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 …

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.

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.

The Revolution Next Time?  —  It has been 15 years since the Rehnquist court began applying the constitutional brakes to assertions of federal power that had seemed unassailable since the New Deal.  Its first target was modest, a five-year-old federal statute called the Gun-Free School Zones Act …

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.

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.