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History Professor Gingrich Falsely Claims U.S. Presidents Don't ‘Smile And Greet’ Russian Leaders — Yesterday, President Obama shook hands and briefly chatted with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, explaining in a press conference afterwards that he was trying to move towards a “more constructive” …
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Obama Begins Mocking GOP's National Security Attacks — An interesting, if subtle, shift in Obama's tone: He's taken to openly mocking GOP criticism of his willingness to diplomatically engage hostile foreign leaders. — You saw the new tone on display over the weekend …

THE HANDSHAKE.... It's early Monday, and you know what that means: time for a new coordinated conservative tantrum. The freak-out over the Department of Homeland Security and domestic threats is so last week. The new fit is over President Obama shaking hands with the President of Venezuela at the Summit of the Americas.

Gingrich slams Obama over Chavez — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tore into President Barack Obama Monday for his friendly greeting of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying Obama is bolstering the “enemies of America.” — Gingrich appeared on a number of morning talk shows comparing Obama …
Discussion:
Political Punch, The Note, Washington Monthly, PERRspectives, Media Matters for America, Taylor Marsh, Hullabaloo and Vanity Fair


Delegates walk out on Ahmadinejad at Geneva — Article's topics: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Durban 2 — As Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the eradication of Israel in his address to the United Nations anti-racism conference which — opened its week long event in Geneva on Monday …
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CHENEY: — “One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort.
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Miss California: My Sister Is A Gay Rights Activist — Pageants,LGBT,Billy Bush,Celebrities — Her opinions on same-sex marriage may have cost Miss California the Miss USA crown on Sunday night - but in an interview with Billy Bush for “The Billy Bush Show” and Access Hollywood on Monday morning …
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Miss California Sparks Furor With Gay Marriage Comments on Miss USA Telecast — Miss North Carolina Kristen Dalton was crowned Miss USA on Sunday, but the big story to come out of the normally politics-free telecast was Miss California's comments regarding gay marriage.
Discussion:
Power Line, The Western Experience, Michelle Malkin, Gateway Pundit and JammieWearingFool

Second Amendment extended — The Constitution's protection of an individual right to have guns for personal use restricts the powers of state and local government as much as it does those of the federal government, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled Monday. The opinion by the three-judge panel can be found here.
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Yes, California, There Is an Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Discussion:
Townhall.com

Karl Rove, Twitter Creep — Blogs and Stories — Meghan McCain says we need to take back Twitter from the creepy people—like Karl Rove, “America's Toughest Sheriff,” and the other undesirables who now follow her every Tweet. — Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That's creepy.

Gibbs confirms that torture memo authors are ‘not being held accountable.’ — Yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that when it came to the Bush administration's illegal torture program, “those who devised the policies...should not be prosecuted.”
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Nadler: Impeach Torture Memo Author
Discussion:
Think Progress, The Huffington Post, Calitics, D-Day, PoliticalBase.com Blog and The Washington Independent

51% View Tea Parties Favorably, Political Class Strongly Disagrees — Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week, including 32% who say their view of the events is Very favorable. — Thirty-three percent (33%) …
Discussion:
Power Line, Blue Crab Boulevard, Conservatives4Palin.com, The Political Inquirer and PoliGazette

Sources: Chrysler Financial Refused Government Loan Over Limits on Executive Pay — Top officials at Chrysler Financial turned away a $750 million government loan because executives didn't want to abide by new federal limits on pay, sources familiar with the matter say.
Discussion:
Megan McArdle, Portfolio, The Page, Emptywheel, Consumerist and The Washington Independent

Big Gov't. Still Viewed as Greater Threat Than Big Business — Democrats' views have changed, now view big business as greater threat — PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup's recent update of its long-standing trend question on whether big business, big labor, or big government will be the biggest threat …
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Why the Harman leaks smell to high heaven — I just posted a brief picking up this CQ Politics story by Jeff Stein, re-raising allegations that U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) attempted to intervene on behalf of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two former AIPAC staffers charged …
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Has gay marriage reached a tipping point in New York? Poll shows majority approve of it — ALBANY - A majority of New Yorkers support gay marriage and Gov. Paterson's attempt to legalize it, a new poll shows. — A Siena College poll released Monday found that by 53% to 39% margin …
Discussion:
The Daily Dish
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RUDY RIPS GOV'S BID FOR GAY NUPS
Discussion:
NY Daily News, The Politico, The Huffington Post, Swing State Project, Outside The Beltway, Daily Kos, Matthew Yglesias, Ben Smith's Blog, The Daily Politics, Hot Air, Salon, The Bilerico Project, Pam's House Blend, The Hill's Blog Briefing Room, TPMDC, Taegan Goddard's …, The Plank, MyDD and Political Machine

Axelrod: Anti-Americanism now ‘not cool’ — Top White House adviser David Axelrod on Monday said that President Obama's trips to Europe, Turkey and Latin America in the last three weeks have made anti-American sentiment uncool and “created a new receptivity” to U.S. interests.
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Treasury Says ‘No Basis’ to Report on Bank Testing — A U.S. Treasury spokesman said there's no basis to a blog posting that buffeted financial stocks by saying that most of the nation's largest banks are insolvent. — Andrew Williams, a Treasury spokesman, dismissed the report from Hal Turner …

Napolitano: Returning vets too stupid to avoid extremists — Janet Napolitano continues to thrash around for any rationalization she can find for the DHS report that painted political organizing on abortion, federalism, and immigration as potential national-security threats …
Discussion:
The Hill
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The Wail of the 1% — As the privileged class loses its privileges, a collective moan rises from the canyons of Wall Street. — Shortly after 1:30 on the afternoon of March 18, two dozen traders in AIG's financial-products division stepped away from their Bloomberg terminals …
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, TalkLeft, The Johnsville News, MoJo Blog Posts, DownWithTyranny!, Felix Salmon and The Impolitic

Where Government Spending Should be Trimmed — And Why It's Necessary to Fast-Track Universal Health Care — It's no accident that as Congress returns this week from its two-week recess and begins debate on the $3.5 trillion budget plans for the fiscal year starting in October …
Discussion:
D-Day
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The Times Wins 5 Pulitzer Prizes — The New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes in journalism on Monday, the second-most in its history, for work on subjects as varied as America's wars in Asia, the sudden downfall of a political titan, art from ancient to modern, and a history-making presidential campaign.


NU's Katz reminds Emanuel he's Jewish — Article's topics: Ya'acov Katz, Rahm Emanuel, King Ahashverosh — National Union chairman Ya'acov “Ketzele” Katz sent a letter to White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel last week admonishing him not to forget his Jewish and Israeli origins.

Angels & Demons: It's A Thriller, Not A Crusade — William Donohue of the Catholic League is on a mission. Whether it is a “mission from God,” as the Blues Brothers would say, only God knows, but the goal of his mission is clear: to paint me and the movie I directed, Angels & Demons, as anti-Catholic.

A U.S. Attorney's Story — Dan Bogden, who served as the United States attorney from Nevada until he was abruptly dismissed from his job during the infamous wave of firings of U.S. attorneys in late 2006, hoped to someday learn why he was let go. By most accounts, Bogden had served …