Echoing Clinton's famous line, Obama tries to connect with voters  —  President Obama told a small crowd in Fairfax, Va., on Monday that he would stand in the hot sun with them and “feel their pain.”  —  He was meeting with a Fairfax family for a backyard discussion on the economy in an effort …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

What will — and won't — get you banned from the U.S.  —  President Obama's Department of Homeland Security and State Department are hard at work making sure that no drunk foreign teens who call the commander-in-chief names ever set foot in our country.  —  Feel safer?

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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.