Unclassified Syria briefing exposes rifts among key lawmakers  —  Thursday night's briefing by top Obama administration officials exposed divisions among key lawmakers on what to do in Syria.  —  Lawmakers on the unclassified conference call said the officials made it clear that President Obama …

David Miranda was carrying password for secret files on piece of paper  —  A journalist's partner who was detained carrying thousands of British intelligence documents through Heathrow airport was also holding the password to an encrypted file written on a piece of paper, the government has disclosed.

White House, Republican senators give up on budget talks  —  The Obama administration and a group of Republican senators abandoned efforts Thursday to hammer out a budget deal and avoid a showdown over the national debt, saying they had failed to resolve their long-standing dispute over taxes.

Liz Cheney: ‘I am not pro-gay marriage’  —  Wyoming Senate hopeful Liz Cheney said bluntly on Friday that she is “not pro-gay marriage.”  —  Cheney, who is mounting a Republican primary challenge to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), made the remark in a statement, which is posted on her website.

Facebook Post Said to Be by Assad's Son Dares Americans to Attack  —  A Facebook post said to be written by the 11-year-old son of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and “liked” or commented on by several people who appear to be the children and grandchildren of other senior members …

Alabama Republican Wants to Ban Toni Morrison's ‘The Bluest Eye’ from Schools  —  Bowing to Tea Party pressure, Alabama State Senator Bill Holtzclaw said this week that he thinks The Bluest Eye, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison's novel about a little black girl who wishes for blue eyes, should be banned in schools.

O'Reilly Admits He Made a ‘Mistake’ Saying No Republicans Invited to March on Washington  —  Hey, what do you know?  Bill O'Reilly actually kind of apologized for saying something that wasn't true on the air.  After one media outlet after another reported on the fact that Senator Tim Scott …

Some News and Thanks  —  I will soon pass the Twitter General Counsel torch to Vijaya Gadde (@vijaya).  Vijaya has been managing Twitter's corporate and international legal work, and I've gotten to know her well over the last fourteen years.  I couldn't be happier with her appointment as General Counsel of Twitter.

The Unsaved World  —  The rupiah is falling!  Head for the hills!  On second thought, keep calm and carry on.  —  In case you're wondering, the rupiah is the national currency of Indonesia, and, like many other emerging-market currencies, it has fallen a lot over the past few months.

What ‘The Butler’ gets wrong about Ronald Reagan and race  —  Steven F. Hayward, Paul Kengor, Craig Shirley and Kiron K. Skinner are Ronald Reagan historians.  —  One cold evening in Dixon, Ill., in the early 1930s, a young man known as Dutch Reagan brought home two African American teammates from his Eureka College football team.

Pelosi: I Don't Want to Be Speaker Again  —  “No, that's not my thing.  I did that.”  —  D.C. is a wait-and-then-hurry-up kind of town.  After more than a month away, Congress returns to a full plate.  Legislators need to find a way—and quickly—to pass some kind of short-term budget and deal with the debt ceiling.

Miliband was governed by narrow political interests - not those of Syrian children.  I have left the Labour Party  —  Whatever your view of last night's defeat for the Government over Syria - for what it's worth mine is it was a catastrophe for the cause of progressive interventionism …