memeorandum: Coakley Campaign Attacks Tea Party “Devil” (Michael Graham/The Natural Truth)

3:40 AM ET, January 13, 2010

Top Items:

A new approach to China — Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.

Dave Girouard / Google Enterprise Blog:

Keeping your data safe — Many corporations and consumers regularly come under cyber attack, and Google is no exception. We recently detected a cyber attack targeting our infrastructure and that of at least 20 other publicly listed companies. This incident was particularly notable for its high degree of sophistication.

Discussion: Between the Lines, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable!

New York Times:
Google, Citing Attack, Threatens to Exit China

Discussion: ParaPundit, TechCrunch, Mashable!, Financial Times, Telegraph, James Fallows and Mediaite

John McCormack / Weekly Standard:

Video: Someone With the Coakley Campaign Pushes Me into a Metal Railing — Coakley won't say if she thinks there are terrorists in Afghanistan. — Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley attended a fundraiser at the Capitol Hill restaurant Sonoma tonight.

Discussion: Ben Smith's Blog, TBogg, The Corner on National …, The Lonely Conservative, Red Mass Group, AmSpecBlog and Michelle Malkin

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:

Internal Memo To Top Dem Donors Warns Mass Senate Race Is “Very Tight,” “Urgent” — In a sign of serious worry about the increasingly tense battle for Ted Kennedy's seat, the Democratic National Committee and the Martha Coakley campaign have blasted a private memo to top national Dem donors …

Michael Graham / The Natural Truth:

Coakley Campaign Attacks Tea Party “Devil” — Martha Coakley's left-wing allies have been attacking and insulting tea party attendees and town hall participants for months. Now the Coakley campaign has jumped on the “teabagger” bandwagon. Her campaign just sent out a press release attacking Scott Brown …

Discussion: Flopping Aces, Gateway Pundit, Hot Air and Weasel Zippers

Sean J. Miller / The Hill:

Dems, labor pour cash into Kennedy seat — Democrats and their union allies are pumping resources into Massachusetts in an attempt to save their 60-seat Senate majority. — The seat in question, which belonged to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), has been one of the most reliable liberal votes …

Discussion: Glenn Thrush's Blog, The Politico and The Nation

Wall Street Journal:
Coakley's Saviors — The health-care industry rides to the Democratic rescue.

Discussion: Boston Herald, Michelle Malkin and Red Mass Group

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:
Senate Race Tightens in Massachusetts

Discussion: The Washington Independent, Flopping Aces, The Plum Line, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Eye on 2010, TPMDC, RedState, The Daily Caller, AmSpecBlog, Swing State Project, Jules Crittenden, Hot Air and The Other McCain

Jim Geraghty / National Review Online:
Coakley to Fundraisers: 'If I Don't Win, 2010 Is Going to Be Hell …

Discussion: The Natural Truth

Pete Abel / The Moderate Voice:
Brown, Coakley, and a Confession

Discussion: Pam's House Blend, Campaign Diaries and Time

New York Times:

Fierce Quake Devastates Haitian Capital — SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — A fierce earthquake struck Haiti late Tuesday afternoon, causing a crowded hospital to collapse, leveling countless shantytown dwellings and bringing even more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere's poorest and most disaster-prone.

Discussion: American Red Cross …, Times of London, the talking dog, Pajamas Media, Mediaite, News Hounds and Hullabaloo

Jonathan M. Katz / Associated Press:
Many casualties expected after big quake in Haiti

Discussion: Gateway Pundit

CNN:
‘Catastrophic’ earthquake slams Haiti

Discussion: Associated Press, Scared Monkeys, Alas, a blog and PoliBlog

msnbc.com:
Haitian capital largely destroyed in quake

Discussion: Online NewsHour, Crooks and Liars, Associated Press and Pam's House Blend

Eric Zimmermann / The Hill:

Palin blasts critics in Fox debut: ‘A bunch of b.s.’ — Sarah Palin hit back today at reports that she was uninformed and unprepared on the 2008 campaign trail. — In her debut as a Fox News contributor, Palin told Bill O'Reilly that anecdotes about her reported in a new book and repeated …

Discussion: The Note, The Politico, American Power and Breitbart.tv

Yahoo! News:
McCain on claims of campaign's lax vetting of Palin: 'I wouldn't know.'

Discussion: The Politico, Progressive Fix, The Huffington Post, Indecision Forever and Alan Colmes' Liberaland

Reid Wilson / Hotline On Call:
Romney Digs At Huckabee Over “Game Change”

Discussion: The Atlantic Politics Channel

Michael Isikoff / Newsweek Blogs:

Chuck Norris Hunts for Obama's ‘Secret Vault’ as Interpol Conspiracy Theories Get Wilder — The conspiracy theories about President Obama's executive order on Interpol are getting wilder by the day. — Invoking no less an authority than Glenn Beck, movie tough guy (and political activist) …

Discussion: Hit & Run and When Falls the Coliseum

WorldNetDaily:

Obama's secret vault — On Glenn Beck's Jan. 7 show, Beck was rightly puzzled regarding the exact purpose of President Obama's Dec. 16 signing of an executive order “designating Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) as a public international organization entitled to enjoy certain privileges, exemptions and immunities.”

Discussion: Alan Colmes' Liberaland and Little Green Footballs

Peter H. Stone / Under The Influence:

Health Insurers Funded Chamber Attack Ads — Just as dealings with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats soured last summer, six of the nation's biggest health insurers began quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying …

Discussion: naked capitalism, Think Progress, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, The Politico, Prescriptions and The Atlantic Politics Channel

Dan Pfeiffer / White House.gov Blog Feed:
Health Insurance Companies Exposed Again

Discussion: The Politico and The Page

The Hill:

Rangel: Dems face ‘serious problems’ on healthcare reform — Congressional Democrats face “serious problems” in getting a healthcare reform bill to the president's desk, according to a House panel chairman. — “We've got to get a bill that's more compatible to the House,” …

Discussion: The Politico

Erica Werner / Associated Press:
AP sources: Employer health mandate may be dropped

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Page and The TrogloPundit

Michael O'Brien / The Hill:
Nelson ‘not 100 percent certain’ he'll support health bill's final passage

Discussion: Ezra Klein

Wall Street Journal:
Tax on Investment Income Is Weighed

Discussion: Associated Press, Townhall.com, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, AmSpecBlog, Bloomberg, Ezra Klein, ProfessorBainbridge.com, The Lonely Conservative, Wonk Room and Michelle Malkin

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

Conan O'Brien Says He Won't Host ‘Tonight Show’ After Leno — Conan O'Brien released a statement Tuesday saying that he no longer wanted to be the host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC if it appeared at 12:05 a.m. — Mr. O'Brien's brief run as host at 11:35 p.m. is to be cut short next month …

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Mashable!, Mediaite, Concurring Opinions, Liberal Values, Silicon Alley Insider, Taylor Marsh and New York Times

Dennis Kraniak / MyFox Detroit:

Unruly Passengers Disrupt Northwest Flight 243 — ((Watch the video to get passenger reaction from Fox 2's Simon Shaykhet.)) — The source says four men from Saudi Arabai were saying something in Arabic that alarmed four on-board Federal Air Marshals. The Marshals speak Arabic.

Discussion: Whiskey Fire and Pajamas Media

John Fund / Wall Street Journal:

Harry Reid's Swansong — Will Harry Reid retire at the end of this year? — Printer — Friendly — In the end, I don't believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will run for re-election. Whether or not the health care bill he muscled through the Senate becomes law, the 70-year-old will bow out of his race for a fifth term.

The Rothenberg / The Rothenberg Political Report:

NV Sen Moved to Lean Takeover, Dems Still have Edge in MA Sen — New polling confirms that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) is mired near 40% in general election ballot tests against all potential opponents, even those voters know nothing about. It will be extremely difficult …

Discussion: Sister Toldjah, Hot Air and TPMDC

Ben Pershing / Washington Post:

House to vote on Obama's first veto — On Dec. 30, President Obama quietly issued his first veto. On Wednesday, the House will vote on whether to override that veto. Except Obama didn't really oppose the bill he vetoed, and the House doesn't really want to override it. — Confused?

Discussion: PoliBlog and Washington Times

Michael Barbaro / New York Times:

Senate Hopeful in New State Airs Evolving Views — In his first extensive interview since he began weighing a run for United States Senate from New York, Harold E. Ford Jr. distanced himself from his previous opposition to same-sex marriage, his description of himself as “pro-life” …

Discussion: TBogg and Post Politics

John Cassidy / The New Republic:

Hedging America — How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities — (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 390 pp., $28 — One tried-and-true way to start off a course in elementary economics is to call the students' attention to a common object, such as the spiral notebooks in which they are presumably busy taking notes.

Discussion: Ezra Klein and TPMCafe

The Corner on National Review Online:

Coates Speaks as Best He Can — By: NRO Staff — It's not news that Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, was relieved of his post on January 5 and “transferred” to South Carolina for an 18-month assignment with the U.S. attorney's office.

Discussion: Commentary

David Brooks / New York Times:

The Tel Aviv Cluster — Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates. — Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population …

Discussion: The New Republic, Jeffrey Goldberg and Israel Matzav

Scott Shane / New York Times:

A Year of Terror Plots, Through a 2nd Prism — WASHINGTON — As terrorist plots against the United States have piled up in recent months, politicians and the news media have sounded the alarm with a riveting message for Americans: Be afraid. Al Qaeda is on the march again …

Discussion: TalkLeft

The Politico:

Obama to address House GOP — President Barack Obama will address House Republicans next week at their annual retreat in Baltimore, deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said Tuesday afternoon. — It's a show of bi-partisanship after a year rife with tumult in the relationship between …

Discussion: The Hill, The Swamp and Jay Bookman

Frank Jack Daniel / Reuters:

Venezuela plans blackouts in Caracas, oil town — CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will switch off lights for hours at a time in Caracas and other cities such as oil town Maracaibo in planned blackouts to tackle power shortages that threaten President Hugo Chavez's support.

Discussion: Power Line and The Lonely Conservative

Gavin Lee / BBC:

Strange reunion — Why would a former Guantanamo Bay prison guard track down two of his former captives - two British men - and agree to fly to London to meet them? — “You look different without a cap.” — “You look different without the jump suits.” — With those words, an extraordinary reunion gets under way.

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, EconLog, The Political Carnival, Jesus' General and Truthdig