memeorandum: Durbin telling top Democrats he'll seek re-election in 2014 (Rick Pearson/Chicago Tribune)

5:45 PM ET, March 8, 2013

Top Items:

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.

Rachel Weiner / Post Politics:

McCain calls Paul, Cruz, Amash ‘wacko birds’ — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is continuing to criticize his fellow Republicans for their filibuster of incoming CIA Director John Brennan over drone policy. In an interview with the Huffington Post, McCain referred to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) …

Discussion: CNN, Right Turn, Mediaite, Ed Driscoll, National Review, Taegan Goddard's …, No More Mister Nice Blog, Hit & Run, American Spectator, New York Times, Talking Points Memo, Washington Times and Jammie Wearing Fools

NationalJournal.com:

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 Impolitic, Des Moines Register, The Atlantic Online, Washington Monthly and PoliticusUSA

Washington Post:
More oversight and disclosure on drones

Discussion: Hot Air, Hit & Run, The Hill, Truthout Stories, The Reaction, Wonkblog, Smartypants and The Fix

Philip Klein / Washington Examiner:
Rand Paul's moment and the end of Obama envy

Discussion: The Moderate Voice

Kevin Cirilli / Politico:
Newt Gingrich: John McCain attacks on Rand Paul ‘sad’

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Moe Lane, Washington Wire, Hot Air, The Immoral Minority, BuzzFeed and Talking Points Memo

Alex Seitz-Wald / Salon:

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 …

Discussion: Hot Air and NewsBusters, more at Mediagazer »

Paul Waldman / American Prospect:

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: Washington Monthly, Hullabaloo and Balloon Juice

Joe Coscarelli / New York Magazine:
Juan Williams Blames Assistant for Plagiarism

Discussion: Michelle Malkin, The Other McCain and The Daily Caller

Dylan Byers / Politico:
Juan Williams lifts work, blames assistant

Discussion: FishbowlDC and Outside the Beltway

Politico:

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.

Discussion: Crooks and Liars, CNN, Hullabaloo, First Read, p m carpenter's commentary and The Hill

Glenn Thrush / Politico:

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

Jeremy Herb / The Hill:

Obama's budget delayed until April — The Obama administration will release its 2014 budget more than two months late on April 8, according to congressional sources. — Pentagon officials have informed the House Armed Services Committee that the budget is coming on April 8, said Claude Chafin, a committee spokesman.

Discussion: The Heritage Foundation, Weasel Zippers, Hot Air, The Spectacle Blog, New York Times and White House Dossier

John Boehner / CNN:
GOP on jobs report: What about the debt?

Discussion: The Plum Line and Politico

Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online:

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: The National Memo, The BRAD BLOG, Joe. My. God. and Crooks and Liars

Wonkette:
Wonket Sexclusive: Totally Blameless Crime-Stopper James O'Keefe To Pay $100,000 To ACORN Criminal

Discussion: James O'Keefe's Project …, Guardian, susiemadrak.com, PoliticusUSA, The Immoral Minority, NewsHounds blog, Firedoglake, Slate, The Raw Story, Gawker, Little Green Footballs and Alan Colmes' Liberaland

Tony Perry / Los Angeles Times:
Conservative activist pays $100,000 to former ACORN worker

Discussion: Wonkette, Mediaite and Politico

Elizabeth Harrington / CNSNews:

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.

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit

Annalyn Kurtz / CNNMoney.com:
Unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 2008

Discussion: Taylor Marsh, The Political Carnival, Patterico's Pontifications and Hot Air

James Pethokoukis / AEIdeas:
To praise the February jobs report is to embrace the New Normal economy

Discussion: National Review, Rush Limbaugh and Right Turn

Nelson D. Schwartz / New York Times:
Unemployment at 4-Year Low as U.S. Hiring Gains Steam

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Gothamist, Calculated Risk, Economix, The Maddow Blog, Campaign for America's Future, Hit & Run, Daily Kos, Outside the Beltway, Online NewsHour, msnbc.com and Prairie Weather

sciencemag.org:

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.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Mother Jones and Dot Earth

Justin Gillis / New York Times:
Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years

Discussion: The Week, The Daily Caller, Business Insider and Jammie Wearing Fools

Tim McDonnell / Mother Jones:
The Scariest Climate Change Graph Just Got Scarier

Discussion: Taylor Marsh, jobsanger and Hullabaloo

Gautam Naik / Wall Street Journal:
In Study, Past Decade Ranks Among Hottest

Discussion: The Maddow Blog, Washington Monthly, NBCNews.com and MarketBeat

archinte.jamanetwork.com:

Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States — FREE ONLINE FIRST — Eric W. Fleegler, MD, MPH; Lois K. Lee, MD, MPH; Michael C. Monuteaux, ScD; David Hemenway, PhD; Rebekah Mannix, MD, MPH — JAMA Intern Med. 2013;():1-9. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.1286.

Discussion: msnbc.com and The Truth About Guns

Nicole Flatow / ThinkProgress:
States With Most Gun Laws Have Fewest Gun Deaths, Study Finds

Discussion: Prairie Weather and The Political Carnival

John Hinderaker / Power Line:
New Study Finds Firearms Laws Do Nothing to Prevent Homicides

Discussion: neo-neocon, The Mahablog, Reuters, Clayton Cramer's Blog and CNN

Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal:

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, Gawker, The Maddow Blog, p m carpenter's commentary, No More Mister Nice Blog and Washington Monthly

Rick Pearson / Chicago Tribune:

Durbin telling top Democrats he'll seek re-election in 2014 … Clout Street — Dick Durbin, Illinois' senior U.S. senator and the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, is telling top Democrats he will seek a fourth term in 2014, sources familiar with his decision said Friday.

Discussion: Ballot Box and Roll Call

Toddstarnes / Fox News:

School Confiscates Cupcakes Decorated with Toy Soldiers — A Michigan elementary school is defending its decision to confiscate a third-graders batch of homemade cupcakes because the birthday treats were decorated with plastic green Army soldiers. — FOLLOW TODD ON FACEBOOK FOR CULTURE WAR NEWS.

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Weasel Zippers and The Last Refuge

Willie Herrmann / BuzzFeed:

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

Bill Clinton / Washington Post:

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.