Gov. Christie arrives at son's high school baseball game in State Police helicopter  —  TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son's baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter.  —  Right before the lineup cards were being exchanged on the field …

Weiner's tweet-hearts  —  By S.A. MILLER in Washington and PERRY CHIARAMONTE AND CHUCK BENNETT in NY  —  It takes a certain type of woman to set his heart a-Twitter.  —  Rep. Anthony Weiner follows only a select 198 of his nearly 49,000 Twitter fans — and a surprising number of them are total babes.

Romney leads in Iowa, Cain surging  —  Mitt Romney has the lead in PPP's first Iowa poll since Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump exited the race, but with six different candidates polling in double digits it's clear this thing is wide open.  —  Romney polls at 21%.  Sarah Palin and Herman Cain are tied for second at 15%.

Martin Bashir: Sarah Palin's Bus Tour ‘Breach of Federal Law’  —  MSNBC's Martin Bashir on May 31 insisted that Sarah Palin's bus tour amounts to a “breach of a federal law.”  —  Anchoring his eponymous program, Bashir scolded, “In fact, the whole thing could be in breach of a federal law …

GOP lawmaker rejects White House trip, says he won't be ‘lectured to’ by Obama  —  A freshman GOP lawmaker rejected an invitation to the White House on Wednesday, saying he didn't want to be “lectured” by President Obama.  —  “I have respectfully declined the president's invitation to the White House today …

Robert Lucas Argues That Barack Obama Is The Most Important Leader In American History  —  I'd been dimly aware of Robert Lucas' argument (PDF) that the Great Recession can be explained without reference to such petty concepts as aggregate demand, but until I read Gavyn Davies' summary …

Sen. DeMint mulls White House bid  —  Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he is considering running for president after frustrated conservative activists have pleaded with him to run.  —  DeMint told The Hill that he has discussed a White House bid with his wife and will pray on the question …

Matt Drudge's disgusting race war awareness campaign  —  Matt Drudge's non-political obsessions used to be harmless things like “extreme weather” and “pictures of Olympic wrestlers.”  Since the election of Barack Obama, though, Drudge — the proto-blogger and reclusive creator of the noted Courier …

77,000 fed employees paid more than governors  —  Government salaries put under scrutiny  —  ** FILE ** A congressional study revealed that 7,283 federal employees in Maryland made more than Gov. Martin O'Malley's $150,000 salary in 2009.  (Associated Press)

Ku Klux Klan protests Westboro Baptist Church (Video)  —  Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. (Michael S. Williamson - THE WASHINGTON POST) As President Obama honored fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, three members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested …

S.E.C. Case Stands Out Because It Stands Alone  —  At the height of the housing boom, the 26th floor of Goldman Sachs's former headquarters on Broad Street in Lower Manhattan was the nerve center of Goldman's fast-growing mortgage trading business.  —  Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams …

Private Jobs Post Tepid Rise  —  Private businesses barely added jobs in May as large companies cut workers, according to a report released Wednesday.  The news is sure to raise further fears about the second-quarter U.S. economy.  —  Private-sector jobs in the U.S. rose by just 38,000 last month …

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION  —  The story of America's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community is the story of our fathers and sons, our mothers and daughters, and our friends and neighbors who continue the task of making our country a more perfect Union.

Rand Paul, Supposed Defender Of Civil Liberties, Calls For Jailing People Who Attend ‘Radical Political Speeches’  —  Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) made headlines last week for single-handedly obstructing the renewal of the Patriot Act, calling the law an unconstitutional infringement on civil liberties.

Airplane annoyance leads to brouhaha in the skies over D.C.  —  Before things got out of hand, it was a typical annoyance that happens once a flight gets airborne: A passenger hit the recline button and sent his seat intimately close to the lap of the guy sitting behind him.

New York AG sues feds over gas ‘fracking’  —  New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opened a new front Tuesday in battles over controversial natural-gas drilling projects with a lawsuit alleging that federal agencies are shirking environmental review of dangerous development techniques.

Study finds many corporations pay effective tax rate of zero  —  A number of U.S. corporations had an effective tax rate of less than zero in recent years, a new study has found.  —  Citizens for Tax Justice released an examination on Wednesday that said that a dozen major companies had …

GOP to White House, Boehner: economists say cut more than you hike — Haley Barbour to the Hill on oil spill — CBC flips on debt limit — Goodbye to Greco  —  DRIVING THE DAY: HOUSE GOP TO WHITE HOUSE House Republicans will head west on Pennsylvania Avenue to meet with President Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House.

Wasserman Schultz's bogus claim that the GOP Medicare plan will ‘throw you to the wolves’  —  “The Republicans have a plan to end Medicare as we know it.  What they would do is they would take the people who are younger than 55 years old today and tell them, 'You know what?  You're on your own.