Under fire, Obama shifts strategy  —  Aides to President Barack Obama are putting the final touches on a new strategy to help Democrats recover from a brutal August recess by specifying what Obama wants to see in a compromise health care deal and directly confronting other trouble spots, West Wing officials tell POLITICO.

Obama White House Has Secret Plan To Harvest Personal Data From Social Networking Websites  —  NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.

Pelosi will let Rangel hold post despite latest allegations  —  Speaker Nancy Pelosi will let Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) keep his chairmanship despite his failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets on federal disclosure forms, according to Democratic aides.

Levi Johnston: “Me and Mrs. Palin”  —  Left, photograph by Nigel Parry/CPi Syndication.  Right, photograph by Mark Seliger.  —  Three days after Sarah Palin was announced as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, the McCain campaign released a statement saying that her 17-year-old unwed daughter, Bristol, was pregnant.

Taliban Surprising U.S. Forces With Improved Tactics  —  The Taliban has become a much more potent adversary in Afghanistan by improving its own tactics and finding gaps in the U.S. military playbook, according to senior American military officials who acknowledged that the enemy's resurgence this year has taken them by surprise.

U.S. to boost combat force in Afghanistan  —  Support units will be replaced by up to 14,000 ‘trigger-pullers,’ and noncombat posts will be contracted out, Defense officials say.  The swap will allow the U.S. to keep its troop level unchanged.  —  U.S. troops patrol in Kunar province.

Conservative Democrats Expect a Health Deal  —  WASHINGTON — Like her colleagues, Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a South Dakota Democrat and leader of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, has been weathering the summer of health care discontent.

Obama's Team Crosses the Rhetorical Line  —  (Update: The website cited below has been suspended by barackobama.com.  The screenshot to the right is the original page, but the embedded links will no longer work.  Click on the picture to the right for a full-screen view.)

Why Glenn Beck, and Fox News, can't escape the “racist” trap  —  Have so many blue-chip advertisers ever fled a program as quickly as the who's who of corporate America that's sprinted away from Glenn Beck in recent weeks?  I certainly cannot recall ever seeing a mass exodus of this scale.

WWF condemns 9/11 print ad by DDB Brazil  —  [NOTE: The WWF says it never approved this ad and is condemning it.  See the updates below.]  Just in time for the anniversary of 9/11 comes this tasteless, nightmarish print ad for the World Wildlife Fund, showing dozens of planes headed for lower Manhattan.

Guest list for Obama's White House Ramadan dinner  —  (UPDATE: 5:48 p.m. The president's dinner remarks — sans teleprompter — have been added to the end of this item.)  —  The other day President Obama issued a special message to the Muslim world for the annual Ramadan holiday.

Hey, Obama, Can We See the Text of Your Speech to Every Schoolkid Before You Deliver It?  —  Suggested Activity: Students can “Write Letters to Themselves About What They Can Do To Help the President”  —  Update: Ed at Hot Air catches the suggestion in the teachers' materials that students …

Justice Stevens slows his hiring at high court  —  WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court's liberals will retire next year.  —  If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama …

Hostages of the Hermit Kingdom  —  Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists released last month after being imprisoned in North Korea, tell their story — and remind people of the story they wanted to cover.  —  We arrived at the frozen river separating China and North Korea at 5 o'clock on the morning of March 17.

Afghan U.S. Embassy patrol in ‘deviant’ parties with booze, hookers - report  —  WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Clinton ordered an investigation on Tuesday into the Animal House revels of private guards at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan - including booze, hookers and other “deviant behavior.”

CNN Poll: Independents disapprove of Obama  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — A majority of independent voters disapprove of how Barack Obama's handling his job as president, according to a new national poll.  —  Fifty-three percent of independents questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation …

Ahmadinejad's Imam: Islam Allows Raping, Torturing Prisoners  —  Follow Israel news on and .  —  (IsraelNN.com) A highly influential Shi'a religious leader, with whom Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly consults, apparently told followers last month that coercion by means of rape …

U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus  —  WASHINGTON — Government efforts to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy appear to be helping the U.S. climb out of the worst recession in decades.  —  But there's little agreement about which programs are having the biggest impact.

Industry Seeks Fannie, Freddie Overhaul  —  A mortgage-industry trade group is calling for Congress to transform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into several smaller privately held companies that would issue mortgage securities carrying an explicit government guarantee.

How Fast Does Approval Fall?  —  David Brooks commented in his column yesterday “All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast.”  Mostly right, sort of.  But some context would help.

Low-Wage Workers Are Often Cheated, Study Says  —  Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.  —  The study, the most comprehensive examination …