Top Items:
Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:
The new comeback kid — If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010. — Obama had a bad November. Self-confessedly shellacked in the midterm election …
Discussion:
The Note, Mother Jones, AOL News, The Politico, Taylor Marsh, NewsBusters.org blogs, Hot Air, Don Surber, Fausta's Blog, Pajamas Media, Betsy's Page, Althouse and Firedoglake
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David M. Herszenhorn / New York Times:
Congress Sends $801 Billion Tax Cut Bill to Obama — WASHINGTON — Congress at midnight Thursday approved an $801 billion package of tax cuts and $57 billion for extended unemployment insurance. The vote sealed the first major deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans …
David Rogers / The Politico:
Democrats concede budget fight to Republicans — Senate Democrats abruptly abandoned an omnibus budget bill for the coming year, pushing major spending decisions into the next Congress and giving Republicans immense new leverage to confront President Barack Obama priorities.
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, Cato @ Liberty, Questions and Observations, Liberty Pundits Blog, Wonk Room, Fox News, TPMDC, Right Turn, Poliglot, Washington Post, Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog, Taylor Marsh, Gawker, National Review, Scared Monkeys, The Reaction, The Hill, AMERICAblog Gay, JustOneMinute, The Hill, Box Turtle Bulletin, Transterrestrial Musings, Left Coast Rebel, The Gateway Pundit, The Page, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Good As You, FrumForum, Riehl World View, Pam's House Blend, Nice Deb, Doug Ross, CNN and Pat Dollard
Ezra Klein:
An incoherent Congress — The tax deal passed last night, and without changes.
Discussion:
Mother Jones
Wall Street Journal:
Congress Passes Tax Deal
Discussion:
Angry Bear, The Baseline Scenario, USA Today, Sky Dancing, JOSHUAPUNDIT and CNN
PolitiFact:
PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: ‘A government takeover of health care’ — In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul America's health insurance system.
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Kevin Sack / New York Times:
Judge Hints He May Rule Against Health Law — PENSACOLA, Fla. — A federal judge asserted on Thursday that it would be “a giant leap” for the Supreme Court to accept the Obama administration's defense of a central provision of the new health care law, suggesting he may become the second judge to strike it down as unconstitutional.
Discussion:
ThinkProgress, JustOneMinute, AmSpecBlog, Wall Street Journal, ACS Blog and Wonk Room
Linda Greenhouse / Opinionator:
The Revolution Next Time? — It has been 15 years since …
Discussion:
New York Times, Hit & Run and The American Scene
Megan McArdle / The Atlantic Online:
Government Arguing That Health Insurance Premiums Are Really Taxes?
Discussion:
protein wisdom, theblogprof, Hit & Run, Bloomberg and Online NewsHour
Huma Khan / ABCNEWS:
Exclusive: Sarah Palin on 2012 Plans, Double Standards for Women — Palin Says Thinking About Presidential Run Is a ‘Prayerful Consideration’ — Sarah Palin is surveying the lay of the land to consider whether to make a presidential run in 2012, she told “Good Morning America” …
Discussion:
CNN, Wonkette, National Review, The Daily Dish, Politics Daily, Weigel and Daily Kos
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Huma Khan / ABCNEWS:
Sarah Palin: Tax Cut Deal is ‘Lousy,’ New Congress Should Take up Issue
Discussion:
CNN, Online NewsHour and The Page
Alexander Bolton / The Hill:
$1.1 trillion spending bill collapses as GOP senators yank support — Senate Democrats have given up on their plan to pass a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill in the face of unified Republican opposition. — The bill's collapse will take with it more than 6,000 earmarks …
Discussion:
TPMDC, The Plum Line, The American Independent, ThinkProgress, Booman Tribune, Associated Press, Right Wing News, The Politico, JOSHUAPUNDIT and The Hill
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Byron York / Washington Examiner:
Dems are earmark junkies but GOP goes straight — Press coverage of the budget frenzy on Capitol Hill has suggested that pork-barrel earmark spending is still a bipartisan problem, that after months of self-righteous rhetoric about fiscal discipline, Republicans and Democrats remain equal-opportunity earmarkers.
Discussion:
Hot Air and The Gateway Pundit
David Dayen / Firedoglake:
GOP Gets Chance to Cut Spending in February After Omnibus Collapses
Discussion:
Weigel, TPMDC, The Caucus and TalkLeft
Jonathan Chait / The New Republic:
The GOP's Secret Senate Plan
Discussion:
Balkinization and The Hill
Jennifer Steinhauer / New York Times:
Bid to Repeal 'Don't Ask' Law Draws Support in Senate
Discussion:
AMERICAblog Gay, ThinkProgress, Oliver Willis and ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*
Fay Schlesinger / Daily Mail:
Snub for Obamas as Royal sources reveal they will not be invited to Prince William's wedding — President Obama and his wife Michelle will not be invited to Prince William's wedding next year. — Because Prince William is not yet heir to the throne, his wedding to Kate Middleton is not classed …
Discussion:
Fox Nation, Gothamist and Gawker
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Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket:
Royal snub for the Obamas: No wedding invite from Prince William and Kate Middleton — Oh, the humiliation. Once not so long ago one of the world's top celebrities in his own right, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle did not make the cut for invitations to the royal wedding in London next spring.
Discussion:
BLACKFIVE and Sky Dancing
Peggy O'Hare / Houston Chronicle:
Retailer praised after killing 3 robbers in Houston — In the back room of a humble jewelry store and pawn shop in Houston's East End Thursday afternoon, a gunman tied Eva Castillo's wrists tightly — too tightly. She complained of the pain, so he loosened the bindings.
Discussion:
The Jawa Report, msnbc.com and JammieWearingFool
David Frum / FrumForum:
How Would President Romney Govern? — “Sincerity is everything - once you can fake that, you've got it made.” — There's Mitt Romney's problem in 1 sentence. He cannot fake sincerity. His insincerity is blatant, inescapable, clumsy and off-putting. Ross Douthat phrased the indictment …
Discussion:
Yglesias, Right Turn, Eunomia, The New Republic and Ben Smith's Blog
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KOCO Oklahoma City's Channel 5:
Feds Force Okla. Bank To Remove Crosses, Bible Verse — Federal Examiners Say Religious Decoration Inappropriate — PERKINS, Okla. — A small-town bank in Oklahoma said the Federal Reserve won't let it keep religious signs and symbols on display. — Federal Reserve examiners come every four years …
Discussion:
Weasel Zippers and The Gateway Pundit
Jillian Rayfield / TPM LiveWire:
Breaking? Study Finds Fox News Viewers Are The Most Misinformed — To perhaps nobody's surprise, a study released this week finds that Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of any news consumers. — The University of Maryland study, called “Misinformation and the 2010 Election,” …
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice and TPMDC
Patricia Cohen / New York Times:
In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture — With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities.
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Paul Krugman / New York Times:
Wall Street Whitewash — When the financial crisis struck, many people — myself included — considered it a teachable moment. Above all, we expected the crisis to remind everyone why banks need to be effectively regulated. — How naïve we were. We should have realized …
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, AMERICAblog News and Paul Krugman
Megan McArdle / The Atlantic Online:
The Limits of the Taxing Power — An interesting question emerges from one of my comment threads on whether or not congress should be able to use the taxing power to get over limits on its enumerated powers. — 1) Can Congress enact a $50,000 tax on second term abortions?
Discussion:
Lawyers, Guns & Money and Outside the Beltway
Glenn Harlan Reynolds / New York Post:
Columbia U. vs. the little guy — Tweet — We often hear politicians and pundits denounce property rights. Property rights, we're told, protect the fat cats against the needs of the public. They're a tool for keeping the little guy down. — Like a lot of what we hear from politicians and pundits …
Discussion:
Don Surber and Hit & Run
Bob Egelko / San Francisco Chronicle:
NOW goes after Hooters for catering to kids — (12-16) 17:51 PST SAN FRANCISCO — The National Organization for Women filed complaints against local Hooters restaurants Thursday, but not for exploiting its scantily clad waitresses by subjecting them to leering and groping customers.
Discussion:
Sister Toldjah, Left Coast Rebel, The Confluence, The Powers That Be, Weasel Zippers, Moonbattery and Doug Ross
Sam Graham-Felsen / Washington Post:
Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines? — In the wake of President Obama's deal to extend the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, pundits have focused on how Obama has alienated the left. But the issue isn't the left - it's the list.
Discussion:
The Huffington Post
Jack Healy / New York Times:
In Seconds Before Blast, the Making of a Hero — BALAD RUZ, Iraq — As the suicide bomber clutched the detonator to his explosive belt, preparing to spray fire and shrapnel into a religious procession here, an Iraqi police officer named Bilal Ali Muhammad faced a choice between his own life and something larger.
Discussion:
FrumForum
Shane D'Aprile / Ballot Box:
Sen. Corker: No talk of Tea Party challenge back home — Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was derided as “Bailout Bob” by one Tea Party group earlier this year, says he sees no sign of a Tea Party-backed primary challenge to him in 2012. — “Much of that talk emanates from Washington …
Discussion:
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