther” claims.

Discussion: The Swamp, Right Wing News, Philly.com and Media Matters for America