Wait a Second.  Why Shouldn't We Insure Illegals?  —  Insuring undocumented immigrants might be unpopular, but it would be good for the economy.  —  Call it the shout heard round the world.  Since last Wednesday, when Rep. Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted Barack Obama's big speech …

ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in New York, NY … So, we headed up to New York...  [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed.  Visit the blog entry to see the video.]  —  [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed.  Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Opposition to Obama's Health-Reform Plan Is High, but Easing  —  President Obama continues to face significant public resistance to his drive to initiate far-reaching changes to the country's health-care system, with widespread skepticism about central tenets of his plan, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON FINANCIAL RESCUE AND REFORM  —  THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.  It is wonderful to be back in New York after having just been here last week.  It is a beautiful day and we have some extraordinary guests here in the Hall today.  I just want to mention a few.

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession  —  The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore.  Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination …

Obama May Do Back-to-Back TV Interviews Sunday  —  It's going to be awfully hard to avoid President Obama on television this Sunday.  —  The president is going to appear on five Sunday talk shows - five - to press his case for health care, White House officials disclosed.  That is a presidential record.

Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme  —  The Republican establishment hopes cooler heads will prevail over strongly anti-Obama parts of the conservative base.  —  Reporting from Washington - Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year …

Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low  —  Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009  —  The public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans' views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.

Does Health Care Reform Debate Carry Risks For The GOP, Too?  —  One point that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves: When it comes to health care, Dems are not the only major American political party courting serious political risk.  —  The vast majority of commentary, understandably …

Unamplified, Beck's Voice Still Carries  —  Establishment Outlets Missed Van Jones Story  —  It has become a familiar chain reaction: Talk-show hosts whip up a noisy controversy, which hits higher decibels as it spreads to the establishment media, which costs some unfortunate soul his job.

Senior al Qaeda leader killed in Somalia  —  Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Robow (left) and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan (face covered) from Shabaab's latest videotape.  Image by Nick Grace.  —  A senior al Qaeda operative behind the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania is believed …

Boortz compares President Obama to a child molester.  —  Today, on the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, President Obama will speak on Wall Street to “try to breathe new life into efforts to overhaul the financial regulatory system.”  Hate radio host Neal Boortz used …

Creeping Birtherism at WaPo?  —  I think this must be just really hasty or poor word choice ('native' for ‘ancestral’?).  But TPM Reader AH just flagged for us that in his column today Howie Kurtz refers to Kenya as President Obama's “native country.” … Late Update: As I suspected, poor word choice.

A Simple Request  —  The Atlantic has done me the honor of putting my open letter to George W. Bush on torture on the cover.  Commercially, this is not exactly an easy call (although the magazine did alternate a few newsstand editions with a more sellable cover of Jon Stewart).

RIP, Jody Powell  —  ABC News has learned that former White House press secretary Jody Powell has died.  —  This afternoon at his house on the Eastern Shore in Maryland, Powell had an apparent heart attack, a family friend said.  —  The former press secretary for President Jimmy Carter was the CEO of the PR firm Powell Tate.

A Destructive Toy Story Made in Washington  —  A dubious safety law is hammering small business, but Congress refuses to fix the mess it created in 2008.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  Last Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee finally held a hearing on the highly controversial …

Who are the undeserving “others” benefiting from expanded government actions?  —  The New York Times' Ross Douthat argues, uncontroversially, that the tea-party protests, townhall outbursts and related appendages aren't about specific health care proposals but, instead, are motivated …

Murtha to Obama: No more troops  —  House defense spending cardinal John Murtha, an early bellwether of congressional opposition to the Iraq war, has made his strongest comments yet opposing more U.S. troops for the war in Afghanistan.  —  The Pennsylvania lawmaker and Vietnam veteran …

SONIC WEAPONS USED IN IRAQ POSITIONED AT CONGRESSIONAL TOWNHALL MEETINGS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY  —  A Joint Investigative Report by East County Magazine and Liberty One Radio  —  “Long-range acoustic devices [LRADs] for crowd control can be extremely dangerous.  These are used in Iraq to control insurgents.

Aceh passes adultery stoning law  —  Indonesia's province of Aceh has passed a new law making adultery punishable by stoning to death, a member of the province's parliament has said.  —  The law was passed unanimously by Aceh's regional legislature, said assembly member Bahrom Rasjid.

Freshwater rage  —  I'm still on the road, with only sporadic internet access.  So I've missed out on much of the outpouring of rage over my magazine article.  I gather, though, that the usual suspects are utterly outraged at my suggestion that freshwater macro has spent several decades heading down the wrong path.

March on Washington: How Big Was the Crowd?  —  Our attempt to calculate the true size of the 9/12 march.  —  “How big is it?” is certainly one of the world's most dreaded questions.  —  In fact, after the Million Man March in 1995, Congress restricted the National Park Service …

I'm setting the protectionist threat level to safety orange  —  When the Obama administraton announced the decision to slap a 35% tariff on Chinese tire imports, I was pretty sure that free traders would be incensed.  And I haven't been disappointed — even the financial markets are freaking out over this one.

Huckabee: Journalism is dead  —  Former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee, currently a Fox News talk show host, ripped the media this weekend, claiming that journalism has been reduced to “ink-stained drivel that smeared the pages of paper and the people who attempted to read it.”

Baucus Remains Hopeful That Republicans Will Like Committee's Health Bill  —  Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus announced Monday that he may unveil his long-awaited health-care bill as soon as Tuesday — and he predicted that Republicans will find plenty to like about it.

Wealthcare  —  Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right  —  I.  —  The current era of Democratic governance has provoked a florid response on the right, ranging from the prosaic (routine denunciations of big spending and debt) to the overheated (fears of socialism) …