Maybe this is the way former Hearst Newspapers columnist and so-called dean of the White House Press Corps Helen Thomas would have wanted it.

Although Thomas’ old seat in the White House press briefing room hasn’t officially been designated for a particular outlet, and this might be wishful thinking on the part of the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, the White House correspondent for website, took the seat for the July 27 briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Stein’s questions from the front row dealt with the possibility of President Barack Obama making recess appointment, in dealing with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and what he deemed the "lethargic pace" of judicial confirmations. Stein then followed up with four additional questions for his piece posted on the Huffington Post later that afternoon.

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The future of Thomas’ former seat is still in question, with Fox News Channel, NPR and Bloomberg vying for the spot. It became part of the so-called "JournoList" controversy after it was revealed Michael Scherer of Time magazine, who recently won a seat on the board of directors of the White House Correspondents’ Association, but was part of the anti-Fox News thread on the JournoList listserv as Politics Daily’s Matt Lewis pointed out.

It’s not clear if the Huffington Post is lobbying for a more prominent spot in the briefing room nor why Stein couldn’t have asked from another spot in the briefing room.

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The Daily Beast’s John Avlon tried to sever the Tea Party movement from the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan in a Tuesday column on CNN.com. Avlon, a Tea Party hater, opined that a "key difference between Reagan’s rhetoric and [the tea party] is the comparative civility," and suggested that "Reagan…would have a hard time getting the GOP nomination today" for apparently not being conservative enough.

Avlon began his column, "2010 Tea Party echoes 1964 Reagan," by tying the Tea Party movement to the former president’s famous speech at the 1964 Republican convention, "A Time For Choosing." After giving three excerpts from the speech, the writer labeled it a "classic — smart, funny and still so resonant that the rhetoric Reagan used more than 50 years ago echoes in Tea Party protests today." Actually, Avlon erred in his math, as 1964 was only 46 years ago.

The senior political columnist for The Daily Beast continued in his analysis of Reagan’s speech:

Consistent with the Tea Party’s self-image, it was primarily an economic speech, advancing a small-government libertarian economic philosophy, making statistics come alive with talk of fallen empires and American history, arguments aided by the added urgency of global conflict with communism. There is the specter of growing government power eclipsing the Constitution, the perverse incentives of the welfare state as an insult to hardworking individuals, all culminating in a citizens’ resistance against elite liberals ruling by fiat from Washington.

Avlon then started to set up his claim that the former president wasn’t as conservative as many lionize him to be:

It is compelling stuff, with the pitch-perfect delivery of a trained actor finally getting to recite his own lines. Speakers echo its themes from stages today almost like a tribute band. But, of course, times have changed a lot since 1964 — and so some questions arise.

First, if America’s past was as idyllic as many Tea Party protesters seem to believe, how come Reagan was warning about America’s eclipse back when the "Andy Griffith Show" was still in prime time? Well, the top marginal tax rate was a whopping 70 percent then — almost double what it is today, and down from 90 percent just a year earlier. That’s cause for a serious debate about socialism. It’s a reminder that the past was never pure and simple — though some Americans might remember it that way because they were children then.

The writer is correct in pointing out this historical detail, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. When the federal income tax went into effect, with the passage of the 16 Amendment in 1913, the initial top marginal tax rate was 7%. This skyrocketed during World War I to a top rate of 77%, and was gradually decreased to 25% in 1925. It went up sharply again in 1932 to 63%, peaking at a whopping 94% in 1944 during World War II. The top rate stayed in the 90%+ range for almost 20 years until it dropped to 77% in 1964, the year of Reagan’s speech. It didn’t reach the 70% figure Avlon cited until the following year in 1965. Reagan’s first income tax reduction during his presidency cut the top rate from 70 to 50% in 1982, and it fell again to 38.5% in 1987 during his second term.

Before heralding the former president’s apparent "civility," Avlon had to touch on a hot-button issue both then and now: race. He did acknowledge that both Reagan and the Tea Party movement weren’t racist.

Second, Reagan’s speech did not mention civil rights, despite the fact that it was one of the dominant issues of that election. Both Reagan and Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act on constitutional grounds, and it was this rift that Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul was referring to when he awkwardly affirmed libertarians’ opposition to civil rights legislation. That does not mean that Reagan or Goldwater were racist — just as it is mistake to label the Tea Partiers of today racist — but that heroic fight wasn’t their primary or even secondary concern, nor was it that of their conservative constituents. Not coincidentally, the former Confederate states of the South realigned in 1964, with traditionally Democratic Mississippi voting 87 percent for the Republican Party.

Another key difference between Reagan’s rhetoric and today is the comparative civility. Reagan never attacks then-President Lyndon Johnson by name, and he is even careful to use the phrase "our liberal friends" when slapping the domestic left. He does not question their patriotism or call them communists — after all, the Cold War was still on, and that insult seemed more idiotic and offensive than it does now.

The 40th president may have used the "our liberal friends" phrase during his endorsement speech for Goldwater, but he also used rhetoric closer to today’s Tea Party activists, such as in a February 3, 1994 speech to Republicans: "Listening to the liberals, you’d think that the 1980s were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They’re claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there."

Near the end of his column, the CNN contributor then tried to spin the former president’s record to portray him as a government-expanding social liberal.

There is a final irony — the Reagan who was elected governor of California in 1966 and ran for president in 1980 would have a hard time getting the GOP nomination today. The self-appointed sentinels of conservatism  would have taken issue with the fact that as governor, Reagan raised taxes by a billion dollars to close a budget gap and increased the size of the state workforce by 50,000. He also raised taxes as president.

Social conservatives….would have hated that he signed the nation’s most liberal abortion bill into law. Reagan wouldn’t have been alone in his isolation from contemporary conservative absolutists — even Barry Goldwater could be painted as liberal today because of his support for gays in the military and the fact that his wife co-founded Planned Parenthood in his home state of Arizona in the 1930s.

Yes, it is true that Reagan raised taxes as president, but as he did earlier, Avlon isn’t telling the complete story, this time by omitting details. Reagan signed two income tax reductions, the first in 1982. He also signed that year, according to a 2003 column by Bruce Bartlett, "not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion." Bartlett went on to outline other tax increases that Reagan signed, but contrary to Avlon, he made it clear that he did this "not to besmirch Reagan’s reputation, but simply to set the record straight….I don’t believe that Reagan ever initiated any of the tax increases enacted during his watch….But when all the political and economic elites of this country gang up on a president to raise taxes, history shows that they always get what they want."

Also, the 1967 abortion law, which the former actor signed into law when he was governor, was the most liberal at the time, but as journalist Lou Cannon outlined in his 2003 book "Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power," he was no "pro-choice" activist:

In his heart, Reagan…really wanted to veto the Therapeutic Abortion Act. Instead, he subordinated his personal feelings to the commitment he had made to Republican [state] legislators to sign the bill. He wasn’t happy about it. "Those were awful weeks," Reagan told me a year later. He added that he would never have signed the bill if he had been more experienced as governor, the only time as governor or President that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation.

More significantly, when he was president, Reagan authored a pro-life article titled "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" for The Human Life Review in its Spring 1983 issue.

Avlon might have a point about ideological purists in the Tea Party, and in the conservative movement in general, taking issue with Reagan’s imperfect political record, but he made his point by selectively editing history.

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The basic iPhone 4 16 GB handset will cost $480 through SingTel#39;s iFlexi Lite plan, with a monthly fee of $39.

The long awaited iPhone 4 will be available from all three telcos here from midnight on Thursday.

Starhub#39;s 3G SmartSurf 100 prices the same model at $500, with a monthly fee of $38.

And customers can get the model through M1#39;s Value plan for $480, plus the lowest monthly fee of $36.

On Monday Apple said the iPhone 4 will also be sold through its online store for $888 for t

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Chris Matthews, on Tuesday’s Hardball, accused Fox News of "whipping up white hysteria" over allegations of the New Black Panther Party intimidating voters in Philadelphia as he wondered, at the top of his show, if there was "a rightist strategy to stir up racial resentment among whites by portraying whites as victims of black rule?" The Hardball host, during a discussion about the New Black Panther Party case with Philadelphia radio talk show hosts Michael Smerconish and E. Steven Collins, claimed that "Fox News and its friends" were pushing the story to motivate voters in the midterms because "I think there’s nothing the Republican Party likes better than a nice, scared white voter. Let’s be honest about it."

While Matthews did agree with Smerconish, about some of the merits of the case, the thrust of the segment was that Fox News and the right were pushing the New Black Panther Party story to race-bait as Matthews claimed: "This is just an attempt by the people on the right, I guess, especially Fox, to just keep pushing this, this beach ball in the air until it finally creates some noise."

The following teaser and full segment were aired on the July 27 Hardball:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Also for weeks Fox News and its friends have been whipping up white hysteria over allegations that members of the New Black Panther Party, two of them, intimidated voters in Philadelphia two years ago. The Justice Department found insufficient evidence to investigate the case and now all seven Senate Republicans on the U.S. Judiciary committee of the Senate want the Justice Department investigated itself. Is this yet another example of a rightist strategy to stir up racial resentment among whites by portraying whites as victims of black rule in this country?

…

MATTHEWS: Let’s start with all seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary committee who sent a letter to Democratic committee chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont on Friday, pushing for a hearing, a big public hearing on a 2008 Election Day incident in Philadelphia involving two members of the New Black Panthers and whether they violated any voter intimidations laws. In their letter the Republican senators write about their concern. Quote, "Concern about the politicization of the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice." What’s this latest push about?

Michael Smerconish is a syndicated radio host and MSNBC political analyst. And E. Steven, Collins is a Philadelphia radio host. I want, Michael you’ve written about this, I want you to start. Then E. Stevens jump in here. I want to try to get a thorough going presentation of what happened two years ago as best we can understand it. Give us a sense of the neighborhood involved, the voting division involved, what happened, Michael, on that day when we all voted, or most of Philadelphia, I should say, voted for, and certainly that division voted for Barack Obama for President?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Well, it’s the 14th ward. It’s the Fourth Division. It’s a public housing development. And as I wrote, it is a division where there didn’t need to be any voter intimidation in support of Barack Obama of any kind. In 2004, you’re talking John Kerry - 501 votes and George W. Bush - 24. It was a fore gone conclusion because of the minority composition of the voting locale that Obama was going to clean house. I have always said this was a case that was about TV and not about turnout. These are a couple of knuckle heads. They are well known to anybody who walks adjacent to City Hall in Philadelphia. They are always looking to create a spectacle. Therefore I think that their mission was accomplished. They are on Hardball yet again tonight. Having said that, having said that I still think you need an investigation because you’ve got a Department of Justice lawyer, now former Department of Justice lawyer who is saying under oath that there was some blow back because-

MATTHEWS: Okay.

SMERCONISH: -there were some political appointees in Justice who didn’t want this case prosecuted.

MATTHEWS: Okay before, in other words we’re talking a classic civil rights case where the, the civil rights of the voters in this case were violated allegedly by a group, by the fact that the government did not investigate. In other words the, the Justice Department itself, you say, has to be investigated. That’s what you’re saying right now, Michael. The Justice Department of Eric Holder has to be investigated.

SMERCONISH: I am saying that where you have a Department of Justice lawyer, who under oath, is saying my colleagues would not pursue this, because they didn’t want a color blind application of the law, you’ve got to go to the next step.

MATTHEWS: Okay who would do the investigation? 

SMERCONISH: Well in this case I think the criminal prosecution should have been permitted to continue…

MATTHEWS: No, no who investigates the investigators?

SMERCONISH: There should have been a trial in this case.

MATTHEWS: Okay what do you want now, what do you want now Michael?

SMERCONISH: What I’d like is a continuation of the criminal process, the criminal process in this particular case that was forestalled by Justice because frankly I think it’s a worse reflection on the administration if it comes to a close now instead of running to it’s end. Because Chris, this was a one-off case. I’m not looking to whip anybody into a hysteria. These were two guys in one polling place.

MATTHEWS: Alright let’s go. Well let me, let me go to E. Steven on this. Your thoughts. You know this story better than I do. This is a Philly story. It’s gotten a lot of swirl. The right wing is loving it because it’s white/black. Your thoughts?

E. STEVENS COLLINS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Only, only, but Chris the only people who are concerned about it are people that watch Fox TV. I mean African-Americans, first of all, were not intimidated by a couple of guys, one who wore some jack boots. Another guy with a, with a bat.

MATTHEWS: You’re looking at them right now.

COLLINS: I’ve seen, I’ve seen worse things happen on Election Day, first of all, in Philadelphia. Second this is inner city Philadelphia where nobody was intimi-, people waited in lines to vote. And it didn’t work. If they were attempting to intimidate someone?

MATTHEWS: Okay.

COLLINS: Now that’s number one. Number two, there was an investigation Michael, and they concluded there was no evidence. So there was no criminal behavior. There was no criminal conduct. And so what are we talking about?

MATTHEWS: Okay, okay. E. Steven I don’t care about Milton Street 20 years ago out in front of the gallery telling the white people to go back to the suburbs. We’re all used to that crap. I’m worried about whether the Republican precinct workers, the division workers there, were they intimidated by these guys? Was there any intimidation by, by poll watchers, any illegality here? You’re saying none.

COLLINS: If there was illegality, it wasn’t just a matter of the federal government. You had Philadelphia police in the district attorney’s office in Philadelphia, and they looked at it, and nothing came of it.

MATTHEWS: And they let that guy stand there with a nightclub looking like a policeman.

COLLINS: It was, well, was that intimidating? Did it stop anybody from voting?

MATTHEWS: I’m asking. No but did it intimidate the Republican precinct worker there? The division worker, if there was one?

COLLINS: Did he file a complaint? I didn’t see a complaint.

MATTHEWS: Well okay I’m not a lawyer. I’m asking these questions, E. Steven because a lot of people are wondering.

COLLINS: And I’m suggesting to you this is small potatoes, as a columnist has written about.

MATTHEWS: Okay, okay. Well if I went to vote and I saw those two guys there I would not think it was small potatoes. Anyway Abigail Thernstrom is the Republican Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. And here’s what she wrote for the National Review. "Forget about the New Black Panther Party case. It is very small potatoes," as E. Steven Collins just said.

COLLINS: Very small.

MATTHEWS: "Perhaps the Panthers should have been prosecuted under section 11 (B) of the Voting Rights Act for their actions on November 28th. But the legal standards that must be met to prove voter intimidation, the charge are very high. In the 45 years since the act was passed, there had been a total of three successful prosecutions." So, okay, let’s go back to Michael on this. You say there ought to be an investigation. You don’t think this is just right wing swirl? This is just an attempt by the people on the right, I guess, especially Fox, to just keep pushing this, this beach ball in the air until it finally creates some noise.

SMERCONISH: There’s a lot of swirl associated with this case. I will grant you that. I remember very well, on Election Day, when there were individuals who were trying on spin this as indicative of what was going on across the city or indeed across the country. And it’s all very clear now it was a one-off incident. My position is there’s no such thing as, as small potatoes. One instance is enough that needs to be prosecuted. And wait a minute, Chris. How about this? What if there were a white hood and a sheet involved and otherwise the facts were the same.

MATTHEWS: Yeah?

SMERCONISH: Would there then be the prosecution of the Klan? Hell yes, there would be, and there should be in this case.

MATTHEWS: Okay let me go to E. Steven Collins. I, I mean E. Steven, I think there’s a challenge here to the administration of Barack Obama that may well be ethnic. He’s President of the United States, the first African-American. Eric Holder is the first African-American, I guess, attorney general, actually.

COLLINS: Sure.

MATTHEWS: And I hadn’t thought about that, but I guess it’s the case. We’re trying not to think about these things all the time, but there’s some people that like to, would like us to be thinking about race all the time.

COLLINS: Yes!

MATTHEWS: Is that’s what what’s going on here?

COLLINS: It appears. That’s what we saw in the Sherrod case. It was such an over, over, over-examination of everything that happened and every decision that was made. Somebody edited a tape. It was, it was a bad decision to fire her, to force her resignation. They retreated. They offered her a better job. They learned something. I mean people make mistakes, Chris. You can’t just criti-, crucify the President and his staff for making a decision. The bigger issue here is the Republicans, the right wing continue to attack and attack and attack.

MATTHEWS: Okay.

COLLINS: And this is small potatoes.

MATTHEWS: Okay let’s go back to Michael. Michael, I appreciate your thinking because you do try to come down the middle here and I wonder if there’s a middle. And here’s my question. Could this be, since it’s two years later, and on the eve of the big elections coming up this November, and they know a lot of older white voters are gonna run this election, because they’re the people who show up in midterm elections, Michael. And you know darn well who the target could be of this campaign? They’re the people who vote midterm elections - older white people. Because minorities and kids don’t tend to vote as heavily around the country as older white people do in these elections. Now the question, is this aimed at [Joe] Sestak? Is this aimed at Democratic candidates in the burbs and the rural areas? To scare with big city black politics? To say the Democratic Party is the party of big city blacks? Is that what’s going on here? Even though you may be right about the facts? Could that be the motive behind the push?

SMERCONISH: It might be, it might be. I mean Chris you maybe thinking three levels beyond where my head is on this issue because-

MATTHEWS: Oh come on.

SMERCONISH: Because I will, because I will grant, I will grant you this.

MATTHEWS: You talk about this, Philadelphia talks race. I know we know the issue. We try to get past it. We have a great black mayor. Whites voted for him heavily. The city really tries to get past its old problems. I know about that. Is this an attempt to rip the scab off?

SMERCONISH: I don’t know what the motivation might be of those senators. Call me naive. I hope that it’s not what you’re insinuating but I’ll say this-

MATTHEWS: I’m asking.

SMERCONISH: The more, the more this footage is shown, the more it benefits a turnout campaign for the type of voter that you have described. And therefore my advice to, to the Justice Department, to the Obama administration would have been, politically speaking, prosecute these guys. The best thing you can do politically is lock them up.

MATTHEWS: Okay, right. I agree. But E. Steven I think there’s nothing the Republican Party likes better than a nice, scared white voter. Let’s be honest about it.

COLLINS: You’re implying there was a crime that was committed. And I’m not sure that the Justice Department and the local district attorney…

MATTHEWS: Okay let me ask you about the white sheets. Suppose I got, suppose those were white folks, with white sheets?

COLLINS: Sure. Then you have a legitimate case. I mean that’s intimidation.

MATTHEWS: Now wait a minute! Where’s the symmetry here? You got a bunch, two black guys, big guys with, wearing big boots and wearing what looks like uniforms to me. And one guy is carrying a pretty dangerous stick there that he could break some heads with, and that wouldn’t intimidate you if you had to walk past them, and those were, just think about the symmetry what you’re argument is creating. The problem.

COLLINS: But, but Chris, wouldn’t you need to have someone making a complaint and someone saying, "We were, in fact, intimidated. We were not allowed. There was undue pressure put on us." No one said that.

MATTHEWS: No, no. No I looked at the voting numbers. I looked at the voting numbers. You have eight votes in the division for the Republican candidate, George W. Bush in 2000. You had about 24 votes for him again the second time in 2004. This time you had something like 13 for the Republican. About the average of the last two times. So it didn’t look like there was any bottom. Michael, go back to you. No bottom line suppression. The voting totals came in about what you’d expect, given the nature of that election in 2008. What evidence do we have, bottom line of voter intimidation or suppression?

SMERCONISH: We don’t have anybody that I’m aware of. We don’t have anybody that I’m aware of that stands up and says, you know, "But for the presence of these two knuckleheads I would have gone in and pulled the lever." But as a lawyer I would say to you the way in which they appear and their mannerisms and the billy club is a prima facie, on its face, case of voter intimidation in the same way that Steven acknowledged, that if they were there wrapped up in sheets and hoods it would be a prima facie case on the part of the Klan.

MATTHEWS: Okay I want to thank you both gentlemen. I hope we don’t have to revisit this. I hope something gets done, well maybe it shouldn’t get done. But I hope we don’t have to talk about this one again. Anyway thank you Michael Smerconish and E. Steven Collins. I think it was a fair debate.

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The man known by Raiders fans of all time as “the Assassin”, Jack Tatum, has sadly passed away at the age of 61 at an Oakland hospital. The team announced the sad loss today, adding that it was consequence of a heart attack. The statement posted on the Raiders’ website says:

“We are deeply saddened by [...]

Related posts:

1. Ben Roethlisberger Trade to Raiders?
2. Jack Osbourne: Niki Cloyd Restraining Order Denied
3. Ryan O’ Neal Hit on Tatum at Farrah Funeral

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If a congressional Democrat blocks economic relief efforts, and no one bothers to report it, does it really happen? The editors at CNNMoney.com are apparently on a quest to find the answer.

After weeks of pounding Republicans for stalling unemployment benefits in the Senate, the site is suddenly disinterested in doing the same to Democrats.

The political battle du jour? Republicans and moderate Democrats want to continue tax cuts set to expire across the board. Liberals want to preserve the cuts for lower-income families while revoking those for the wealthy.

This time Republicans are the ones with bipartisan support while infighting among Democrats is causing delay. Yet while reporting on the breakdown, CNN Money managed to write 500 words without saying the word Democrat once. Prepare yourself for the vaguest explanation one could possibly write:

Get ready for a smaller paycheck.

At least that’s what could happen if Congress doesn’t approve President Obama’s proposal to extend the Making Work Pay tax credit soon. [...]

In his $3.8 trillion budget for 2011, Obama proposed a year-long extension to the Making Work Pay credit and pushed to make the tax cuts passed during the Bush administration permanent, except those aiding households that earn more than $250,000 a year.

If the extension isn’t passed, the 110 million families that received higher paychecks in 2009 and 2010 will be back to where they started and will owe more taxes than they did during those two years.

And because of the steep cost of keeping the Making Work Pay tax break around — about $60 billion to extend it one year — Marr said he wouldn’t be surprised if Congress doesn’t end up passing the extension.

That’s as deep as it gets. Nameless members of unknown parties in Congress are finding themselves unable to approve something President Obama is asking for. When faced with a choice between tax relief in a recession or losing out on $60 billion, lawmakers suddenly need to slow down and think about it.

Fortunately, some news sources are doing a better job. The Financial Times on Sunday reported all the gritty details that CNN Money didn’t want readers to see:

If the Obama administration has its way, the highest tax rate for high-income earners would rise from 35 per cent to 39.6 per cent, while capital gains and dividend taxes would also increase for richer Americans from 15 per cent to at least 20 per cent.

Some members of the president’s own party are nervous. Last week, Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who chairs the Senate budget committee, said Congress might want to keep tax rates where they are for another 18 to 24 months, until the economy had improved.

"The general rule of thumb would be you’d not want to do tax changes, tax increases . . . until the recovery is on more solid ground," Mr Conrad said, joining other conservative Democrats in the Senate, including Evan Bayh of Indiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, in opposing the expiry of tax relief for upper income brackets.

As the possibility of defections within Democratic ranks increased last week, both Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, reiterated their determination to end the tax cuts for the wealthy.

Liberal Democrats are apparently willing to stall tax relief for the middle class if that’s what it takes to punish the wealthy. Centrist Democrats fearful of losing reelection are siding with Republicans on the grounds that no tax increase is worth the political fight this year.

And the best that CNN Money can do is a half-hearted report on how "Congress" is failing to act.

Of course, when Democrats are united and Republicans are the ones balking, CNN Money is all over it. Observe the website’s coverage of the recent battle over paying for unemployment benefits: 

• March 26: "Republicans - in particular, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. - are balking at extending benefits without finding a pot of money to offset the spending. Extending benefits costs about $10 billion a month."
• July 1: "House Democrats have struggled to get support from Republicans, who oppose the extension because it adds to the nation’s $1.4 trillion deficit."
• July 19: "The president focused his frustration on Republicans, calling them out for supporting unemployment extensions under GOP presidents while refusing to help middle-class families now."
• July 21: "The jobless stopped getting their checks in early June, after Congress failed to extend the deadline to apply for benefits. Senate Republicans, as well as Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, prevented the legislation’s passage, saying it should be paid for first. They suggested covering the $34 billion tab with unused stimulus money, a step the Senate Democratic leadership rejected."
• July 22: "Senate Republicans, as well as Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, prevented the legislation’s passage, saying it should be paid for first. They suggested covering the $34 billion tab with unused stimulus money, a step the Senate Democratic leadership rejected." 

Amazing how a mere five days later, CNN Money stopped feeling a need to identify obstructionists.

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House of Representatives resolution 1553, introduced by Congressional Republicans, and currently working its way through the system will endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates.  The resolution provides explicit US backing for Israel to bomb Iran, [...]

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During live news coverage this afternoon, MSNBC’s Chris Jansing demonstrated her apparent ignorance of the statistical maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Interviewing the authors of Red Families v. Blue Families, the daytime anchor gleefully reported the finding that states that voted Republican in the 2008 presidential election have higher rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, and unwed parenthood than states that voted for Barack Obama.

"You’ve heard the term a lot – ‘family values’ – but are they actually breaking up families?" the daytime anchor inquired enthusiastically. "According to one book, the so-called liberal blue states actually have more stable family units than culturally conservative red states."

Presenting the findings as a nonpartisan analysis of statistical data, Jansing omitted the fact that the authors, June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, are contributors to New Deal 2.0, a blog of the left-wing Roosevelt Institute designed to "discuss how the Great Recession has exposed the fault lines of traditional family values."

Writing for New Deal 2.0 on March 1, Carbone and Cahn lectured:

Today, as we discuss in our book, Red Families v. Blue Families, the part of the country identified with what we call "the Blue Family Paradigm" has embraced a new family strategy geared to the needs of the post-industrial economy. This paradigm emphasizes the importance of women’s as well as men’s workforce participation, egalitarian gender roles, and the delay of family formation until both parents are emotionally and financially ready.

Carbone and Cahn are not disinterested academics, as Jansing led viewers to believe. Rather, they are liberal activists nostalgic for the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and the radical ideology it promulgated.

Jansing also managed to overlook the resume of Jonathan Rauch, an openly gay liberal columnist at the National Journal. After reciting a glowing passage from Rauch’s review of the book, Jansing asked: "Is that pretty much a good summary of it, June?"

"It’s a superb summary," replied Carbone.

A transcript of the relevant portions of the segment can be found below:

MSNBC
News Live
July 27, 2010

3:44 P.M. E.S.T.

CHRIS JANSING: You’ve heard the term a lot – "family values" – but are they actually breaking up families? According to one book, the so-called liberal blue states actually have more stable family units than culturally conservative red states. Take a look at this map, it’s how states voted in the 2008 presidential election. Statistics reveal higher rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, single parenthood in the red states that voted Republican while blue states like Massachusetts, the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, has the lowest divorce rate in the country. How can we explain this and what does it mean for the next election cycle? I’m joined by the authors of Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture, June Carbone, law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Naomi Cahn, also a professor of law at The George Washington University. Thanks to both of you for joining us. June, I was a little surprised by these results, were you?

JUNE CARBONE, co-author of Red Families vs Blue Families: Well, yes and no. We first started looking at this after the 2004 election and we realized after we saw the high divorce rates, it reflected age of marriage. 1960, if you got married young, the husband could get a job, there was a support structure in place. Today, getting married at 19, 20, even 23, high risk proposition. And it’s age we started looking at first.

JANSING: So, Naomi, is this a situation where in states where they’re better educated, in states where couples delay marriage more, that that’s why this is happening? What did you find out? What was the root cause?

NAOMI CAHN, co-author of Red Families vs Blue Families: What we discovered was there are two different family systems in the United States. In the blue system, which is more likely to take place in the liberal states that voted blue in the 2004 and 2008 elections, there is exactly as you said. Marriage happens at a later age once both spouses have reached financial and emotional maturity and who you have sex with is a private matter, and there is a toleration of and an understanding that you might have sex before you get married that abstinence is not necessarily as realistic an option as the red states hope. So we discovered that’s one pattern, the blue family pattern. And then we discovered the red family pattern which preaches abstinence until marriage. It preaches early marriage and it also preaches more traditional roles for men and women.

JANSING: Let me read to you what Jonathan Rauch wrote about your findings in the National Journal: "Moral traditionalism fails to prevent premarital sex and early childbirth. Births precipitate more early marriages and unwed parenthood. That, in turn, increases family breakdown while reducing education and earnings." Is that pretty much a good summary of it, June?

CARBONE: It’s a superb summary and it’s getting worse.

JANSING: It’s getting worse?

CARBONE: It’s getting worse.

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Barely a month after Dave Weigel resigned from the Washington Post, he has been hired by…the Washington Post.

Well, to be more specific, by Post subsidiary Slate Magazine. Michael Calderone tweeted the news this evening, and Weigel confirmed shortly thereafter.

Weigel’s resignation came after it was revealed he had made derogatory and highly offensive comments towards prominent conservatives on the liberal media listserv JournoList. Those included suggesting that Matt Drudge should set himself on fire, wishing death on Rush Limbaugh (incidentally, he wasn’t the only JournoLister to do so), and dubbing Newt Gingrich an "amoral blowhard."

It wasn’t the first time Weigel got in trouble for offensive comments. It wasn’t the first time he took heat over comments made about Matt Drudge. He also called gay marriage opponents bigots, sparking outrage from some on the right.

Since Weigel had been hired to cover the political right, most conservatives believed he would be a counterweight to Ezra Klein, who covers the liberal beat on his own WaPo blog. Weigel’s comments confirmed (though anyone who had read his work already suspected) that he would not bring that hoped-for balance.

Weigel’s comments also set off a media frenzy over the extensive behind-the-scenes media collaboration on JournoList. Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 for the JournoList archives. The Daily Caller eventually got a hold of those archives, and has published a number of exposes on some of the more controversial discussions that took place on the list.

The news that Weigel has been hired by a Post-owned publication suggests that his resignation was just a move to shield him - and possibly the Post - while the controversy blew over. Though the biosphere is still buzzing about the JournoList scandal, pundits have been largely silent on Weigel’s role in that scandal since shortly after his resignation.

Like that of its parent publication, Slate’s editorial stance is distinctly liberal.

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Cesc Fabregas#39;s girlfriend Named Carla Cutie who is a spanish national. They have been dating for quite a long time, and i expect them to tie the knott in near future as he would want to settle down abit. Here are some more pics of the couple enjoying a day out in the summer.

Cesc Fabregas is a Spanish footballer who plays as a central midfielder. He captains the Premier League side Arsenal and also plays for the Spanish national team.

Fàbregas started his career as a trainee with Barcelona

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