Facebook May Hire Robert Gibbs, Former Obama Aide  —  Facebook is in talks to hire Robert Gibbs, President Obama's former White House press secretary, for a senior role in helping to manage the company's communications, people briefed on the negotiations said.

Ayers affirms he wrote Dreams from my Father  —  Last Thursday evening at Montclair State University, with a video camera rolling, Bill Ayers volunteered that yes indeed he had written the acclaimed Barack Obama memoir, Dreams from My Father.  —  Unprompted, Ayers also noted that while Dreams deserves …

Fiscal Showdown Looms in Capitol  —  The White House and Democratic lawmakers, with less than two weeks left to avoid a government shutdown, are assembling a proposal for roughly $20 billion in additional spending cuts that could soon be offered to Republicans, according to people close to the budget talks.

Libyan Rebel Gains Could Be Fleeting, U.S. Military Says  —  TRIPOLI, Libya — As rebel forces backed by allied warplanes pushed toward one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's most crucial bastions of support, the American military warned on Monday that their rapid gains could quickly be reversed without continued coalition air support.

American Thought Police  —  Recently William Cronon, a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, decided to weigh in on his state's political turmoil.  He started a blog, “Scholar as Citizen,” devoting his first post to the role of the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council …

When test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?  —  WASHINGTON — In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its “shining stars.”  —  Standardized test scores improved dramatically.

Joe McQuaid's Publisher's Notebook: The newspaper's a year older; and we are still being blamed  —  This past Thursday was an anniversary.  The “Union” part of the Union Leader begn its 149th year of continuous daily publication.  It was a weekly even earlier.  — > Jim Grady: RGGI benefits all Granite Staters (13)

Welcome to Wal-Mart: The Biggest Case of the Term  —  On Tuesday morning, the United States Supreme Court will hear argument in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, an already-epic battle between the world's largest corporation and perhaps as many as one million current and former employees, all of them female …

The Reagan shooting: A closer call than we knew  —  Bob Schieffer on how quick thinking prevented a tragedy when a gunman fired on the president 30 years ago … It's one of those artifacts of the electronic age: Videotape of an ordinary afternoon that, in a matter of seconds, became etched forever in our memories.

Wages and Employment, Yet Again  —  Oh, my.  Even Matt Yglesias doesn't quite get it.  —  Writing about Republican plans to raise employment by reducing it, he writes … Then he turns, rightly, to the problem of nominally denominated debt.  But look: even if we didn't have that problem …

N.Y. Budget Deal Cuts Aid to Schools and Health Care  —  Culminating weeks of secretive negotiations and intense political jockeying, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and leaders of the Legislature on Sunday announced a $132.5 billion budget agreement that would cut spending, impose no major new taxes …

Japan nuclear plant data error was ‘unacceptable’  —  The BBC's Mark Worthington says many people in Japan are becoming increasingly concerned about what is going to happen in the future  —  The Japanese government has attacked the operator of a crippled nuclear plant for “unacceptable” mistakes.

Biden Team Apologizes to Reporter for Sticking Him In Closet  —  “Scott - You have our sincere apologies for the lack of a better hold room today,” wrote Vice President Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander last Wednesday to Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers.

U.S. Won't Intervene in Syria as Assad Differs From Qaddafi, Clinton Says  —  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. won't enter into the internal conflict in Syria the way it has in Libya.  —  “No,” Clinton said, when asked on the CBS “Face the Nation” program if the U.S. would intervene in Syria's unrest.