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The core of President Obama's congressional agenda stalled Thursday as new obstacles emerged to climate change and health care legislation, possibly crushing Democratic leaders' hopes for rapid progress this summer. In the House, a large bloc of moderate Democrats known as Blue Dogs wrote a letter demanding a slowdown for health legislation, just as a bill was set to be introduced. The group, which numbers more than 50, said they won't support a bill that's not fully paid for and expressed doubts over increasing taxes. In the Senate, the chairman of the primary committee charged with advancing climate change legislation...

Frail Kim Jong-il 'may only have months to live' Kim Jong-il is seriously ill and is likely to be dead before the end of the year, according to a source within the North Korean leader's own family. By Julian Ryall in Tokyo Published: 5:28AM BST 10 Jul 2009 The latest speculation over the health of the reclusive Kim has been triggered by his appearance on state television on Wednesday to mark the 15th anniversary of the death of Kim Il Sung, his father and the man revered as the founder of North Korea. He looked gaunt, his hair has thinned...

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BARACK Obama spent all of 2008 running against the sputtering economy, and warned earlier this year of a crisis "we may not be able to reverse." Yet, as the unemployment rate climbs beyond the administration's projections, Vice President Joe Biden informs us that the administration "misread how bad the economy was." Apparently, we were going to experience a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis comparable to the Great Depression without a particularly high unemployment rate. This was the promise of the Obama administration, which indulged in hair-raisingly alarmist economic rhetoric while pumping out unduly hopeful economic projections. If the Reagan administration gave us...

AMONG the benefits from President Obama's effort to "reset" relations with Russia, we're told, is that the Kremlin will join us in pressuring rogue nations from seeking to build nuclear weapons. But even as Obama was making nice in Moscow this week, Russian diplomats in New York have been stonewalling an effort to slap Pyongyang over its weapons proliferation. A UN committee has struggled for a month now to meet this weekend's deadline for drawing up a sanctions list on North Korea. The list is supposed to put the teeth in last month's Security Council resolution to punish Pyongyang for...

Life sometimes imitates art, even in the Obama presidency. The old movie, The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey as the earnest and clueless Truman Burbank, a man literally raised in a bubble since he was born, and the star of a popular television show, is a decent analogy for Obama's first half year in office. Let's start with the bubble itself in the film. The enormously costly stage for the show is a sealed environment where everyone is scripted, except Truman himself, and all actions are tightly controlled. The drama for the TV audience is in how Truman will react...

The June employment report suggests that the alleged green shoots are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure. The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market continue to be extremely weak, with job losses in June of over 460,000. With the current rate of job losses, it is very clear that the unemployment rate could reach 10% by later this summer--around August or September--and will be closer to 10.5%, if not 11%, by year-end. I expect the unemployment rate is going to peak at around 11% at some point in 2010, well above historical standards...

Inside the Ring Bill Gertz INSIDE THE RING (Contact) North Korean leadership New reports from U.S. and diplomatic sources say that the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il continues to decline and that he may have only one more year to live. A U.S. official who is familiar with the Korea situation but spoke on condition that he not be named said there are signs that Mr. Kim is still not well nearly a year after he suffered a stroke. "Kim Jong-il certainly hasn't been in good shape since his stroke last year, and, as time wears on, it's...

Intelligent idiots, smart fools, multi-degreed morons - lots of monikers could describe a category of individuals dismayingly prominent in the ruling elites of the West. They are the people so divorced from reality, so engrossed in bookish pursuits that - for all their undoubted intellectual accomplishments and often as a direct consequence thereof - they invariably end up with egg on their faces whenever they try to engage in practical activities. Worse yet, they idolize each other, sticking up for one another out of class solidarity. Case in point: a few days ago I watched a gathering of noted media...

Enlarge ImageTrouble brewing. Trouble brewing. Satellite observations show telltale signs of an El Niño returning (red and dark-blue zones).Credit: TOPEX/Poseidon Team/CNES/NASA (APOD) Batten down the hatches! The disruptive weather pattern known as El Niño has developed once again in the central Pacific Ocean, the first time since 2006, scientists announced today. Satellite instruments have recorded a band of telltale warming in surface waters of about 1°C. That could mean damaging storms this winter in California and across the southern half of the United States, as well as heavy rains in Central and South America, drought in Southeast Asia and...

On the night of June 27, Marty Marshall and his family were standing outside a friend’s home in Akron, OH. The group had gathered to watch a fireworks display at nearby Firestone Park, the festive night ended suddenly, when the family as well as their friends were brutally attacked by a group of nearly 50 black teenagers. Marty Marshall, a 39-year-old construction worker came to the aid of his friend who was sucker punched by one of the teenagers, and was soon overwhelmed by the growing mob. His 13-year-old daughter Rachel was shoved to the ground, while mom Yvonne tried...

The Obama administration, in a precedent-setting move, has approved resettlement in the U.S. for 1,350 Palestinian refugees from Iraq. But before this becomes a done deal, Congress and the media ought to ask the White House and the State Department why these refugees, rather than being granted asylum in the U.S., shouldn't get immigration visas to Arab countries, especially those with immense oil wealth. Wouldn't that be a more logical, more natural destination for these refugees? Thousands of these Palestinians lived for many years in Iraq under the generous protection of Saddam Hussein -- and repaid him in kind with...

Young Mystery General Spotted Trailing Kim Jong-il South Korean intelligence services have spotted a young-looking one-star general walking behind North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in images taken during on-the-spot guidance tours this year, but it was unclear whether that was the elusive heir apparent Jong-un. An intelligence officer said, "In the process of closely scrutinizing photos and video images... we twice or three times spotted a young man in his mid- or late 20s in a one-star general's uniform escorting Kim, but it's unclear who he is because their definition is poor and the images are small." He added the...

Newsweek took their criticism of Pope Benedict XVI to the next level on Thursday- not only did guest columnist Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend affirm that the pontiff could learn from President Obama (something Newsweek and their partners at the Washington Post agreed upon back in April), but also blasted the Bishop of Rome and the Catholic hierarchy for their supposed “disdain” towards women and homosexuals. The former lieutenant governor of Maryland began her column, titled "Without a Doubt: Why Barack Obama represents American Catholics better than the pope does," with the context of the pope’s upcoming meeting with the American president,...

John Cook of the gossip website Gawker discovered that the White House press elite partied down with President Obama on ahem, Independence Day: Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines, and web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy. We reported yesterday that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's "backyard bash" by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being...

PICTURES: Boeing unveils first Australian Super Hornet By Siva Govindasamy Boeing has unveiled the first of 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets (below) ordered by the Royal Australian Air Force. Canberra, the first export customer, is expected to set up its first operational Super Hornet squadron in March-April 2010. This will help the RAAF to retire its General Dynamics F-111s and ease the transition to the Lockheed Martin F-15 Joint Strike Fighter around 2015. Flighglobal.com reported earlier today that while Australia is unlikely to order additional F/A-18s, it could convert 12 of the Super Hornets that it has ordered into E/A-18G Growlers....

F SNIPPET: "In her sixth e-mail to me, Hamdan sent me a link to a MAS page attacking me for attempting to get a 2006 MAS New Year’s youth retreat (previously known as “jihad camp”) shut down for having, as its featured speaker, Youth Director of MAS-New Jersey and member of MAS’s Board of Trustees, Mazen Mokhtar. Like Hamdan’s calling the MAS-Minnesota quotes “lies,” MAS stated that I “falsely accused” Mokhtar of “having ties to al-Qaeda.” According to the U.S. government, Mokhtar was the “U.S.-based administrator” for qoqaz.net (Jihad in Chechnya), a website that was raising funds and recruiting fighters...

The Washington Post called it an "orgy of praise" and an "exercise in excess." They were referring to the star-studded, mega-televised Michael Jackson memorial service in Los Angeles. It just as accurately described the supposedly serious national media’s weeks of outsized hyperbole concerning the life and death of a man who was a pop sensation, to be sure, but also highly controversial, even scandalous. There certainly was the exercise in excess on the "news" programs. On the night of July 6, ABC, CBS, and NBC, paid twenty times more attention to Jackson (more than a week after his death)...

Boeing displays manned F/A-XX concept jet By Stephen Trimble Boeing Phantom Works has released a new concept image for a "sixth-generation" fighter to replace the F/A-18E/F fleet after 2025. The two-seat, twin-engined tailless concept jet is being offered for F/A-XX, a notional US Navy strategy that has not yet become a formal requirement. Although the image shows a tandem cockpit, Boeing says the aircraft could be manned or unmanned "depending on the missions assigned and technology maturity". © Boeing Boeing's latest concept image for F/A-XX The new image features a blended wing and a conventional fighter shape from the cockpit...

The highest resolution snapshots yet showing how bacteria adapt to survive treatment with quinolone drugs are giving drug makers an additional weapon in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Scientists at King's College London and St. George's, University of London, have shown exactly how quinolones, which are the second line of defence against diseases like pneumonia and meningitis, interact with their topoisomerase IV enzyme target. The researchers captured detailed crystal structures using high power x-rays produced at the Diamond synchrotron in the UK and its French counterpart, Soleil. From these images the team has been able to identify the amino acids that mutate...