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Mitch McConnell Stands Firm: No Partial Bush Tax Cut Extension — Updated at 2:50 p.m. ET. — The House Republican leader on Sunday suggested he may be willing to concede to Democrats who want to let the Bush tax cuts lapse for the wealthiest Americans, but the Senate Republican leader today said he is standing his ground.
Discussion:
Ezra Klein, Washington Post, AmSpecBlog, Say Anything, CBS News, Firedoglake, National Review and HotAirPundit
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MCCONNELL BREAKS WITH BOEHNER, WILL FIGHT MIDDLE-CLASS TAX BREAKS. …
Discussion:
First Draft and Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!


Rich Americans Save Tax Cuts Instead of Spending, Moody's Says
Discussion:
Washington Monthly

Boehner concedes only three percent of small businesses affected …
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, The Politico, TPMDC, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Wonk Room, Talking Points Memo and Crooks and Liars

GOP spokesman: Senate GOP to oppose Obama tax plan
Discussion:
Weekly Standard, Washington Monthly and FrumForum

Democrats challenge Nancy Pelosi on taxes
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The Note, Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal, Daily Kos, Hot Air, Bloomberg, National Review, YID With LID, TPMDC, Liberty Pundits Blog, Booman Tribune, The New Republic, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, Economist's View, The Confluence, AmSpecBlog, The Atlantic Online, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Hill and CBS News

Welcome back, Congress — Congress is back in session today …
Discussion:
Brookings Institute and TalkLeft

“The Obama tax cuts for the middle class”
Discussion:
Talking Points Memo and TPMDC

McConnell Spox: No Pledge From GOP Members To Filibuster Tax Cut Bill
Discussion:
Talking Points Memo, TalkLeft, Daily Kos and New York Times

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, The Atlantic Online, Weigel and FrumForum
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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, The Politico, New York Times and National Review

Too Close to Call in Delaware — It looks like there's a real possibility of a major upset in the Delaware Senate primary on Tuesday night, with insurgent conservative Christine O'Donnell leading longtime Congressman and Governor Mike Castle 47-44. That 3 point lead is well within the poll's margin of error.
Discussion:
TPMDC, Politics Daily, Talking Points Memo, Washington Examiner, Salon, RedState, Washington Post, msnbc.com, Hot Air, Washington Monthly, About.com US Liberal Politics, Ballot Box, The Other McCain, Riehl World View, Pollster.com All Content, Swampland, Weigel, Weekly Standard, Outside the Beltway, Matthew Yglesias, The Confluence, Democratic Strategist, American Spectator, TBogg, Hullabaloo, Daily Kos, Taylor Marsh, AmSpecBlog, Raw Story, Patterico's Pontifications, The Mahablog, Conservatives4Palin.com, The Moderate Voice, Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!, National Review, Wake up America, Liberty Pundits Blog, DownWithTyranny!, GOP 12 and Taegan Goddard's …

Conservative group didn't think O'Donnell could win in Del.
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CNN, ABCNEWS, Public Policy Polling and The Note


Paul Mirengoff over at Powerline
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Power Line, The Moderate Voice, Hot Air, American Power and RedState

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:
Weigel, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Daily Dish, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Huffington Post, Balloon Juice and Peter Daou
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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 Caucus, Political Punch, Politics Daily, Washington Monthly, Ben Smith's Blog, Salon, News Desk, THEROOT.COM, Hullabaloo, Think Progress and PostPartisan

Andy Card: Newt Gingrich is not ‘helpful’
Discussion:
Outside the Beltway, CNN, FrumForum and Washington Monthly

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:
Nicholas D. Kristof, Politics Daily, Salon, The Huffington Post, Raw Story, TPMCafe, Ò", Hit & Run, Wonkette, Gawker, The Atlantic Online, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion and New York Times
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Readers on the Anti-Muslim Frenzy
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Mediaite, TPM LiveWire, Ben Smith's Blog and TPMCafe

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:
Weasel Zippers and HotAirPundit
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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:
NewsBusters.org, Say Anything, Hot Air, Beltway Confidential, Politics Daily, GayPatriot, The Caucus and Liberty Pundits Blog
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Elevating John Boehner (and will it work)
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, Weigel, USA Today and PostPartisan

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:
Salon, Hot Air, RedState, Taylor Marsh and Politics Daily
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Jerry Brown: “I Did Not Have Taxes With This State” UPDATED
Discussion:
The Fix, CNN, Calbuzz and Capitol Alert


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

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?
Discussion:
AmSpecBlog
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UK Teenager Banned From America For Life Over Obscene Obama Email
Discussion:
The Confluence, Say Anything, LewRockwell.com Blog and Outside the Beltway


America Is a Joke — The worst of times for politics and media has been the best of times for The Daily Show's host—and unfortunately things are getting even funnier. — I — t's hard to top a kick in the nuts. — Especially when the kicker is Linda McMahon, the Connecticut Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Discussion:
newsfeed.time.com and Mediaite, more at Mediagazer »


INTOLERANCE — When a dozen cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammed appeared in the conservative Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, in September, 2005, there was only a muted outcry from the small Danish Muslim community, and little reaction in the rest of the Muslim world.
Discussion:
Atlas Shrugs, News Desk, Talking Points Memo and The Jawa Report


The Exit Interviews: Sen. Bob Bennett — Q: What things do you think are most misunderstood by the public about being a senator or how Congress works? — A: They have no understanding of what we do. They expect that we spend most of our time on the Senate floor debating.
Discussion:
The Hill, Liberty Pundits Blog and The Impolitic

China, Japan, America — Last week Japan's minister of finance declared that he and his colleagues wanted a discussion with China about the latter's purchases of Japanese bonds, to “examine its intention” — diplomat-speak for “Stop it right now.” The news made me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration.

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:
Outside the Beltway, Liberty Pundits Blog and Taegan Goddard's …


Ground Zero Mosque Group Includes 9/11 Denier — In his interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien on Wednesday, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf defended his plans to build a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero, saying “You cannot heal a trauma by walking away from it. We have to sit down.
Discussion:
National Review, The Daily Caller and The Jawa Report


MIDTERM BIEBER FEVER — Internet-savvy types know that teen heartthrob Justin Bieber pretty much rules the web. Just last week, rumor spread that Bieber's fan base was so active on Twitter that the microblogging website has servers dedicated just to him. Twitter didn't confirm, but they didn't deny it, either.
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias, Michelle Malkin, Outside the Beltway, Think Progress and JammieWearingFool