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John McCain: Getting Back To Maverick, With An Eye On Retirement — WASHINGTON — Last August, a few minutes before GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., I was hurrying down a flight of stairs to get to the floor to watch.
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CNN, Hot Air, The Hill, Booman Tribune, Mediaite, The Week, PoliticusUSA, The Daily Caller, msnbc.com, The Maddow Blog, Politico, Weasel Zippers, The Gateway Pundit, Business Insider, Smartypants, Taegan Goddard's …, Daily Kos, The PJ Tatler, American Spectator, Firedoglake, Mother Jones, Post Politics, Lawfare, Twitchy, American Power, The Fix and First Read
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Inside the Rand Paul Filibuster — Eleven days before he spent nearly 13 hours filibustering on the Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul floated his idea to block the president's pick for CIA director to one of Sen. Mitch McConnell's top political strategists over a Saturday night dinner of lasagna …
Discussion:
Mother Jones, david-frum, The Atlantic Online, Washington Monthly and PoliticusUSA


Rand Paul's moment and the end of Obama envy … Ever since losing the presidential election, the right has been consumed by envy of President Obama — of his mobilization of key voters, his digital strategy, his ability to successfully shift blame to Republicans and the way he is able …
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice

More oversight and disclosure on drones
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Hot Air, Hit & Run, The Hill, Truthout Stories, The Reaction, Wonkblog, Smartypants and Post Politics


Newt Gingrich: John McCain attacks on Rand Paul ‘sad’
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The Moderate Voice, Moe Lane, Washington Wire, BuzzFeed, Hot Air and The Immoral Minority

Rand Paul: ‘Seriously’ weighing 2016 bid
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New York Magazine, Washington Monthly, New Republic, The Impolitic, Ballot Box, The Week, First Read, Mediaite, Taylor Marsh, The Immoral Minority, CANNONFIRE, The Moderate Voice, Post Politics, msnbc.com, Hot Air, Balloon Juice, BuzzFeed, National Review, NationalJournal.com, The Fix and The Huffington Post


Juan Williams' plagiarism problem — EXCLUSIVE: Fox News pundit blames researcher for word-for-word similarities. “Unacceptable,” says Hill editor — In a case of apparent plagiarism, Fox News pundit Juan Williams lifted — sometimes word for word — from a Center for American Progress report …
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NewsBusters, more at Mediagazer »
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How Many Big-Time Pundits Are Plagiarists? — Not long ago I was getting a shiatsu massage in my office when my assistant came in to tell me that he'd gathered the data on government spending that I'd asked for, and written it up in text form so I could drop it into my next column.
Discussion:
Balloon Juice


Juan Williams Blames Assistant for Plagiarism
Discussion:
Michelle Malkin, The Other McCain and The Daily Caller

Juan Williams lifts work, blames assistant
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FishbowlDC and Outside the Beltway

How the GOP forced President Obama's hand — President Barack Obama used to want a grand deficit deal because he philosophically believed it was best for the country, and politically believed it was best for him. — Now he needs it because he has no choice.
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CNN, Hullabaloo, The Hill, First Read and p m carpenter's commentary
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Obama's budget delayed until April
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Weasel Zippers, The Spectacle Blog and White House Dossier

Obama on His Heels — In January, pretty much all of respectable …
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PJ Media and Betsy's Page


Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe Ruined Him, and Now He Gets $100,000 — Former ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera sued after being wrongly portrayed as a willing participant in an underage sex-trafficking scheme. Breitbart still hasn't corrected the item!
Discussion:
Joe. My. God.
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Wonket Sexclusive: Totally Blameless Crime-Stopper James O'Keefe To Pay $100,000 To ACORN Criminal — James O'Keefe—the blonde bombshell who set the conservative world of hidden-camera YouTube movies ablaze—has just agreed to a $100,000 settlement to calm down the unjustly fired …

A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years — 1College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA. — 2Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
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The Atlantic Online, Mother Jones and Dot Earth
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The Scariest Climate Change Graph Just Got Scarier
Discussion:
Taylor Marsh, jobsanger and Hullabaloo

Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years
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Business Insider and Jammie Wearing Fools

In Study, Past Decade Ranks Among Hottest
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, The Maddow Blog, NBCNews.com and MarketBeat


Record 89,304,000 Americans ‘Not in Labor Force’ — 296,000 Fewer Employed Since January — (CNSNews.com) - The number of Americans designated as “not in the labor force” in February was 89,304,000, a record high, up from 89,008,000 in January, according to the Department of Labor.
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Rush Limbaugh and The Gateway Pundit
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Unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 2008 — Hiring picked up in February, helping to bring the unemployment rate down to its lowest level since December 2008. — The U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday.
Discussion:
AEIdeas, Taylor Marsh, The Political Carnival, Patterico's Pontifications and Hot Air

Unemployment at 4-Year Low as U.S. Hiring Gains Steam
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Gothamist, Calculated Risk, Mediaite, Economix, msnbc.com, Online NewsHour, The Maddow Blog, Hit & Run, Daily Kos, Outside the Beltway and Prairie Weather


It's time to overturn DOMA — In 1996, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Although that was only 17 years ago, it was a very different time. In no state in the union was same-sex marriage recognized, much less available as a legal right, but some were moving in that direction.
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Talking Points Memo, News Desk, USA Today, AMERICAblog, msnbc.com, Advocate, The Dish, ACS Blog, PostPartisan, The Plum Line, Business Insider, The National Memo, Guardian, The Caucus, Washington Wire, The Week, Firedoglake, The New Civil Rights Movement, Mediaite, Capital New York, Taylor Marsh, Daily Kos, The Raw Story, Shakesville, Post Politics, The Maddow Blog, Power Line, CNN, Joe. My. God., The Hill, Politico, Telegraph, The PJ Tatler and Gawker


Secret supper — President Barack Obama has been hosting a lot of high-profile dinner companions lately, but here's one guest list that didn't leak for a week: — On March 1st, the president, First Lady Michelle, former President Bill Clinton and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enjoyed …
Discussion:
CNN, The Caucus and Post Politics

Noonan: The Anti-Confidence Man — Just when America needs a boost, we're stuck with Dr. Doom in the White House. — It's not a debt and deficit crisis, it's a jobs crisis. The debt and the deficit are part of it, part of the general fear that we're on a long slide and can't turn it around.
Discussion:
Wonkette, The Maddow Blog, p m carpenter's commentary, No More Mister Nice Blog, Gawker and Washington Monthly


The Jobs Report Is Wrong — What headlines say about the monthly jobs numbers is actually no more accurate than chance. A BuzzFeed original analysis. — Months in red are months where initial headlines said the jobs numbers fell short of economists' expectations, but then the revised …
Discussion:
Outside the Beltway


States With Most Gun Laws Have Fewest Gun Deaths, Study Finds — States with more gun laws have lower levels of gun fatalities, according to a new study from Boston Children's Hospital. While the study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, does not establish cause-and-effect …
Discussion:
Prairie Weather and The Political Carnival
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New Study Finds Firearms Laws Do Nothing to Prevent Homicides
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archinte.jamanetwork.com, neo-neocon, The Mahablog, Reuters, Clayton Cramer's Blog and CNN


President Obama is about to lose the PR battle on the sequester | Harry J Enten — The president's numbers on the sequester are falling. He risks losing his edge if he doesn't change tactics soon — The sequester talks drone on while congressional Republicans and President Obama cannot reach an agreement to stop it.
Discussion:
The Dish

RNC chair says Rove's threatened attack on King “a fool's game” (AUDIO) — The chairman of the Republican National Committee made a trip to Iowa today, rejecting calls for the GOP to moderate its message. Reince Priebus, a Wisconsin Republican, presided over the national party in 2012 …
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Mediaite
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