Modern Flourishes at Obamas' State Dinner  —  WASHINGTON — It is an old tradition, a White House dinner governed by ritual and protocol that happens to be this city's hottest social event.  But at their first state dinner on Tuesday night, President Obama and his wife, Michelle …

Phil Carter's resignation from key detainee policy post  —  Phillip Carter is a lawyer, a former Army Captain, a veteran of the Iraq War and a very harsh critic of the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies.  He was a vigorous supporter of Barack Obama's campaign …

How a letter from 1964 shows what's wrong with the Senate today  —  One of the challenges in arguing about the use of the filibuster is that the filibuster has changed drastically in recent decades, but it's done so quietly.  Quietly enough that people don't really understand that it's changed at all.

Dobbs Reaches Out to Latinos  —  Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, pondering a future in politics, is trying to wipe away his image as an enemy of Latino immigrants by positioning himself as a champion of that fast-growing ethnic bloc.  —  Mr. Dobbs, who left the network last week …

Google won't exclude distorted Michelle Obama image from its site  —  ‘We have, in general, a bias toward free speech,’ a Google spokesman says, explaining that offensiveness alone is not a reason to remove the image from the search index.  —  A crudely altered photograph of Michelle Obama …

Help Wanted, No Private Sector Experience Required  —  A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report.  It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy.

Obama to Offer Firm Pledge on Emissions Cuts in Copenhagen  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama is pledging a provisional target for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the first time in more than a decade that an American administration has offered even a tentative promise …

Palin Suggests Reforming Canada's Universal Health Care System: ‘Let The Private Sector Take Over’  —  Canadian comedian Mary Walsh (playing the character of Marg Delahunty) attended a Sarah Palin book signing in the United States last week and asked the “thrilla from Wasilla, the Alaskan Aphrodite” …

Bob Ainsworth criticises Barack Obama over Afghanistan  —  Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, has blamed Barack Obama and the United States for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan.  —  Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising …

For Bills in Congress, How Long is Long?  —  As soon as Senate Democrats released their health care reform bill, Republicans began calling it out on its length.  It's “longer than Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch [R, UT] last week at a press conference set up by Senate Republicans to slam the bill.

Brooks' Error  —  Yesterday's David Brooks column featured an interesting, but factually inaccurate, critique of health reform legislation: … I suppose his out here is the use of the word “could funnel” but you're clearly supposed to understand that as will funnel.

No exit  —  The latest Fed minutes, together with the forecast, are out.  What do they tell us?  —  Well, the Fed expects unemployment to come down only very gradually — over 9 percent at the end of 2010, over 8 percent at the end of 2011, around 7 percent at the end of 2012.

The Uncertainty Economy  —  Tim Geithner is not the Democrats' biggest problem.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  Preparing to write about yesterday's downward revision in third-quarter GDP, we were tempted to say the Obama Administration has hit a speed-bump on its promised exit out of the recession.

Approval of Obama on Afghan war dives  —  WASHINGTON — Public approval of President Obama's handling of the war in Afghanistan has plummeted, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, amid rising pessimism about the course of the conflict.  —  The nation is divided over what to do next …

Wikileaks Says It Has Half-a-Million 9/11 Pager Messages  —  The document-leaking site Wikileaks says it's preparing to release 500,000 intercepted wireless pager messages from a 24-hour period encompassing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  —  Site operators say they plan …