Pharma Deal Shuts Down Senate Health Care Debate  —  WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?  —  The White House, aided by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is working hard to crush an amendment being pushed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, Senate sources tell the Huffington Post.

Tiger Woods taking hiatus from golf  —  I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children.  I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness.

UN Security Stops Journalist's Questions About ClimateGate  —  A Stanford Professor has used United Nation security officers to silence a journalist asking him “inconvenient questions” during a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.  —  Professor Stephen Schneider's …

Ungovernable America  —  The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it's not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it's the fact that the country has become ungovernable.  For example, here's Steven Pearlstein on minority leader Mitch McConnell:

BREAKING: New Cost Estimate on Senate Bill  —  The Office of the Actuary for Medicare has issued its long-awaited cost estimate for the Senate's health care reform bill.  I've only had a few hours to digest it and talk with outside experts.  * But these seem to be the main points:

Judge stops ACORN funding ban  —  A federal judge today issued an injunction preventing the implementation of a congressional ban on funding for ACORN.  —  Judge Nina Gershon concluded that the ban amounted to a “bill of attainder” that unfairly singled out ACORN.

Election 2010: Colorado Senate Race  —  2010 Colorado Senate: Norton Runs Best Against Democrats  —  The election is nearly a year away, but right now former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton appears to be the Republican with the best shot of beating either of the potential Democratic candidates in Colorado's race for the U.S. Senate.

Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border  —  My friend, the wonderful sf writer Peter Watts was beaten without provocation and arrested by US border guards on Tuesday.  I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London and called Cindy Cohn …

Sources: Drone Killed Top Qaeda Operative  —  Saleh al-Somali Was in Charge of External Operations for Group; Considered One of a half Dozen top Qaeda Operatives  —  (CBS) Sources tell CBS News the Al Qaeda operative believed killed in a drone strike in Pakistan this week is Saleh al-Somali …

Sign a Letter to Susan B. Komen Foundation: Donations Shouldn't Go To Hadassah Lieberman  —  The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation Headquarters  —  The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Susan G. Komen for the Cure are driving forces in funding breast cancer research.

A gun case or Pandora's box?  —  Ruling could trigger the unhinging of American culture  —  Many have heard about the historic gun rights case going to the Supreme Court.  Fewer have heard that this is also a major case for businesses and family values.  It could lead to anything from court-ordered Obamacare to same-sex marriage.

The Ugly Beast Returns — By: Jonah Goldberg  —  One of the simultaneously heartening and dismaying aspects of the Obama era is how it demonstrates that bad ideas never, ever, ever, die.  They can go into remission, to be sure, but the the bacillus lives on.  Via Drudge, I just read this hideous call for a planetary one-child policy.

Exclusive** Leaked Justice Department Memo: Terrorists To Be Moved to Camp Gitmo Illinois  —  The Land of Lincoln may still be licking its wounds-and certain real estate transactions-over Chicago's losing the Olympics to Rio, but the Obama Administration has delivered up a small consolation prize …

Asked How He Knows The Earth Is Cooling, Michael Steele Says 'I Don't!'  —  Earlier this year, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele ridiculed the notion that the Earth is warming, arguing instead that the world is actually “cooling,” citing the supposed examples of Iceland and Greenland:

The Errors of Matt Taibbi.  —  Matt Taibbi has done it again — written a nightmare of a story for Rolling Stone on Obama's economic sell-out of his campaign.  The piece is a factual mess, a conspiracy theorist's dream, doesn't even indict Obama for his real failures (which I'll discuss …

Sarah Palin's Copenhagen-Bashing Op-Ed One Of Most Read WaPo Opinion Pieces Of The Year  —  Here's a dispiriting postscript to the massive flap over The Washington Post's decision to publish an Op ed by Sarah Palin on climate change, a piece that has been widely criticized as riddled with falsehoods.

House Passes Far-Reaching Bill Tightening Financial Rules  —  WASHINGTON — The House on Friday approved a Democratic plan to significantly tighten federal regulation of Wall Street and the financial sector, advancing a far-reaching Congressional response to the financial crisis still reverberating through the economy.

For feds, more get 6-figure salaries  —  The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.  —  Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during …

Tea partyers petition Dem lawmaker to move office to ease protests  —  A Christian civil liberties organization on Thursday asked centrist Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) to move his district office to a location more favorable to protesters.  —  The Rutherford Institute, which was founded …

First, stop doing harm  —  “I can't see it,” Olympia Snowe said after considering the Medicare buy-in proposal for a day or two.  “I am talking to a lot of my providers this afternoon and I know they are mighty unhappy.”  —  “My providers.”  Think about that for a second.

Pro-Israel Lobby Group's Iran Petition Features Lots of Questionable Names  —  Earlier today, the Israel Project — a pro-Israel organization that endorses tough measures against Iran's nuclear program — sent out a release announcing substantial support for placing sanctions on Iran.

Washington Fuss Over White House Hanukkah Party  —  WASHINGTON — At the first Hanukkah party in the Obama White House, a Jewish student choir will sing in sweet harmony, the two young children of a soldier deployed in Iraq will light a 19th-century silver menorah from Prague and President Obama and his wife …

The new socialism  —  In the 1970s and early '80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in.  OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history.  Why not them?  So in grand U.N. declarations …

Spanking and the 2008 election … More here.The most interesting part of the study is that this is apparently a new divide in American politics.