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 …

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 …

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!

Palin Camp Rips Limbaugh, Hits His “Retard” Comment As “Crude And Demeaning”  —  Sarah Palin versus Rush Limbaugh!  —  Palin believes Limbaugh's repeated use of the word “retard” yesterday was “crude and demeaning,” her spokesperson emails.  —  In the wake of Palin's demand that Rahm Emanuel …

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.

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 …

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.

‘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 …

New Hampshire independents abandoning Obama in droves: Poll  —  The crucial independent voters of notoriously independent New Hampshire, the ones who were so vital to Barack Obama's 2008 victory there and nationally, are fast falling out of love with the Democrat.

Democrats send conflicting signals on repealing 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy  —  The White House and congressional leaders are sending contradictory signals on scrapping the Pentagon's “Don't ask, don't tell” policy.  —  While President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) …

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.

Pentagon to stock health facilities with morning-after pill  —  The Department of Defense will begin making the morning-after pill Plan B available at all of its hospitals and health clinics around the world, officials announced Thursday.  —  The decision came after a recommendation …

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.

Cohen: ‘I will not resign’  —  Gov. Quinn's embattled running mate, Scott Lee Cohen, allegedly abused anabolic steroids, displayed fits of rage and forced himself sexually on his wife before their divorce, court documents reviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Gallup: Majority of Dems View Socialism Positively  —  The Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party.  —  Only 17 percent of Republican and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light.

Charles Krauthammer, Rocket Scientist  —  Last evening on FoxNews, host Bret Baier reported that the Iranians had launched a rocket carrying “a mouse, two turtles, and a can of worms” into space.  He asked the panelists to speculate on the implications.  —  Charles Krauthammer inveighed …

Our Strange Constitution  —  I'm not even slightly surprised to find out that the Obama administration has some kind of process in place to assassinate American citizens who it's decided are in cahoots with terrorists.  I was always raised to appreciate the “out of control spies” …

Correction Request: Max Blumenthal, Salon.com  —  In Max Blumenthal's article “James O'Keefe's race problem” for Salon.com of February 3, 2010, Mr. Blumenthal makes a number of unverifiable and provably false claims regarding James O'Keefe's attendance at a 2006 conference called “Race and Conservatism.”

NBC Cafeteria Celebrates Black History Month With Fried Chicken Special (Update)  —  So who at NBC thought it would be a good idea for the special today to be, among other things, fried chicken, “in honor of Black History Month”?  —  Because, spoiler alert - it wasn't a good idea at all.