Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval  —  Each result is based on a three-day rolling average  —  Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.  —  Editorial note: Gallup did not conduct interviews Dec. 8 …

Obama FAIL  —  We just sent this email out: … Click here to sign the petition.

HOUSE GOP IS PRO-CHRISTMAS.... It was just six weeks ago that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) decided he was fed up with empty, meaningless congressional resolutions.  These largely symbolic measures are taken up all the time — it's been routine fare for years …

Norwegians incensed over Obama's snub  —  Barack Obama's trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.  —  Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response …

NYT Gift Guide Includes A Separate Section For “People Of Color.”  White NYT Readers, You May Skip To The Next Page!  —  We don't like to throw around words like “racist” in the same sentence as the NYT's name, but there's no other word we can think of to describe this page …

Sotomayor Draws Retort From a Fellow Justice  —  WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court released its first four decisions in argued cases this term on Tuesday.  They were all minor, but one was notable for being Justice Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court debut and for prompting a testy concurrence from Justice Clarence Thomas.

A Case Of Classic SwiftBoating: How The Right-Wing Noise Machine Manufactured ‘Climategate’  —  In mid-November, thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit webmail server — a top climate research center in the United Kingdom — were hacked and dumped on a Russian web server.

Baird Retires; GOP Lands Solid Recruit  —  Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) announced his retirement tonight, becoming the third Dem in a vulnerable seat to announce his departure in the last few weeks.  “The time has now come to pursue other options, other ways of serving.

Bush closes the gap  —  Public Policy Polling:  —  Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama's declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they'd rather have his predecessor.  Given the horrendous approval ratings …

Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data  —  At the Foresight Institute, J. Storrs Hall had some interesting graphs made from NOAA ice core data (Alley, R.B. 2000. … It sure seems to mirror other hockey sticks this past century.  Dr. Mann will be thrilled to see this I'm sure.

Bank-Friendly Dems Shut Down House, Threaten To Kill Wall Street Reform  —  WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?  —  A group of Democrats friendly to Wall Street interests forced a delay in consideration of the landmark financial regulatory reform bill scheduled to hit the House floor on Wednesday …

My conversation with Michele Bachmann: 'I'm a lovable little fuzz ball!'  —  Michele Bachmann: “I don't fear the left, and maybe that's part of the loathing that they feel toward me.”  —  I had never met Michele Bachmann, and when I mentioned to liberal friends that I was going to interview her …

Panel votes 6-1 against Sanford impeachment  —  An impeachment resolution against Gov. Mark Sanford has been essentially killed, as a majority of the 7-member committee formed to weigh evidence against the governor voted against it today.  —  The vote, which came shortly after 3:30 p.m., was 6-1 against the resolution.

‘Wake up, gentlemen’, world's top bankers warned by former Fed chairman Volcker  —  One of the most senior figures in the financial world surprised a conference of high-level bankers yesterday when he criticised them for failing to grasp the magnitude of the financial crisis and belittled their suggested reforms.

Idiocy  —  I get spam: … Really?  All we have to do is send the DNC $5 and we get ponies?  The same DNC that is enabling corporatist Democrats to water down and destroy any hope for health care reform?  That DNC?  —  This is so freakin' obnoxious I can hardly stand it.

Dead End America  —  Dead End?  —  The film with Joel McCrea and what finally became known of as The Dead End Kids?  —  Saw it ... in its entirety ... for the first time, two nights ago.  —  The authors, of course, Sidney Kingsley and Lillian Hellman had been, at the time of writing …

Glenn Beck's Schakowsky name-slam  —  It's one thing, perhaps, to challenge the White House — as FOX News Channel's Glenn Beck has been doing — for inviting an “ex-con” to a State Dinner: Robert Creamer, the former Illinois Public Action Fund director who did some prison time for check kiting and tax problems.

Solar geomagnetic activity is at an all time low - what does this mean for climate?  —  I've mentioned this solar data on WUWT several times, it bears repeating again.  Yesterday, NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center released their latest data and graph of the interplanetary geomagnetic index …

Feinstein Says It's ‘Morally Correct’ to Force Taxpayers to Fund Abortion  —  (CNSNews.com) - Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) told CNSNews.com that using tax dollars from pro-life Americans to pay for insurance plans that cover abortion is morally correct.

Dems to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, fear 2010 backlash  —  In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year's rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections.  —  “We've incurred this debt.

The True Story of Orrin Hatch's Hanukkah Song  —  Here's the complete story about how Orrin Hatch and I collaborated on this Hanukkah song:  —  Ten years ago, I visited Hatch, the senior senator from Utah and a prominent member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on Capitol Hill.

What Goldstein Said.  —  Patrick tries to get the Charles Johnson-ish charges of racism against Robert Stacy McCain to stick, and fails.  —  For the record, I do not buy Pat's argument that anyone who has hangups about interracial dating and marriage is racist.