U.S. officials said Tuesday that a North Korean ship has turned around and is headed back toward the north where it came from, after being tracked for more than a week by American Navy vessels on suspicion of carrying illegal weapons.

The move keeps the U.S. and the rest of the international community guessing: Where is the Kang Nam going? Does its cargo include materials banned by a new U.N. anti-proliferation resolution?

The ship left a North Korean port of Nampo on June 17 and is the first vessel monitored under U.N. sanctions that ban the regime from selling arms and nuclear-related material.

The Navy has been watching it — at times following it from a distance. It traveled south and southwest for more than a week; then, on Sunday, it turned around and headed back north, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

Democrat Al Franken, a satirist turned politician, was declared the winner of a Senate seat in Minnesota on Tuesday, clearing the way for President Barack Obama's party to secure a critical 60-seat majority in the Senate.

Ending one of the longest Senate races ever, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected each of Republican Norm Coleman's five legal arguments that an earlier recount of the November 4 vote had been unfair. Coleman quickly conceded.

Franken will become the 58th Senate Democrat, the most the party has had since 1981. Two independents routinely vote with the Democrats, giving the party the 60 votes needed to clear Republican procedural hurdles known as filibusters.

Stocks fell sharply in midday trading Tuesday after a private research group said consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in June.

Investors had been expecting the Conference Board's measure of consumer sentiment to hold steady following big jumps in April and May. Consumer confidence is closely watched because spending from consumers accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

The latest data on the troubled housing sector provided no help to the market.

The number of homeowners at least two months behind or in foreclosure jumped in the first quarter from the previous quarter, a Treasury Department report said Tuesday. And much of the increase came from borrowers who had good credit.

U.S. consumer confidence took an unexpectedly steep slide in June, figures released on Tuesday showed, suggesting the 18-month-long recession had yet to loosen its grip on the economy.

A separate report on April house prices in major cities offered some encouraging signs that the worst of the housing slump may be over, but that was not enough to lift investors' spirits. Another crop of economic data showed business activity in New York City and the Midwest remained weak, while retail chains slogged through a rough June.

To go through the 9,800 word profile/excoriation of Sarah Palin by Todd Purdum in Vanity Fair and Fisk it line by line would take an enormous amount of time and space, and probably more time than you’re willing to devote to reading it. So for now, the low-lights:

Lefty journalist Todd Purdum has a hit piece in the new Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin. You don’t have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the ground.
Meanwhile, on the day Purdum’s piece hit the web (today), a journalist who had expressed suspicions in the past that elements of the McCain campaign had undercut Palin suddenly got a friendly e-mail from top McCain-Palin campaign strategist Steve Schmidt. This journalist hadn’t heard from Schmidt in months. Perhaps Steve was nervous someone would finger him for the Purdum piece.

Many people will dissect Todd Purdum's 9,800-word opus on the rise, fall, and continuing journey of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, but perhaps readers ought to be a bit wary when they encounter sentences like this:

Palin herself often sounds tired and resentful these days, as if wondering whether she should have blinked and just said no to John McCain.

Telepathy is a great and rare gift, and I envy reporters who have been granted it through genetic mutation.
Can she be simultaneously tired, resentful, and thinking she shouldn't have run for vice-president, and at the same time, nostalgic for the campaign trail, eager to return to national issues and focused on Washington D.C. beltway politics?

Or is it that Sarah Palin is now a blank slate, upon which national magazine writers project whatever negative narrative they prefer?

I assume that everybody has read the hit piece that will be published in the August edition of Vanity Fair. The Castroesque article is written by liberal writer Todd Purdam, the husband of former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Bill Clinton actually doesn't think too highly of Purdam, notwithstanding his marriage to Myers:

There was a time earlier this year when Republican Pat Toomey was the skunk at the Republican establishment party, a conservative gadfly whose prospective primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter seemed to jeopardize GOP control of the seat.

Even after Specter switched to the Democratic Party in April, party leaders continued to dismiss Toomey’s chances and looked elsewhere for a 2010 nominee.

Today, however, the party is gradually falling in line behind his bid, setting aside reservations about his electability and getting accustomed to the idea of the former Club for Growth president as the GOP Senate nominee.

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state's long-running Senate race.

The high court rejected a legal challenge from Republican Norm Coleman, whose options for regaining the Senate seat are dwindling.

Justices said Franken is entitled to the election certificate he needs to assume office. With Franken and the usual backing of two independents, Democrats will have a big enough majority to overcome Republican filibusters.

Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics, with a lucrative book contract for her story. But what Alaska’s charismatic governor wants the public to know about herself doesn’t always jibe with reality. As John McCain’s top campaign officials talk more candidly than ever before about the meltdown of his vice-presidential pick, the author tracks the signs—political and personal—that Palin was big trouble, and checks the forecast for her future.

A blockbuster Vanity Fair piece by Todd Purdum quotes many senior members of John McCain's presidential campaign team trashing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

"They can't quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be."

Said one aide: "I think, as I've evaluated it, I think some of my worst fears… the after-election events have confirmed that her more negative aspects my have been there… I saw her as a raw talent. Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better."

President Obama's Iran policy is incoherent and obsolete. Maybe David Axelrod should take note.

On Sunday, Mr. Obama's consigliere was asked about Iran by ABC's George Stephanopoulos and NBC's David Gregory. Mr. Gregory asked whether there "should be consequences" for the regime's violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations. "The consequences, I think, will unfold over time in Iran," answered Mr. Axelrod.

Mr. Stephanopoulos quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that "this time, the Iranian nation's reply will be harsh and more decisive to make the West regret its meddlesome stance." Said Mr. Axelrod, "I'm not going to entertain his bloviations that are politically motivated." As for whether the administration wasn't selling short the demonstrators, Mr. Axelrod could only say that "the president's sense of solicitude with those young people has been very, very clear."

The Health and Human Services Department Monday rescinded three controversial Bush administration regulations governing Medicaid and said it would postpone and possibly change or rescind a fourth.

The regulations were among seven that President George W. Bush ’s administration tried to implement in 2007 and 2008 that sent health care providers, state governments and advocates for the poor into a lobbying frenzy. Critics charged that the administration was trying to shift to the states, from the federal government, the burden for about $19.6 billion in Medicaid spending over five years. Medicaid, a health insurance entitlement program for the poor, is a shared federal-state program, and there is constant tension between the two over costs.

North Korea appears to be enriching uranium, potentially giving the state that has twice tested a plutonium-based nuclear device another path to making atomic weapons, South Korea's defense minister said on Tuesday.

"It is clear that they are moving forward with it," Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee told a parliamentary hearing, adding such a programme was far easier to hide than the North's current plutonium-based activities.

North Korea earlier this month responded to U.N. punishment for its most recent nuclear test in May by saying it would start enriching uranium for a light-water reactor.

Experts said destitute North Korea lacks the technology and resources to build such a costly civilian reactor but may use the programme as a cover to enrich uranium for weapons.

North Korea, which has ample supplies of natural uranium, would be able to conduct an enrichment programme in underground or undisclosed facilities and away from the prying eyes of U.S. spy satellites.

The last time Indiana missed its deadline for passing a budget and had to shut down the government was during the Civil War.

But on Monday, as lawmakers raced to hammer out an agreement over school funding, state agencies began preparing 31,000 workers to be temporarily out of a job. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has warned residents that most of the state's services — including its parks, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and state-regulated casinos — would be shuttered unless a budget is passed today.

Indiana is one of five states — along with Arizona, California, Mississippi and Pennsylvania — bracing for possible shutdowns this week as time runs out for lawmakers to close billion-dollar gaps in their fiscal 2010 budgets.

Of the 46 states whose fiscal year ends today, 32 did not have budgets passed and approved by their governors as of Monday afternoon, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Monday that he is considering running for governor in 2010.

Appearing on CNN’s “American Morning,” Giuliani insisted that “I don’t know if I am or if I’m not” running for governor. But pushed further, the former Republican presidential candidate conceded that he is indeed “thinking about it.”

“I don’t know if I’m at the point of seriously considering it,” he said. “It’s a little too early.”

According to a June Quinnipiac University poll, Giuliani holds a 52 percent to 34 percent advantage over the unpopular Democratic Gov. David Paterson in a potential general election matchup.

Giuliani’s chances, however, are less promising against a stronger Democratic opponent. In a potential general election matchup against Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the same poll shows Giuliani trailing 51 percent to 39 percent.

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla, a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

California has about 14% of the total number of dentists nationwide–the largest percentage of any state. This fact sheet provides county-by-county estimates of the distribution and characteristics of California's more than 31,000 licensed dentists, spotlighting dental health professional shortage areas and noting key demographic trends. This fact sheet presents a snapshot of licensed and actively practicing dentists in California in the third quarter of 2008. However, changes in licensure, practice status, and reported practice location of dentists continuously occur, leading to discrepancies with data obtained in other time periods.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday declined to reaffirm President Barack Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on families earning under $250,000 per year, calling questions about the promise — asked in the context of a possible tax on health benefits — speculative.

Gibbs asserted it would by “hypothetical” to talk about raising health benefit taxes because lawmakers have not approved health reform legislation and Obama has not yet been put in the position of having to decide whether to back such a tax

“We’re going to let Congress do its job,” Gibbs said.

During the presidential campaign, Obama used his pledge not to tax health care benefits to bash his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who said he would include the tax as part of his health plan.

he UCLA Center for Health Policy Research has revised an earlier study detailing severe shortages of dentists in several California counties.

A technical error — which arose because some ZIP Codes span two counties — caused an underestimate in the total number of active dentists and the ratio of dentists to population in some areas. The overall remain largely the same: Some counties are experiencing a severe shortage and others may soon see shortages when aging dentists retire.

"In most cases, it didn't matter," said the report's primary author, Nadereh Pourat, who is the head of research planning at the UCLA School of Public Health. "The problem was in the border areas where a ZIP Code crosses two counties."

"Distribution and Characteristics of Dentists Licensed to Practice in California, 2008" Fact Sheet

A technical error was found in the fact sheet entitled, "Distribution and Characteristics of Dentists Licensed to Practice in California, 2008," originally released on Thursday, May 28th. On June 3, the fact sheet was withdrawn from the Center's Web site and an announcement posted in our newsroom. A revised version of the fact sheet has subsequently been released and is currently posted on the Center's Web site.

The revisions, detailed below, do not substantively change the findings: Some California counties experience severe shortages of dentists. Other counties may experience shortages due to a larger number of dentists near retirement age than newly licensed dentists starting their practices in those areas. There are no changes in the number of DHPSAs, the number of community care clinics with dental services, or the number of dentists practicing in those clinics.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

California is preparing to issue IOUs to its creditors this week as it grapples with an unprecedented cash crunch and prepares to begin its new fiscal year deep in the red.

Once the US’s richest state, California now has the dubious distinction of having the worst credit rating in the country.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed.

"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Zelaya, in office since 2006, was overthrown in a dawn coup on Sunday after he angered the judiciary, Congress and the army by seeking constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election beyond a four-year term.

The Honduran Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, and the country's Supreme Court said it had ordered the army to remove Zelaya.

Voters remain closely divided over the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, with a high level of intensity on both sides of the issue.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of U.S. voters at least somewhat favor the Democrats’ health care reform plan, while 45% are at least somewhat opposed.

South Korea is acquiring 40 U.S.-made missiles for an Aegis destroyer this month to boost its defences amid reports North Korea may soon test-fire missiles, Yonhap news agency on Sunday quoted a military source as saying.

North Korea, which rattled regional security with a May 25 nuclear test, is preparing to test a long-range missile that could hit U.S. territory and mid-range missiles that could hit all of South Korea, a South Korean presidential Blue House official said last week.

The surface-to-air missiles for the Aegis destroyer, designed to track and shoot down objects including missiles, can hit targets up to 160 km away, Yonhap quoted the source as saying.

North Korea has also warned ships to stay away from waters off its east coast city of Wonsan, Japan's Coast Guard said last week, in a possible indication of a missile test.

The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

North Korea criticized the U.S. on Monday for positioning missile defense systems around Hawaii, calling the deployment part of a plot to attack the regime and saying it would bolster its nuclear arsenal in retaliation.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he ordered the deployment of a ground-based, mobile missile intercept system and radar system to Hawaii amid concerns the North may fire a long-range missile toward the islands, about 4,500 miles away.

"Through the U.S. forces' clamorous movements, it has been brought to light that the U.S. attempt to launch a pre-emptive strike on our republic has become a brutal fact," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.

The paper also accused the U.S. of deploying nuclear-powered aircraft and atomic-armed submarines in waters near the Korean peninsula, saying the moves prove "the U.S. pre-emptive nuclear war" on the North is imminent.

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

Mitt Romney says publicly he’s not considering another presidential campaign, most recently on Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But many of his loyalists expect one and remain at the ready for 2012.

When dozens of former Romney aides and advisers convened on the terrace of Charlie Spies’ fashionable Penn Quarter loft earlier this year on a warm February night, the purpose was ostensibly to help raise money for the Virginia state House race of Romney strategist Barbara Comstock.

Honduran soldiers rousted President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and exiled him at gunpoint Sunday to Costa Rica, halting his controversial plan to stay in power but spurring fresh concerns about democratic rule across Latin America.

Supporters of Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya gather in front of the president residency in Tegucigalpa June 28, 2009. Witnesses said Zelaya was detained at home by troops in a constitutional crisis over his attempt to win re-election. CNN's Spanish-language channel later quoted Costa Rican officials as saying he was in Costa Rica and seeking political asylum. (REUTERS)

Big Brother Episodes posted on the internet.

Two widely cited examples of this alleged war were revisions made to a government climate report by a former industry lobbyist and a NASA official's ham-handed efforts to prevent noted climate scientist James Hansen, a NASA employee, from commenting publicly on climate change policy. Could the Obama Administration be guilty of equivalent science politicization? Perhaps. Two weeks ago, Roger Pielke Jr. marshaled evidence that a government contractor with substantial industry ties may have been responsible for misrepresenting the relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature in an important government report on climate change. This past week, the EPA was accused of suppressing an agency's employee's comments on the EPA's proposed greenhouse gas "endangerment finding" (the official finding that greenhouse gas emissions may threaten public health and welfare). Here again, Pielke finds the parallel with the Bush Administration's conduct instructive.

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message (PDF) to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward…and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won't rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.

"The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year — despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.

Soldiers on Sunday arrested the Honduran president and took him to an air force base just before voting was to begin on a disputed constitutional election, according to the Associated Press.

President Manuel Zelaya's private secretary told the AP that Zelaya was arrested and brought to a base on the outskirts of the capital, Tegucigalpa.

An AP reporter saw dozens of green-helmeted soldiers surround the president's house Sunday morning and then later jump in trucks and drive away, according to the report. About 60 police continue to guard the house, it said, adding that the president did not appear.

Troops in Honduras have ousted the president and flown him out of the country after a power struggle over plans to change the constitution.

After arriving in Costa Rica, deposed President Manuel Zelaya said he had been kidnapped by soldiers in a "coup".

Mr Zelaya, elected for a non-renewable four-year term in January 2006, wanted a vote to extend his time in office.

His arrest came just before the start of a referendum ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and opposed by Congress.

Yet if the culture is moving on, national politics is not, or at least not as rapidly. Mr. Obama has yet to fulfill a campaign promise to repeal the policy barring openly gay people from serving in the military. The prospects that Congress will ever send him a bill overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, appear dim. An effort to extend hate-crime legislation to include gay victims has produced a bitter backlash in some quarters: Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, sent a letter to clerics in his state arguing that it would be destructive to “faith, families and freedom.”

An eerie stillness has settled over this normally frenetic city.
In less anxious times, the streets are clogged with honking cars and cranky commuters. But on Saturday, drives that normally last 45 minutes took just a third of the time, and shops were mainly empty. Even Tehran’s beauty salons, normally hives of activity, had few customers; at one, bored workers fussed over one another’s hair.

People who did venture out said they were dispirited by the upheaval that has shaken this country over the two weeks since the contested presidential election, and worried they would get caught up in the brutal government crackdown of dissent that has followed.

In the high-stakes battle over health care, a growing cadre of liberal activists is aiming its sharpest firepower against Democratic senators who they accuse of being insufficiently committed to the cause.

The attacks — ranging from tart news releases to full-fledged advertising campaigns — have elicited rebuttals from lawmakers and sparked a debate inside the party over the best strategy for achieving President Obama's top priority of a comprehensive health-system overhaul.

The rising tensions between Democratic legislators and constituencies that would typically be their natural allies underscore the high hurdles for Obama as he tries to hold together a diverse, fragile coalition. Activists say they are simply pressing for quick delivery of "true health reform," but the intraparty rift runs the risk of alienating centrist Democrats who will be needed to pass a bill.

* Genetic condition had ruined his lungs and left him unable to sing
* He became so skeletal, doctors believed he was anorexic
* He had nightmares about being murdered – and wanted to die
* He used swine flu as an excuse to avoid coming to England
* He thought he was agreeing to 10 concerts – it was 50

Whatever the final autopsy results reveal, it was greed that killed Michael Jackson. Had he not been driven – by a cabal of bankers, agents, doctors and advisers – to commit to the gruelling 50 concerts in London’s O2 Arena, I believe he would still be alive today.

Congressional Republicans are finding much to dislike in Democratic health care proposals, illustrating the immense difficulty Democrats face in fashioning an overhaul that can attract enough Republican support to be portrayed as bipartisan.
Republicans’ primary objection is the Democrats’ push for a public health insurance plan that would serve as an alternative to private coverage. Republicans say such a plan would cause the private insurance market to unravel.

There is also the potential 10-year price tag of $1 trillion or more for the overhaul, coupled with the prospect of new taxes or fees to offset the cost. And Republicans see elements of the Democratic plans as government intrusion into personal health care decision making.

The 8 cap-and-tax Republican turncoats again are:

Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330
Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165
Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385 (And he’s seriously considering running for Senate!)
Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361
LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572
McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611
Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761
Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765

In a lousy week, Mark Sanford had one stroke of luck: Michael Jackson chose the day after the governor's news conference to moonwalk into eternity, and thus gave the media's pop therapists a more rewarding subject to feast on – or at any rate one of the few stories whose salient points are weirder than Sanford's. Not that the governor didn't do his best to keep his end up on the pop culture allusions: "I've spent the last five days crying in Argentina," he revealed, in presumably unconscious hommage to Evita.

The mystery of who revealed Gov. Mark Sanford’s e-mail messages may finally be solved. A business associate of Mr. Sanford’s Argentine mistress said Friday that private messages between the two lovers had been sent anonymously to a South Carolina newspaper last December by an Argentine man the mistress had briefly dated.

Earlier this week, the White House officially abandoned President Obama's "Sunlight before Signing" pledge (which I discussed here and here). As the NYT reported:

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it.

“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent and accountable.
The Administration also appears to be backing off its promises for greater access to government documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
+++++++
The Waxman-Markey climate bill passed 219-212. Any guess how many of those 219 (or, for that matter, the 212) really know everything that is in the bill?