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 …

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.

Obama to Freeze Pay for Most Federal Workers for 2 Years  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to announce a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers later Monday morning, according to an administration official, the latest White House move intended to demonstrate concern over sky-high deficit spending.

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

John Kampfner: Wikileaks shows up our media for their docility at the feet of authority  —  Mr Assange is an unconventional figure, a man who lives in the shadows and enjoys doing so  —  You should never shout “fire” in a crowded theatre.  Once you have accepted this old adage, you accept that there are limits to free expression.

Portland bomb plot suspect felt betrayed by family, thought living in U.S. was sin  —  Mohamed Osman Mohamud was angry at his parents for keeping him from jihad and had thought about carrying out an operation, “something like Mumbai,” since he was 17.  On the two-year anniversary of the shooting …

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.

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.

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.

A Media False Alarm Over the T.S.A.  —  If a squadron of mad scientists surrounded by supercomputers gathered in a laboratory to try to conjure a single news topic that would blow up large, they could not touch the T.S.A. pat-down story.  —  It began with a Drudge Report link to a video …

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.

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.

THE BIG UNEASY  —  T he German and Chinese governments, Republican congressmen, the liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Sarah Palin don't agree on much.  But they're united in their opposition to the Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing—or, as it's known, QE2.