Top Items:
Kos / Daily Kos:
Harry Reid abdicates his leadership role — Bill Frist never had 60 votes. Bill Frist never cared. Republicans ran the Senate as if they owned the place, even when enjoying razor-thin majorities. — Yet when Democrats took the chamber, the first thing Harry Reid did was complain …
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Associated Press:
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.
Discussion:
Ruby Slippers, Another Black Conservative, Left Coast Rebel, Pundit & Pundette and RedState
Jordan Fabian / The Hill:
Sen. Vitter: Reid wants illegals counted in Census — Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who is sponsoring an amendment to an appropriations bill that would require illegal immigrants list their status on next year's Census, said late Wednesday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) …
Agence France Presse:
Majority of Nobel jury ‘objected to Obama prize’ — OSLO — Three of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee had objections to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to US President Barack Obama, the Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang (VG) reported Thursday.
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Jeffrey M. Jones / Gallup:
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.
Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
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 …
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Lee Fang / Think Progress:
CNN's Castellanos Problem: On-Air Contributor Revealed To Be Paid …
CNN's Castellanos Problem: On-Air Contributor Revealed To Be Paid …
Discussion:
The Plum Line
Tim Cavanaugh / Hit & Run:
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.
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Eliot Spitzer / Slate:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce must be stopped. Here's how to do it. — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the self-proclaimed voice of business in Washington—has been wrong on virtually every major public-policy issue of the past decade: financial deregulation, tax and fiscal policy …
Sheryl Gay Stolberg / New York Times:
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.
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Tsquare / tsquare's blog:
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
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, Salon, TBogg, Osborne Ink, Balloon Juice, The Impolitic, Newsbroke and Hot Air
Andy McCarthy / The Corner on National Review Online:
So Much for the Post-Racial America — By: Andy McCarthy — I'm hunkered down on some projects and just heard about the phony attacks on Rush by the race-hustlers extraordinaire, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. I know Rush has big shoulders and he'll handle it just fine.
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Jason Horowitz / Washington Post:
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 …
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Eli Lake / Washington Times:
‘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.
Tom Coghlan / Times of London:
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 …
Discussion:
The New Republic, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, Associated Press, Fausta's Blog, JammieWearingFool, Weasel Zippers and Jihad Watch
Jonathan Martin / The Politico:
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.
The Politico:
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.
Discussion:
The Swamp, Outside The Beltway, DownWithTyranny!, RedState, The Page, Daily Kos and Wonk Room
Craig Shirley / The Politico:
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.
Lee Fang / Think Progress:
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 …
Juliet Eilperin / Washington Post:
Cap-and-Trade Climate Bill Would Slow U.S. Economy, CBO Head Says — A House-passed bill that targets climate change through a cap-and-trade system of pollution credits would slow the nation's economic growth slightly over the next few decades and would create “significant” …
Publius / Big Government:
ACORN Scandal Immortalized on ‘South Park’ — ***VIDEO FIXED!!! Watch the full episode here. ACORN segment begins after the last commercial. — The ACORN scandal was immortalized tonight on “South Park.” The plot of the season 13 episode “Butters' Bottom Bitch” is that Butters …
Reid Wilson / The Hill:
House Republicans may face a ‘civil war’ over Scozzafava bid — The House GOP conference is bitterly divided over a centrist New York Republican's run for the House seat vacated by Army Secretary John McHugh. — Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who backs abortion rights and has voiced support …
Monica Davey / New York Times:
G.O.P. Has a Lightning Rod, and It's Not Palin — BUFFALO, Minn. — Representative Michele Bachmann will appear in the 2010 calendar of “Great American Conservative Women” (she will be November). Her likeness has been transformed into an action figure. And, so far in 2009 …
Arianna Huffington / The Huffington Post:
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 …
Discussion:
Top of the Ticket, The Huffington Post, The Caucus, Los Angeles Times, Michael Calderone's Blog, MyDD, Townhall.com, Raw Story, Political Byline, The Stranger …, The Politico, Ruby Slippers, Stop The ACLU, Brave New Films blog, Jules Crittenden, JammieWearingFool, New York Magazine, Weasel Zippers and New York Times
David Ignatius / Washington Post:
President Obama's Crucial Afghanistan Decision — Afghanistan could be the most important decision of Barack Obama's presidency. Maybe that's why he is, in effect, making it twice. — What's odd about the administration's review of Afghanistan policy is that it is revisiting issues …
Discussion:
Commentary