Gates Says U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Iran's Nuclear Drive  —  WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress …

Source Of Vicious Right-Wing “Whisper Campaign” Against Elena Kagan Uncovered  —  Like Domenech and Yglesias, 48 hours ago I would have sworn Kagan was out.  Now I realize that I was the gullible victim of a right-wing “whisper campaign,” launched in its latest incarnation by wingnuts …

Clinton: Rush Limbaugh Comment “Doesn't Make Any Sense”  —  In my EXCLUSIVE “This Week” interview, former President Bill Clinton told me Rush Limbaugh's assertion that Clinton had “set the stage for violence in this country” and that “any acts of future violence” would be on Clinton's shoulders, “doesn't make any sense”.

Limbaugh: Volcanic eruption in Iceland is God's reaction to health care's passage.  —  Yesterday, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh talked about the volcanic eruption that's affecting air travel over much of Europe, saying it was “God speaking” in response to the passage of health care: … Listen here:

Gore takes cash for water campaign from chemical firm  —  Environmentalists condemn former vice-president for letting controversial company fund Life Earth  —  Al Gore, the self-styled squeakiest-clean and deepest-green politician in American history, has some explaining to do this weekend.

Welcome to Confederate History Month  —  It's kind of like that legendary stunt on the prime-time soap “Dallas,” where we learned that nothing bad had really happened because the previous season's episodes were all a dream.  We now know that the wave of anger that crashed on the Capitol …

Who Needs Apartheid?  — By: Mark Steyn  —  This is a question that should be asked more often:  —  Moshe Ya'alon, a former Israel Defense Forces general who now serves as Benjamin Netanyahu's strategic affairs minister, posed the following query in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post …

Pelosi: Two ‘pillars’ down, one more to go in passing Obama ‘blueprint’  —  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said the Democrats are one bill away from completing President Barack Obama's “blueprint for American prosperity.”  —  “We have passed two of the three pillars in the historic healthcare …

Obama Must Act To Ease Arizona's Deportation Panic  —  It is open season on the Latino community in Arizona.  In Phoenix, Tucson, and across the state, people in Latino neighborhoods are afraid to leave their houses, afraid to be apart from their children for even a minute …

Romer: 'It's Aggregate Demand, Stupid'  —  Christina Romer, chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, says the reason unemployment remains so painfully high is clear: It's not the inadequacy or laziness of the workers or the long-standing mismatch between workers' skills and employers' needs.

Why's Sen. McConnell trashing Wall Street regulation bill?  —  WASHINGTON — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell this week threw a rhetorical stick of dynamite into what had been a collegial debate about overhauling the nation's financial regulations, triggering criticism and confusion …