Judge strikes down Prop. 8, allows gay marriage in California [Updated]  —  A federal judge in San Francisco decided today that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry, striking down Proposition 8, the voter approved ballot measure that banned same-sex unions.

Rauf's Radicals  —  The leader of the “Ground Zero mosque” project in New York, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is commonly portrayed as a moderate and a sincere believer in interfaith dialogue.  Typical is a profile in Time that described Rauf and his wife as “the kind of Muslim leaders right-wing …

Bike agenda spins cities toward U.N. control, Maes warns  —  Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”

CNN Poll: Quarter doubt Obama was born in U.S.  —  President Obama's birth certificate (left) has been certified authentic by the Republican governor of Hawaii.  His birth announcement (right) appeared in print in 1961.  (PHOTO CREDIT: State of Hawaii)  —  Washington (CNN) …

Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images  —  For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed.  The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”

Angle: “What's happening (in America)..is a violation of the 1st Commandment,” entitlements “make government our God.”  —  That's what Sharron Angle, the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, said in an April 21 interview with TruNews Christian Radio's Rick Wiles.

Sheriff Taylor's health pitch sparks cardiac arrest  —  WASHINGTON — Was it not enough for President Obama to saddle future Americans with billions of dollars in new health benefits and entitlements that they simply cannot afford?  —  He also had to go and corrupt one of America's most beloved figures of the last half-century.

Senate Vote Clears Way for $26 Billion in Aid to States  —  WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday cleared the way to provide $10 billion to states and local school districts to prevent teacher layoffs and an additional $16 billion in federal aid to cash-strapped states, and the Speaker …

Keyes Hits Graham For Politicizing The 14th Amendment: This ‘Is Not Something That One Should Play With Lightly’  —  In recent days, several leading Republicans have launched a movement to review or revoke parts of the 14th amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship.

Updated.  Must Watch: The Broken Window Fallacy  —  This brilliant video is a simple illustration on the fallacy of claiming that calamities stir economic growth.  Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize - winning economist, says the attacks of 9/11 and World War II brought great economic benefits to the nation.

Ugly Populism  —  I'd like to associate myself with everything Alan Jacobs just wrote in his post on the mosque and community center being built near Ground Zero.  Newt Gingrich is a politician I would've considered supporting in a bid for the presidency.  His behavior during this episode has cost him any chance at my vote.

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers  —  $22 million, federally-backed program aims to help outsourcers in South Asia become more fluent in areas like Java programming—and the English language.  —  Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S. …

JOINING THE RESISTANCE?  —  I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.  But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse.  The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed …

Why I Was Angry  —  LAST week I got angry on the floor of the House.  In this age of cable and YouTube, millions of people evidently saw the one-minute-plus clip.  But there has been relatively little focus on why the substantive debate that sparked it matters.

McCaskill: ‘Message received’ from Missouri voters on health reform  —  Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) said she had received the message from her state's voters after they approved a ballot initiative looking to exempt the state's residents from mandates contained within the healthcare reform law.

This year's election may mirror Democrats' setback of 1966  —  President Lyndon B. Johnson signs an executive order in January of 1968.  —  Everybody, even White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, agrees that Republicans are going to pick up seats in the House and Senate elections this year.

L.A. pensions may consume a third of city's general fund by 2015  —  City administrative officer reports that benefits for retired police, firefighters, DWP workers and other city employees could grow by $800 million in the next five years.  —  The cost of retirement benefits …

Anti-US ‘tirade’ upsets Obama man  —  Mohammed Wajihuddin, TNN, Aug 4, 2010, 04.17am IST  —  MUMBAI: Rashad Hussain, the Barack Obama administration's Muslim face, was in for a shock on Tuesday when the head of a city-based Muslim institution slammed the US' policies, not just in the Middle East, but towards Muslims everywhere.