SEIU officials: Stern to resign  —  Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern, one of America's most prominent labor leaders, is set to resign, according to a member of the union's board and another SEIU official.  —  The President of an SEIU local based in Seattle …

Tea Party NY Gov Candidate's E-Mails Exposed: Racism, Porn, Bestiality  —  An online news outlet in New York state has obtained dozens of emails, many of them racist and sexually graphic, which it reports were sent by Carl Paladino, the Tea-Party-backed Republican candidate for governor of New York …

Washington Memo: Baffled by Health Plan?  So Are Some Lawmakers  —  WASHINGTON — It is often said that the new health care law will affect almost every American in some way.  And, perhaps fittingly if unintentionally, no one may be more affected than members of Congress themselves.

King, Bachmann co-opt abortion rights message to attack health reform  —  SERGEANT BLUFF, Iowa — Co-opting the argument advocates of legal abortion have used for decades, two leading congressional conservatives Saturday said health-care reform is nothing short of a federal intrusion …

Boehner: Repealing healthcare law GOP's ‘No. 1 priority’  —  Repealing healthcare reform will be Republicans' “No. 1 priority,” their House leader said Monday.  —  House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that repealing the healthcare legislation passed in Congress last month …

Senators End Impasse on Extending Jobless Aid  —  WASHINGTON — The Senate on Monday agreed to consider a temporary extension of unemployment benefits after four Republicans joined Democrats in voting to debate the proposal, which has become the focus of an intensifying fight over deficit spending.

The Sarcasm of Sarah Palin  —  Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin delivered a well-received speech on Friday at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, an address defined — as almost all of her public pronouncements have been in the 18 months since she emerged on the national political scene — by a stinging sense of sarcasm.

Healthcare law to sock middle class with a $3.9 billion tax increase in 2019  —  Taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes — in 2019 alone — because of healthcare reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official scorekeeper for legislation.

‘BARTER WITH YOUR DOCTOR’.... Once in a great while, we get a peek at Republicans' health care ideals, but rarely do we see them articulated as candidly as Sue Lowden described them last week.  —  Lowden is a former state senator and chair of the Nevada Republican Party.

Vice President Joe Biden  —  Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., was born November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the first of four siblings.  In 1953, the Biden family moved from Pennsylvania to Claymont, Delaware.  He graduated from the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School and served on the New Castle County Council.

White House points to smaller deficit numbers  —  The federal deficit is running significantly lower than it did last year, with the budget gap for the first half of fiscal 2010 down 8 percent over the same period a year ago, senior Obama administration officials said Monday.

Immigration reform as Democratic electoral firewall  —  Like health care reform before it, immigration reform has been declared dead more times than Al Qaida's #2 man.  Yet this past weekend, Harry Reid spoke to an immigration rally in Las Vegas and promised action on the issue.

Will Blanche Lincoln Oppose the Dems Again?  —  Hungry Beast Giving Beast Women in the World  —  Blogs and Stories  —  The White House and some outside experts worry that even seemingly insignificant exemptions could provide room for dangerous exploitation by larger companies.

What about the next great female pundit?  —  Respected Op-Ed pages may be getting young new blood, but they're still mostly made up of white men  —  Late last week, Politico's Michael Calderone fretted over the fact that so many young, wonder-boy pundits were climbing to the top …

Did FDR End the Depression?  —  The economy took off after the postwar Congress cut taxes  —  'He got us out of the Great Depression.  " That's probably the most frequent comment made about President Franklin Roosevelt, who died 65 years ago today.  Every Democratic president from Truman …

CORRECTION: Visa Policy For Israeli Nuclear Scientists Did Not Begin With Obama Admin  —  On April 8, 2010, I wrote an article in this space implying that the Obama administration had instituted a new policy restricting entry to the United States for Israeli nuclear scientists who worked at the Dimona reactor.

White House kills Hillary SCOTUS buzz  —  The White House moved quickly today to squelch the widening speculation that Hillary Clinton could be nominated to the Supreme Court, as Senator Orrin Hatch suggested this morning.  —  “The President thinks Secretary Clinton is doing an excellent job …