Sens: Snowe's healthcare vote puts her top Commerce perch at risk  —  Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) is risking a shot at becoming the top Republican on an influential Senate committee by backing Democratic healthcare legislation, according to senators on the panel.

Number of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Overlooks Thousands of Support Troops  —  Additional Deployments Not Announced and Rarely Noted  —  President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.  But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized …

Dumb “Reform”  —  Today's big news story is the release of a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers on the impact the Senate Finance Committee's health care “reform” bill will have on health insurance premiums.  PWC concluded that the cost of health insurance for the average family will rise by $4,000 by 2019, as compared with doing nothing:

Whiner-in-Chief  —  The Obama administration really needs to get over itself.  —  First, the president and his aides go to war with Fox News because the network maintains a generally anti-Obama slant.  —  Then, an anonymous administration aide attacks bloggers for failing to maintain a sufficiently pro-Obama slant.

BRUCE JENNER: BARACK OBAMA UNDESERVING OF NOBEL AWARD  —  TMZ has a video of former Olympian and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” reality star Bruce Jenner weighing in on President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win.  —  “He's done nothing,” Jenner said.  “He's done absolutely nothing.”

Obama Dollar Retreats Most Against Commodities in Wealth Shift  —  Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama's effort to lead the world economic recovery by spending the U.S. out of its recession is undermining the dollar, triggering record commodities rallies as investors scour the globe for hard assets.

Liz Cheney takes on ‘radical’ W.H.  —  Former Vice President Dick Cheney's eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the “radical” foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation's security.

Snowe Vote Shows Obama Whether Republicans Help on Health Care  —  Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe's independent streak showed up early.  —  Orphaned at age 9, she took the train by herself as a young girl from boarding school in upstate New York to Maine to see her aunt and uncle on weekends and holidays.

Governing The Commons  —  No one should now say “Elinor who?” Nobel Laureate, Elinor Ostrom, Oct. 12, 2009  —  I have just returned from an undergraduate multidisciplinary class that my colleague (Bart Wilson) and I teach, “Foundations of Economic Exchange.”

Obama's Peace Prize Won't Reset His Agenda  —  Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award?  Glenn Beck has a conniption fit and demands that the president not accept what may be the world's most prestigious honor?

A Question of When Dishonesty Becomes Criminal  —  In February, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that federal prosecutors had developed an unseemly crush on a particularly vague law, one that had “been invoked to impose criminal penalties upon a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”

Second Thoughts in Battle for Virginia  —  WASHINGTON — When State Senator R. Creigh Deeds defeated Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic Party chairman and confidante of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, to be the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia, the argument among many Democrats …

Gag on reporting MP's Trafigura question lifted  —  The question from Paul Farrelly MP which was subject to a gagging order related to the Trafigura toxic waste scandal  —  How the Guardian reported the Trafigura dumping story  —  The existence of a previously secret injunction against the media …

Don't Fail, or Reward Success  —  “Compensation continues to generate controversy and anger,” Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said last month.  “And, in many respects, much of it is understandable and appropriate.”  —  On Thursday, Mr. Blankfein and his colleagues …

German Ship Transporting Arms for Iran  —  US troops boarded a German-owned freighter in early October and found eight containers full of ammunition, allegedly headed to Syria from Iran.  The shipment is in violation of a UN weapons embargo and has become a source of chagrin in Berlin.

Dems undermine free speech in hate crimes ploy  —  What does a hate crimes bill have to do with money for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq?  —  Nothing, except that the National Defense Authorization Act, which will win final passage in Congress and be sent to the president's desk this week …