Election 2010: Massachusetts Special Senate Election  —  2010 Massachusetts Senate: Coakley 50%, Brown 41%  —  State Attorney General Martha Coakley holds a nine-point lead over her Republican rival, state Senator Scott Brown, in Massachusetts' special U.S. Senate election to fill the seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.

The Tea Party Teens  —  The United States opens this decade in a sour mood.  First, Americans are anxious about the future.  Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey.  Only 27 percent feel confident …

Democrats Considering Health Care-Immigration Deal To Overcome Key Sticking Point  —  Lawmakers who want to extend health coverage to illegal immigrants will not block the passage of the final health care reform bill so long as the White House offers a substantive promise to start pushing comprehensive immigration legislation this year.

How Visa, Using Card Fees, Dominates a Market  —  Every day, millions of Americans stand at store checkout counters and make a seemingly random decision: after swiping their debit card, they choose whether to punch in a code, or to sign their name.  —  It is a pointless distinction to most consumers …

Secret Service confirms third crasher at White House state dinner  —  Another uninvited guest made it into the White House state dinner made famous by gate-crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the Secret Service announced Monday — exposing more holes in the security perimeter around President Obama.

MI5 told US about Detroit bomber's terror links ‘a year ago’  —  Britain told American intelligence agents more than a year ago that the Detroit bomber had links to extremists, according to Downing Street.  —  The prime minister's spokesman indicated that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was named …

Personal Bankruptcy Filings Rising Fast  —  The number of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy rose by nearly a third in 2009, a surge largely driven by foreclosures and job losses.  —  And more people are filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which liquidates assets to pay off some debts and absolves the filers of others.

CHERRY WILL DROP OUT OF GOV'S RACE  —  UPDATE: 6 News Capitol Correspondent Tim Skubick reports that Lt. Governor John Cherry, once the presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination, will drop out of the race for Governor.  —  Several sources have confirmed the story 6 News first broke Monday night at 11pm.

New scanners break child porn laws  —  The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.  —  Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines …

A Crime Theory Demolished  —  If poverty is the root cause of lawlessness, why did crime rates fall when joblessness increased?  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s …

What Liberal Revolt?  —  Claims That Obama's Base Have Turned On Him Are Based On Scant Evidence  —  Does President Obama have a problem with his political base?  That conclusion seems inescapable in recent weeks, as prominent liberal voices have expressed their unhappiness with the president …

Matthews Bites The Politico That Feeds Him Cheney  —  It's delightful to see someone in the media go after Politico for their stenography.  J-Mart looked like the cat who ate the canary having to dodge the question about how Dick Cheney was using Politico as his conduit.  And there's simply no excuse for it.

Health talks resume with W.H. meet  —  Congressional Democrats are embarking on an abbreviated negotiation to save Reid the hassle of overcoming more procedural hurdles, but that means the resulting negotiations will be held behind closed-doors as the various stakeholders push for final changes.

First Transgender Appointee Fears Being Labeled ‘Token’  —  Amanda Simpson Says It Was Her Merits, Not Gender Identity, That Got Her Commerce Job  —  For Amanda Simpson, believed to be America's first openly transgender presidential appointee, the job she starts Tuesday in the U.S. Commerce Department …

For Obama, terrorism is a four-letter word: Bush  —  The attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was more than just al Qaeda's latest attempt to bring death and destruction to American shores.  It was also, in its still-unfolding political aftermath, a head-on collision between …

Joan Rivers bumped off flight in Costa Rica when Continental gate agent finds passport suspicious  —  Above, Rivers celebrates the New Year with family and friends in Costa Rica last week.  On her return, though, she had a tough time leaving the country because of her ‘suspicious’ passport.

C-SPAN asks Dems to televise health negotiations  —  C-SPAN is asking Democrats to open their healthcare negotiations to television cameras.  —  Democratic leaders have reportedly decided to skip a formal conference and instead talk behind closed doors to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills.

Press Pool, C-SPAN Join Criticism of Conference Process on Health-Care  —  Yesterday, several outlets reported that the Democrats would “almost certainly” forgo the official conference process to get a health-care bill passed, opting instead to negotiate largely behind closed doors.

Pensioners burn books for warmth  —  Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm.  —  Volunteers have reported that ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.

Hollywood's Liberal Heartbreak  — Home - Cheat sheet - Buzz board - Big Fat Story - Blogs & stories - Videos - Galleries - Crossword  —  Blogs and Stories  —  I hope and trust that Robbins has since calmed down.  —  When it came to politics, Robbins and Sarandon tended to espouse and admonish rather than try to persuade.

Moussaoui Conviction Upheld — By: Andy McCarthy  —  The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has affirmed the conviction and sentence of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.  Enthusiasts of the law-enforcement approach to terrorism will undoubtedly claim this development as more evidence that their strategy works.

GOP Chief: Republicans ‘Screwed Up’ After Reagan  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele offers a simple explanation for why the GOP all too often lost touch with typical Americans since the Ronald Reagan era: “We screwed up,” he claims in a new book offering a blueprint for the party's resurgence.

Wherein Lies the Greatness of Janet Napolitano?  —  She gave an awful public performance in the wake of the Flt. 253 terror incident—assuring air travelers that “the system worked” when the one obvious thing was that for whatever reason the system didn't work, as President Obama acknowledged a few days later.

Group Gives Up Death Penalty Work  —  Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.  —  There were other important death penalty developments last year …

What Spitzer, Sanford, Ensign and Edwards Could Learn From John Profumo  —  In politics, a new year inevitably brings tidings of hope and dreams of regeneration to those who have embarrassingly stumbled along the corridors of power.  If only the change in calendar also carried with it a dollop of self-awareness.

Steele Doesn't Know If GOP Ready To Lead  —  RNC chair Michael Steele doesn't think his party can take back the House in '10, and even if they do, he doesn't know if the GOP is ready.  —  Appearing on Sean Hannity's nationally syndicated show the same day his new book, “Right Now,” …