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Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Are 2010's Most Admired — Sarah Palin and Oprah Winfrey are closely matched behind Clinton — PRINCETON, NJ — President Barack Obama is Americans' Most Admired Man of 2010, substantially ahead of the former presidents, iconic religious leaders, and others who fill out the top 10 list.
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Palin's Food Fight — Michelle Obama and childhood obesity. — President Obama's indiscriminate expansion of federal power has inspired a healthy populist rebellion, but his opponents sometimes seem to lose their sense of proportion. Take Sarah Palin's mockery of Michelle Obama's childhood antiobesity campaign.
Discussion:
Washington Post, Mediaite, The Hill, Commentary and The Democratic Daily

Optimism for Obama Should Come With Caution — For as poorly as President Obama's Democrats performed on Nov. 2, you can find several assessments of his re-election chances that seem doggone optimistic. — The Washington Examiner's Michael Barone, in a careful analysis, suggests that Mr. Obama won't be easy to defeat.

Poll: Obama and Hillary Clinton are ‘most admired’
Discussion:
TalkLeft and Tammy Bruce

President Obama is USA's most-admired man
Discussion:
Truthdig, The Political Carnival, Wonkette, Hit & Run and Taegan Goddard's …

White House Confirms Obama's Michael Vick Phone Call, But Says He Condemns The Crime — WHAT'S YOUR REACTION? … NEW YORK CITY — The Obama administration confirmed on Monday afternoon that the president, in a call with the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, expressed gratitude …
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Obama applauds Eagles for giving Vick second chance — Though the Eagles didn't have a chance to make news on the field tonight, they made some more news off the field. — Peter King of NBC reported during Football Night in America that President Barack Obama recently called Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie …
Discussion:
SportsGrid, The Gateway Pundit, Scared Monkeys, theblogprof, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Wonkette and iOwnTheWorld.com

Peter King>MONDAY MORNING QB
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ABCNEWS, Political Punch, Politics Daily, Hot Air and Michelle Malkin

White House confirms Barack Obama's call to Michael Vick
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Weasel Zippers

Division Wrought by New Tea Partiers — Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who was taken out in his primary by Tea Party favorite Christine O'Donnell, expresed alarm at the division the movement had caused within his own party. — “The Tea Party movement really is quite a bit different …
Discussion:
Politics Daily
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Shea-Porter implies Chinese cost her election, helped Guinta — Outgoing Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter implied the Chinese cost her re-election in November and secretly funneled money to help her Republican opponent Frank Guinta during a post-election interview with ABC News.
Discussion:
RedState and National Review


Inside The GOP's Plan To Stifle Obama's Executive Branch Power — In the nearly two months since the November midterms, the conventional wisdom has centered on the idea that President Obama's agenda will be largely protected from an influx of Republicans by the Senate's arcane rules and his own veto pen.
Discussion:
Hot Air, Congress Matters, The New Republic, Firedoglake, Hullabaloo, Liberal Values, The Political Carnival and Yglesias

DeMint challenger Alvin Greene to run for S.C. state house — Alvin Greene, the unemployed military veteran who won the Democratic nomination to face Sen. Jim DeMint (R) this fall, has filed to run for South Carolina's state house. — Greene, who lost to Demint by over 30 percentage points …
Discussion:
CNN, The Note, Scared Monkeys and The Political Carnival
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Alvin Greene tries again in South Carolina
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Weasel Zippers


The Trouble With Liberty — Libertarians, of both left and right, haven't been this close to power since 1776. But do we want to live in their world? — Just before Thanksgiving, in an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Ron Paul called for Congress to be groped.
Discussion:
Hit & Run and National Review
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GOP Sen.-elect Paul: Attach spending cuts to every ‘major’ bill
Discussion:
Coffee & Markets

The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired — (updated below) — For more than six months, Wired's Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed — but refuses to publish — the key evidence in one of the year's most significant political stories: the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks' source.
Discussion:
Firedoglake, Balloon Juice, AlterNet, The Moderate Voice and Emptywheel


Sotomayor Guides Court's Liberal Wing — At her confirmation hearings last year, Sonia Sotomayor spent a lot of time assuring senators that empathy would play no part in her work on the Supreme Court. — That was a sort of rebuke to President Obama, who had said that empathy was precisely …
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FIRST ONE
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Sotomayor protests court's refusal of appeals
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Law Blog and Shakesville

Does the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act need title reform? — Puh-pack-uh? Is that some kind of llama? — In fact, it's the ungainly acronym of the new health-care law - PPACA, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Many people who support the law, or are neutral toward it …
Discussion:
Hot Air, NewsReal Blog, Examiner and Weasel Zippers
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The Median Voter Supports The Affordable Care Act
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Grasping Reality …

SARAH PALIN KNOCKS CONSERVATIONISTS — It was time to pick up the chainsaw and yell “timber” on Sunday night's episode of “Sarah Palin's Alaska.” — While last week's installment had Sarah doing a little of everything, from dog sledding to waitressing —this week, the show focused …
Discussion:
Alan Colmes' Liberaland
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Christmas bomb plot: nine men remanded over plan to ‘blow up Big Ben and Westminster Abbey’ — Nine alleged terrorists plotted a Christmas bombing campaign targeting sites that included the London Stock Exchange and Big Ben, a court heard. — They are alleged to have carried …
Discussion:
Atlas Shrugs
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IF ONLY THOSE ‘LUCKY DUCKIES’ HAD SOME ‘SKIN IN THE GAME’.... It's been about eight years since the far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page came up with the notion of “lucky duckies.” The label was used to describe the millions of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes because they don't earn enough money.
Discussion:
Ezra Klein, theblogprof, Hullabaloo, The Moderate Voice and Yglesias


Group Opposed To DADT Repeal To Fight On Against Shower Policy — Since 1993, the Center for Military Readiness has been fighting to keep gay men and lesbians from infiltrating the United States military. So now that “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” has been repealed, what's next for the group …
Discussion:
No More Mister Nice Blog

Michigan Town Is Left Pleading for Bankruptcy — HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — Leaders of this city met for more than seven hours on a Saturday not long ago, searching for something to cut from a budget that has already been cut, over and over. — This time they slashed money for boarding up abandoned houses …
Discussion:
Zandar Versus The Stupid and Law Blog


In tough times, Barbour flies high — The Mississippi state plane, a zippy Cessna Citation with a capacity of 12, is a model favored by corporate executives and the wealthy, and its principal passenger, Gov. Haley Barbour, might easily be mistaken for one of them when he arrives …

A Return to Normalcy — Over the past three years, American politics has been dominated by a liberal fantasy and a conservative freakout. — The fantasy was the idea that Barack Obama, a one-term senator with an appealing biography and a silver tongue, would turn out to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt …
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