Top Items:
Wall Street Journal:
The Fall Guy — CIA Director Leon Panetta getting sacked by his own team. — Printer — Friendly — In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team.
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Washington Post:
Holder's Decision To Probe CIA Hints At a New Dynamic — About five weeks ago, faced with a crucial decision on how to react to brutal CIA interrogation practices, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. concluded that it would be all but impossible to follow President Obama's mandate to move forward …
Matt Corley / Think Progress:
Local official to Bachmann: 'I'll be danged if I am going to give up my Social Security because of socialism.' — In Lake Elmo, Minnesota yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann held a “raucous” town hall meeting to discuss health care reform that was filled with “deafening cheers and a few jeers.”
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Anna Palmer / Roll Call:
Bachmann Faces Raucous Crowd in Minnesota
Bachmann Faces Raucous Crowd in Minnesota
Discussion:
Minnesota Independent
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet — Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet. — They're not much happier …
Discussion:
The Atlantic Politics Channel, Right Wing News, QandO, The Other McCain and Weasel Zippers
Kevin Sack / New York Times:
Dealing With Being the Health Care ‘Villains’ — LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Max Shireman says that when he looks in the mirror he does not see the monster the politicians have made him out to be. — Sure, he could stand to lose a few pounds. And there was that speeding ticket last year for going 40 in a 30-mile-an-hour zone.
Discussion:
No More Mister Nice Blog, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, The Huffington Post and Lean Left
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David Cho / Washington Post:
Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’ Have Grown Even Bigger — Behemoths Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard — When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions …
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias, The Agonist, The Confluence, Ezra Klein, Gawker, John Stossel's Take, EconoPundit, Marginal Revolution and AMERICAblog News
Paul Kane / Capitol Briefing:
With LeMieux Pick, the Dawn of a New Era of Appointed Senators — George LeMieux, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's selection to succeed retired Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), will become the fifth senator this year to take his seat through appointment. A possible sixth appointee is waiting …
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Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
Ben Calhoun / NPR:
‘Reading Rainbow’ Reaches Its Final Chapter … For 26 years, Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton (left) shepherded kids through the exciting world of books. The show, which fostered a love of reading, was the third longest-running program in PBS history, outlasted only by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
‘Public Option’, Rolls Off the Tongue — Nate Silver wrote a post last night flagging an AARP poll, the upshot of which is that Americans don't seem to have any idea what the ‘public option’ even is. As Silver notes, the fact that only 37% of respondents correctly identified what the ‘public option’ was …
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Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:
Poll: Most Don't Know What “Public Option” Is — Including Pollsters
Poll: Most Don't Know What “Public Option” Is — Including Pollsters
Discussion:
Pollster.com
Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:
A Strategy to Save Obamacare, But at What Cost — Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead. The 1,000-page monstrosity that emerged in various editions from Congress was done in by widespread national revulsion not just at its expense and intrusiveness but also at the mendacity with which it is being sold.
Discussion:
Ezra Klein, The New Republic, Outside The Beltway, The Glittering Eye, Betsy's Page and Don Surber
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Bush's Search Policy For Travelers Is Kept — Obama Officials Say Oversight Will Grow — The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler's laptop computer …
Charles Hurt / New York Post:
OOPS! CHARLIE FORGOT THIS $1M HOUSE — REALTY BITES TAX-THEM-NOT-ME RANGEL — WASHINGTON — Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.
Bloomberg:
Leverage Rising on Wall Street at Fastest Pace Since '07 Freeze — Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) — Banks are increasing lending to buyers of high-yield company loans and mortgage bonds at what may be the fastest pace since the credit-market debacle began in 2007. — Credit Suisse Group AG and Scotia Capital …
Attaturk / Firedoglake:
Gutless Cowards — Observe the man who undoubtedly receives medicare speaking in an Iowa town hall meeting with Senator Charles Grassley earlier this week: … Observe that Grassley says NOTHING to dissuade the gentlemen from his thesis or desire. — This has happened again, and again, and again in the last month.
The Politico:
Burton defends new vacation — After a mid-August trip to America's national parks and a weeklong vacation on Martha's Vineyard, President Obama plans ... ... to take a little more time away from the office next week. — Obama will head to Camp David on Wednesday, Sept. 2 …
Lisa Demer / Anchorage Daily News:
SarahPAC taken to task by feds for illegal contributions — OOPS: Mistakes on political donations blamed on software. — ldemer@adn.com — Former Gov. Sarah Palin's political action committee gave excessive contributions to two well-known Republicans and also is facing demands …
David Brooks / New York Times:
The Great Gradualist — In the days since Ted Kennedy's death, the news programs have shown and re-shown the unforgettable ending of his 1980 Democratic convention speech — the passage from Tennyson and the beautiful final lines: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
Discussion:
The Note, Time, Washington Post, ABCNEWS, Washington Times, marbury, Commentary and The Moderate Voice
Gil Hoffman / Jerusalem Post:
‘Post’ poll: Only 4% of Jewish Israelis think Obama is pro-Israel — The number of Israelis who see US President Barack Obama's policies as pro-Israel has fallen to four percent, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.
James Rowley / Bloomberg:
Pawlenty Says ‘Ludicrous’ to Claim Stimulus Pivoted Economy — Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) — Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, charged that President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program still isn't working and that his health-care overhaul proposal …
Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket:
Obama defies safety advocates, shuns bike helmet, looks great, ignites debate — In an obvious bid to broaden public support for his troubled healthcare reform plans, a vacationing President Obama has now taken to defying the advice of safety advocates at both the federal and state levels.
Michelle Malkin:
Rep. Michele Bachmann to heckler: “I've given birth here probably more times than you, sir” — Some pro-socialized medicine hecklers tried to shout down GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann as she pointed to the crappy care pregnant moms are getting in the U.K. — Watch her snappy retort.
Boston Globe:
Legislature must act quickly on interim Senate appointment — THE DEATH Tuesday of Senator Edward M. Kennedy puts Massachusetts at half strength in the US Senate at a precarious time. Massachusetts lawmakers will only worsen the situation if they fail to take steps to assure a timely replacement.
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
Till Debt Does Its Part — So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade. According to many commentators, that's a terrifying number, requiring drastic action — in particular, of course, canceling efforts to boost the economy and calling off health care reform.
Blue Texan / Firedoglake:
Joe Scarborough & Peggy Noonan: Americans Secretly Yearning for Republican-Controlled Congress — Some pretty first-rate concern trolling here on “Morning Joe.” — What Nooners and Scar conveniently ignore is that Obama's numbers are dropping primarily because he's losing Democrats.
Kate Southwood / The Huffington Post:
Why Isn't Health Care a Right? — I am an American citizen without health insurance. I don't have a dental plan, either. I am, however, very familiar with the inside of my doctor's office as well as that of my municipal emergency room. Not to mention the operating rooms at two city hospitals …
Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
MAKING THE PUBLIC OPTION OPTIONAL.... Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R) of Texas has been one of the leading right-wing agitators against health care reform. It was a little odd, then, to see Armey accidentally tell The Economist that the public option may be a good idea.
Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
The Pentagon's Parking Lot — I think it's great that the newest Pentagon auxiliary structure will be the DOD's greenest office building yet but if they really wanted to be environmentally conscious they wouldn't have located it “a mere 7 miles down I-395 at Mark Center,” …
Discussion:
DCmud
Philip Rucker / Washington Post:
Late Senator's Staff Became The Other Kennedy Family — Behind each of Edward M. Kennedy's legislative victories was a vast coterie of staffers who became Washington legend. They meticulously packed the senator's black briefcase each evening with tabbed, underlined and dog-eared briefing papers.
Discussion:
New York Times, OpenSecrets.org, The Caucus, Balloon Juice, New York Times, The Page, The Democratic Daily and Associated Press
Greg Mankiw / Greg Mankiw's Blog:
The Least Surprising Correlation of All Time — The NY Times Economix blog offers us the above graph, showing that kids from higher income families get higher average SAT scores. — Of course! But so what? This fact tells us nothing about the causal impact of income on test scores.