memeorandum: Iraq combat over but U.S. troops still in danger (Rania El Gamal/Reuters)

9:45 PM ET, September 13, 2010

Top Items:

Timothy R. Homan / Bloomberg:

Rich Americans Save Tax Cuts Instead of Spending, Moody's Says — Hand the wealthiest Americans a tax cut and history suggests they will save the money rather than spend it. — Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Donklephant and The Political Carnival

Christina Bellantoni / TPMDC:
House Dems Will Not Force Vote On Middle Class Tax Cuts

Discussion: The Politico, TalkLeft, Daily Kos, The Plum Line and Talking Points Memo

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Boehner concedes only three percent of small businesses affected …

Discussion: The Politico, Washington Monthly, TPMDC, Wonk Room, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Washington Post and Crooks and Liars

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Cantor, Ryan distance themselves from Boehner on middle class tax cuts

Discussion: Think Progress, CNN, Daily Kos and TPMDC

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
MCCONNELL BREAKS WITH BOEHNER, WILL FIGHT MIDDLE-CLASS TAX BREAKS. …

Discussion: Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
“The Obama tax cuts for the middle class”

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and TPMDC

Associated Press:
GOP spokesman: Senate GOP to oppose Obama tax plan

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Freedomist, Swampland, First Draft, Raw Story, FrumForum, Washington Monthly and New York Times

Stephanie Condon / CBS News:
Mitch McConnell Stands Firm: No Partial Bush Tax Cut Extension

Discussion: Daily Kos, Liberty Pundits Blog, Ezra Klein, CBS News, Guardian, Say Anything, Firedoglake, National Review and HotAirPundit

The Huffington Post:

Tom Ross, Delaware GOP Chair, Threatened With ‘Bullet In The Head’ — WHAT'S YOUR REACTION? — The chairman of the Delaware Republican Party received a death threat last week over his support for Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del) over Tea Party challenger Christine O'Donnell in the state's upcoming Senate primary …

Discussion: TPMDC, Weigel, Ballot Box, The Atlantic Online and FrumForum

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

2 Insurgents Could Hurt G.O.P. Chances for Senate Takeover — Tomorrow's primaries in New York and six other states - the last of the 2010 cycle, save for Saturday's primary in Hawaii and a runoff in Louisiana on Oct. 2 — originally looked as though they'd have little impact on the electoral landscape.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Facebook, Doug Ross, New York Times, The Politico and National Review

Sean J. Miller / Ballot Box:
Conservative group didn't think O'Donnell could win in Del.

Discussion: Public Policy Polling, CNN, ABCNEWS, The Other McCain and The Note

ABCNEWS:
Delaware Senate Race: A Kamikaze Republican and the Tea Party

Discussion: Classical Values, The Freedomist, CNN and Riehl World View

Christina Bellantoni / TPMDC:
Christine O'Donnell Targeting ‘Hillary Democrats’ …

Discussion: Crooks and Liars, RedState, Guardian, Hot Air, Talking Points Memo and paracom.paramountcommunication …

Michelle Malkin:
The DE Senate GOP primary: Castle, Soros & a health advisory

Discussion: JOSHUAPUNDIT, Riehl World View, The Moderate Voice, Swampland, Liberty Pundits Blog and The Mahablog

The Note:
From the Campaign Notebook - Delaware: The GOP Primary and the Candidates

Discussion: Mediaite

David Frum / FrumForum:

Gingrich: Obama Wants Whitey's Money — Newt Gingrich upped the rhetoric against the president on Friday night. Interviewed by National Review's Robert Costa, Gingrich cited Dinesh D'Souza's cover story in Forbes. … With the Forbes story and now the Gingrich endorsement …

Discussion: The Reality-Based Community, TheFourthBranch.com, The Caucus, Washington Monthly, Democracy in America, DownWithTyranny!, THEROOT.COM, Hullabaloo, Salon, Political Punch, News Desk, Guardian, Politics Daily, Ben Smith's Blog, Jay Bookman, Think Progress, PostPartisan and National Review

Adam Serwer / American Prospect:

Forbes Embraces Birtherism Lite. — Sometimes it's best to think of racism as intellectual laziness. That is, it reflects a failure to evaluate people for who they actually are, because its easier to slip them into a familiar, predetermined category that doesn't upset other related conclusions a person might have come to as a result.

Discussion: JustOneMinute, Weigel, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Daily Dish, The Rachel Maddow Show, Balloon Juice and The Huffington Post

Andy Barr / The Politico:
Andy Card: Newt Gingrich is not ‘helpful’

Discussion: CNN, Outside the Beltway and FrumForum

Timothy P. Carney / Beltway Confidential:

Pelosi has pocketed nearly twice as much lobbyist cash as Boehner — If you read this weekend's New York Times' hit job on would-be Speaker John Boehner and his “lobbyist friends,” you might think, as the reporter clearly thinks, that John Boehner is cozier with lobbyists than most powerful politicians are.

Discussion: theblogprof, Hot Air, NewsBusters.org, Say Anything, Politics Daily, Liberty Pundits Blog, GayPatriot and The Caucus

Chris Cillizza / The Fix:
Elevating John Boehner (and will it work)

Discussion: Don Surber, The Huffington Post, PostPartisan, Weigel, USA Today and Beltway Confidential

Meredith Shiner / The Politico:
W.H. denies plan to avoid Warren fight

Discussion: American Banker and Daily Kos

Chris Johnson / Washington Blade:

Reid to schedule 'Don't Ask' vote next week — The Washington Blade has learned that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) intends to schedule a vote next week on major defense budget legislation that contains “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” repeal language, regardless of any objection from members of the U.S. Senate.

Discussion: Wonk Room and Joe. My. God.

Alexander Nicholson / Congress Blog:
Reid my lips: no forgiveness if no NDAA in September

Discussion: The Politico, The Note, Pam's House Blend, The Page and Open Left

Michelle Malkin:

Document drop: Breaking: DOJ Inspector General will investigate Obama voting rights record — Just obtained this letter from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine to members of Congress informing them that he will open up a review of the Obama administration's selective enforcement …

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and JOSHUAPUNDIT

Sherry Devlin / Missoula Editor:

We didn't “sneak in” to Sarah Palin's speech — First: This blogpost is not about politics. — Second: Contrary to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's warning to the standing-room-only crowd at this afternoon's Teen Challenge fundraiser in Missoula, the media did not “sneak in” to her speech.

Discussion: Missoulian and The Political Carnival

Alex Seitz-Wald / Think Progress:
Paranoid Palin Hunts For Media ‘Moles’ At Montana Speech

Discussion: News Hounds

Mark Halperin / The Page:

Halperin's Take: Brown Escalates War of Words With Bill Clinton — HALPERIN'S TAKE: The Whitman ad is probably the best TV spot by any campaign all cycle. Clinton and Brown have always had a rough relationship, which probably hit rock bottom... ... in 1992, when, in the same debate …

Discussion: Hot Air, Salon, Taylor Marsh, RedState and Politics Daily

Michael Scherer / Swampland:
Jerry Brown: “I Did Not Have Taxes With This State” UPDATED

Discussion: Washington Wire, The Fix, CNN and Calbuzz

Virginia Wheeler / myfoxdc WTTG FOX 5:

UK Teenager Banned From America For Life Over Obscene Obama Email — A British teenager who sent an email to the White House calling President Obama an obscenity was banned from America for life, The Sun reported Monday. — The FBI asked local cops to tell college student Luke Angel, 17, his drunken insult was “unacceptable.”

Discussion: The Confluence, Hot Air, LewRockwell.com Blog, Say Anything and Outside the Beltway

Michelle Malkin:
What will — and won't — get you banned from the U.S.

Discussion: AmSpecBlog

Martin Peretz / The New Republic:

An Apology — Nicholas Kristof and I do not see the world—and America's role in it—in the same way. I have sometimes expressed my disagreements with his opinions vociferously (vociferousness is my business). But in yesterday's The New York Times, he quotes two sentences that I recently wrote …

Discussion: The Daily Dish, Nicholas D. Kristof, Mediaite, Salon, Raw Story, Politics Daily, Hit & Run, Ò", The Huffington Post, TPMCafe, TPM LiveWire, Wonkette, Gawker and The Atlantic Online

Lydia Saad / Gallup:

Generic Ballot Splits 48% for GOP, 43% for Dems — Republicans close to unanimous in supporting GOP candidates — PRINCETON, NJ — Forty-eight percent of registered voters favor Republican congressional candidates and 43% favor Democratic candidates in Gallup's national generic ballot for the week of Sept. 6-12.

Discussion: TPMDC, The Hill, The Huffington Post and Taegan Goddard's …

Leon H. Wolf / The New Ledger:

Meghan McCain's Dirty, Sexy Politics — On June 20, 2002, the United States Supreme Court decreed, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, that the mildly mentally retarded were categorically exempt from capital punishment, reasoning that fully functional adults of diminished mental capacity …

Discussion: Outside the Beltway and AmSpecBlog

Michiko Kakutani / New York Times:

Digging for the Roots of Conservative Rage — In his new book, “The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama,” the progressive journalist Will Bunch serves up his own anatomy of the Tea Party movement, that loose agglomeration of right-wing insurgents …

Discussion: Philly.com

Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:

63% say trade out Snowe — Last November, right after she supported the health care bill in committee, we found that 59% of Maine Republicans wanted to replace Olympia Snowe with someone more conservative while only 31% said they would support her again in 2012.

Discussion: AMERICAblog News and Outside the Beltway

WIS-TV:

Obit: In lieu of flowers, donate to anybody running against Obama in 2012 … ROME, GA (NBC) - About 50 people attended the funeral for Don Unsworth, a northwest Georgia businessman, father, grandfather and husband. — Described by family as lively, humorous and politically conservative …

Discussion: CNN, Weasel Zippers and HotAirPundit

Ben Smith / Ben Smith's Blog:

Liberal despair: Age of irrationality — A couple of influential writers broadly in sympathy with Obama today float the same notion: That we're living in a fundamentally unreasonable age, that voters basically can't be trusted, and that democracy is just barely muddling through.

Discussion: The Daily Dish, Hullabaloo and RedState

Sean Trende / Real Clear Politics:

Signs of a Democratic Rebound? — Connecticut Senate - Many race watchers had pegged the Connecticut Senate race as an “upset special.” After all, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had committed what looked a self-inflicted wound when it was discovered that he had exaggerated his military service.

Discussion: Democratic Strategist and Weekly Standard

Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:

Reporting With the Weekly Standard — Hot on the heels of unearthing the Kenyan anti-colonialist roots of Barack Obama's ideology, conservative journalists are apparently scouring the progressive community for more shady African ties. The latest began when my colleague Sara Haile-Mariam …

Discussion: The Politico, Michelle Malkin and Balloon Juice