Getting the message on Journolist's controversial postings  —  To conservatives, it is a pulling back of the curtain to expose the media's mendacity.  —  To liberals, it is a selective sliming based on e-mails that were supposed to remain private.  —  But there is no getting around the fact …

From Buckley to Breitbart  —  William Buckley achieved notoriety, if not celebrity, with the publication of God and Man at Yale in 1951.  The book was a succès de scandale.  In it Buckley attacked the undergraduate education on offer at Yale for its hostility to Christianity …

Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege  —  America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all ‘people of color’ are unfair.  They should end.  —  The NAACP believes the tea party is racist.  The tea party believes the NAACP is racist.

Democrats Call Off Climate Bill Effort  —  WASHINGTON — The effort to advance a major climate change bill through the Senate this summer collapsed Thursday even as President Obama signed into law another top Democratic priority — a bill to restore unemployment benefits for millions of Americans …

Bachmann: Subpoenas and Hearings Are Coming in 2011  —  Want a sneak preview for what the 2011 legislative calendar has in store?  —  The Intrade prediction market is giving the GOP a 57-percent shot of taking back the House of Representatives this fall, meaning it is more likely to happen than not.

Addicted to Bush  —  For a couple of years, it was the love that dared not speak his name.  In 2008, Republican candidates hardly ever mentioned the president still sitting in the White House.  After the election, the G.O.P. did its best to shout down all talk about how we got into the mess we're in …

Journolisters offended by Keith Olbermann's ‘misogynistic,’ ‘predictable,’ and ‘pompous’ show  —  If you were one of the 400 members of the listserv Journolist, perhaps one of the most vicious insults you could hurl at a colleague is: You're just like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Pentagon Faces Growing Pressures to Trim Budget  —  WASHINGTON — After nearly a decade of rapid increases in military spending, the Pentagon is facing intensifying political and economic pressures to restrain its budget, setting up the first serious debate since the terrorist attacks of 2001 …

Sen. John Kerry skips town on sails tax  —  Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.  —  Isabel - Kerry's luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop …

Democratic rifts apparent at liberal Netroots Nation conference  —  LAS VEGAS — For all the talk of a splintered GOP base, with “tea party” conservatives squaring off against establishment Republicans, the Democrats have serious divisions of their own.  —  Democratic officials were hoping …

The Art of the Ann Arbor City Budget  —  The debate in Ann Arbor, where firefighters are being laid off due to a multimillion dollar budget deficit, is over an $850,000 piece of art.  —  That's how much the city has agreed to pay German artist Herbert Dreiseitl for a three-piece water sculpture …

Pentagon workers tied to child porn  —  Security agencies were left at risk, investigators say  —  WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have identified several dozen Pentagon officials and contractors with high-level security clearances who allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography …

Biden: ‘The heavy lifting is over’  —  The “heavy lifting is over” when it comes to the Obama administration's legislative priorities this year, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday evening.  —  Biden said now that Wall Street reform is finished and signed into law, the administration …

Beware the lame duck  —  Barack Obama's considerable political capital, earned on Election Day 2008, is spent.  Well spent, mind you, on the enactment of a highly ideological agenda of Obamacare, financial reform and a near-trillion-dollar stimulus that will significantly transform the country.

BLAME WHERE BLAME IS DUE.... What's become of the Senate energy bill is a profound disappointment to anyone who takes policy seriously.  It's a shell of its former self, and it's painful to see this rare opportunity to make meaningful progress slip away.  It's not that the legislation's remaining provisions …

The case for impeachment  —  Obama has violated his oath of office over immigration  —  Eleven years ago, like every citizen elected to serve in Congress or any person appointed to any federal position, I swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

The scenemakers  —  Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but blogger Andrew Breitbart says it definitely boosts his buzz.  —  “The secret sauce and the added value is the inadvertent mystery that is born from being absent from the scene,” Breitbart told POLITICO …

Feinberg Says Bonuses Paid by Troubled Banks Were Unmerited  —  With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners.  Now, the federal authority on banker pay …

Credit scoring and unemployment  —  The previous post arose from things I came across while failing to find what I was looking for.  I was trying to find concrete data on the reportedly increasing use of credit “scoring” by prospective employers and its relation to the disturbing trend of very long-term unemployment.

Alvin Greene's ‘On the Scene’  —  Alvin Greene, the Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina, who emerged at a public campaign event for the first time last weekend, is now out with his first campaign video.  The video, called, “Alvin Green Is On the Scene,” is a 3-minute hip-hop mix …

Glitch in America Speaks Tabulation Artificially Inflated Support for Raising Retirement Age  —  When America Speaks, the organization bankrolled by deficit scold Pete Peterson, held its series of meetings last month, the results basically showed that the public favored progressive options to lower the deficit and stabilize the budget.

Analysis of a Proposal to Offer a Public Plan Through the New Health Insurance Exchanges  —  This morning CBO released a letter to Chairman Fortney Pete Stark analyzing a proposal to add a “public plan” to the options available through the health insurance exchanges that will be established under …

Russian ‘spy’ Anna Chapman gets her own action figure, plastic doll of sexy secret agent now on sale  —  She's the Russian Barbie.  —  Sexy secret agent Anna Chapman may have been deported, but she's now available on U.S. soil in fully jointed plastic.  —  The doll manufacturer Herobuilders.com …

No Immigration Papers, No School, Many New York Districts Say  —  Three decades after the Supreme Court ruled that immigration violations cannot be used as a basis to deny children equal access to a public school education, one in five school districts in New York State is routinely requiring …