Dear A.I.G., I Quit!  —  The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group's financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.  —  DEAR Mr. Liddy,  —  It is with deep regret that I submit …

Little-Known GOP Challenger Tops Specter In Primary, Quinnipiac University Pennsylvania Poll Finds; Support For Obama Plan Helps Among Democrats  —  Apparently paying a political price for his support of President Barack Obama's Stimulus Plan, longtime Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter …

GOP faithful still loves Jindal  —  While President Barack Obama commanded a national prime time TV audience, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal played to the GOP faithful Tuesday night, warning a Republican fund raising dinner that Obama was undertaking “the greatest expansion of government in our lifetimes.”

What Obama said and what he meant  —  Hold a Washington news conference and you'll be sure to hear a lot about Washington obsessions.  —  Two big ones dominated President Barack Obama's prime-time encounter with the White House press corps: budget deficits, and growing criticism in the Congress …

Transcript: President Obama's Press Conference  —  [*] OBAMA: Hello, everybody.  Please have a seat.  —  Good evening.  Now, before I take questions from the correspondents, I want to give everyone who's watching tonight an update on the steps we're taking to move this economy from recession to recovery …

Analysis: Teleprompter telegraphs Obama caution  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  WASHINGTON - What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?  —  A careful one.  —  President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference …

‘Global War On Terror’ Is Given New Name  —  The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase “global war on terror,” a signature rhetorical legacy of its predecessor.  —  In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense Department's office of security review noted that …

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures  —  President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term.  But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package …

Obama testing pundits' patience  —  Barack Obama's second televised presidential news conference saw him in combative mood, pundits and bloggers judged after his prime-time White House performance.  —  Online reaction was dominated by the president's minor spat with a TV reporter …

POPULISM AND PARANOIA  —  Step out of the A.I.G. bonus frenzy, the bailout conundrum, and other matters of the moment to think a bit about American history.  It's all related.  —  Last year, Vintage reissued Richard Hofstadter's classic 1965 essay collection “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”

Barack Obama's delivery of no news is quite smooth  —  Tuesday morning The Ticket examined the White House's current political strategy and asked the question of who would show up at Barack Obama's second nationally televised news conference that evening: the president or the senator?

U.S. bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

Geithner ‘open’ to China proposal  —  Geithner, at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. is “open” to a headline-grabbing proposal by the governor of the China's central bank, which was widely reported as being a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar …

Top Hedge Fund Managers Do Well in a Down Year  —  The financial crisis may have turned much of Wall Street's wealth into dross, but a select group of hedge fund managers has managed to maintain a golden touch that might make King Midas blush.  —  As major markets and economies careened downward last year …

U.K. Bond Auction Fails for First Time Since 2002  —  The U.K. failed to find enough buyers for 1.75 billion pounds ($2.55 billion) of bonds for the first time in almost seven years as debt investors repudiated Prime Minister Gordon Brown's plan to stem the worst economic crisis in three decades.

FM 3-XX: Revolutionary Operations  —  I've been looking over the Army's new manual for stability operations, which the University of Michigan just reprinted with an all-star lineup of introductions by Michele Flournoy, Shawn Brimley, and Janine Davidson.  —  I'm all for the idea.

Vandals Hit Home of Ex-Chief of Bank  —  LONDON — The house of Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of ailing Royal Bank of Scotland, was vandalized early Wednesday and windows of his car were smashed.  —  Mr. Goodwin attracted criticism for keeping his £703,000, or $1 million …

President Obama's News Conference  —  Following is a complete of President Obama's prime-time press conference on March 24, as transcribed by Federal News Service.  —  PRESIDENT OBAMA: Hello, everybody.  Please have a seat.  —  Good evening.  Now, before I take questions from the correspondents …

Politicians Fret as Muslim Population Swells in Europe Amid Little Integration  —  BRUSSELS, Belgium — A clash of civilizations may be taking place on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's also happening a lot more quietly in European cities.  —  Old Europe's population …

Obama's Approach to Protecting ‘State Secrets’ at Issue  —  Like Predecessor, New Justice Dept. Claiming Privilege  —  Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak …

Apocalypse alert: Barney Frank tells Code Pink to “grow up”  —  You have to see this video from Townhall to believe it.  Barney Frank, fresh from calling Antonin Scalia a homophobe, chastises the Left's darlings, Code Pink, for being disruptive during his committee hearing today.

E.U. President Calls U.S. Stimulus the ‘Way to Hell’  —  BRUSSELS — Transatlantic tension over the handling of the global economic crisis intensified on Wednesday when the prime minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the European Union presidency, described the U. S. stimulus measures as the “way to hell.”

Building Bridges on Capitol Hill  —  Last week, the three of us announced the formation of a moderate Democratic working group in the U.S. Senate.  —  Even though the White House and Senate leadership praised the group's formation, some commentators reacted by reporting signs of a rift and a power struggle within the Democratic Party.