Top Items:
Evan McMorris-Santoro / TPMDC:
Report: Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks — Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations …
Discussion:
Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Washington Monthly, Talking Points Memo, The Moderate Voice, Daily Kos, No More Mister Nice Blog, Hotline On Call, PoliBlog, Capital Gains and Games blogs, Outside The Beltway, BuzzFlash.org, Democratic Strategist, Left in the West, Emptywheel, The New Republic, Jesus' General, Firedoglake, The Reality-Based Community and Dennis the Peasant
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ABCNEWS:
‘Tea Party’ Fireworks: Speaker Rips McCain, Obama, ‘Cult of Multiculturalism’ — Ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo Suggests ‘Civics, Literacy Test’ Would Have Foiled Obama's Election; High-Priced National ‘Tea Party’ Convention Stirs Debate Among Factions — The opening-night speaker …
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Judd Berger / Fox News:
Tea Party Launches ‘Counter-Revolution’ — The first-ever National Tea Party Convention started with a bang Thursday, as conservative firebrand Tom Tancredo used his kickoff speech to rail against “the cult of multiculturalism” and the country's “socialist ideologue” president …
Javier C. Hernandez / New York Times:
20,000 Jobs Lost in January as Jobless Rate Falls to 9.7% — The United States economy shed 20,000 jobs in January, the government said Friday, deepening concern that relief from the deepest economic downturn in a generation would be slow to come. But even as the economy struggled …
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Lucia Mutikani / Reuters:
Payrolls fall in January, jobless rate at 5-month low — Reuters - Stephen Battaglia (L) of West Palm Beach, Florida searches for jobs on a computer at Workforce Alliance in ... WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Employers unexpectedly cut 20,000 jobs in January, but the unemployment rate surprisingly fell …
Wall Street Journal:
Jobless Rate Hits 9.7%; U.S. Sheds 20,000 Jobs — The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly declined in January, but the economy continued to shed jobs and revisions painted a bleaker picture for 2009, casting doubt over the labor market's strength. — The unemployment rate …
Discussion:
Law Blog
The Politico:
Franken lays into Ax over health bill — Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats. — Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration's failure …
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, The Daily Caller, Commentary, The New Republic, Another Black Conservative, Ruby Slippers, Scared Monkeys, The Huffington Post, Prescriptions, RedState, Don Surber, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Coop's Corner, Betsy's Page, The Reaction, The Page and The Lonely Conservative
Robert Schlesinger / US News:
Palin Denounces Limbaugh Over ‘Retard’ Cracks, Glenn Beck Next? — By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog — The collateral damage from Sarah Palin's broadside against Rahm Emanuel for his “retard” comments keeps spreading. Her spokeswoman today flamed Rush Limbaugh …
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Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:
The great peasant revolt of 2010 — “Iam not an ideologue,” protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions. — Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier.
Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:
Lobbying Imperils Overhaul of Student Loans — WASHINGTON — Four months ago, it appeared all but certain that the White House and Democrats in Congress would succeed in overhauling the student loan business and ending government subsidies to private lenders.
Discussion:
Firedoglake, Think Progress, OpenSecrets.org, Gawker, The Mahablog, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/* and The BLT
Rachel Monahan / NY Daily News:
Queens girl Alexa Gonzalez hauled out of school in handcuffs after getting caught doodling on desk — A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
Fiscal Scare Tactics — These days it's hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we're told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world.
Tom Maguire / JustOneMinute:
Andrew Sullivan's Heroic Self-Appraisal — Is there some world championship for self-deceit and puffery of which I am unaware? Andrew Sullivan seems to have penned a winning entry. His theme, roughly - How I Was So Right About Sarah Palin Yet So Wrong About John Edwards. … Any day now!
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Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
New senator Scott Brown sure gets down to Republican business — Great. Here comes one more model prone to sudden acceleration. — Another Toyota? Actually, no. This one is Scott Brown, as of Thursday the junior senator from Massachusetts. — Brown, the surprise victor …
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Megan Mulligan / The Daily Caller:
Struck Down: Feds Refuse to Explain How Agent Injured Daily Caller Writer — The State Department has refused to answer basic questions about an accident that took place in Washington on Wednesday night, in which a U.S. Diplomatic Security Service vehicle struck Daily Caller employee Sean Medlock as he was crossing the street.
Discussion:
Hit & Run, The DC Trawler, The Jawa Report, Megan McArdle, TBogg, POWIP, The Awl, Wonkette and Media Blog on National …
Frank Newport / Gallup:
Socialism Viewed Positively by 36% of Americans — Majority of Americans positive on capitalism, entrepreneurs, free enterprise, and small business — PRINCETON, NJ — More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of “socialism,” while 58% have a negative image.
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Ezra Klein:
Minority rules — Steve Pearlstein really goes to town on bipartisanship today: … Word. But I'm a bit less taken with his belief that the “dynamic is unlikely to change until the voters get so disgusted that they are willing to indiscriminately turn out all incumbents, irrespective of party and ideology.”
Discussion:
The Incidental Economist
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Steven Pearlstein / Washington Post: The myth of Washington bipartisanship and the art of true compromise
Scott / Power Line:
“It's a joke name, sir” — With his all-seeing eye, Glenn Reynolds has directed readers to an intriguing story out of Pakistan and/or Saudi Arabia: … In place of any straightforward cue to the story, Glenn substituted a quote from a very funny scene in “Monty Python's Life of Brian” (the scene is below).
John / Power Line:
Is Obama a Corpse-man? — I don't think President Obama is dead politically, by any means, but corpses seem to be on his mind. I heard about his mispronounciation of “corpsman” on Hugh Hewitt's show tonight—if you don't listen to it regularly, you should.
Discussion:
JustOneMinute
Dexter Wright / American Thinker:
Climategate: Is It Criminal? — The potential criminality of the Climategate scandal is exactly the issue that is being investigated by authorities in Britain. The British Parliament has convened hearings to investigate East Anglia University and the Climate Research Unit to uncover unethical and illegal activities.