Obama Freezes Pay for Federal Workers for Two Years  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers on Monday as he sought to address concerns over sky-high deficit spending and appeal to Republican leaders to find a common approach to restoring the nation's economic and fiscal health.

King: WikiLeaks Release ‘Worse Than Military Attack’  —  WASHINGTON (AP/1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — Hundreds of thousands of State Department documents leaked Sunday revealed a hidden world of backstage international diplomacy, divulging candid comments from world leaders and detailing occasional …

The Times then and now  —  The New York Times is participating in the dissemination of the stolen State Department cables that have been made available to it in one way or another via WikiLeaks.  My friend Steve Hayward recalls that only last year the New York Times ostentatiously declined …

First priority?  Control federal spending  —  Today is my first day in the U.S. Senate.  With this honor comes a tremendous responsibility to accomplish much for our nation.  —  My top priority is turning our economy around.  In Congress, we had a vigorous debate about the trillion-dollar stimulus.

The Spanish Prisoner  —  The best thing about the Irish right now is that there are so few of them.  By itself, Ireland can't do all that much damage to Europe's prospects.  The same can be said of Greece and of Portugal, which is widely regarded as the next potential domino.  —  But then there's Spain.

Blasts target Iranian nuclear scientists  —  One professor dies, another is injured on their morning commutes.  The attacks prompt a stern warning by the head of IranÂ's atomic energy agency.  —  Reporting from Beirut — Two separate explosions killed a nuclear scientist and injured another …

Wikileaks - Anti-Israel Foreign Policy Experts Got Saudi Arabia, Other Arab Countries 100% Backward On Iran Attack  —  By  —  It didn't get nearly as much play as it should have, but Obama's June 2009 meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah ended with the monarch flying into a tirade …

PRECEDENT AND PROLOGUE  —  Momentous Supreme Court cases tend to move quickly into the slipstream of the Court's history.  In the first ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that ended the doctrine of separate but equal in public education, the Justices cited the case more than twenty-five times.

Liberal Groups to Propose Routes to Smaller Deficit  —  WASHINGTON — As President Obama's fiscal commission faces a deadline this week for agreement on a plan to shrink the mounting national debt, liberal organizations will unveil debt-reduction proposals of their own in the next two days …

Leslie Nielsen, Actor, Dies at 84  —  Leslie Nielsen, the Canadian-born actor who in middle age tossed aside three decades of credibility in dramatic and romantic roles to make a new, far more successful career as a comic actor in films like “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” series, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

Picasso's electrician reveals artist's ‘treasure trove’  —  The works include a portrait of the late artist's first wife, Olga  —  A retired electrician in southern France who worked for Pablo Picasso says he has hundreds of previously unknown works by the artist.

Democrats warm to tax-cut compromise  —  A faction of congressional Democrats is making a push to persuade President Obama to consider a compromise on tax policy that would leave only the nation's 315,000 richest households facing higher taxes in January.  —  Over the past few days …

In bid for Appropriations gavel, Rep. Kingston calls for mandatory spending caps  —  In an attempt to seal his bid to be the next chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) on Tuesday will tell the Republican Steering Committee that the next Congress must …

The Partisan Mind  —  Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been president when the Transportation Security Administration decided to let Thanksgiving travelers choose between exposing their nether regions to a body scanner or enduring a private security massage.

Big names on sidelines in West Palm Beach mayoral race  —  Mark Foley in front of the Lake Worth City Hall in Lake Worth  —  WEST PALM BEACH — With a month remaining for candidates to declare for the city's wide-open mayoral race, it's as much about who's sitting out and who might consider a last-minute bid as it is who's running.

Palin Tweets About WikiLeaks  —  ABC News' Jon Berman Reports:  —  Sarah Palin took a short break from her book tour to weigh-in on the recent Wikileaks scandal.  Or perhaps, more accurately, she found a way to include the Wilileaks scandal in her recent book tour.

A's for Good Behavior  —  A few years ago, teachers at Ellis Middle School in Austin, Minn., might have said that their top students were easy to identify: they completed their homework and handed it in on time; were rarely tardy; sat in the front of the class; wrote legibly; and jumped at the chance to do extra-credit assignments.

American exceptionalism: an old idea and a new political battle  —  Is this a great country or what?  —  “American exceptionalism” is a phrase that, until recently, was rarely heard outside the confines of think tanks, opinion journals and university history departments.

Waters wants ethics trial now  —  Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is calling on the ethics committee to hold her public ethics trial before the end of the year.  —  “I am here because I am disappointed that the committee has chosen not to hold my hearing,” she said.