The Ohio Senate approved a bill on Wednesday that would weaken the powers of public workers unions to negotiate their contracts. The vote came as union supporters protested the measure for a second day on the grounds of the state capitol in Columbus.

The GOP-sponsored bill passed the Senate by a vote of just 17-16, with six Republicans voting against it. As the roll call finished, dozens of union supporters in the Senate gallery chanted "Shame! Shame! Shame!" Screeches and shouts echoed down the corridors of the Statehouse, where hundreds of opponents of the bill had gathered for the day's events.

It was a conspiracy – 9/11. That is indisputable. There is no “lone gunman” to confuse matters. To say anything meaningful about 9/11, you have to be a conspiracy theorist. It is only a question of whose theory of the conspiracy you are prepared to believe. It is incredible that anyone still believes anything the Bush administration said about that tragic day.

Bob Woodward is “flat-out disgusted” with Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir.

“Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away,” Woodward writes on Tom Ricks’s Best Defense blog. “It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.”

The Washington Post reporter outlines contradictions in Rumsfeld’s version of events, including when the administration began focusing on Iraq, when the decision to go to war with the country was made, and on whom the responsibility of post-war planning ultimately fell.

A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday.

The report, by Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, offers fresh ammunition to Democrats seeking block the Republican plan, which would terminate dozens of programs and slash federal appropriations by $61 billion over the next seven months.