Students Kicked Off Campus for Wearing American Flag Tees  —  Freedom of expression or cultural disrespect on Cinco de Mayo?  —  TWITTER  —  On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing T-shirts with the American flag.

Fear Itself  —  There are many important and urgent questions about the man accused of trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square.  —  Officials say Faisal Shahzad admitted to the attempt and said he learned bomb-making at a camp in Pakistan.  Is Mr. Shahzad indeed connected to the Pakistani Taliban …

Congress, Up In Arms  —  There seems to be a strong sentiment in Congress that the only constitutional right suspected terrorists have is the right to bear arms.  —  “I think you're going too far here,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday.

Health care law's massive, hidden tax change  —  NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.  —  Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document …

George Rekers Is a Homosexual, Says Escort  —  Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the “long stroke” — a complicated caress “across his penis, thigh... and his anus over the butt cheeks,” as the escort puts it.  “Rekers liked to be rubbed down there,” he says.

Dems come out swinging against GOP consumer protection measure  —  Democrats came out swinging Thursday against a Republican proposal to change consumer protection rules in the new Wall Street reform bill.  —  President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress loudly criticized an amendment …

Exclusive: Rubio Clarifies Critique of Arizona Law  —  Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio got himself into hot water with conservatives when he argued that Arizona's new illegal immigration law went “too far” and could possibly turn Arizona into a “police state.”

Phoenix Fans Turn Out For ‘Los Suns’  —  In last night's NBA playoffs game, the Phoenix Suns beat the San Antonio Spurs 110-102.  The team won this Cinco de Mayo game wearing its “Los Suns” jerseys, a move meant to show solidarity with the Latino community and protest Arizona's anti-immigration law.

Rove, GOP plot vast network to reclaim power  —  The Republican Party's best-connected political operatives have quietly built a massive fundraising, organizing and advertising machine based on the model assembled by Democrats early in the decade, and with the same ambitious goal — to recapture Congress and the White House.

Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling  —  WASHINGTON—In a decisive and vulgar 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court once again upheld the constitution's First Amendment this week, calling the freedom of expression among the most “inalienable and important rights that a motherf**ker can have.”

Truth is the First Casualty of Kos  —  Last Friday Markos Moulitsas, the Kos in DailyKos, put up a fundraising post titled “AR-Sen: Hell to Pay: Chamber-backed group runs racist ad against Bill Halter.”  After displaying the ad the bulk of the post starts with “The group running this ad is funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce...”

Comedy Central developing Jesus Christ cartoon  —  Comedy Central might censor every image of the Prophet Muhammad on “South Park,” yet the network is developing a whole animated series around Jesus Christ.  —  As part of the network's upfront presentation to advertisers (full slate here) …

National Day of Prayer to go on despite ruling  —  Washington (CNN) — The 59th annual National Day of Prayer was held Thursday against a backdrop of controversy and growing doubts about the future of the event, which a federal judge recently declared unconstitutional.

A people's history of ‘teabag’  —  The Week and Tommy Christopher do the hard and amusing work of figuring out how and when the term “teabag” first surfaced in our political parlance and how and when it became an insult.  (One activist I talked to yesterday compared it to the “n-word.")

Kentucky Poll: Paul holds commanding lead; Mongiardo ahead  —  FRANKFORT — A new Kentucky Poll shows novice political candidate Rand Paul with a commanding 12-point lead over Trey Grayson, the Republican Party establishment's choice in the GOP race for U.S. Senate in Kentucky.

Arizona governor: Boycott is misguided  —  Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona, responds to calls for sports boycotts of her state  —  In my 28 years of public service, I have made a lot of tough calls.  But with a federal government unwilling to secure our border for years and years, Arizona is left with little choice.

Nashville Flood 2010: The Disaster You May Not Have Heard About  —  A great American city is currently buried under a sea of water, but you may not know much about it given all the attention media have given to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the failed car bomb attempt in New York's Times Square.

Trying to shirk responsibility for spill, BP CEO predicts ‘lots of illegitimate’ lawsuits because ‘this is America.’  —  BP is financially responsible for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, so it is desperately trying the limit the financial and legal fall out.

New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer  —  The President's Cancer Panel is the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream, so it is astonishing to learn that it is poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies.

Kerry, Lieberman to pursue climate change measure  —  Sen. Joe Lieberman will partner with Sen. John Kerry to resurrect climate change legislation.  —  Washington (CNN) - Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman are working to resurrect long-planned climate change legislation that got knocked off track …

The Right and Journalism  —  Laura McGann has an interesting story in The Washington Monthly about conservative efforts to get into the reporting game: … To ruin the punchline, though, the subhead asks of these new outlets “can their reporting survive their politics?” and the answer seems to be “no, it can't.”