Under pressure from right, John Boehner steps back on debt deal  —  House Speaker John Boehner, under pressure from the right and facing resistance from his own deputies, backed away Saturday from a bold $4 trillion deficit-reduction package that he once hoped would resolve the August debt ceiling crisis …

Bachmann Stands By Marriage Pledge That Links Slavery to Black Family Values  —  Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann is standing firm behind a pledge she signed Thursday that promotes marriage and social conservative values, but includes a passage in the opening statement …

U.S. Is Deferring Millions in Pakistani Military Aid  —  WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively.

The Sugar Daddy Has Run Out of Sugar; Now We Need New Leaders  —  Barack Obama's big government policies continue to fail.  He should put a link to the national debt clock on his BlackBerry.  The gears on that clock have nearly exploded during his administration.

Can jobs news get worse?  Just wait and see  —  If you are an American looking for work — no, make that pleading to be allowed to earn a living — you already know this: the job market is even worse than Washington is telling us.  And Washington yesterday told us that the employment situation is just plain ugly.

Issue could cost Obama his job  —  Where are the jobs?  —  Not the stimulus signs, rhetoric about “shovel-ready” economic voodoo or propping-up of an anemic manufacturing sector, but the real jobs?  —  Polls at the beginning of July showed President Obama in an increasingly hazardous position with voters on jobs and the economy.

Light motif  —  I think we ought to be harder when minor functionaries of a failed leviathan reveal themselves to have a defective understanding of the role of government in free societies.  Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary who came into office saying “we have to figure out how to boost …