memeorandum: White House attempts to quiet revived talk of ‘death panels’ (Jason Millman/The Hill)

4:05 AM ET, December 28, 2010

Top Items:

White House Confirms Obama's Michael Vick Phone Call, But Says He Condemns The Crime — WHAT'S YOUR REACTION? … NEW YORK CITY — The Obama administration confirmed on Monday afternoon that the president, in a call with the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, expressed gratitude …

CNN:

TRENDING: President Obama supportive of second chance for Michael Vick — Honolulu, Hawaii (CNN) - President Obama believes in second chances. The president recently called Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie and, during the conversation, the two discussed Michael Vick and the fresh start …

Mike Florio / ProFootballTalk:

Obama applauds Eagles for giving Vick second chance — Though the Eagles didn't have a chance to make news on the field tonight, they made some more news off the field. — Peter King of NBC reported during Football Night in America that President Barack Obama recently called Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie …

Discussion: SportsGrid, Scared Monkeys, theblogprof, The Gateway Pundit, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Wonkette and iOwnTheWorld.com

Sports Illustrated:
Peter King>MONDAY MORNING QB

Discussion: ABCNEWS, Political Punch, Hot Air, Politics Daily and Michelle Malkin

Carol E. Lee / The Politico:
White House confirms Barack Obama's call to Michael Vick

Discussion: Weasel Zippers

Lydia Saad / Gallup:

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Are 2010's Most Admired — Sarah Palin and Oprah Winfrey are closely matched behind Clinton — PRINCETON, NJ — President Barack Obama is Americans' Most Admired Man of 2010, substantially ahead of the former presidents, iconic religious leaders, and others who fill out the top 10 list.

Discussion: Commentary, The Mahablog, The Confluence, msnbc.com, Conservatives4Palin, Truthdig, USA Today, Zandar Versus The Stupid, Raw Story, The Atlantic Online, The Politico, The Moderate Voice, Michelle Malkin, The Page, CNN, The Hill and GOP 12

Wall Street Journal:

Palin's Food Fight — Michelle Obama and childhood obesity. — President Obama's indiscriminate expansion of federal power has inspired a healthy populist rebellion, but his opponents sometimes seem to lose their sense of proportion. Take Sarah Palin's mockery of Michelle Obama's childhood antiobesity campaign.

Discussion: Mediaite, Washington Post, The Hill, Commentary and The Democratic Daily

Natalie Portman / Associated Press:

Poll: Obama and Hillary Clinton are ‘most admired’ — WASHINGTON — For the third straight year, President Barack Obama ranks as the man most admired by people living in the U.S., according to an annual USA Today-Gallup poll. — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most-admired woman …

Discussion: Tammy Bruce and TalkLeft

Jordan Fabian / The Hill:

DeMint challenger Alvin Greene to run for S.C. state house — Alvin Greene, the unemployed military veteran who won the Democratic nomination to face Sen. Jim DeMint (R) this fall, has filed to run for South Carolina's state house. — Greene, who lost to Demint by over 30 percentage points …

Discussion: Scared Monkeys and The Note

Jennifer Epstein / The Politico:
Alvin Greene tries again in South Carolina

Discussion: Weasel Zippers

CNN:
Failed South Carolina candidate Greene to try again

Discussion: The Political Carnival

WIS-TV:
Alvin Greene to run for SC House

Discussion: Alan Colmes' Liberaland and Sister Toldjah

Jordan Fabian / The Hill:

GOP Sen.-elect Paul: Attach spending cuts to every ‘major’ bill — GOP Sen.-elect Rand Paul said Monday that he wants to attach spending cuts to every piece of major legislation that comes before the Senate next year. — Paul (Ky.) — who won his race with strong support from the Tea Party movement …

Discussion: Coffee & Markets

Christopher Beam / New York Magazine:
The Trouble With Liberty — Libertarians, of both left and right …

Discussion: Hit & Run, National Review and Whiskey Fire

New York Magazine:
The Trouble With Liberty

Discussion: Yglesias and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Brian Beutler / TPMDC:

Inside The GOP's Plan To Stifle Obama's Executive Branch Power — In the nearly two months since the November midterms, the conventional wisdom has centered on the idea that President Obama's agenda will be largely protected from an influx of Republicans by the Senate's arcane rules and his own veto pen.

Discussion: Hot Air, The New Republic, Congress Matters, Firedoglake, Hullabaloo, Liberal Values, The Political Carnival and Yglesias

Caroline Gammell / Telegraph:

Christmas bomb plot: nine men remanded over plan to ‘blow up Big Ben and Westminster Abbey’ — Nine alleged terrorists plotted a Christmas bombing campaign targeting sites that included the London Stock Exchange and Big Ben, a court heard. — They are alleged to have carried …

Discussion: American Power and Atlas Shrugs

Luis Martinez / ABCNEWS:
U.S. Embassy in London Was Terror Target

Discussion: The Jawa Report

Marilyn Serafini / Washington Post:

Does the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act need title reform? — Puh-pack-uh? Is that some kind of llama? — In fact, it's the ungainly acronym of the new health-care law - PPACA, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Many people who support the law, or are neutral toward it …

Discussion: Hot Air, NewsReal Blog, Examiner, Weasel Zippers and Nice Deb

Myglesias / Yglesias:
The Median Voter Supports The Affordable Care Act

Discussion: Grasping Reality …

Glenn Greenwald / Salon:

The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired — (updated below) — For more than six months, Wired's Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed — but refuses to publish — the key evidence in one of the year's most significant political stories: the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks' source.

Discussion: Balloon Juice, Firedoglake, AlterNet, The Moderate Voice and Emptywheel

Adam Liptak / New York Times:

Sotomayor Guides Court's Liberal Wing — At her confirmation hearings last year, Sonia Sotomayor spent a lot of time assuring senators that empathy would play no part in her work on the Supreme Court. — That was a sort of rebuke to President Obama, who had said that empathy was precisely …

Discussion: FIRST ONE

Karin Tanabe / The Politico:

SARAH PALIN KNOCKS CONSERVATIONISTS — It was time to pick up the chainsaw and yell “timber” on Sunday night's episode of “Sarah Palin's Alaska.” — While last week's installment had Sarah doing a little of everything, from dog sledding to waitressing —this week, the show focused …

Discussion: Alan Colmes' Liberaland

Soraya Roberts / NY Daily News:
'Sarah Palin's Alaska' explains ‘refudiate’ …

Discussion: GOP 12

Jordan Fabian / The Hill:

Outgoing House Dem implies Chinese aided her electoral defeat — Defeated Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (N.H.) suggested in a recent interview that Chinese interests contributed to her loss in the November midterm elections. — Shea-Porter, who first won her seat in the Democratic sweep of 2006 …

ABCNEWS:
Division Wrought by New Tea Partiers

Discussion: RedState and Politics Daily

Ryan J. Reilly / TPMMuckraker:

Group Opposed To DADT Repeal To Fight On Against Shower Policy — Since 1993, the Center for Military Readiness has been fighting to keep gay men and lesbians from infiltrating the United States military. So now that “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” has been repealed, what's next for the group …

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:

IF ONLY THOSE ‘LUCKY DUCKIES’ HAD SOME ‘SKIN IN THE GAME’.... It's been about eight years since the far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page came up with the notion of “lucky duckies.” The label was used to describe the millions of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes because they don't earn enough money.

Discussion: Hullabaloo, theblogprof, Ezra Klein and The Moderate Voice

Ron Nixon / New York Times:

Earmarks Ban May Loom, but Lawmakers Find Ways to Finance Pet Projects — WASHINGTON — No one was more critical than Representative Mark Steven Kirk when President Obama and the Democratic majority in the Congress sought passage last year of a $787 billion spending bill intended to stimulate the economy.

Monica Davey / New York Times:

Michigan Town Is Left Pleading for Bankruptcy — HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — Leaders of this city met for more than seven hours on a Saturday not long ago, searching for something to cut from a budget that has already been cut, over and over. — This time they slashed money for boarding up abandoned houses …

Discussion: Zandar Versus The Stupid and Law Blog

The Huffington Post:

Islam-Bashing Bigots Train Counterterrorism Agents — What's Your Reaction: … “Kill them...including the children.” — That's how to solve the threat of militant Muslims? — This quote is from what one official involved in homeland security said was the theme of a speech by Walid Shoebat …

Discussion: Crooks and Liars, Raw Story and Bartholomew's Notes …