Looters in Loafers  —  Last October, I saw a cartoon by Mike Peters in which a teacher asks a student to create a sentence that uses the verb “sacks,” as in looting and pillaging.  The student replies, “Goldman Sachs.”  —  Sure enough, last week the Securities and Exchange Commission accused …

Top GOP Officials Writing Off Crist  —  Top GOP officials in DC now believe it is a virtual certainty that FL Gov. Charlie Crist (R) will bolt the GOP and run instead as an independent, sources tell Hotline OnCall.  —  Over the weekend, Crist pulled TV advertisements that had been running in key markets …

Tancredo: Send Obama ‘back’ to Kenya  —  Former congressman Tom Tancredo's speech at the National Tea Party was a misstep that gave organizers their only lasting, negative coverage.  At a Sunday afternoon tea party rally in Greenville, S.C., where he was the keynote speaker, Tancredo stepped in it again.

Top Qaeda Leaders in Iraq Killed in Raid  —  BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraqi intelligence officers have located and killed Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Monday.  —  Mr. Maliki said the intelligence team also killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi …

Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor  —  The People and Their Government  —  By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days.  A new Pew Research Center survey finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government …

This Is Apple's Next iPhone  —  You are looking at Apple's next iPhone.  It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS.  We got it.  We disassembled it.  It's the real thing, and here are all the details.  —  While Apple may tinker with the final packaging …

World warming to US under Obama, BBC poll suggests  —  Views of the US around the world have improved sharply over the past year, a BBC World Service poll suggests.  —  For the first time since the annual poll began in 2005, America's influence in the world is now seen as more positive than negative.

Tea partiers in two camps: Palin vs. Paul  —  Tea party activists are divided roughly into two camps, according to a new POLITICO/TargetPoint poll: one that's libertarian-minded and largely indifferent to hot-button values issues and another that's culturally conservative and equally concerned about social and fiscal issues.

Is current unemployment all about aggregate demand?  —  Christie Romer basically says yes, Arnold Kling dissents.  —  I don't expect Romer to turn a speech into an academic debate and in this sense I don't fault her.  Nonetheless I did not find her account very persuasive.

LEAVE THE 19TH AMENDMENT ALONE.... I like to think I can take a joke, and appreciate political commentary intended as humor, but this item from Thomas Mitchell, editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, wasn't amusing.  The headline read, “Time to repeal the 19th Amendment?”

North Carolina Democrats' votes against health care push labor to form party  —  RALEIGH, N.C. — A political rebellion is brewing inside an old funeral home near the state Capitol here.  Frustrated liberals and labor organizers are taking aim at the Democratic Party, rushing to gather enough signatures …

An alarming outbreak of ‘regime’ amnesia  —  Time's Joe Klein got some attention over the weekend when he said, on “The Chris Matthews Show,” that statements from Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are “right up close to being seditious.”  What received less attention was the statement immediately following Klein's …

Royal Navy called in to repatriate Britons stranded by volcanic ash  —  Three Royal Navy warships have been deployed to continental Europe to rescue stranded Britons, Gordon Brown said today, as flying restrictions were extended until at least 1am tomorrow.  —  HMS Ark Royal …

Hillary's second husband  —  Bill Clinton, speaking to NBC, contemplates the notion of appointing Hillary to the Court:  —  I think she'd be a great Supreme Court judge.  But I think she probably thinks that it'd be better if he appointed somebody younger.  Although if you look, I mean, my mother-in-law's 91.

THE THEOCRATIC WING OF THE GOP.... A certain former half-term governor appears to be drifting even further away from the American mainstream.  Over the weekend, appearing at an evangelical Christian women's conference in Louisville, Sarah Palin rejected the very idea of separation of church and state …

Militia movement will be packing heat at rally on the Potomac  —  Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, is ready to “muster outside D.C.” on Monday with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed.  They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns …

Congress may get fined by its own health-care law  —  Congress may be fined tens of millions of dollars a year under its own health-care law, in part because the bill dumps members of Congress and their staffs from their current health-care plans.  —  But no one really knows for sure what the bill does, not even the experts.

Americans Still Most Confident in Obama on Economy  —  Obama, business leaders have confidence of majority of Americans  —  PRINCETON, NJ — President Obama and “business leaders” engender the most confidence from Americans for their ability to do or to recommend the right thing for the economy.