President Barack Obama broke his months-long silence on the $100 million Islamic center and mosque planned two blocks from ground zero in New York City, which project critics say is offensive to families of those who perished in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The president came out in support of the Cordoba House mosque project. Or ... did he? (more)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has decided it will allow humanitarian organizations to place more emergency watering stations in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge to aid illegal immigrants attempting to cross the desert preserve in southern Arizona along the Mexican border. (more)

Judging by the White House statement after a federal judge struck down California's Proposition 8 on Wednesday, you might think President Obama supports the rights of gays to marry. The president "has spoken out in opposition to Proposition 8 because it is divisive and discriminatory. He will continue to promote equality for LGBT Americans," the White House said. (Post User Poll: Do you agree with the decision?) But Obama does not endorse gay marriage. As a candidate for president, he consist... (more)

At a cost to taxpayers of $34 billion, Congress has extended federal unemployment benefits through the end of November 2010. Republicans tried to block the last extension, which led President Obama to note that both Democratic and Republican presidents had never hesitated to "offer relief to the unemployed" when needed. Was he correct? (more)

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that President Obama has ordered an additional 1,200 National Guard troops to the Southwest border states of Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico. (more)

The latest trial balloon for passing climate change legislation appears to be just as explosive as the others. Electric utilities are divided over the prospect of a bill that caps their heat-trapping emissions while shunning mandatory limits on transportation and heavy domestic manufacturers, like pulp and paper mills and chemical plants. Environmentalists also are concerned about the prospect of a more limited global warming bill than what they first envisioned, fearful it won’t come anywhere close to... (more)

For a guy from Salon, Jake Tapper has struck me as someone who has been very conscientious as the White House correspondent for ABC News. He usually is trying to be a watchdog, even when his colleagues are content to be lapdogs. That does not make the story coming from his Twitter feed tonight any less odd. That story starts here: (more)

It's no secret that I am not fond of the teacher's unions. I get into a lot of arguments about this, in which I am accused of being uninterested in any school reforms that don't involve breaking the power of the teacher's unions. Of course, short of the not-very-successful class size reduction schemes, there aren't many proposed reforms that don't involve breaking the power of the teachers' unions. Exhibit B is Steven Brill's new piece on the teacher's unions in New York, which illustrates just ho... (more)

So much to blog about when I have so little time to blog about it. I still need do my post on George Alan Rekers and pseudo-science. May just do it as a short bullet-point post and leave it as an item for discussion as I doubt I’ll have the time to turn my ideas into a thoughtful essay before I depart on my “odyssey.” (more)

Members of Congress from both parties have pledged to fix the alternative minimum tax (AMT), intended to ensure that the very wealthy paid some federal income taxes when passed decades ago. Congress never indexed the AMT to inflation, and now it threatens to ensnare millions of middle-class earners if reform gets postponed any further. Under a budget plan offered by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), that turns from a bug into a feature (more)