memeorandum: How To Open A Lameduck Session: Harry Reid Tells A 5-Minute College Football Story (Jon Bershad/Mediaite)

11:35 PM ET, November 29, 2010

Top Items:

Amid Deficit Fears, Obama Freezes Pay — WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday announced a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers as he sought to address concerns over high annual deficits and appealed to Republicans to find a common approach to restoring the nation's economic and fiscal health.

Scarecrow / Scarecrow's myFDL diary:

Obama Flunks Economics with Pointless Federal Wage Freeze — The Obama White House just announced details of a two-year federal wage freeze as a means to reduce federal spending and deficits. [David Dayen has more.] The move is obviously political and only symbolic …

Discussion: New York Times, Daily Kos, TalkLeft and Economist's View

Brian Beutler / TPMDC:

Everyone Hates Obama's Pay Freeze Plan... Except Republicans — The early reviews of President Obama's plan to freeze federal worker pay are in — and it gets a resounding “F” from just about everybody outside of GOP leadership. — Michael Linden, a budget expert at the liberal Center …

Discussion: Yglesias, The Monkey Cage, Don Surber, The New Republic, Wonk Room and Daily Kos

The White House:
Fact Sheet: Cutting the Deficit by Freezing Federal Employee Pay

Discussion: The Foundry, Federal Eye, Los Angeles Times, Talking Points Memo, Swampland, White House.gov Blog Feed, Daily Kos, Left Coast Rebel, Ben Smith's Blog, Weasel Zippers, Outside the Beltway, Runnin' Scared, AmSpecBlog, Gawker, New York Magazine and The Agonist

Erik Wasson / The Hill:
Liberal groups blast Obama pay-freeze proposal, release alternative plan

Discussion: DownWithTyranny!, iOwnTheWorld.com and protein wisdom

Brian Beutler / TPMDC:
Obama's Federal Worker Pay Freeze Was Blasted By Democrats Months Ago

Discussion: The Atlantic Online

Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
Obama to freeze federal worker pay, save $5 billion over two years

Discussion: Associated Press and Hit & Run

Sarah Palin / Facebook:

Serious Questions about the Obama Administration's Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco — We all applaud the successful thwarting of the Christmas-Tree Bomber and hope our government continues to do all it can to keep us safe. However, the latest round of publications …

Jennifer Epstein / The Politico:

Sarah Palin blasts Obama administration for WikiLeaks ‘fiasco’ — Sarah Palin says the U.S. government's inability to stop the latest WikiLeaks release is all President Barack Obama's fault. — Sunday's document dump of classified State Department cables is the result of the …

Discussion: Alan Colmes' Liberaland, The Note and Wonkette

DEBKAFile:

Nuclear scientist killed in Tehran was Iran's top Stuxnet expert — World Exclusive from DEBKAfile's intelligence sources: — Prof. Majid Shahriari, who died when his car was attacked in North Tehran Monday, Nov. 29, headed the team Iran established for combating the Stuxnet virus rampaging through its nuclear and military networks.

Discussion: Patterico's Pontifications, Pajamas Media, POWIP and Maggie's Farm

Raymond Bonner / The Atlantic Online:

‘By Whatever Means Necessary’: Arab Leaders Want Iran Stopped — LONDON — Rather than prosecuting Julian Assange for what he calls his “outrageous, reckless, and despicable” action in leaking thousands of sensitive government cables, Joe Lieberman might want to consider praising the head of WikiLeaks.

Discussion: The Daily Dish, Wonk Room, Solomonia, RubinReports, Israellycool, Yourish.com, Guardian and The Volokh Conspiracy

Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
The Starr Report Of American Foreign Policy?

Discussion: The Daily Beast and Ben Smith's Blog

Thomas Erdbrink / Washington Post:
Iranian nuclear scientist killed, another injured in Tehran bombings

Discussion: PostPartisan, Threat Level, Gawker and New York Times

Reuters:

WikiLeaks plans to release a U.S. bank's documents — (Reuters) - The founder of whistle-blower website WikiLeaks plans to release tens of thousands of internal documents from a major U.S. bank early next year, Forbes Magazine reported on Monday. — Julian Assange declined in an interview …

blogs.forbes.com:

Andy Greenberg — When will WikiLeaks return to its older model of more frequent leaks of smaller amounts of material? — If you look at the average number of documents we're releasing, we're vastly exceeding what we did last year. These are huge datasets. So it's actually very efficient for us to do that.

Discussion: Gawker and Hullabaloo

Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:

An Interview With WikiLeaks' Julian Assange — Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world's secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, msnbc.com, Washington Post, Doug Ross, The Independent, Newshoggers.com and Alastair Campbell

James Fallows / The Atlantic Online:

In Which I Become a Conservative — Ross Douthat, an Atlantic alumnus, contends in the NY Times that the recent controversy over “enhanced” TSA procedures illustrates the dominance of partisan reflex in today's politics. Liberals complained about excessive state power when Bush and Cheney were in charge …

Discussion: The League of Ordinary …, Winds of Change.NET, Eunomia, New York Times, Salon, The Daily Dish and Brilliant at Breakfast

Lori Montgomery / Washington Post:
Democrats warm to tax-cut compromise

Discussion: National Review, The Atlantic Online, About.com US Liberal Politics, RedState, Washington Monthly and The Hill

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Netflix Partner Says Comcast ‘Toll’ Threatens Online Video Delivery — Level 3 Communications, a central partner in the Netflix online movie service, accused Comcast on Monday of charging a new fee that puts Internet video companies at a competitive disadvantage.

Discussion: Zandar Versus The Stupid, Seeing the Forest and Gizmodo, more at Mediagazer »

New York Times:

Answers to Readers' Questions About State's Secrets — The New York Times is publishing State's Secrets, a series of articles about a trove of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables that were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets.

Discussion: The Firewall, Gothamist, Yahoo! News, Spiegel Online, Wall Street Journal, Salon, Washington Wire, This Just In and Ben Smith's Blog, more at Mediagazer »

Robert Mackey / The Lede:
Reaction to Leak of U.S. Diplomatic Cables, Day 2

Discussion: New York Times, FP Passport, National Review, Guardian, alicublog, Solomonia, Don Surber, Politics Daily and Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog

New York Times:
Iran Calls Leaked Documents U.S. Plot

Discussion: Tablet Magazine, CNN, Hot Air, Gawker, Big Journalism, MiamiHerald.com, JustOneMinute, Guardian and Telegraph

Penny Starr / CNSNews:

Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts — WARNING: This story contains graphic photographs of items on display in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.

Discussion: alicublog, Weasel Zippers and Daily Pundit

Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:

Americans not impressed with Bloomberg — Massive amounts of attention have been given over the last few years to a possible Michael Bloomberg Presidential run in 2012. And a new PPP poll finds that he is indeed a unifier- Democrats, Republicans, and independents all don't like him.

Discussion: Gothamist and Hot Air

Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:
Palin not seen as electable

Discussion: Alan Colmes' Liberaland and Outside the Beltway

Louise Gray / Telegraph:

Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world — Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.

Discussion: Weasel Zippers, iOwnTheWorld.com, Watts Up With That?, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, RedState, NewsBusters.org, AmSpecBlog, Michelle Malkin, EU Referendum and Guardian

Bloomberg:
U.S., EU Expect Limited Progress at Climate Talks, No Treaty

Discussion: The Huffington Post and The Gateway Pundit

Simon Tisdall / Guardian:

China ‘ready to abandon North Korea’ — Leaked dispatches show Beijing is frustrated with military actions of ‘spoiled child’ and increasingly favours reunified Korea — China has signalled its readiness to accept Korean reunification and is privately distancing itself from the North Korean regime …

Discussion: New York Times, Daniel W. Drezner, Washington Post, New York Magazine, YID With LID, Hot Air, This Just In and CNN

CNN:

Justices turn aside another challenge over Obama's citizenship — Washington (CNN) — The Supreme Court has again cast aside an appeal that raised doubts about President Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship, a grass-roots legal issue that has gained little legal or political footing, but continues to persist in the courts.

Discussion: Change of Subject, Crooks and Liars, Zandar Versus The Stupid and Juanita Jean's

Scott Keyes / ThinkProgress:

Sen. Joe Lieberman: Fox News ‘Is My Favorite,’ ‘Anything Rupert Murdoch Owns’ — This morning, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) took to Don Imus's radio show to discuss the Wikileaks story. Lieberman did little to dissuade his critics on the left when he declared that his favorite television channels are …

Discussion: Crooks and Liars and Raw Story

Washington Post:

‘The criminalization of politics’ — THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) schemed to get around a Texas law prohibiting corporate contributions to political campaigns. Mr. DeLay's state political action committee accepted $190,000 in (legal) corporate contributions.

Discussion: Power Line and National Review

Mark Kleiman / The Reality-Based Community:

Of WikiLeaks and the Pentagon Papers — In connection with the latest WikiLeaks flap, commenter Brett Bellmore asks rhetorically, “Do you think America would be better off if the Pentagon Papers hadn't been leaked?” — Yes! Hell, yes! Much better off. — The Pentagon Papers leak didn't end the Vietnam War.

Discussion: New Atlanticist, The Impolitic and The Daily Dish

Josh Rogin / Foreign Policy:

WikiLeaked: John Kerry calls for Israel to cede Golan Heights and East Jerusalem — On a February trip to the Middle East, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) told Qatari leaders that the Golan Heights should be returned to Syria, that a Palestinian capital …

Discussion: JOSHUAPUNDIT, YID With LID, Crooks and Liars, Weasel Zippers, Commentary and National Review

Ezra Klein:

What happens when Medicare controls costs too well — There's one school of thought that says Congress is incapable of controlling costs in Medicare, and then there's, well, this: … One of the dirty little secrets of the health-care system is that Medicare has done a much better job controlling costs …

Discussion: Angry Bear, Grasping Reality …, Marginal Revolution, Yglesias and Overcoming Bias

Marc Caputo / St. Petersburg Times:

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson tests Florida waters for presidential bid — TALLAHASSEE — A self-made millionaire Republican is campaigning in Florida on a platform of spending cuts and less government. — It's not Rick Scott, anymore. — This is Gary E. Johnson …

Discussion: Ballot Box and Hit & Run

Jon Bershad / Mediaite:

How To Open A Lameduck Session: Harry Reid Tells A 5-Minute College Football Story — This weekend, the University of Nevada won a big upset against Boise State. It was an exciting upset and a great game between conference rivals. Why am I discussing this here and not over at SportsGrid?

Discussion: Hot Air and Breitbart.tv

Associated Press:

APNewsBreak: NJ must pay $271M for killing tunnel — TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey owes the federal government more than $271 million after canceling a rail tunnel connecting the state with New York, according to a debt notice obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

Associated Press:

Chief: 5 hostages released from Wis. high school — MARINETTE, Wis. (AP) — A student armed with a handgun burst into a high school classroom in eastern Wisconsin on Monday, taking nearly two dozen students and a teacher hostage at the end of the school day, authorities said.

Discussion: Fox News, The Gateway Pundit and The Other McCain