NINE CONGRESSWOMEN WRITE: Dear Mr. President: Your Policies Are Damaging Women the Most.

UPDATE: Conor Friedersdorf is immune to irony. (Bumped).

THIS PRE-ELECTION REPORT FROM RON FOURNIER OF AP, which I’ve referenced before, looks pretty prophetic now:

Arrogance is a common vice in presidential politics. A person must be more than a little self-important to wake up one day and say, “I belong in the Oval Office.”

But there’s a line smart politicians don’t cross — somewhere between “I’m qualified to be president” and “I’m born to be president.” Wherever it lies, Barack Obama better watch his step.

He’s bordering on arrogance. . . . both Obama and his wife, Michelle, ooze a sense of entitlement.

“Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics,” his wife said a few weeks ago, adding that Americans will get only one chance to elect him.

Obama’s cool self-confidence got him into trouble in New Hampshire when he said Clinton was “likable enough,” faint praise that grated on female votes who didn’t appreciate him condescending to the former first lady. . . .

It may be that he has just the right mix of confidence and humility to lead the nation (Obama likes to say, “I’m reminded every day that I’m not a perfect man”). But if the young senator wins the nomination, even the smallest trace of arrogance will be an issue with voters who still consider him a blank slate. . . .

Voters won’t cut Obama as much slack on the humility test because he’s sold himself as something different. While rejecting the “me”-centric status quo and promising a new era of post-partisan reform, Obama has said the movement he has created is not about him; it’s about what Americans can do together if their faith in government is restored.

So how’s that going? And Paul Rahe wonders what happens next.

UPDATE: “What are a few broken promises between friends?”

MILLIONS? BIG DEAL. NOWADAYS IT’S PEANUTS UNLESS IT’S TRILLIONS. ABC News: Security for 9/11 Trials in NYC Will Cost More Than $400M.

BOSTON GLOBE: McGrory: Where’s Martha Coakley? “If you’re a registered voter in Massachusetts, your friendly Democratic Senate candidate, Martha Coakley, is sticking her thumb in your eye. Coakley, in exquisitely diva-like form, is refusing all invitations to debate her Republican opponent in the race, Scott Brown, unless a third-party candidate with no apparent credentials is included on the stage. She may also require a crystal bowl of orange-only M&Ms in her dressing room, but we haven’t gotten that far yet.”

FOUNDING BLOGGERS: Chris Matthews Is A Bigoted Liar And We Have The Proof.

MAYBE HE CAN HIRE BRISTOL PALIN’S PR FIRM TO SMOOTH THINGS OVER: David Letterman Offends Transgender Community.

WELL, IT’S HARD TO ARGUE WITH HIM: Paterson Speech Chastises Lawmakers. “In a strikingly blunt State of the State address, Gov. David A. Paterson chastised the lawmakers seated before him on Wednesday for spending the state into near-ruin and standing by as a plague of political corruption destroyed New Yorkers’ trust in their government.”

LOSING FAITH IN POLITICS: Cautionary words from Hitler’s Germany.

RUMOR: Chris Dodd for Treasury Secretary?

Might as well go with Peter Orszag as Families Czar.

UPDATE: “Integrity.”

DAVID HARSANYI: Flying With The Enemy.

Related: The Fine Line Between Airport Screener and Child Pornographer.

BLANCHE LINCOLN, ON THE ROPES? “A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Arkansas shows Lincoln’s support for reelection at 38% or 39% no matter which of four potential Republican challengers she is matched against. . . . The White House and the Democratic leadership have been telling their colleagues that health care is their political salvation, the only way of heading off the coming tidal wave election. But the voters don’t seem to agree.”

UPDATE: Related: Blanche Lincoln Rips Ben Nelson for ObamaCare Kickback. “Is that … a threat to vote no? That’d be an uncharacteristically shrewd move on Lincoln’s part, if so. Instead of being the disloyal Democrat who panicked at crumbling public support for the bill, she could torpedo it, save her own skin in the process, and frame herself as the crusader for good government whose conscience simply won’t permit her to endorse such bribe-taking. The left won’t even hassle her much over it since they hate the bill too. In fact, not only does she have political cover, she has some legal cover as well: Just as I’m writing this, I got a tip that Oklahoma’s Democratic state attorney general is joining the 13 Republican state AGs who want Nelson’s kickback investigated. This is your escape hatch, Blanche!”

I ALREADY LINKED TO IT, but I suppose the launch of Andrew Breitbart’s newest site, BigJournalism.com, deserves its own post. Keep up the good work, Andrew! What’s next, BigBlogs.com?

XENI JARDIN: “A 16-year-old boy in Ontario, Canada, says he met and fell in love with a 42-year Texas mother of four while playing World of Warcraft. Their chats were sexually explicit, she flew to Toronto, he snuck off there to meet her and escape in her rented car. He’s home now, and reportedly playing WoW again. The response from parents and police seems remarkably mellow. Would things have been handled differently if genders/ages were reversed?”

Yes.

SARAH PALIN TO HEADLINE first-ever Tea Party convention.

HEH: No Wonder Everybody Says He Looks “Tired.”

FORGET THE FLYING CAR: Here comes the flying motorcycle.

CHRIS DODD as a “Tea Party success story.”

CHANGE: White House: We will NOT discuss broken C-Span promise.

DECONSTRUCTING THOSE “Coexist” bumper stickers.

LIKING THE LEXUS 450H HYBRID. That’s the upscale version of my Highlander hybrid. With the 100K mileage mark now looming on the horizon, I’m at least thinking of moving up. I rode in one last year and it was very nice. On the other hand, the new Highlander Hybrids are pretty cushy, too . . . .

VIDEO: Press corps grills Gibbs: Um, didn’t Obama totally shamelessly lie about C-SPAN?

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Worst on-air mauling ever?

UPDATE: Reader Patrick McHale writes:

Two things struck me about the Glenn Beck clip.

1. Mr. Blumenthal is amazingly listless and boring in the defense of his actions. If this is how the guy campaigns, a decent Republican with a firm grasp of the issues facing the country and a modicum of charisma should be able to destroy him in a debate. A caveat, this is based on the performance in this clip, perhaps he is better when campaigning but it did not appear so from this interview. Politics is part presentation and his was awful.

2. The line of questioning from Beck shows how easy it is to call out Mr. Blumenthal on the over-reach of his office and his trouble in providing the legal basis for his actions.

“Listless and boring” indeed. He’s an apparatchik with an apparatchik’s ways.

ANOTHER WORKOUT BENEFIT: Exercise slows telomere decay?

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

ANDREW BREITBART: ‘You Are a Bad, Bad, Bad Journalist.’