Rumors about Steve Jobs’s health surfaced again after he didn’t show up at the Apple iPhone launch on Verizon Wireless in New York last week, as was expected. This morning Apple released the following email to all Apple employees: Team, At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to...

If you haven’t gotten around to reading Matt Taibbi’s fun and informative Rolling Stone profile, The Crying Shame of John Boehner, I recommend it. But not for this passage which appears to contradict the sentiment I was pointing to the other day: The fact that Boehner supported TARP and No Child Left Behind and mega-handouts to the pharmaceutical industry and a range of other federal subsidies is hardly surprising, for this is what mainstream Washington politicians of both parties do...

If you haven’t already found reason enough to condemn Julian Assange, Farhad Manjoo offers up another: Here’s a fellow who’s been using computers since at least the mid-1980s, a guy whose globetrotting tech-wizardry has come to symbolize all that’s revolutionary about the digital age. Yet when he sits down to type, Julian Assange reverts to an antiquated habit that would not have been out of place in the secretarial pools of the 1950s: He uses two spaces after every period....

I spent over a decade working closely with elected officials — the descriptive term preferred, over politician, among those I know — and I wholeheartedly agree with Ezra Klein: I’ve met a lot of members of Congress, and I do think most of them are good, or at least are trying to be. Serving in Congress is actually a sort of crummy life: You live in a small apartment, you spend most of your time missing your family, you’re constantly in airports, and when you do get home you...

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Derived from a quote from Herodotus’ Histories (8.98), that phrase is inscribed on the James A. Farley Post Office building, the main post office building in New York City. The building is a McKim, Mead & White masterpiece and a totem to another time. I live in rural Georgia. You may have heard we had an unusual snow storm here in the South this week. Georgia is...

A 32 year-old California man was arrested today for making phone calls last month to Democratic Representative Jim McDermott’s office and leaving expletive-laden voice mails. In those messages he threatened to kill the congressman, his friends and family. The Caucus: The news came as law-enforcement officials briefed members of Congress on precautions they ought to take to ensure the security of their families and staff in the wake of the shootings in Tucson. A spokeswoman for the United States...

Four hours ago Sarah Palin posted this video response to the tragedy in Tucson. In it she addresses the debate that followed about whether the harsh political rhetoric played a role. Slickly but simply produced, beautifully written and clearly delivered uncut directly into the camera, she has struck the exact right tone to ensure her continuing political influence: The transcript is, of course, on her Facebook page. UPDATE: Media and weblog reaction is starting to come in. Much of it is focusing...

A Stewart fan, I tuned in to The Daily Show last night… Glynnis MacNicol called it an emotional, moving monologue. OTB’s Doug Mataconis calls it the smartest reaction of anyone to the tragedy in Arizona. I was disappointed; I thought it a rambling abdication of the Murrow mantle. Not for its perspective — did anyone really expect the Restoring Sanity maestro to take sides? — but what ever happened to the show must go on? In the monologue Stewart says, “frankly after...

The Navy said yesterday that it is investigating the “clearly inappropriate” videos made by USS Enterprise Capt. Owen Honors in 2006 and 2007 while he was the ship’s executive officer. Today they say it is unclear whether he will deploy with his ship when it leaves to support combat missions in Afghanistan this month. Broadcast to the crew of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the videos (sample below) include anti-gay slurs, mimicked masturbation, profanity, men pretending to...

Weren’t the founders equally concerned with government and aristocratic power? How is it that in America today we are all, Left and Right, still concerned about government but not so much the power of the American aristocratic class, our super rich? This thought comes in reaction to a Newsbusters critique (such as it is, where’s the beef?) of Nicholas Kristof’s New Years Day column, Equality, a True Soul Food: There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is...

An antidote for those of us guilty of slipping into sunny optimism… George Washington at Naked Capitalism makes the case that where we are now is worse than the Great Depression. This is how the hefty, link-filled post begins: The following experts have – at some point during the last 2 years – said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (and see this and this) Former Fed Chairman Paul...

With the purchase of a 2010 Prius I quickly morphed from a speed demon to a hypermiler, complaining anytime the car’s gas mileage dips below 50 MPG. Toyota’s simple energy monitor with instant fuel consumption metering and fuel consumption history has changed the way I drive, gently incentivizing greater fuel efficiency. But that Toyota Multi-Information Display has been around for nearly a decade. Now Nissan is upping the ante, using crowdsourcing to enhance the fuel economy of the Leaf: Nissan’s...

When I first heard I didn’t believe it. As politically savvy as Rendell’s stunt, I thought: In his column on Sports Illustrated’s website Monday, Peter King reports that Mr. Obama called Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie to thank the team for giving Vick a chance. Obama was “passionate about it,” Mr. Lurie told Mr. King, adding that the president said “it’s never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail. And he was happy that we did something on...

My headline is a Dave Camp quote. Camp is the 11 term Republican Congressman from Michigan who will chair the House Ways and Means Committee. George Will used the Camp quotable in a column last Thursday that included this gem: Many conservatives, including Camp, believe that although most Americans should be paying lower taxes, more Americans should be paying taxes. The fact that 46.7 million earners pay no income tax creates moral hazard – incentives for perverse behavior: Free-riding people...

They could have handled this worse. They could have waited until tomorrow, and turned the sick away on Christmas Eve. The Guardian: The head of the Catholic church in Phoenix has stripped Arizona’s largest hospital of its Catholic affiliation after he ruled that a decision to save the life of a mother by terminating her 11-week pregnancy was morally wrong. Bishop Thomas Olmsted announced yesterday that St Joseph’s hospital can no longer be considered to be Catholic. The ruling breaks...

Gregg Gllis, better known to fans by his stage name, Girl Talk, released his fifth album, All Day, last month. The album is composed of 373 overlapping samples of other artists’ songs. Fair use? Or copyright infringement? In 2008 the NYTimes famously called Gillis, a 29-year-old Pittsburgh native and former Case Western Reserve University biomedical engineering student, a “lawsuit waiting to happen.” In an interview to be published later this month, Michael Gallucci asked Gillis...

Jon Stewart is being given credit for breathing new life into the James Zadroga 9/11 Health Bill. This afternoon the Senate passed it unanimously. Then they passed the START treaty. LATimes: The Senate ratified the strategic nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia on Wednesday, fulfilling President Obama’s major foreign policy goal for the lame-duck session. By 71-26, the Senate approved the treaty, known as New START, which Republicans had blocked. A jubilant Vice President...

From the transcript: I am proud to sign a law that will bring an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (Applause.) It is a law — this law I’m about to sign will strengthen our national security and uphold the ideals that our fighting men and women risk their lives to defend. No longer will our country be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans who were forced to leave the military -– regardless of their skills, no matter their bravery or their zeal, no matter their years...

In light of the dialogue surrounding the repeal of DADT and a day after pointing to David Bahati, Ugandan homophobia and American evangelicals, a review of Martha Nussbaum‘s From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (Inalienable Rights), by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate from last spring: Nussbaum…explains that much of the political rhetoric around denying equal rights to gay Americans is rooted in the language of disgust. Their activities are depicted as “vile...

Against a backdrop of intense and overt homophobia in Uganda — a bill that would impose the death penalty for sexual activity between consenting same sex adults who are “serial offenders” will be considered early next year — a judge is expected to decide tomorrow whether a tabloid can continue to out gay men and lesbians. The publication ran a front page headline in October claiming 100 pictures of Uganda’s “top” homosexuals. Along with the photos, the publication...

As follow-up to the comments of Joe and Dorian on John McCain’s DADT performance yesterday, I point to James Fallows writing on the mystery of John McCain: I can remember when McCain seemed to be a potentially Eisenhower-ish, as opposed to an increasingly Bunning-like, figure in American public life. Broad-minded, tolerant, eager to bridge rather than open divides — this was the way he seemed to so many people starting from his arrival in the Congress in the 1980s. Seeing him now is...

HRC sings its praises. The 63-33 vote invokes cloture and moves the bill forward to debate and a final vote. TPM: Just so we’re clear. This is not the passage of the actual DADT repeal bill. This is the vote that allows a straight majority vote, which will likely come tomorrow. And since there are many more than 51 votes for repeal, that means that the actual bill will pass tomorrow and likely be signed by the president early next week. This vote means that DADT is history. Meanwhile, in a...

Charles Blow wonders, is the Democratic Party experiencing the beginnings of a purging of moderates akin to that seen on the right? His starting point is a Gallup Poll out Thursday: [T]he percentage of Democrats who identify as liberal rose by nearly a third from 2000 to 2007, for the first time matching the percentage who describe themselves as moderate. Over the same period, the percentage of conservative Democrats declined. In 2000, there was a relatively small margin between the number of liberal...

On Andrea Mitchell Reports this afternoon: SEN JOE LIEBERMAN: Right now I’d say the chances for this are really good. The moment for this has come… We’ve got four Republicans out publicly for repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I think we’re going to get one or two or three other Republicans tomorrow…. I think we’re on the verge of a historic breakthrough. Watch it: Tomorrow or Sunday? There are two votes scheduled in the Senate, on cloture (to cut off...

And some thought The Social Network would hurt him. The 26-year-old man once derided as the “toddler CEO” (a comment recently rescinded in a 60 Minutes love-fest) sits comfortably on top of the world. Or, at least, on top of Time’s read of the zeitgeist. USA Today: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 26, the second youngest person in the publication’s history. (Charles Lindbergh was younger.) Editor Richard Stengel unveiled the choices on Today this morning and said, “He’s...