Obama To The Next Generation: Screw You, Suckers  —  The logic behind president Obama's budget has one extremely sensible feature: it distinguishes between spending that simply adds to consumption, and spending that really does mean investment.  His analogy over the weekend …

Key 2012 early states cool to Palin  —  A new poll of New Hampshire voters is the latest in a string of surveys suggesting that if Sarah Palin chooses to run for president, she'll struggle in the crucial early states.  —  The WMUR Granite State Poll released late Monday afternoon puts Palin close …

House Votes to Extend Patriot Act Provisions  —  WASHINGTON — The House on Monday voted to reauthorize and extend through Dec. 8 three ways in which Congress expanded the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterterrorism powers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Clinton to announce new ‘AfPak’ envoy  —  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has chosen a new special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, after months of delay and disagreements between the White House and the State Department over the parameters of the job that became vacant …

The U.S. Government: An insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army  —  American politics is one long argument about what government should or shouldn't be doing, and how it should or shouldn't be doing it.  It's rare that we step back, take in the larger picture and ask what it is doing.

Wanted: A Grand Strategy for America  —  NEWSWEEK's new columnist on Obama's Egypt debacle and the vacuum it exposes.  —  Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images  —  President Barack Obama in front of the Sphinx during a tour of the Great Pyramids of Giza following his landmark speech to the Muslim World on June 4, 2009.

Popular Arizona sheriff considering a U.S. Senate run  —  Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Monday he is open to the possibility of running for the seat of retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in 2012.  —  Arpaio, the conservative sheriff famous for his hard-line anti-immigration stances …

‘Punisher’ gets its first battlefield tests  —  XM25 ‘performs flawlessly’ in Afghanistan  —  The XM25 has changed the battlefield with only 55 rounds, and earned a new name among soldiers.  They call it “the Punisher.”  —  Since its first contact Dec. 3, the XM25 has been in nine engagements …

Protests Gather Steam in Tehran  —  Thousands of Iranians gathered in several locations across Tehran Monday, heeding calls in recent days by opposition leaders to demonstrate in solidarity with Egyptian and Tunisian protesters who recently toppled their own regimes.

New Chrome extension: block sites from Google's web search results  —  (Cross-posted on the Google Chrome Blog)  —  We've been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.  One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users.

Late Night: Possibly We Should Stop Sucking So Much  —  By Brigadier Lance Mans, Deputy Director, NATO Special Operations Coordination Centre [Public domain via Wikimedia Commons  —  Dan, with his finger on something that's been bugging me forever: … The stories immediately post-9/11 …

What Does Bias Look Like?  —  So my post on the liberal slant in academia has garnered what I believe to be a record number of comments, many, even most of them, pretty angry.  And as I predicted, the positions are very much reversed from the normal take on such things.

Letter From Herzliya, Neocon Woodstock  —  HERLIZYA, ISRAEL— The city of Herzliya sits about ten miles north of Tel Aviv on Israel's breezy central Mediterranean coast.  Often referred to as the “Silicon Valley of Israel,” it's home to high-tech startups, palm tree-lined boulevards …

Forde convicted in killing of Arivaca man, daughter  —  A Pima County jury convicted Shawna Forde today of two counts of first-degree murder in the May 30, 2009 deaths of Arivaca residents Raul Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia.  —  The jury also convicted Forde of attempted …

New Civil Rights Commission Suspends Printing Of New Black Panther Report  —  Newly appointed members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights closed their investigation of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case and suspended publication of hard copies of the report at a meeting last week.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities  —  For Immediate Release  —  Statement: Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, on the President's Budget Proposal  —  The President's budget would take an important step toward addressing the nation's long-term fiscal challenge …

No, He Wouldn't—Would He?  —  House Speaker's State May Get $450 Million Extra  —  Leaders of the new majority in the House of Representatives promised to cut spending and eliminate earmarks.  But House budget legislation filed Friday night contains a provision that looks very much like an earmark …

Obama Isn't Trying to ‘Weaken America’  —  Some conservatives call the president the political equivalent of a suicide bomber: so consumed with hatred that he's willing to blow himself up in order to inflict casualties on a society he loathes.  —  Some conservative commentators may feel inclined …

Michelle Obama to Promote Breastfeeding as IRS Gives Tax Breaks for Nursing … First lady Michelle Obama will be speaking out to remove barriers to breastfeeding, Politics Daily has learned, throwing the spotlight on nursing as a way to reduce childhood obesity.