Winning Dede: How Dems got her nod  —  Fearful that the party had almost no chance of winning the Nov. 3 New York special election after Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava abruptly announced Saturday that she was dropping out, high-ranking national Democrats immediately began working to secure …

The Worst Bill Ever  —  Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's …

Karzai declared elected president  —  Hamid Karzai has been declared president of Afghanistan, after election officials scrapped a planned second round of voting.  —  The announcement comes a day after Mr Karzai's sole challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out of the race.

Controversial New Video of Obama's Pastor  —  A new video of Jeremiah Wright has surfaced, showing Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years praising Marxism and discussing his ties to communists in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the Libyan government.  Equally important, Wright is being introduced …

If Fox Is Partisan, It Is Not Alone  —  The Obama White House's decision to challenge Fox News appears driven equally by strategy and frustration.  It is also a test case for politicians in both parties.  —  That is because partisan fragmentation throughout America's news media and their audiences has grown significantly.

Obama Strategy on Health Legislation Appears to Pay Off  —  WASHINGTON — After months of plodding work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama's arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends …

Planned Parenthood Director Leaves, Has Change of Heart … Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson's life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned.  Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

DVR, Once TV's Mortal Foe, Helps Ratings  —  In what may seem a media business version of the Stockholm syndrome, television network executives have fallen in love with a former tormentor: the digital video recorder.  —  The reason is not simply that more households own DVRs …

Divide and conquer  —  In today's New York Times, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, whistling past the Democratic graveyard that will be tomorrow's election results in his state, finds a glimmer of hope: The “divide between moderate Republicans” and the party's conservatives “is going to be around for a while.”

Palin robocalls urge Virginians to 'vote for Sarah's values'  —  RICHMOND, Virginia (CNN) - Sarah Palin isn't staying out of the Virginia governor's race after all.  —  Less than 48 hours before voters head to the polls to elect a new governor, several Virginians reported receiving robocalls …

A 95.2% Income Tax Rate?  —  The Tax Foundation computes the income tax rates necessary to close the deficit:  —  Or Congress could stop spending.  —  I suppose it should be obvious that if anything approaching these tax rates existed, the people subject to such confiscatory taxation …

Comcast Said to Be Close to Gaining NBC Universal  —  By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN  —  General Electric and the cable giant Comcast have moved closer to a deal giving control of NBC Universal to Comcast, and a formal announcement could be made sometime next week, people briefed on the talks said Sunday.

Clinton's Mideast pretzel  —  Hillary Clinton's voice has not been heard all that often in the Mideast peace process, but she has provoked crises with almost every word.  —  Administration officials hold Clinton largely responsible for entrenching an unsuccessful focus on settlements in thesprint …

White Men Are Not Very Progressive  —  A nice map from dreaminonempty at Open Left illustrates the vote share won among white men in the 2008 presidential election: … I would say that another message is that progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities …

An insurance industry CEO explains why American health care costs so much  —  On Friday, I sat down with Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson to talk about health-care reform.  The conversation was long and ranging and will take a while to transcribe.  But before we really got into the weeds …

Goldman takes on new role: taking away people's homes  —  How one couple beat Goldman Sachs and saved their home  —  SAN JOSE, Calif. — When California wildfires ruined their jewelry business, Tony Becker and his wife fell months behind on their mortgage payments and experienced firsthand the perils of subprime mortgages.

Republican adviser faces health care's costly bite  —  Former McCain strategist is about to lose his health insurance  —  If history had taken a different course, Doug Holtz-Eakin would be inside the McCain White House driving the Republican president's domestic agenda, including health-care reform.

Biden a key part of Obama's inner circle  —  Washington (CNN) — Apparently you can take the vice president out of the Senate, but you just can't take the Senate out of the vice president, and that might be the secret to Joe Biden's influence in President Obama's inner circle.

Democrats' Quiet Changes Pile Up  —  WASHINGTON — While President Barack Obama still faces stiff headwinds on a range of major legislation on his agenda, he has been signing into law a slew of smaller initiatives that had gathered dust on the Democratic wish list for years.

Too Little of a Good Thing  —  The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would.  But that's also the bad news — because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus …