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Nobel laureate Obama scales back his Middle East peace ambitions. To the consternation of some progressives, 2010 will be the year of fiscal

The GOP leadership worries about the Bachmann effect. Did Wells Fargo use prominent black figures to lure minorities into subprime loans? Mark Sanford has

That’s the question being asked by some government watchdogs in the wake of Rep. Charlie Rangel’s admonishment by the House Ethics Committee yesterday. The

The Washington Post reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has submitted draft legislation to restrict the substantive and procedural rights of terrorism

According to The News Service of Florida , Florida health officials have “less than three months” to develop a detailed Medicaid-overhaul plan to sell to the Obama administration. But whether or not the federal government will give Florida a go-ahead with its proposed overhaul is unclear, due to certain provisions that “conflict with basic federal laws.” Among these conflicts is a provision that allows Medicaid providers to opt-out of providing family planning services on “moral or religious grounds.” # The Medicaid reform bill recently passed by state legislators is only an outline of what will be proposed to the feds. Currently, agencies such as the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) are developing concrete proposals to show the federal government

Secure Communities, a federal immigration enforcement program, is once again at the center of a debate, this time about the possibility that local law enforcement should be able to opt out of the program. # According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the program allows local law enforcement agencies to compare the fingerprints of every person arrested and booked with FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records. But critics of the program point to data from Immigration and Customs enforcement, which they say shows that Secure Communities leads to the detention and deportation of people who are not criminals

A Saginaw County judge ruled this week that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision means that property owners in the dioxin-contaminated Tittabawasee floodplain cannot sue Dow Chemical for damages in a class action. Operations at Dow’s Midland plant have spread dioxin — a highly toxic and cancer-causing byproduct of the chemical manufacturing process — and other chemicals, through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and into Lake Huron .

Looking for bi-partisan support for his stimulus package, President Barack Obama wants to hold off on letting bankruptcy judges help struggling homeowners.

White House: Decision to appoint new social secretary will not affect donors’ access to lawmakers. Liz Cheney’s group attacks lawyers defending Gitmo

Republicans: Obama is too distracted by domestic issues to keep the country safe. Looks like Dems will expedite health reform by forgoing a formal

Jim Risen broke the story in yesterday’s New York Times, but now you can read the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s full report about the narcotics problem

Democrat Kathy Hochul is reportedly streaming ahead of Republican Jane Corwin in the Buffalo-area special election that has been marked out as a first test of the controversial GOP congressional budget plan crafted by Paul Ryan that seeks to “save” Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. Hochul hammered on the Ryan Medicare plan and Corwin defended it mostly by backing away from it. “Just for the record, I am not decimating Medicare!” she told seniors in the aging upstate district

This year, annual congressional financial disclosure forms (PDF), due May 16, would have included -- for the first time -- required information about married

The American Association of School Administrators released a statement today on the Atlanta Public Schools teaching scandal: At its regularly scheduled

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele + conservative radio show = hilarious gaffes. The liberal blog Fired Up! has the audio of Steele rolling

The elections are over. Let’s all speculate about the next ones. Bush says the worst moment of his presidency was an insult from Kanye West. Lion cubs

The Rachel Maddow Show once again turned its attention to the extremist record of those endorsing Gov. Rick Perry’s August prayer event, hosted by the

I don’t yet have the transcript of his presser this afternoon, but according to Reuters, Defense Secretary Bob Gates has embraced the measure to reduce the

Last week, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) called on TV networks and other news organizations to refrain from calling the presidential winner while the polls remain

The Susan B. Anthony List is among the anti-abortion rights groups taking credit for the trend of states cutting federal funding for reproductive services in

What Democrats saw as an opportunity to turn American opinion against Republican obstructionism in the Senate became an opportunity for conservatives to endorse a slowdown of Senate business.

For a while, I’ve been calling and emailing the organizers of the National Tea Party Convention with some basic logistical questions, to no avail. Kevin Diaz