Following Controversy Over Pledge, Family Leader Clarifies Anti-Porn Statement  —  GOP presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum both signed a candidate pledge by the influential social conservative group THE FAMiLY LEADER which ThinkProgress, ABC, the Washington Post …

What did David Plouffe really say about unemployment?  —  Senior Obama adviser David Plouffe is getting widely pilloried on the right today for claiming that people won't vote in 2012 “based on the unemployment rate.”  —  Plouffe made the comments to reporters at a Bloomberg breakfast earlier this week.

Rep. Ryan Tastes The Grapes Of Wrath  —  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.

Job Growth Falters Badly, Clouding Hope for Recovery  —  The United States economy added a meager 18,000 jobs in June, up from a gain of a revised 25,000 jobs in May, the Department of Labor said on Friday.  The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent from 9.1 percent in May, the department said.

Nancy Pelosi: No entitlement cuts  —  At a televised news conference Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she opposes cuts to entitlement programs as part of a debt deal, but left some room for compromise on changes to key programs.  —  Fresh off a White House meeting Friday morning …

FACT CHECK: Treasury General Counsel George Madison Responds to New York Times Op-Ed on 14th Amendment  —  Treasury's General Counsel George Madison submitted to the New York Times today the following letter to the editor:  —  620 Eighth Avenue  —  New York, NY 10018  —  To the Editor:

Former First Lady Betty Ford Dead at 93  —  Betty Ford, wife of former President Gerald Ford and the founder of the Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and addiction, has died at age 93.  —  In public, she was one of the most visible and outspoken first ladies in history.

President Obama Receiving Sycophantic Laughter  —  While President Obama certainly has an above-average sense of humor for a politician — easy-going, self-effacing, maybe a little corny at times — he's not known as one of the planet's foremost comedians.  Yet photographic evidence compiled …

The Cost of Austerity  —  The main problem with the job market is the lack of hiring by private employers.  Above all, they aren't sure what the future will bring.  —  Financial crises have long hangovers, and this one is no exception.  Home sales and car sales remain depressed …

No, Seriously: No Excuses  —  In the early days of the education-reform movement, a decade or so ago, you'd often hear from reformers a powerful rallying cry: “No excuses.”  For too long, they said, poverty had been used as an excuse by complacent educators and bureaucrats who refused …

6 False Lessons Of The Space Shuttle  —  With the final flight of shuttle Atlantis sparking inspired debate over where NASA should go from here, PM contributor Rand Simberg warns against some of the conclusions that observers are drawing from 30 years of shuttle flights.  —  The last space shuttle flight has now launched.

DSCC fires back at Koch brothers  —  The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, after soliciting funds from the Koch Brothers, have decided that they're a much better foil.  DSCC executive director Guy Cecil writes a letter in response, blaming the DSCC campaign solicitation on a staff error:

TSA Agent Caught With Passenger's iPad in His Pants; Allegedly Took $50,000 in Other Goods, Cops Say  —  While most Transportation Security Administration employees are busy groping people or taking naked pictures of them, the cops say one of those employees was putting fliers' electronics down his pants.

CHART: Over 500,000 Government Jobs Lost Since Obama's Inauguration  —  So should we blame today's bad jobs numbers on Barack Obama's big government policies?  Again, I doubt it.  What we continue to see are decent—though not great—private sector job numbers offset by tumbling public sector employment:

What Really Matters  —  I don't want to take it too seriously, but I think this Gallup data on who is and isn't expressing satisfaction with their lives helps us understand which dimensions of economic inequality in America do and don't matter:  —  What you're seeing here is that being unemployed or being seriously poor is terrible.

Some Afterthoughts  —  Almost two weeks ago — hauntingly, on the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, whom King Herod would behead because the saint dared to defend the God-given truth about marriage — our state sadly attempted a re-definition of marriage.  Is there anything left to say?