We’re all entitled to our own man-crushes-heck, I think Jeff Flake’s a dreamboat-but we are not entitled to our own facts. And on the facts of Obama’s actual governing policies, Brooks does some quick hand-waving about how the administration’s crack financial team have “tried with halting success to find a center-left set of restraints to provide some stability to market operations” (what does that even mean?), points out that lefties and righties both critize Tim Geithner, and so therefore MODERATE AND REASONABLE PROGRESSIVE. Here’s an example of his logic:

CIA drones are killing terrorists — and civilians — in Pakistan almost every day. The unmanned aircraft are becoming the weapon of choice in the fight against al-Qaida and its allies. But the political, military and moral consequences are incalculable. SPIEGEL ONLINE has investigated Barack Obama’s remote-controlled campaign against terrorism.

Did the fall of Saddam Hussein and the violent birth of Iraqi democracy really empower Iran?

That conventional wisdom might have been true in the shorter term during the chaotic Iraqi insurrection, but it was never an accurate assessment over the longer haul - as we are beginning to see, nearly seven years after the Iraq War began.

Netanyahu sensed a political advantage, and he’s pressing it. Martin Indyk, former American ambassador to Israel, explains Netanyahu’s remarkable decision to taunt his country’s most important ally.

What happened to Vice President Biden this week in Jerusalem was egregious but hardly new. Right-wing governments in Israel have regularly embarrassed high-level U.S. officials by making announcements about new settlement activity during or just after their visits. But it usually happens to secretaries of state. It infuriated James Baker, confounded Condoleezza Rice, and appalled Madeleine Albright.

ELSEWHERE in the world, Europe is widely regarded as a continent whose economy is rigid and sclerotic, whose people are work-shy and welfare-dependent, and whose industrial base is antiquated and declining-the broken cogs and levers that condemn the old world to a gloomy future. As with most clichés, there is some truth in it. Yet as our special report in this week’s issue shows, the achievements of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, tell a rather different story.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has begun to scale back its political engagement because the results have been few, government repression continues, and other opposition groups mistrust the movement. Instead it will focus on a traditional religious, educational, and social agenda. The consequence result will be an even greater lack of political competition.

In a detailed profile of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities over the last decade, this paper examines the Brotherhood’s relations with the Mubarak regime and other opposition groups, its legislative priorities and accomplishments, and its internal debate over the value of political participation.

The national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has long been intimidated by the Murdoch press in the obsessive manner of the campaign waged against the BBC. Funded directly by governments, the ABC has none of the nominal independence afforded by a licence fee. Last year, HarperCollins, owned by Murdoch, was awarded a lucrative “partnership” with ABC Books.

In 1983, there were 50 major corporations dominating the world’s media. By 2002, this had been reduced to nine. Rupert Murdoch says that eventually there will be three, including his own. If we accept this, media and information control will be the same, and we all shall be citizens of a murdochracy.

AUSTIN - The State Board of Education tentatively approved new standards for social studies on Friday with members divided along party lines - some blasting them as a fraud and conservative whitewash, others praising them as a tribute to the Founding Fathers that rightly portrays America as an exceptional country.

The standards, which will influence history and government textbooks arriving in public schools in fall 2011, were adopted by 10 Republicans against five Democrats after weeks of debate and across a racial and ideological chasm that seemed to grow wider as the proposal was finalized Thursday.

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving.

AUSTIN, Tex. - After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described the nearly 45-minute phone conversation in unusually undiplomatic terms, signaling that the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades after the embarrassment suffered by Vice President Biden this week when Israel announced during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem.

(Reuters) - Attorney General Eric Holder failed to tell the Senate about seven legal briefs he signed when lawmakers considered his nomination to his current job, according to a letter released on Friday.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - After dropping out of the gubernatorial race last year, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is running for lieutenant governor.
Newsom’s announcement wasn’t a surprise-he filed papers Feb. 17 with the secretary of state, a necessary step to run again for a statewide office. But he had refused to confirm his candidacy until Friday’s deadline.

Virtually every budget expert knows that the U.S. federal debt is on an unsustainable course. This means that something beyond our control is eventually going to force us to live within our means. Historically, it has been foreign bond holders who ultimately imposed fiscal austerity on profligate nations. That is why America’s growing foreign debt should be a matter of concern to policymakers.

Reading the findings this morning about how Lehman executives went about destroying a bank that was too big to fail reminded me that perhaps it’s time for the investigators, whether they be from Congress or the Angelides Commission — the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that is supposed to tell this country what really happened — to interview the real bad guys, the guys who bankrupted and crushed their own institutions.

NEW YORK (Fortune) – Unraveling the biggest-ever U.S. bankruptcy case isn’t cheap.

A report released Thursday by the examiner in the Lehman Brothers Chapter 11 case exposed the games the defunct investment bank’s executives played to stay in Wall Street’s good graces.

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Federal Spending: It’s a good thing President Obama isn’t in the private sector. If he was, the budget he just put forward for the next 10 years just might get him indicted for fraud.

Of all the promises the president made during the 2008 presidential campaign and last year’s budget debates, none rings so hollow now as the pledge of “fiscal responsibility.”

By Kevin Marder
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Historically, on average there have been two particularly auspicious times to buy stock each year. Right now is one of those times.

We are very bullish on shares, and for the following reasons:

We reported in May that after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households to 6.25% from 4.75%. In cities like Baltimore and Bethesda, which apply add-on income taxes, the top tax rate with the surcharge now reaches as high as 9.3%-fifth highest in the nation. Liberals said this was based on incomplete data and that rich Marylanders hadn’t fled the state.

Well, the state comptroller’s office now has the final tax return data for 2008, the first year that the higher tax rates applied. The number of millionaire tax returns fell sharply to 5,529 from 7,898 in 2007, a 30% tumble. The taxes paid by rich filers fell by 22%, and instead of their payments increasing by $106 million, they fell by some $257 million.

IF THERE IS A RECOVERY IN AMERICANS’ FINANCES, they don’t see it.

The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that the net worth of U.S. “households” increased at about a 5% annual rate in the fourth quarter, a good deal slower than the blistering 20% pace over the two previous quarters, but still a solid increase.

Not long after the news was posted on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site early that afternoon, the vituperative comments began to flow. Many simply dismissed the data as inaccurate or worse. The numbers simply didn’t jibe with what they were seeing in their own finances or those around them.

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The proposal would connect Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Wichita and Kansas City and could be moving full speed ahead if supporters can get lawmakers on board.

“It’s been an exciting project to be a part of because it keeps gaining momentum as it goes along,” said Joni Johnson of the Northern Flyer Alliance, a group who’s lobbying for the project.