Spinal Fire Scientia Est Potentia

This time, the right-wing media juggernaut went too far too fast. Sleazy tactics similar to those employed by online provocateur Andrew Breitbart against former USDA official Shirley Sherrod have been driving the national political conversation and intimidating the so-called mainstream media for the better part of a generation now.

Hundreds of firefighters gained ground Wednesday against the most destructive of two big wildfires that have burned homes and forced 2,300 people to evacuate mountain communities on the edge of the Mojave Desert and in the southern Sierra Nevada.

Everyone knows that the Washington Post has the worst opinion section in America. But yesterday, one man took it upon himself to actually set up a loudspeaker system outside its downtown D.C. offices and yell at the building.

This originally appeared on Robert Reich's blog

The private contractor that handles the bulk of the work servicing NASA's space shuttle fleet is notifying 1,400 employees in Florida, Texas and Alabama that they will be laid off in the fall.

Yesterday, I wrote that Sarah Palin seems like a poor match for New Hampshire's quirky Republican electorate, which tends to shun presidential candidates who are overtly identified with the Christian fundamentalist right (Pat Robertson in 1988 and Mike Huckabee in 2008, for instance).

Official Fox News Democrats-in-residence Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen got together to write one of their op-eds about how the Democrats are Bad and Wrong. As usual, the reasons given for the Badness and Wrongness of Democrats are exactly the same ones named by right-wing talk radio hosts and bloggers and Fox News hosts -- but because the authors of the op-ed are Democrats, it is newsworthy!

A judge has blocked the most controversial sections of Arizona's new immigration law from taking effect Thursday, handing a major legal victory to opponents of the crackdown.

Rod Blagojevich's fate is now in the hands of the jury at the former Illinois governor's corruption trial.

Poor Journalism. Did you know that Ezra Klein killed it? It's true! I read it in "Politico," a free newspaper you can find at Washington's Union Station. According to Roger Simon, Politico's chief political columnist, journalism died when this Klein fellow made a listserv.

Here's another piece of information from the WikiLeaks war logs that, while not strictly "new," underscores an under-discussed and intensely problematic fact of the Afghan War: U.S. taxpayer dollars are funding the Taliban via protection payments from military trucking contractors to insurgents.

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- The U.S. Embassy says two American citizens were among the 152 people killed in a plane crash in the hills surrounding Pakistan's capital.

If you’re part of the Obama administration -- particularly a member of the Department of Justice -- today is a day you might want to spend in bed.

Jack Tatum, the Pro Bowl safety for the Oakland Raiders best known for his crushing hit that paralyzed Darryl Stingley in an NFL preseason game in 1978, has died. He was 61.

A barge slammed into an abandoned well in a coastal inlet early Tuesday, sending a shower of water, natural gas and oil spewing about 100 feet into the air.

Newt Gingrich has now clarified his previous argument that America should block the Muslim community center ("Ground Zero Mosque") in lower Manhattan because Saudi Arabia oppresses its people, too.

The total number of unmarked, improperly marked or mislabeled graves at Arlington National Cemetery could be well over 6,000, according to an estimate by a Senate subcommittee investigating the cemetery.

PPP is out with a new poll that purports to show Sarah Palin dragging down the GOP's top Senate prospect in New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte.

The Tea Party is increasingly embracing the billboard as a means of getting its conservative message out around the country, with a new Texas group organizing as a political action committee to raise money for more signs.

Today, the Senate will vote on the DISCLOSE Act, a campaign finance reform bill that would require detailed reports on corporate funding of political speech. But it will be filibustered, and the Democrats will not be able to break that filibuster, because Sen. Joe Lieberman has to go to a funeral.