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:
Think Progress, The New Republic, Emptywheel, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, The Moderate Voice, Open Congress, Capital Gains and Games blogs, Progressive Fix, Daily Kos, No More Mister Nice Blog, Ta-Nehisi Coates, PoliBlog, Outside The Beltway, BuzzFlash.org, Left in the West, Jesus' General, Firedoglake, The Reality-Based Community, skippy the bush kangaroo and Dennis the Peasant
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Ezra Klein:
What is a ‘hold’? — The news of the day, as I mentioned earlier, is that Richard Shelby has decided to place a hold on everything that eats, breathes or moves unless Alabama gets a couple billion more in pork. Before we take a step further on this, it's worth noting that Shelby is doing exactly …
National Journal Online:
Reid: Shelby Has Hold On All Nominees
Reid: Shelby Has Hold On All Nominees
Discussion:
Think Progress, Newsweek Blogs, Hotline On Call, Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post, TPMDC and Outside The Beltway
National Journal Online:
Reid: Shelby Has Hold On All Nominees
Reid: Shelby Has Hold On All Nominees
Discussion:
The Atlantic Politics Channel
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 …
Brent Budowsky / Pundits Blog:
Sarah Palin takes $100,000 for populist Tea Party speech
Sarah Palin takes $100,000 for populist Tea Party speech
Discussion:
CNN
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 …
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Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket: Politicizing Justice? Obama names DNC member Tim Purdon as a U.S. Attorney
Arizona Republic:
Scott Brown to stump for McCain in March — Sen. Scott Brown, who shook the national political scene last month by winning the late liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy's old seat, will come to Arizona in early March to campaign for Sen. John McCain's re-election. — Other details about Brown's trip …
Discussion:
The Hill
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Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
New senator Scott Brown sure gets down to Republican business
New senator Scott Brown sure gets down to Republican business
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, Boston Globe, The Note, No More Mister Nice Blog and The Corner on National …
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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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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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).
Los Angeles Times:
Rahm Emanuel's latest gaffe points to larger issues — He's apologized for using the word ‘retarded,’ but Obama's chief of staff, once seen as the perfect strategist for the job, has become a target of criticism as the White House's agenda lags. — President Obama's chief of staff has apologized for his use of the word “retarded.”
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The New Republic
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Robert Schlesinger / US News:
Palin Denounces Limbaugh Over ‘Retard’ Cracks, Glenn Beck Next?
Palin Denounces Limbaugh Over ‘Retard’ Cracks, Glenn Beck Next?
Discussion:
Fox News, Firedoglake, The Plum Line, Mediaite, Taylor Marsh, Liberal Values and The Daily Dish
Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Obama Floats Possibility That Health Reform May Not Happen — Maybe I'm misreading this. But if you look at the transcript of Obama's remarks at a fundraiser last night, it seems like the President was at least raising the possibility that health reform may not happen.
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:
The DC Trawler, Hit & Run, The Jawa Report, TBogg, Megan McArdle, POWIP, The Awl, Wonkette and Media Blog on National …
Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
The Ontology of Miranda Rights — One tick I've noticed in conservative discourse on the Underpants Bomber case is the idea that Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and the FBI somehow decided to “give” the suspect his Miranda rights, as if they'd somehow created the right to remain silent out of whole cloth.
Discussion:
No More Mister Nice Blog
Bill Dedman / msnbc.com:
Palin e-mails reveal a powerful ‘first dude’ — Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that the first gentleman, Todd Palin, exchanged with state officials draw a picture of his influence on policy in the Sarah Palin administration. Other e-mails are still being withheld by the state of Alaska.