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<p>White House press secretary Jay Carney tells the press corps that President Obama's attack on the Supreme Court was misunderstood because he was speaking in "shorthand" since he is a former professor of law.</p> <p>Henry: The president is a former constitutional law professor. One of his professors is Laurence Tribe. He now says, in his words, the president “obviously misspoke earlier this week”, quote “he didn’t say what he meant and having said that in order to avoid misleading anyone, he had to clarify it.” I thought yesterday you were saying repeatedly that he did not misspeak. What do you make of the president’s former law professor saying he did?</p>

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is Howard Fineman last night on PMSNBC's The Last Word. Fineman now left Newsweek, as you know, and he's over at the Huffing and Puffington Post and they're having a discussion about Newt's debate performance last night. This was Howard Fineman's review. FINEMAN: Newt Gingrich, with this crowd and with these people here who want a fighter -- who like cockfighting, who like the hardscrabble, who like the confrontational approach -- that's what Newt Gingrich gives them. It may be shortsighted of them going down the road, but these people here in this state want to...

I hope I never write another piece on Sarah Palin again. The woman is a disease, and I choose my words carefully there. She is everything that is wrong with America, and indeed, that is the only reason I’m writing this at all. This essay is altogether far more a commentary on Governor Quit’s America than it is on the woman herself. Our national problem is Palinosis far more than it is Palin. There have always been people like Sarah Palin, and presumably there always will be. The two real questions are why anyone cares about them and, most astonishingly,...

I just have to vent to someone - I'm so angry!!!! I am doing a Masters in Counseling and currently have a class in Marriage and Family issues. The text is revoltingly biased - in which white, Christian, heterosexual males are usually to blame for everything. This particular unit is on "diverse" types of families - including gay, which the book portrays and just as good, if not better than heterosexual 2-parent families for children. I am so pissed off at the dismissive attitude the authors take toward those who have legitimate concerns about the long -term effects on children,...

A new Gallup poll reveals that voters who identify as more conservative, do not have college degrees and who make less than $24,000 annually are more likely to support former Alaska governor Sarah Palin over Mitt Romney for president in 2012. Romney, on the other hand, has evidently fared better with voters who describe themselves as “liberals to moderate”, have received degrees of higher learning and who make at least $90,000 a year. The split drives home the challenges facing any would-be GOP candidate: Catering to the party’s base without completely alienating those on the fence, and appealing to voters...

"We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic."

When I covered George W. Bush’s White House, my job was made easier by the simplicity of the subject. The president had a few defining mantras — Cut taxes! Rally the base! Terrorists hate freedom! With us or against us! — and most of his decisions could be understood, even predicted, by applying one of the overarching philosophies. With President Obama, there is no such luxury. The political right is befuddled as it tries to explain him: First, Obama was a tyrant and a socialist; now he’s a weakling who refuses to lead. The political left is almost as confused,...

The New York Sun has an article today called “Sarah Palin for the Fed?” in which they discuss how the former governor of Alaska and 2008 vice-presidential candidate has been running rings around all of Barack Obama’s high-priced, high-powered, ideologically impeccable financial men: “The big question as Chairman Bernanke gets set for his first quarterly press conference is how Sarah Palin was able to figure out sooner than everyone else that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of quantitative easing wouldn’t work. Disappointment in the Fed’s policies is being reported this morning at the top of page one of the New York...

It’s healthy, even natural, for Americans to feel populist resentment against elites that base their status through inherited wealth and family connections. But it’s toxic, misguided and profoundly stupid to focus public hostility on leaders who achieved their positions through education, diligence and ability. Recent sniping between Sarah Palin and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer highlights the crucial distinction between rebellious attitudes that attack unfairly arrogated power and privilege and a trendy neo-populism that attacks brains. When Krauthammer dared to suggest that the former Alaska governor looked less than “presidential” while shooting caribou with Kate Goselin on her hit TLC...

This morning I went to TJ's only to see the sidewalk in front of the store loaded with young people holding signs that read "Traitor Joe's", "Duquesnes Students for Fair Food", and "Fair Wages, Fair Food". I thought "WTH?" and as i approached the entrance, I was confronted by two college students (one wearing a North Face jacket) who told me that the "workers in Florida who pick the tomatoes sold by Trader Joes, like, don't get paid enough, like hardly anything". I told this little punk that most of those "workers" are in the U.S. illegally, that he should...

During remarks that she made for the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launch of a new program that according to Clinton will now become the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.

If you believe any of the hogwash about the irrelevance of the religious right to this election, take a look at the numerous right-wing evangelical websites promoting the 40/40 Prayer Vigil, which began in September with a prayer for Christian voter registration and ends--you guessed it--just before election day, Nov. 2. The 40/40 stands for the forty days and forty nights that Jesus supposedly spent wandering in the desert before finally saying no to Satan's temptations. I'm sure that you won't have any trouble figuring out which political party the Southern Baptist Convention--America's largest religious denomination and one of the...

Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford University climate scientist who for decades built the case that global warming, while laden with complexity, justified an aggressive response, has died. Ralph Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, of which Schneider was a longtime member, said he had confirmed the news. Schneider, who was 65, spent decades studying the forces influencing climate and the policy implications of human-driven warming, as well as pressing the case for action to curb emissions of greenhouse gases even as he battled and subdued a rare cancer in recent years. In an e-mail message to a...

"To see what is in front of one's nose," George Orwell famously asserted, "needs a constant struggle." Congratulations this week to three journalists who have finally taken up that constant struggle: Christopher Buckley, David Gergen and David Brooks. All three used to insist that Obama was some species of centrist or moderate. Now that Obama has proposed the most massive expansion of government in the history of the republic, each has recognized that just conceivably he might have been mistaken. A humorist--and, I should disclose, an old friend--Christopher Buckley exercised his acute comic sense during the presidential campaign, judging John...

Among the many wonders to be expected from an Obama administration, if Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is to be believed, is ending "the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life." He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics. Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are "interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity," people who "read the classics." It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Adlai Stevenson was...

What is Sarah Palin? What is her mission? Why did the Republican strategy elite–never known for stupidity or for honor, pick Palin? Palin herself tells us in every speech and interview she gives: “I’m a soccer mom. Do you know the definition of a soccer mom? A pit bull with lipstick.” Mainstream media wake up: Sarah Palin is telling you: Her role in the campaign is simple: Pit Bull. By the way, Pit Bull is how she won election in her little town. She won 617-413 based on a campaign that hinged on ideological issues and her proposed ban of...

find a strong parallel between the mentality of these creatine-loving individuals and the mentality of our current Administration on foreign policy. Mr. Bush loves to use the brute force of the American military to scare potential enemies into submission, while also giving the proverbial dead lift to any country to whom he chooses to "bring" democracy. Like our friends in the raised Silverado Z71, the Bush Doctrine is chock-full of brute strength, but lacks true power, flexibility, focus, and endurance. It lacks power because it has severely overestimated our military's ability to lift a country to peaceful democracy. It lacks...

To live peacefully with Muslims and Jews, Christians must put aside the notion that their faith requires the creation of a Christian kingdom on Earth, a Lipscomb University theologian told an interfaith gathering at the university. "We are not going to get very far in our relationship with Jews or Muslims if we do not let go of this idea," Lipscomb professor Lee Camp said at Tuesday's conference. The unusual gathering of several dozen clergy and lay people was devoted to resolving religious conflict in Nashville and around the world. "We need to forsake the Christendom model," Camp said. "The...

Martin wants to point out that if it weren't for the icky evangelicals, we'd still have Allen as Senator in Va.

The cross from the altar area of the chapel at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., has been removed to ensure the space is seen as a nondenominational area, explains Melissa Engimann, assistant director for Historic Campus. "In order to make the Wren Chapel less of a faith-specific space, and to make it more welcoming to students, faculty, staff and visitors of all faiths, the cross has been removed from the altar area," Engimann announced in an e-mail to staff. The cross will be returned to the altar for those who wish to use it for events,...