GOP senator's protest grinds Senate to a halt  —  Oklahoma's Coburn tries a filibuster after pet idea dropped from bill  —  WASHINGTON - The Senate ground to a halt Wednesday in a display of what an individual senator can do to protest his treatment by some of Capitol Hill's most powerful barons.

Tonight... We Are All Rush Limbaugh  —  Earlier this evening, as most of you now know, one of our own, Rush Hudson Limbaugh, while taking withering fire, crashed and burned.  —  Tonight, Rush is no longer ‘just’ a radio personality.  —  Tonight, Rush is no longer ‘just’ a NFL owner denied

Hillary Clinton Now More Popular Than Barack Obama  —  Secretary of state viewed favorably by 62% of Americans, president by 56%  —  PRINCETON, NJ — Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama, but in one respect she now ranks ahead of Obama.

CNN Admits That On-Air Commentator Has Ties To Insurance Industry, Promises Full Disclosure  —  Looks like the insurance industry has another PR mess on its hands.  —  CNN has acknowledged in a statement to me that a high-profile Republican commentator who frequently discusses health care …

Public Option Is Next Big Hurdle in Health Debate  —  WASHINGTON — As the White House and Congressional leaders turned in earnest on Wednesday to working out big differences in the five health care bills, perhaps no issue loomed as a greater obstacle than whether to establish a government-run competitor to the insurance industry.

When Your Neighbor Loses His Job It's A Recession.  When You Screw A Whore Behind Your Wife's Back, Get Caught, And Lose Your Job, It's A Catastrophic Economic Meltdown  —  Disgraced criminal Eliot Spitzer has for reasons unknown been occupying a columnist spot at Slate.com for some period of time.

Profile of Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director  —  Interim Media Strategist Leads Salvo Against Fox  —  Earlier this week, Anita Dunn inserted two words into the conservative electronic echo chamber: Anita Dunn.  —  With her CNN appearance on Sunday attacking Fox News as …

French troops were killed after Italy hushed up ‘bribes’ to Taleban  —  When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.  —  Their revulsion increased with the news …

‘Dead’ al Qaeda terrorist surfaces for media  —  Doubts raised on drone tactics  —  A key al Qaeda military planner thought dead by the United States and Pakistan gave an interview this week to a Pakistani reporter, illustrating the uncertainties of a military strategy based on air strikes by unmanned drones.

Free Perks With Medicare Advantage Plans Aren't Really Free  —  Plans' Free Perks Are Subsidized By Government  —  TUCSON — Patrick Higney, 66, doesn't want to give up the freebies that come with his zero-premium Medicare Advantage plan: free aspirin and free Band-Aids, a free blood pressure machine and a free ear thermometer.

Maverick fallout: GOP won't retaliate  —  Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe's decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill.  —  That's about all they can do.

New book pins ‘debategate’ on Dem  —  In the annals of Washington scandals, “debategate” in 1983 may have set some sort of record for flare followed by fizzle.  It looked to some reporters, for a brief moment, like it could topple a CIA director, a White House chief of staff and maybe even a president.

Third-party pooper: GOP's N.J. dilemma  —  The surging campaign of third-party candidate Chris Daggett has turned the New Jersey governor's race into a dead-heat and left Republicans divided over the seriousness of the threat he poses to GOP nominee Chris Christie.

Gunmen, Bombers Hit 5 Sites in Pakistan; 38 Die  —  Pakistan came under a deadly, staccato series of attacks Thursday that left at least 38 people dead and raised questions about the ability of the nation's security and intelligence agencies to thwart a rising Islamist insurgency.

Why Joe Biden Should Resign  —  Joe Biden met with CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus this morning to talk about Afghanistan — an issue that has pushed the vice president into the spotlight, landing him on the cover of the latest Newsweek.  —  I have an idea for how he can capitalize on all the attention …

Rep. Shadegg: 'We're getting full on Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag healthcare.'  —  Yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) ranted against health reform.  While his colleagues have used inflammatory rhetoric to denigrate various health proposals …