Deficit to Hit All-Time High  —  Obama's $3.8 Trillion Budget Forecasts a $1.6 Trillion Shortfall for 2010 Before It Drops  —  WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will propose on Monday a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 that projects the deficit will shoot up to a record $1.6 trillion this year …

‘Iran will deliver telling blow to global powers on Feb. 11’  —  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the nation will deliver a harsh blow to the “global arrogance” on this year's anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.  —  “The Islamic Revolution opened a window to liberty for the human race …

Obama to Seek Sweeping Change in ‘No Child’ Law  —  The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush's signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination …

The Obama Spell Is Broken  —  Unlike this president, John Kennedy was an ironist who never fell for his own mystique.  —  The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history.  That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic …

Forces Pushing Obama on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama and top Pentagon officials met repeatedly over the past year about repealing “don't ask, don't tell,” the law that bans openly gay members of the military.  —  But it was in Oval Office strategy sessions …

Hoekstra: Ax Xmas bomber remark is “crazy”  —  Following up on the theme I struck on the night of Scott Brown's victory: Despite all the Dem self-congratulation about the Trippi-Plouffe social networking political revolution, Republicans are absolutely killing Democrats when it comes to leveraging the web to go negative.

PUTTING THE PENTAGON BUDGET ON THE TABLE?.... When the White House started talking up the notion of a spending freeze (which isn't really a spending freeze) last week, officials outlined a proposal with modest reductions in discretionary spending not related to national security.

Good and Boring  —  In times of crisis, good news is no news.  Iceland's meltdown made headlines; the remarkable stability of Canada's banks, not so much.  —  Yet as the world's attention shifts from financial rescue to financial reform, the quiet success stories deserve at least as much attention as the spectacular failures.

Democrats squabble over jobs bill  —  Democrats from the president on down say jobs are their No. 1 priority, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expects to announce details of a bill this week.  But a squabble among Senate Democrats is complicating early efforts to bring a bill to the floor.

What Obama Isn't Saying  —  The apolitical politics of progressivism.  —  “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”  —  The words are those of President Barack Obama speaking to Congress on health care reform on September 9, 2009.

Dem. senators spent weekend with bank, energy, tobacco lobbyists  —  Twelve Democratic Senators spent last weekend in Miami Beach raising money from top lobbyists for oil, drug, and other corporate interests that they often decry, according to a guest list for the event obtained by POLITICO.

Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs ‘expecting $100 million bonus’  —  Goldman Sachs, the world's richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.

Glenn Beck Destroys Chris “I Forgot He Was Black For An Hour” Matthews

500,000 hospital patients sent home too soon every year (and 1,500 a day readmitted for emergency care)  —  More than 500,000 patients every year are readmitted to hospital after apparently being sent home too soon, alarming figures reveal.  —  Labour's waiting-time targets have been blamed …

Obama to Skip Annual EU Summit  —  WASHINGTON—The White House has decided that President Barack Obama will not attend what has been an annual summit with the European Union this spring, as Mr. Obama scales back from his record-setting foreign travel last year.

Should Edwards Aides Be Shamed And Blamed?  —  Late Friday night, having browsed through Andrew Young's book exposing bare the details of John Edwards's extensive cover-up of his reckless decisions, I tweeted that “The senior staff who covered for John Edwards should be identified and shamed out of the Dem consulting world.”

Editorial Shake-Up as Harper's Tries to Stabilize in a Downturn  —  Just before noon last Wednesday, John R. MacArthur, the president, publisher and chief benefactor of Harper's Magazine, joined his editorial staff after its monthly meeting.  —  “We are going through a crisis,” Mr. MacArthur …

Sex Ed in Washington  —  Liberals hated almost everything about George W. Bush's presidency, but they harbored a particular animus toward a minor domestic policy priority: abstinence-based sex education.  The abstinence effort accounted for about a hundred million dollars in a trillion-dollar budget …