Liveblog - Egypt's protests erupt  —  on January 28th, 2011. … Follow staff tweets on the protests from Egypt and Doha.  —  Watch Al Jazeera English broadcasting live from Cairo, Suez and Alexandria.  —  View a gallery of photos from the past four days of protests.

The House GOP's Plan to Redefine Rape  —  Drugged, raped, and pregnant?  Too bad.  Republicans are pushing to limit rape and incest cases eligible for government abortion funding.  —  Post Comment  —  Rape is only really rape if it involves force.  So says the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.

On Sputnik vs. Spudnut  —  Please read this article by the Hoover Institution's Research Fellow Peter Schweizer.  Schweizer, who has written extensively on the subject of the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, offers a Washington Post writer an important refresher on the real history of Sputnik …

VFW WILL DEFEAT BACHMANN PLAN  —  “NO WAY, NO HOW, WILL WE LET THIS PROPOSAL GET ANY TRACTION IN CONGRESS.”  —  America's oldest and largest major combat veterans' organization announced it will do everything within its power to defeat a plan introduced by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) …

George W. Bush in Egypt  —  Today, as Egypt explodes, I can't help thinking of George W. Bush.  I think in particular of an appearance he made in Sharm El Sheikh, in May 2008.  I wrote about that appearance here.  Before a conference of Middle Eastern elites, and their Western associates …

TNT apologizes for Tracy Morgan's lewd comments on Palin  —  UPDATE: TNT sponsor AutoTrader.com is complaining to the network about being stuck in the middle, literally, of Tracy Morgan's lewd remarks about Sarah Palin on last night's edition of Inside the NBA.

Too young not to work, too old to get a job  —  Pew's new report on long-term unemployment is sobering stuff: … The interplay between age and unemployment really worries me.  On some level, we have a rosy view of “structural unemployment”: It's a guy in Reno, Nev., who has skills better suited …

Kucinich settles lawsuit against cafeteria  —  Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said Friday that he'd settled his lawsuit against the congressional cafeteria for dental damage he sustained after biting into an olive pit.  —  Kucinich wrote on his website that he'd settled his suit …

Fla. rep failed to explain thousands in expenses  —  MIAMI (AP) — Freshman U.S. Rep. David Rivera, who is facing a state criminal investigation of his finances, paid himself more than $60,000 in unexplained campaign reimbursements over the eight years he served in the state legislature …

Al Jazeera Releases Egypt Coverage Under Creative Commons (UPDATED)  —  Qatar-based news service Al Jazeera has a long relationship with Creative Commons licensing.  Now, for its coverage of the Egyptian uprising, it has released photographs via Flickr and video on a CC license.

Jordanian protesters demand political reforms  —  (Reuters) - Islamists, leftists and trade unionists gathered in central Amman Friday for the latest protest to demand political change and wider freedoms.  —  A crowd of at least 3,000 chanted: “We want change.”

The most subversive protest of all: An Egyptian protestor kisses a riot police officer.  — necrophiliaisnottheanswer reblogged this from waste-ofpaint and added:

Biden thinks The Onion's spoofs of him are ‘hilarious’  —  A mock photo of Vice President Joe Biden washing a Trans-Am shirtless.  Strange?  Distasteful?  Crossing the line?  —  Not so, Biden says.  —  “I think it's hilarious,” Biden told Yahoo! in a wide-ranging interview Thursday.

A big warning sign for Mitt Romney  —  An array of Republican heavyweights who backed Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential bid are not yet committed to - and in some cases, downright skeptical of - the former Massachusetts governor's all-but-certain 2012 campaign.

GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter: The Federal Government Can't Legislate Bike Paths Because They're Unconstitutional  —  As ThinkProgress has previously noted, there is a radical strain of conservativism, dubbed “tentherism,” that invokes the Tenth Amendment to claim that a whole host …

One U.S. Corporation's Role in Egypt's Brutal Crackdown  —  The open Internet's role in popular uprising is now undisputed.  Look no further than Egypt, where the Mubarak regime today reportedly shut down Internet and cell phone communications — a troubling predictor of the fierce crackdown that has followed.

Republicans terrified of tea  —  When Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann was named to the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year, one of her Republican colleagues responded this way: “Is that a punchline?”  Another simply said, “Jumbo shrimp.  Oxymoron.”  —  Neither dared to attach his name to his comment.

David Brock's big-money outside group gains steam  —  It looks like David Brock is getting more serious about building a powerful apparatus on the left to go head-to-head with the flood of outside money conservative groups are planning to pump into the 2012 elections.