Bob Ainsworth criticises Barack Obama over Afghanistan  —  Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, has blamed Barack Obama and the United States for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan.  —  Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising …

Obama to Offer Firm Pledge on Emissions Cuts in Copenhagen  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama will travel to Copenhagen at the start of the United Nations conference on climate change on Dec. 9 just before flying to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, White House officials said Wednesday.

Modern Flourishes at Obamas' State Dinner  —  WASHINGTON — It is an old tradition, a White House dinner governed by ritual and protocol that happens to be this city's hottest social event.  But at their first state dinner on Tuesday night, President Obama and his wife, Michelle …

Key coordinator of detainee policy quits  —  A key official in the Obama administration's effort to remake detention policy and close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay has resigned.  —  Phillip Carter, who was appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy in April …

Climategate: MSM Writers Try to Ignore Scandal in Global Warming Stories But Readers Bring Them Back to Reality  —  An hilariously bizarre situation is happening in the wake of the growing Climategate scandal.  Many of the mainstream media stories about global warming are simply pretending it doesn't exist.

Dobbs Reaches Out to Latinos  —  Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, pondering a future in politics, is trying to wipe away his image as an enemy of Latino immigrants by positioning himself as a champion of that fast-growing ethnic bloc.  —  Mr. Dobbs, who left the network last week …

Google won't exclude distorted Michelle Obama image from its site  —  ‘We have, in general, a bias toward free speech,’ a Google spokesman says, explaining that offensiveness alone is not a reason to remove the image from the search index.  —  A crudely altered photograph of Michelle Obama …

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist  —  Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004.

The Uncertainty Economy  —  Tim Geithner is not the Democrats' biggest problem.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  Preparing to write about yesterday's downward revision in third-quarter GDP, we were tempted to say the Obama Administration has hit a speed-bump on its promised exit out of the recession.

Help Wanted, No Private Sector Experience Required  —  A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report.  It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy.

Obama's Approval Slide Finds Whites Down to 39%  —  Support has declined much more among whites than among nonwhites  —  PRINCETON, NJ — Since the start of his presidency, U.S. President Barack Obama's approval rating has declined more among non-Hispanic whites than among nonwhites …

Analysis: Obama makes decisions slowly, and with head, not gut  —  President George W. Bush once boasted, “I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player.”  The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach.  President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative …

Rudy Giuliani, Serial Rumor Monger  —  Rudy Giuliani, the big scoop went, had decided to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand for her U.S. Senate seat next year and would announce his candidacy “in the next 48 hours.”  —  120 hours later (and counting), the world is still waiting to hear from Rudy.

EXCLUSIVE: Angelina Jolie Not a Fan of Obama  —  Barack Obama does not have Angelina Jolie's seal of approval.  —  “She hates him,” a source close to the U.N. goodwill ambassador, 34, tells the new issue of Us Weekly (on newsstands now).  —  “She's into education and rehabilitation and thinks Obama is all about welfare and handouts.

Obama's First Year Policies Need Time to Settle In  —  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates listen as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Cabinet meeting at the White House  —  Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama has been criticized for the following …

No exit  —  The latest Fed minutes, together with the forecast, are out.  What do they tell us?  —  Well, the Fed expects unemployment to come down only very gradually — over 9 percent at the end of 2010, over 8 percent at the end of 2011, around 7 percent at the end of 2012.

Swiss court grants director Polanski bail  —  A Swiss court has accepted film-maker Roman Polanski's plea to be freed on bail from a Swiss jail where he is being held for a US child sex case.  —  Polanski has been wanted in the US since fleeing the country in 1978 after pleading guilty …

How Glenn Beck Can Save the Right … Glenn Beck appears at a rally in Huntington, WV in May 2003 (Shaun Heasley/Getty)  —  As the Obama administration pushes its expensive healthcare reform agenda, tackles global warming head-on (sort of), and moves forward with its various stimulus projects and bailouts …

From the Hospital to Bankruptcy Court  —  NASHVILLE — Some of the debtors sitting forlornly in this city's old stone bankruptcy court have lost a job or gotten divorced.  Others have been summoned to face their creditors because they spent mindlessly beyond their means.

Police: Sparkman Committed Suicide, Made It Look Like Murder For Insurance Scam  —  Census worker Bill Sparkman committed suicide and deliberately made it look like murder as part of an insurance scam, Kentucky state police have concluded.  —  State police, working with the FBI …

U.S. Mulls New Panel to Tackle Deficit  —  Bipartisan Commission Considered as Administration Seeks to Show Resolve on a Problem that Dogs Its Broader Agenda  —  WASHINGTON — The White House is considering a bipartisan commission to tackle the nation's swelling deficit …

Election 2010: Massachusetts Democratic Senate Primary  —  Coakley Still Ahead Among Massachusetts Democrats Seeking Kennedy's Senate Seat  —  Attorney General Martha Coakley holds a 15-point lead among likely Democratic Primary voters in Massachusetts in the race to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.