memeorandum: Gov. Perry will consider running for president (Daniel Strauss/Ballot Box)

1:55 PM ET, May 27, 2011

Top Items:

Jason Embry / Austin American-Statesman:

Perry says he will consider White House run — Gov. Rick Perry today gave his strongest indication yet that he may run for president. — “I'm going to think about it” after the legislative session ends Monday, Perry said. — For years, Perry has said that he would not run for president and that he had no interest.

Discussion: The Politico, Ben Smith's Blog, Pajamas Media, Hot Air, Big Government, Swampland and The Gateway Pundit

Daniel Strauss / Ballot Box:

Gov. Perry will consider running for president — Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said he will consider running for president in 2012. — Perry had previously taken himself out of contention for the Republican nomination but he has been walking back on that in recent days.

Discussion: Weasel Zippers

Wayne Slater / Trail Blazers Blog:
Rick Perry says he will “think about” running for president

Discussion: FrumForum

Byron York / Washington Examiner:

Palin creates buzz but rivals bet she won't run — Chief Political Correspondent Follow Him @ByronYork — “The bottom line is Sarah Palin is not going to run for president,” says a Republican adviser close to front-runner Mitt Romney. “She's making money, she's moved on, she's kind of an entertainer rather than a politician.

Discussion: The Note, Conservatives4Palin, Althouse, The Daily Caller and Pundit & Pundette

Gschwarzcnn / CNN:

TRENDING: CNN Poll: GOP 2012 field still up in the air — Washington (CNN) - Call it a sign of how unsettled the GOP presidential field remains: Two of the three people at the top of new national poll in the battle for the Republican nomination may not even run for the White House.

Discussion: Taegan Goddard's …

Jeff Zeleny / New York Times:
State of Uncertainty for Romney Camp as It Looks to Iowa

Discussion: msnbc.com, CNN, USA Today, Daily Kos, Washington Post and Ben Smith's Blog

Aharding / CNN:
Pawlenty spins low poll numbers

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, The Other McCain, The Last Tradition and The Daily Caller

The Note:

Obama Won't Personally Sign Patriot Act Extension — ABC News' Matthew Jaffe (@jaffematt) and Devin Dwyer (@devindwyer) report: Congress officially passed an extension of the Patriot Act tonight, just hours before key provisions of the national security law were due to lapse at midnight.

Discussion: The Hill, Top of the Ticket, The Daily Caller, Los Angeles Times, The Volokh Conspiracy, blogs.abcnews.com, Michelle Malkin, Outside the Beltway, No More Mister Nice Blog, Odd Clauses Watch, The Moderate Voice, rubber hose, Josh Blackman's Blog, New York Magazine and The Politico

Emptywheel:
“Robo-signing” the PATRIOT Act

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Jordan Fabian / The Hill:
Obama signs Patriot Act extension

Discussion: ThinkProgress and Ballot Box

Julian Sanchez / Cato @ Liberty:
Manufactured Panic over Patriot Act

Discussion: OpEdNews, Danger Room, Emptywheel, Weigel and Eschaton

Kenneth P. Vogel / The Politico:

Judge strikes down corporate donations ban — A federal court in Alexandria, Va. on Thursday struck down a federal ban on corporate campaign contributions, in a case with potentially dramatic ramifications for a campaign finance regulatory system under siege by legal and regulatory attacks.

Aaron Gould Sheinin / Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Federal judge strikes down ban on corporate giving to candidates

Rick Hasen / Election Law Blog:
Federal District Court, in Criminal Case, Holds That Ban on Direct Corporate Contributions …

Discussion: Associated Press, Taegan Goddard's … and Sunlight Foundation Blog

Mike Lillis / The Hill:

Frank bashes GOP ‘thugs’ over possible Warren appointment — Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Senate Republicans have “acted like thugs” in threatening to prevent a prominent consumer advocate - or anyone else - from heading a new consumer-protection agency.

Philip Klein / Washington Examiner:
BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL — No recess appointments for Obama over Memorial Day break

Discussion: Taegan Goddard's … and Moe Lane

The Hill:
GOP forces Senate pro-forma session, blocking Warren recess appointment

Discussion: Roll Call, naked capitalism, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, Pajamas Media and The Lonely Conservative

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

Medicare and Mediscares — Yes, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is a sore loser. Why do you ask? — To be sure, Mr. Ryan had reason to be upset after Tuesday's special election in New York's 26th Congressional District. It's a very conservative district …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, The Confluence, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Prairie Weather, Washington Monthly and The New Republic

William Kristol / Weekly Standard:
Not ‘Right Now’ — Paul Ryan opens the door for a presidential run.

Discussion: Eunomia, Washington Post and National Review

Kevin Hall / The Iowa Republican:

Bachmann's Debacle — “This is a disaster,” said one prominent Polk County Republican. An elected official called it “an embarrassment”. The embarrassing disaster was the result of Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann's last minute cancellation of her appearance at the Polk County GOP's Robb Kelley Dinner.

Discussion: Taegan Goddard's …

The Politico:
Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann size each other up

Discussion: The Note, Ben Smith's Blog, Taegan Goddard's …, CNN and Philly.com

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:

When a party declares intellectual bankruptcy — The good news is, House Republicans unveiled a plan yesterday that's intended to create jobs. The bad news is, the plan can charitably be described as a bad joke. — As we discussed yesterday, the jobs agenda, such as it is …

Discussion: Balloon Juice, Mother Jones, Daily Kos and Wall Street Journal

Paul Krugman:

No Ideas — Ezra Klein points us to the House GOP's rather pitiful jobs manifesto. Ezra describes it as “now more than ever”: the GOP's response to the employment crisis is to demand exactly the same things it demands when the economy is doing well. — Actually, the same is true of the Ryan plan …

Discussion: Jared Bernstein and Daily Kos

Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:

What Obama did to Israel — Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Swampland, Wonk Room, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Betsy's Page, The Huffington Post, Mondoweiss, AlterNet, TomDispatch, OpEdNews and Pajamas Media

Matthew Yglesias / Yglesias:

Tim Pawlenty's Doing It Wrong — Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty continues to be the paper candidate who just can't catch fire. This is often attributed to him being “boring” but Allen McDuffie's reporting on the reaction to his big speech at the libertarian Cato Institute makes …

Discussion: Washington Post, Grasping Reality … and Cato @ Liberty

Bryan Preston / Pajamas Media:
Pawlenty knocks out Obama in one tweet

Discussion: Riehl World View and The Daily Caller

David Brooks / New York Times:

Medicare Survival Guide — Sometime this summer, the Democrats and the Republicans will go toe-to-toe over whether to raise the debt ceiling. At the height of the confrontation, President Obama may well address the country and say that even though he has offered the Republicans …

Discussion: The New Republic, No More Mister Nice Blog and DailyHowler.com

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
A swing and a miss from Boehner on Medicare

Discussion: Political Correction RSS, Washington Post and Balloon Juice

Associated Press:

Herman Cain: Federal Reserve Chairman, Tea Party Champion — The businessman's tenure with the Kansas City Fed should make for interesting debates with anti-Fed stalwart Ron Paul — There's no question that Herman Cain is the big winner in the the latest national Gallup poll …

Discussion: AmSpecBlog, The Atlantic Online and Outside the Beltway

The Note:

Mitt Romney Sends Leftover Pizza to Obama Chicago HQ — ABC's Emily Friedman (@abcemily) reports: After spending the day in Chicago fundraising, Mitt Romney sat down with small business owners at Gino's East, a pizza joint famous for their deep-dish pizza. — Not wanting any of the leftover slices …

Discussion: REPUBLICAN REDEFINED, Talking Points Memo, Gawker, Outside the Beltway, CNN, TPMDC, CBS News and New York Magazine

Brendan Greeley / Business Week:

Tyler Cowen, America's Hottest Economist — The George Mason University professor has written a bestseller, The Great Stagnation, keeps an influential blog, and reads way too many books — Tyler Cowen sits with a cranberry juice and a pile of books he no longer intends to read.

Discussion: Outside the Beltway and The Moderate Voice

New York Post:

A Supreme conflict of interest — Judicial Watch, a public-interest watch dog group, just unearthed a cache of e- mails showing that Elena Kagan participated in preparing the government's defense of ObamaCare during her time as President Obama's solicitor general.

Rick Perlstein / New York Times:

America's Forgotten Liberal — JANUARY was the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, and the planet nearly stopped turning on its axis to recognize the occasion. Today is the 100th anniversary of Hubert H. Humphrey's birth, and no one besides me seems to have noticed.

Discussion: Hullabaloo and Daily Kos

Brian Beutler / TPMDC:

McConnell: I Won't Agree To Raise The Debt Limit Without Medicare Cuts — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says substantial Medicare cuts must be part of a spending and deficit cut package to get his support to raise the debt limit. — In a Capitol briefing with reporters Friday …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Raw Story and Balloon Juice

Jeré Longman / New York Times:

Badminton's New Dress Code Is Being Criticized as Sexist — In an attempt to revive flagging interest in women's badminton as the 2012 London Olympics approach, officials governing the sport have decided that its female athletes need to appear more, how to put it, womanly.

Discussion: Jezebel and ECHIDNE of the snakes