Petraeus briefly collapses at Senate hearing on Afghanistan  —  Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, briefly collapsed at a Senate Armed Services hearing on progress in Afghanistan.  —  Petraeus was about to answer a question when he went silent and passed out in front of the microphone.

NPR Poll Shows Tough Road Ahead For Democrats  —  A new public opinion survey for NPR shows just how difficult it will be for Democrats to avoid big losses in the House this November.  —  Democrat Stan Greenberg and Republican Glen Bolger conducted the first public battleground poll of this election cycle.

66% of Voters Are Angry At The Media  —  Sixty-six percent (66%) of U.S. voters describe themselves as at least somewhat angry at the media, including 33% who are Very Angry.  —  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 31% say they are not angry at the media …

Rep. Bob Etheridge gets vicious in viral video — but who filmed it and why?  —  So, what really happened when Rep. Bob Etheridge ran into a couple of self-described “students” on the streets of D.C. last week?  The video confrontation between the obscure seven-term North Carolina Dem …

Efforts to Repel Gulf Oil Spill Are Described as Chaotic  —  GRAND ISLE, La. — Deano Bonano, the emergency preparedness director for Jefferson Parish, marched from a motor home being used as a command center to an office across the street filled with BP officials.  —  It was late May.

Obama Will Take to Oval Office With a Familiar Theme  —  WASHINGTON — The venue says it all.  By choosing to speak to the nation on Tuesday night for the first time from the Oval Office, where his predecessors have spoken of wars and disasters, President Obama is conveying the gravity of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I admit it: I was wrong to have supported Barack Obama  —  In three and a half years of blogging, this has been my single most unpopular post.  There's little point, I know, in reminding readers that my support for Barack Obama was qualified; that I simultaneously endorsed GOP Congressional candidates …

Obama May Go ‘Middle Big’ in BP Address  —  I'm pulling this out of last night's Night Beat with a bit of augmentation.  —  Aside from regulation, a strong confrontational tone against BP, and an acknowledgment of reality, the White House is remaining mum on whether the President will use …

Glenn Beck's paranoid thriller, “The Overton Window”  —  Threshold.  321 pp.  $26  —  The success of Glenn Beck's novel, “The Overton Window,” will be measured not by its literary value (none), or its contribution to the thriller genre (small), or the money it rakes in (considerable) …

KIRK'S PROBLEMS GET A LITTLE WORSE.... Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk ran into trouble recently when a variety of claims about his military service — in speeches, in correspondence, and in written materials — were proven to be untrue.  Making matters worse for the Illinois Republican, the story isn't quite done yet.

Lobbyists Can't Reach Lawmakers  —  Wall Street Finds It Hard to Reach Lawmakers to Lobby on Financial Overhaul  —  Wall Street's lobbying army is marching around Washington in a push to shape the final financial-overhaul bill.  But it has gotten harder to get through the door with some lawmakers.

Washington Sketch: Clinton finally ahead of Obama in popularity  —  It's about two years too late, but Hillary Clinton has finally pulled ahead of Barack Obama.  —  By any measure — favorability ratings or job approval — Americans by a sizable margin have warmer views of the secretary of state than they do of the president.

Meg Whitman Was Accused of Shoving eBay Employee  —  SAN FRANCISCO — During her 10 years as chief executive of eBay, Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California, was known as a demanding leader who did not hesitate to express displeasure with employees who failed to live up to her standards.

Grover Norquist joins GOProud  —  Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, has joined the advisory council of GOProud, the gay Republican group that recently — and unfortunately — drew attention when it was alternately derided and defended from the stage of CPAC.

Paypal Called, Paypal Caved  —  Paypal backed down.  Excelsior!  —  As many of you know, on Friday of last week, my paypal account was “restricted.”  After a recent review of my account they said, “it has been determined” that I was “currently in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy.

Recipe for disaster: When the media's big story spills over from day to day  —  Do you think you have seen that gull before?  You don't suppose the TV news folks are recycling oily birds from the Exxon Valdez disaster, do you?  Or that they have video files bulging with stock pathetic pelicans, glum inky crabs and sad-sack oysters?

Angle works to soothe nervous GOP  —  Sharron Angle is coming to Washington for two days of meetings designed to reassure worried Republican leaders that she will not let Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid define her as an eccentric right-wing extremist before her campaign against Reid even gets off the ground.

Documents Detail Risky Decisions Before BP Well Blowout  —  Internal BP documents, including an e-mail message calling the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon a “nightmare,” show a pattern of risky choices made to save time and money in the weeks before the disastrous April 20 blowout …

Haley's path to Christianity leaves some evangelicals uneasy  —  In the wake of Nikki Haley's swift rise, her religious journey has become an increasingly common topic of discussion in churches, at community gatherings and online.  —  (CNN) - Whispers about Nikki Haley's Sikh heritage burst …

American arrested searching for Osama bin Laden  —  Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — A 52-year-old American citizen who said he was searching for Osama bin Laden was detained in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan this week, Pakistani police said Tuesday.  —  The Californian named Gary …

Oil Spill May End Up Lifting GDP Slightly  —  The continuing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could end up adding a bit of growth to the U.S. economy as the huge cleanup efforts in some ways outweigh negative factors, analysts at J.P. Morgan Chase said.  —  Underlining that gross domestic product measures …

Proposed Arizona law denies citizenship to kids of illegal immigrants  —  (CNN) — A proposed Arizona law would deny birth certificates to children born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents.  —  The bill comes on the heels of Arizona passing the nation's toughest immigration law.

Justices Ease Deportation Rule in Minor Drug Cases  —  WASHINGTON — Immigrants who are legally in the United States need not be automatically deported for minor drug offenses, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a unanimous decision.  —  Lower courts had said that Jose Angel Carachuri-Rosendo …