Pat Dollard

Politico: With a first meeting called for Thursday, House and Senate Democrats are beginning active discussions on when — and for how long — to extend Bush-era middle-class tax cuts due to expire at the end of this year. The political and economic pressures to act are immense going into November’s elections. But Republicans won’t [...]

CHICAGO (AP) — Prosecutors at Rod Blagojevich’s corruption trial wheeled three carts crammed with documents into court each day, making it easy to believe estimates that it could take more than two months to present their case to jurors. Instead, it took them just five weeks despite having dozens of possible witnesses and hundreds of [...]

NBC: Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has battled coronary artery disease for decades, had a small heart pump implanted last week at Inova Fairfax Hospital. Cheney said in a statement that the operation went “very well” and that he is recuperating at the hospital after undergoing the procedure at the hospital’s Heart and Vascular [...]

Fox News: If not for an elusive, antelope-like creature in the Arizona desert, the Department of Homeland Security might have a much easier time cracking down on illegal immigration in hotbeds along the border. The Sonoran Pronghorn, which roams in Arizona, is an endangered species on the verge of extinction. As a result, environmentalists and [...]

The Washington Post: So is it go or no go? Shut down the gulf oil well, or let it keep gushing? Government officials were conferring Wednesday with BP executives and engineers about whether, and how, to proceed with the all-important “integrity test” that could temporarily shut down the well and could potentially throttle the flow [...]

Washington Times: The Obama administration said this week that there is no reason to sue so-called sanctuary cities for refusing to cooperate with federal authorities, whereas Arizona’s new immigration law was singled out because it “actively interferes” with enforcement. “There is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to [...]

Fox News: The group that uncovered evidence of large-scale illegal voting by felons in Minnesota’s contested 2008 Senate race says the whole mess might have been prevented if the federal government had just done its job. The federal government is required under the Civil Rights Act and the Help America Vote Act to make sure [...]

The Washington Post: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has approved a U.S.-backed plan to create local defense forces across the country in an attempt to generate new grassroots opposition to the Taliban, U.S. and Afghan officials said Wednesday. The plan Karzai approved calls for the creation of as many as 10,000 “community police” who would be [...]

Daisy Lowe for UK esquire HD from Greg Williams on Vimeo.