Rush Limbaugh Closes First Hour With Dead Air  —  Rush Limbaugh closed the first hour of his radio show on his flagship station, WABC, with 1:03 of dead air Monday.  —  From WABC's online feed of the final commercial break of the first hour:  —  While advertisers have fled Limbaugh's show since …

Was Soledad O'Brien Bailed Out by Producers on Critical Race Theory Definition?  —  CNN's Soledad O'Brien's venomously sarcastic interview with Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Joel Pollak culminated with her throwing out her definition of “Critical Race Theory” in the heat of her interview over the Obama/Bell Tapes released last night.

It's Always A Conspiracy: Derrick Bell Edition  —  Yesterday, the Breitbart empire stepped up to the plate, called their shot, swung, missed, hit themselves in the face with the bat, then took a triumphant trot around the bases as spectators looked on with piteous and mocking wonder.

Rush Limbaugh's Advertisers, March 8  —  At least 50 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Rush Limbaugh's radio show in the wake of his misogynistic attacks on Sandra Fluke.  —  Here are his March 8 advertisers, in the order they appeared on WABC, the flagship station for Limbaugh's show.

Senate rejects GOP measure to construct Keystone pipeline, 56-42  —  The Senate has rejected a GOP plan to approve construction of the Keystone oil pipeline after President Obama made personal calls to Democrats urging them to oppose it.  —  The 56-42 vote staves of an election-year rebuke of Obama …

Mitt Romney's media charm offensive  —  BOSTON — It's the worst-kept secret of the 2012 campaign: The candidate who does the least public media-bashing — Mitt Romney — has the worst relationship of all with the press.  —  But as Romney seeks to nail down the GOP nomination and cement …

Gallup: Unemployment now up over 9%  —  The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the official unemployment report for the month of February, but we have two previews this week to use as a gauge.  First, the ADP report predicts a net growth of 216,000 jobs in the private sector …

Romney Calls Southern Primaries “An Away Game”  —  Lowering expectations for a rough stretch, he tells an Alabama radio station he hopes to pick up delegates in Birmingham — even if he can't win the state.  —  Mitt Romney admitted Thursday that he might not be the most natural fit …

How a $1,000 test could destroy the health-insurance industry  —  The New York Times reports that the cost of sequencing an individual genome will soon be less than $1,000.  That's not nothing, but given what most health care costs, it's not much.  And it means that an individual mandate — or something much like it — is inevitable.

Ron Paul's pointless Internet presidency  —  Ron Paul has about as many votes in this year's GOP primaries as he has Facebook fans - is his fierce online following that much less relevant than it appears?  —  Four years ago, the shrewdest presidential candidates used YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and a dash of Twitter.

UN women's rights panel due to culminate annual session by condemning Israel  —  Israel's envoy to UN Prosor bemoans Commission on the Status of Women ‘obsessive’ preoccupation with Palestinian issue, while ignoring women being ‘butchered, tortured, raped’ in Syria.  —  Get Haaretz on iPhone

Mitt: Pay for Your Own Damn College!  —  And get off my lawn while you're at it.  —  Earlier this week, a pretty interesting and telling exchange took place at a Mitt Romney town hall meeting.  A student asked Romney what he would do to make college more affordable for students who struggle to pay for it.

Ignorance Is Strength  —  One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education.  First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education.

MF Global Still Set to Pay Bonuses  —  Executives Helping Trustee in Wake of Firm's Collapse Could Get Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars  —  Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much as several hundred thousand dollars each under a plan …

‘Game Change’ actors dish on Palin, portrayals and politics  —  Washington (CNN) - Actress Julianne Moore, who portrays former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in the HBO movie “Game Change,” said she was surprised to learn how disorganized the McCain-Palin campaign was in 2008.

New Republic Gets an Owner Steeped in New Media  —  The newest owner of The New Republic magazine is Chris Hughes, a new-media guru who co-founded Facebook and helped to run the online organizing machine for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.  —  Mr. Hughes's purchase of a majority stake …

Scandal at The Washington Post: Fraud, Lobbying & Insider Trading  —  In the summer of 2010, business columnist for The Washington Post Steven Pearlstein lifted the veil on the little-known company operating procedure that involves an incestuous relationship between his own employer …

U.S. adds Vatican to money-laundering ‘concern’ list  —  (Reuters) - The Vatican has for the first time appeared on the State Department's list of money-laundering centers but the tiny city-state is not rated as a high-risk country.  —  The 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report …

Kansas Abortion Bill Could Raise Taxes On Women Seeking Procedure (UPDATE) … REACT:  —  FOLLOW:  —  Planned Parenthood, Abortion, Abortion Rights, Anti-Abortion, Taxes, Video, Birth Control, Kansas Legislature, Sales Tax, Sam Brownback, Women's Health, Abortion Tax, Kansas Abortion …

Then and Now: White House won't comment on a federal contractor nondiscrimination policy, but Obama pledged his support for such a policy in 2008  —  News:  —  Despite the refusal of the White House to comment for months on whether the president supports a federal nondiscrimination policy based …