Culture Shock  —  What happened when one conservative Web site ventured outside the movement bubble.  —  Last May, Conor Friedersdorf, a twenty-eight-year-old recent graduate of NYU's Journalism School, decided he was going to save conservative journalism.

Home of Swedish Muhammad cartoonist attacked  —  STOCKHOLM — The home of a Swedish artist who once drew a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog has been hit by a suspected arson attack, police said Saturday.  —  Lars Vilks, who lives in Nyhamnslage in southern Sweden …

The Looming Obama Debt Disaster  —  Is the United States Greece?  The short answer is: not yet, but it will be if the Democrats remain in control in Washington for two more election cycles.  —  In the Telegraph, Edmund Conway summarizes a lengthy report by the International Monetary Fund on sovereign debt that came out today:

Roxanne Conlin— Is She The Democrat Most Likely To Paint A Red Seat Blue In 2010?  —  The ideologically-based media and the corporately owned media have been diligent in painting a decidedly one-sided anti-Democratic picture going into the November Midterm elections.

D.C. Dems to Obama: Aim fire at GOP  —  President Barack Obama is a master of knowing his audience - even when it's fellow politicians.  —  He served up a Republican roast to House Democratic leaders and donors in New York Thursday night, two weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants griped …

Debit Fee Cut Is Rare Loss for Largest U.S. Banks  —  WASHINGTON — Retailers have begged Congress for years, in vain, to limit the fees they must pay to banks when customers swipe credit or debit cards.  Bills never reached a vote.  Amendments were left on the table.

Public Works Are Hard to Do  —  Harold Meyerson explains why it hasn't been possible to use public works to counter massive unemployment in construction, and wouldn't have been even had more funds been appropriated: … Two lessons from this.  One is that I think we need some more real talk …

Winning not whining  —  Bend It Like Boehner  —  Greg Sargent makes an important observation: … It's a sad but true fact about American culture that winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.  —  I've told the story before about sitting despondently in my front yard on the morning …

AP-GfK Poll flashes mixed signals for parties  —  WASHINGTON — Americans want Democrats to control Congress after this fall's elections, a shift from April, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released Saturday.  But the margin is thin and there's a flashing yellow light for incumbents …

Health reform threatens to cram already overwhelmed hospital ERs  —  The new healthcare law will pack 32 million newly insured people into emergency rooms already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts on healthcare facilities.  —  A chief aim of the new healthcare law …

Global Green Meltdown Gains Momentum  —  Volcanoes blast; glaciers melt; economies implode; currencies nose dive and voters revolt.  It is the worst of worlds for the climate change movement, and the outlook continues to darken.  —  None of this dimmed the glory of the majestic moment …

Ex-Meek aide received money from troubled developer  —  Police records show that Dennis Stackhouse cultivated a cozy relationship with the mother and aide of U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek as the congressman supported the developer's project.  Meek says he didn't know about a mortgage deal given to the aide.

WiFi data collection: An update  —  Nine days ago the data protection authority (DPA) in Hamburg, Germany asked to audit the WiFi data that our Street View cars collect for use in location-based products like Google Maps for mobile, which enables people to find local restaurants or get directions.

Angry Obama Seeks to Deflect Blame for Gulf Oil Spill Crisis  —  The president seemed genuinely angry today, on a beautiful spring afternoon in the Rose Garden.  Having watched him on a daily basis for about a year and a half, I'm confident he wasn't faking it.

“Stall, Baby, Stall” Revisited  —  We now find out that the horrifying oil spill in the Gulf may well have been due to the lax standards and poor oversight of government agencies.  The BP disaster is not Obama's Katrina; it's Cheney's delayed Katrina.  The clear push to explore for oil off-shore …

Facebook and “radical transparency” (a rant)  —  At SXSW, I decided to talk about privacy because I thought that it would be the most important issue of the year.  I was more accurate than my wildest dreams.  For the last month, I've watched as conversations about privacy went from being the topic …