It's time to embrace American royalty  —  (updated below - Update II)  —  We're obviously hungry to live with royal and aristocratic families so we should really just go ahead and formally declare it: … They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager …

Cheney calls the Dems soft on defense  —  Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday called Democrats soft on national defense while standing up for his administration's actions in the war on terrorism.  —  In a pre-recorded interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace from his home in Wyoming …

Ridge backpedals on pressure to raise terror alert level  —  WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics …

Experts see double-digit Dem losses  —  After an August recess marked by raucoustown halls, troubling polling data and widespread anecdotal evidence of a volatile electorate, the small universe of political analysts who closely follow House races is predicting moderate to heavy Democratic losses in 2010.

Palin gets 1,070+ invitations  —  Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin this week will begin accepting and rejecting the more than 1,070 invitations she has received for paid speeches and political appearances since she resigned as Alaska governor, aides said.  —  Twenty speakers' bureaus made offers to represent her.

Senate field hinges on Kennedy decision  —  With Massachusetts having paid its final respects to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the politics of succession begins in earnest this week - candidates will emerge, a race will take shape, and the Kennedy clan will have to reveal whether it wants to keep the seat in the family.

Pro-Obamacare Tea Party Crasher SMASHES ATTENDEE In the Face With His Elbow & Disrupts Meeting (Video)  —  More Hope & Change—  Barack Obama gave his marching orders: … His supporters followed through...  But, don't expect the state-run media to report on this.

Boston Globe: Now That Ted's Out of the Way, Hurry Up With That Cape Cod Wind Farm  —  On the very day Ted Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery near his two brothers, a Boston Globe editorial argued to undo part of his legacy.  —  The pertinent portion of Mr. Kennedy's legacy …

A Chance to Avoid Defeat in Afghanistan  —  The United States cannot win the war in Afghanistan in the next three months — any form of even limited victory will take years of further effort.  It can, however, easily lose the war.  I did not see any simple paths to victory while serving …

An Ivy League Huey Long  —  Washington is seriously unserious.  —  From the magazine issue dated Sep 7, 2009  —  In August our ubiquitous president became the nation's elevator music, always out and about, heard but not really listened to, like audible wallpaper.

AFL-CIO, Dems push new Wall Street tax  —  The nation's largest labor union and some allied Democrats are pushing a new tax that would hit big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs reaping billions of dollars in profits while the rest of the economy sputters.

As Big Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit  —  Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation's biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that many critics thought might never be seen again.

Fighting Health Care Overhaul, and Proud of It  —  SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who predicted that President Obama's effort to overhaul the health care system would become his “Waterloo,” is doing his best to make that happen.

Missing Richard Nixon  —  Many of the retrospectives on Ted Kennedy's life mention his regret that he didn't accept Richard Nixon's offer of a bipartisan health care deal.  The moral some commentators take from that regret is that today's health care reformers should do what Mr. Kennedy balked …