Obama Refuses to Dine With Jewish Leader  —  Do you remember when Jesse Jackson said that under Obama Jews would lose all of their clout?  —  He was right.  —  (Top left clockwise) Barack and Michelle Obama and radical Leftist anti-Israel Professor Edward Said at a May 1998 Arab community event …

Frum thinks critique of GOP led to boot — 2 big bipartisan bashes — Chris Matthews, cornered — HHS Secretary is vastly more powerful — Jackie Calmes to White House beat — Kimberly Dozier to AP  —  FIRST LOOK: Valerie Jarrett is Jake Tapper's exclusive guest Sunday as he begins four months of interim-hosting of “This Week.”

Maddow takes full-page ad in Boston to say she's still not running  —  An ad slated for the Boston Globe.  (Click for full jpg or pdf.)  —  People in Massachusetts picking up their morning papers today may spot an open letter from Rachel Maddow.  The full-page ad explains that she's …

Going to Extreme  —  I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law.  But a few days later, it doesn't seem quite as entertaining — and not just because of the wave of vandalism and threats aimed at Democratic lawmakers.

Obama Announces New Nuclear Arms Treaty with Russia  —  ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports:  —  Shortly after concluding a phone call with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, President Obama made a surprise visit to the White House briefing room to hail the new arms control agreement with Russia …

Tea Party Advocates Who Scorn Socialism Want a Government Job  —  Tea Party activists, who are becoming a force in U.S. politics, want the federal government out of their lives except when it comes to creating jobs.  —  More than 90 percent of Tea Party backers interviewed …

2,000 House staffers make six figures  —  Nearly 2,000 House of Representative staffers pulled down six-figure salaries in 2009, including 43 staffers who earned the maximum $172,500 — or more than three times the median U.S. household income.  —  Starting salaries on Capitol Hill are still low …

Bullet that hit Cantor office was randomly fired  —  RICHMOND — A bullet that hit a window in Republican U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor's office building was fired randomly into the air, police said Thursday.  —  Cantor announced at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday that a shot had been fired into his Richmond campaign office.

THE LIMITS OF AN EXTREME IDEOLOGY.... The Washington Post ran a profile of Mike Vanderboegh, a 57-year-old former militiaman from Alabama, who disapproves of the new Affordable Care Act.  Vanderboegh, who describes himself as a “Christian libertarian” and has been part of various clandestine militia groups …

Beneath the Obama agenda, the Obama agenda  —  Last night, the House of Representatives passed the reconciliation fixes.  “And oh, by the way,” writes Jon Cohn, “they managed to completely revamp the student loan program along the way.  At any other time in recent memory, that would have been a huge accomplishment all its own.

JPMorgan, Lehman, UBS Named as Conspirators in Muni Bid-Rigging  —  JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments …

Say Goodbye to Mitt Romney  —  Mitt Romney had his chance, and he blew it.  —  He was given the opportunity to establish himself as the Leader of the Republican Party on what has become the defining issue between the nation's two major political parties, and, in the process …

Harsanyi: Masters of distraction  —  The mob is furious.  And while it hollers on about “killing” bills, Republicans stoke the fury by calling on citizens to “target” races in “battleground” states.  —  Get it?  “Target.”  The violent intentions are palpable.

CBO report: Debt will rise to 90% of GDP  —  President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020 …

Road rage, accident centers on Obama bumper sticker  —  NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A Nashville man says he and his 10-year-old daughter were victims of road rage Thursday afternoon, all because of a political bumper sticker on his car.  —  Mark Duren told News 2 the incident happened around 4:30p.m. …

South Korean ship sinking, North attack suspected: report  —  SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean naval vessel with more than 100 aboard was sinking on Friday in waters near North Korea and Seoul was investigating whether it was hit in a torpedo attack by the North, South Korean media said.

Personal Income Drops Across U.S.  —  Personal income in 42 states fell in 2009, the Commerce Department said Thursday.  —  Nevada's 4.8% plunge was the steepest, as construction and tourism industries took a beating.  Also hit hard: Wyoming, where incomes fell 3.9%.

What do conservatives believe about health care?  —  Conservative strategist Patrick Ruffini has a searching and skeptical post on his party's approach to health-care reform.  “On health care, I have no idea what our basic guiding principle is,” he writes.  “Seriously, I don't.”

We Good Europeans  —  For now, we better start adjusting to our new status as good Europeans.  —  As if governors these days don't have enough on their plates.  Now that ObamaCare has become law, there's a whole new to-do list for my state:  —  1) Plan for the termination of our Healthy Indiana Plan.

Modes of Dissent  —  The most surprising thing about David Frum's apparent parting of ways with the American Enterprise Institute is the extremely mild nature of Frum's heterodoxy.  What he's been doing for the past week has been to primarily offer a tactical critique of congressional Republicans' approach to health reform.

Student Loan Reform  —  It's a sign of how enormous an achievement the Affordable Care Act is that the passage in last night's reconciliation fix package of the long-awaiting reform to student lending practices has become a kind of forgotten afterthought.  But this is a big deal on its own terms.