Surprise!  Palin likes Obama's Nobel speech  —  Sarah Palin and President Obama don't agree on much, but last year's Republican vice presidential nominee just gave the president's defense of “just wars” a thumbs up in an interview with USA TODAY.  In fact, she said that the president's address in Oslo …

Medicare Buy-In Filibuster-Proof?  Senate Dem Deeply Concerned  —  WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?  —  Democrats in the Senate may not have a filibuster-proof majority for the latest health care compromise after all.  —  Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), expressed deep concern on Thursday that a new proposal …

Putting the Plodding Moralism Back In  —  Chris Mooney has a smart post on the vicious—and viciously effective—comeback campaign that's been mounted by climate change deniers.  I highly recommend it, but his claim that deniers “didn't need good science to make another sally …

‘Editor & Publisher’ to Cease Publication After 125 Years  —  NEW YORK Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry and a journalism institution that traces its origins back to 1884, is ceasing publication.  —  An announcement, made by parent company The Nielsen Co. …

Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret Raids by the C.I.A.  —  WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.'s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan …

Poll: GOP erases popularity gap in Congress  —  Washington (CNN) — Eleven months before crucial midterm elections, a national poll indicates that the public is divided over whether the country would be better off with Democrats or Republicans controlling Congress.

Exclusive Interview: Andrew Breitbart Announces Launch of New “Big” Sites  —  When Andrew Breitbart launched Big Government in September, we asked if he was gearing up to be the next Arianna Huffington: An opinion blog rainmaker with a one-stop digital powerhouse, but presented from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Photoshop Follies of API  —  Everybody's favorite Big Oil lobby, American Petroleum Institute, distributed a pamphlet at an API forum last week that includes a delightfully diverse collection of people that apparently agree with their dirty agenda.  —  It appears to be just a typical iStock Photo image …

Police Shoot and Kill Man Outside Hotel in Times Square  —  A plainclothes police sergeant fatally shot a 25-year-old man Thursday morning outside the parking garage of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square following a crackdown on street vendors who were using counterfeit CDs to intimidate tourists, the authorities said.

SoCal councilman wears a Stalin-ized Pelosi  —  That protesters on both sides of the political spectrum equate America's leaders with dictators like Hitler isn't new.  But critics were shocked when such a comparison was made by an elected official.  —  Last Friday, a group rented a room …

Cook Political Report's dire forecast for Dodd  —  The Cook Political Report's Senate race analyst Jennifer Duffy doesn't think much of Chris Dodd's (D-Conn.) re-election prospects, in her latest update on the Connecticut Senate race.  —  And she's moving the race rating to “Lean Republican” …

In trouble, White House searches for a billionaire to blame  —  In 1998, when the Clinton White House found itself in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, one of its key defense strategies was to attack the conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife as the dark power behind the allegations against the president.

Writing Is On Wall: Pelosi Softens On Public Option  —  In yet another sign that the writing is on the wall for the public option, Nancy Pelosi repeatedly refused to say today that a bill without one could not pass the House, backing away from a marker she'd laid down in the past.

Unemployment plan would change rules on bank bailouts  —  Executive pay, other limits may be lifted  —  The Obama administration plans to channel money from the government's massive financial bailout program to small businesses as part of an effort to limit the political and economic damage of high unemployment.

DeMint: Republican leaders have ‘gone to the left’  —  Conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Wednesday called out the leadership of the Republican Party for straying too far from conservative principles.  —  DeMint, in an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network …

Steny Hoyer explains how Newt Gingrich broke Congress  —  On Monday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer delivered a startling speech on the obstructionism of minority Republicans and the dangers that poses to Congress and the country.  It's not common for politicians to address structural problem directly, or at length.

Why the Personal Mandate to Buy Health Insurance Is Unprecedented and Unconstitutional … This statement from a 1994 Congressional Budget Office Memorandum remains true today.  Yet, all of the leading House and Senate health-care reform bills being debated in Congress require Americans …

Al Gore Is as Awesome at Math as He Is at Science  —  I'm going to start calling him Dysfunction Al.  He's a nervous-making stiff even under the best of circumstances, and when you confront him with the end of all his dreams, you have to wipe the flopsweat off the lens:

conservatives as self-parodies  —  This interview with Andy Schlafly [below] of conservapedia.com is hard to watch.  It's almost embarrassing.  I think Colbert is at his best for most of the exchange, and the zinger about creating his own reality is marvelous.

The jobs deficit  —  It was truly amazing the way last week's employment report was hailed by many people as a sign that our troubles are over.  Here we are, having suffered huge job losses, and needing to make up the lost ground — and a report showing that we're still losing jobs, but not as fast, is grounds for celebration?

In Shift, Oren Calls J Street ‘A Unique Problem’ … Published December 09, 2009, issue of December 18, 2009.  —  Breaking with his previous restraint, Israel's ambassador to the United States delivered an unprecedented blast against J Street, the new dovish Israel lobby that has made waves …

Snubbed Norwegians replace absent Obama at event with ... cardboard cutout; Update: Photo added  —  Wait 'til you hear what the event was. … Presumably this means they stuck a cardboard cutout next to the entrance, but I've been cracking myself up imagining that they put it in a seat …

The News Crisis: What Google Can Do  —  “How Google Can Help Newspapers,” ran the benign-sounding headline atop an Op-Ed column by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the December 1 Wall Street Journal.  In it, Schmidt sought to rebut claims that, as Les Hinton, the CEO of Dow Jones, has put it …