memeorandum: Obama urging state lawmakers to legalize gay marriage in Illinois: Sun-Times exclusive (Lynn Sweet)

3:15 AM ET, December 30, 2012

Top Items:

How the fiscal cliff fight will end (unhappily for Republicans) … The word among some Senate Republicans is that a fiscal cliff deal is likely to be struck by Sunday, or Monday at the latest. (And Monday, being December 31st, is in fact the latest a deal could be struck to avoid January 1 tax increases.)

Discussion: The Hill, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Hot Air, National Review, Power Line, The Huffington Post, The Daily Caller and Politico

Politico:

GOP unlikely to oust Boehner as speaker of the House — It's a truth that fire-breathing conservatives will have to handle: John Boehner isn't going anywhere as speaker of the House. — Boehner's grip on leadership is no doubt weaker after a faction of his caucus blocked his “Plan B” to avoid the fiscal cliff.

Discussion: Hullabaloo

Erik Wasson / The Hill:

Congress, federal workers to get raise — Members of Congress will be getting a small pay increase next year. — Under an executive order issued by President Obama on Thursday, members of Congress will join federal workers in seeing their pay rise by 0.5 percent after March 27.

Discussion: BuzzFeed

Politico:

Sunday showdown: Reid, McConnell try for small deal — Senate leaders are headed into a critical Sunday session of Congress with a singular mission to avoid historic tax hikes, setting the stage for a high-wire final act of fiscal cliff negotiating just two days before the country is hit with a series of tough austerity measures.

Discussion: Power Line

Alexander Bolton / The Hill:
Leading proponent of filibuster reform claims he has 51 votes

Discussion: Fix the Senate Now News, The Hill, CNN, Talking Points Memo, Doug Ross, Booman Tribune and Post Politics

Sahil Kapur / Talking Points Memo:
Obama Gives Republicans A Tough Ultimatum On Taxes

Discussion: Alan Colmes'Alan Colmes' and Washington Monthly

Alexander Bolton / The Hill:
Reid, McConnell working on fiscal cliff deal after meeting Obama

Discussion: Hot Air, Saint Petersblog and New York Times

Marc Santora / New York Times:

Woman Accused of Hate-Crime Murder in Subway Push — A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train.

Discussion: Associated Press, Atlas Shrugs, The Gateway Pundit, The Hinterland Gazette, The Other McCain and The Raw Story

Piers Morgan / Daily Mail:

Deport me? If America won't change its crazy gun laws... I may deport myself says Piers Morgan — I have fired guns only once in my life, on a stag party to the Czech capital Prague a few years ago when part of the itinerary included a trip to an indoor shooting range.

Discussion: American Power, Weasel Zippers and Jammie Wearing Fools

Mary Ellen Godin / Reuters:
Claim seeks $100 million for child survivor of Connecticut school shooting

Discussion: The Hinterland Gazette and Outside the Beltway

Lynn Sweet:

Obama urging state lawmakers to legalize gay marriage in Illinois: Sun-Times exclusive — WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is urging the Illinois General Assembly to legalize gay marriage in his home state as lawmakers are poised to take up the measure as early as this week in Springfield.

Discussion: BuzzFeed, Washington Blade, Firedoglake and The New Civil Rights Movement

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Judge rebuffs feds' secret arguments on no-fly list — A federal judge in California has rejected the Obama administration's effort to use secret arguments and evidence to defeat a lawsuit relating to the so-called no-fly list designed to keep suspected terrorists off of airline flights.

Shushannah Walshe / ABCNEWS:

Dick Armey Defends His $8 Million Deal to Leave FreedomWorks — Former House majority leader Dick Armey says he took an $8 million consulting deal in return for leaving the conservative organization FreedomWorks because the group was “dishonest” and because he “couldn't leave with empty pockets.”

Discussion: Hullabaloo, Washington Monthly and Talking Points Memo

N. Gregory Mankiw / New York Times:

Wishful Thinking and Middle-Class Taxes — IN the continuing fiscal negotiations between President Obama and House Republicans, both sides have, from the very beginning, agreed on one point: Taxes on the middle class must not rise. But maybe it's time to reconsider this premise.

Discussion: Business Insider, American Power and Greg Mankiw's Blog

Josh Barro / Bloomberg:

When Getting Your Butt Kicked Is the Strategy — Buzzfeed has one of many pieces about anonymous Republicans bemoaning their party's strategic incompetence, this time about the debt ceiling deal. They report: … Here's what Buzzfeed is missing: For Republicans, losing the political fight isn't a downside of the strategy.

Discussion: National Review and BuzzFeed

Mark Steyn / National Review:

Laws Are for Little People — A week ago on NBC's Meet the Press, David Gregory brandished on screen a high-capacity magazine. To most media experts, a “high-capacity magazine” means an ad-stuffed double issue of Vanity Fair with the triple-page perfume-scented pullouts.

Discussion: Belmont Club, The Other McCain, The Jawa Report, Twitchy and Ed Driscoll

Reuters:

French court rejects 75 percent millionaires' tax — (Reuters) - France's Constitutional Council on Saturday rejected a 75 percent upper income tax rate to be introduced in 2013 in a setback to Socialist President Francois Hollande's push to make the rich contribute more to cutting the public deficit.

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and Althouse