Obama's Speech to the United Nations General Assembly  —  Following is a text of President Obama's speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, as released by the White House.  —  Good morning.  Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen …

Triggering a Democratic Civil War  —  Media reports and insider buzz make it increasingly clear that key people at the White House have become obsessed with Olympia Snowe on health care, and are willing to do pretty much whatever she demands in order to get her on board.

ACORN files suit against filmmakers  —  ACORN filed suit today in Maryland against conservative filmmakers James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and conservative Web site Breitbart.com for secretly taping the organization's employees at its Baltimore office.  —  In the complaint, ACORN alleges …

Excerpts of Sarah Palin's Speech to Investors in Hong Kong  —  Alex Frangos reports from Hong Kong on Sarah Palin's speech.  —  Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, delivered her first major international speech outside North America Wednesday in Hong Kong at an investor conference.

Carper Publicly Defends Secret PhRMA Pact; Deal Made in Exchange for Support Ads  —  In a stunning moment during the Senate Finance Committee markup Sen. Tom Carper defended a secret deal that the White House, Baucus, and PhRMA had reached.  The White House has long denied the deal.

AP source: Census worker hanged with ‘fed’ on body  —  The FBI is investigating whether anti-government sentiment led to the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery.  A law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word 'fed" was scrawled on the dead man's chest.

Democrats nix putting pre-vote health bill online  —  WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.  —  Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal.

Canada to walk out on Ahmadinejad's UN speech  —  Ahmadinejad warned Western powers it was too late to stop Iran's nuclear programme, amid ...  UNITED NATIONS — Canada will boycott Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the United Nations on Wednesday, saying his outbursts about the Holocaust and Israel are “shameful.”

Kamikaze Obstructionism  —  You guys like polls, right? … The Republican Party's strategy against health-care reform has been something of a kamikaze mission: destroy the bill through a strategy that also destroys the party, at least in the short-term.  The hope is that if they win the war …

Obama's time warp: The U.S. is still the bad guy  —  Senior Political Analyst  —  In the early 1980s, while planning a vacation in Latin America, I went to bookstores to find histories of the region.  All I could find were Marxist tracts arguing that “the people” were exploited …

At Pentagon's Request, Washington Post Delayed Story on Afghanistan Report  —  To Bob Woodward, it was the modern-day equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.  But to Obama administration officials, the classified assessment of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, if disclosed by The Washington Post …

Glenn Beck, Post-Modern Conservative  —  Buried in the cross-tabs of the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is a question that takes a temperature reading of Glenn Beck.  Beck actually makes out pretty well.  While just 24 percent of Americans have a favorable view of him (13 percent strongly so) …

Al Franken Reads the 4th Amendment to Justice Department Official  —  Just in case he wasn't familiar with it, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) decided to read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to David Kris, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's National Security Division …

Wife: Gov ‘stunned’ O wants him out  —  Gov. Paterson's wife — emotionally stunned at President Obama's request that her husband not run for another term — ripped into him today, saying that it's “very unfair” the president asked New York's “first African-American governor” not to seek office.

I went to Afghanistan and all I got was H1N1  —  It started as a cough.  It wasn't the kind of cough where something is temporarily stuck in your throat.  It wasn't the kind of cough where simply clearing your throat would've been adequate.  This was the kind of cough that hurts when you do it.

Dancing Tom DeLay on Infighting in the ‘Leaderless’ GOP: ‘Even Rush and Hannity Are Doing It’  —  LOS ANGELES — Walking out of a restaurant in Los Angeles last week, the former House Majority Leader was stopped by a stranger.  —  “Aren't you Tom DeLay?” the man asked.  —  “Yes, I am.”

GOP Favors Public Option for Property, Not People  —  Atop the front page of the New York Times today is a color photo of Georgia homes flooded up to their rafters, an image that illustrates how when it comes to insurance our Congress applies two standards, separate and unequal, one for property and a lesser one for people.

Khadafy booted from Camp Trump  —  W'chester foils Trump guest  —  Unwelcome Libyan thug Moammar Khadafy briefly found a comfy spot to rest his foul head yesterday — at Donald Trump's palatial estate in suburban Westchester.  —  But town officials in tony Bedford put the kibosh …