Pat Dollard

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran announced Wednesday it launched a menagerie of animals—including a mouse, two turtles and worms—into space on a research rocket, a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology. Ahmadinejad also unveiled the model of a light booster rocket that is being built [...]

The Washington Times: The long-shot bid by Republicans to retake control of the Senate is suddenly in play, as the prospect of high-profile Republican candidates entering the fray has pushed the GOP even or ahead in polling for 10 races. The potential candidacies of former Republican Govs. George E. Pataki in New York and Tommy [...]

FOX News: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, going toe to toe with lawmakers Wednesday in defense of President Obama’s proposed budget, heard point blank from one critic that the administration can only blame Bush for so long. At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, lawmakers — weary of record deficits, wary of the president’s tax [...]

Politico: President Barack Obama might just wish he had opened even one health care meeting to the C-SPAN cameras. The issue is starting to follow him around. Once again Tuesday, he faced a question about it, from a high school student in Nashua, N.H., who asked him to grade the White House’s transparency efforts, given [...]

The Drudge Report: CBSNEWS anchorwoman and 60 MINUTES contributor Katie Couric faces a dramatic pay cut at the network, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT. CBS boss Les Moonves is determined to save money and trim expenses — from top to bottom — at the former crown jewel of broadcasting. Couric, the highest paid TV news [...]

MSNBC: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will meet today with Special Olympics head Tim Shriver at the White House to discuss Emanuel’s acknowledged use of the word “retarded.” The chief of staff invited Shriver last week — after Shriver wrote him to complain about the remark, a slur on special needs people. It [...]

WASHINGTON (AP) – Defense Secretary Robert Gates declined to say Tuesday whether he thinks it’s appropriate to try self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York civilian court, not far from the site of the attack. Prodded by Sen. John McCain to say if he agreed with Attorney General Eric Holder’s choice [...]

Taken from Sarah Palin’s Facebook: The newly-released mind-boggling, record-smashing $3,400,000,000,000 federal budget invites plenty of opportunity to debate the merits of incurring more and more debt that will drown the next generation of Americans. Never has it been possible to spend your way out of debt. So… let the debate begin. Included in the debate [...]

The Wall Street Journal: NAIROBI, Kenya—The militant group al Shabaab said it would ally with al Qaeda in a drive to establish an Islamic state in Somalia and fight for Muslims across East Africa, offering a fresh test for U.S.-backed African peacekeepers struggling to defend a weak Somali government. In a statement Monday, the group [...]