Pelosi 'will ensure' Murtha win, Murtha ally says  —  House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will ensure that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) wins his race for majority leader, a key Murtha ally said Monday night.  —  "She will ensure that they [the Murtha camp] win.

Abramoff Reports to Prison Tomorrow; Offers Testimony on Democratic Senators  —  Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz Report:  —  Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff is scheduled to report to federal prison tomorrow, over the objections of federal prosecutors who say they still need his help to pursue leads on officials he allegedly bribed.

Plutonium found in Iran waste facility  —  VIENNA, Austria - International Atomic Energy experts have found unexplained plutonium and highly enriched uranium traces in a nuclear waste facility in Iran and have asked Tehran for an explanation, an IAEA report said Tuesday.

FOX NEWS INTERNAL MEMO: "BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ANY STATEMENTS FROM THE IRAQI INSURGENTS...THRILLED AT THE PROSPECT OF A DEM CONTROLLED CONGRESS"...  Huffington Post has obtained an internal Fox News memo written by the network's Vice President of news.  The memo details Fox's game plan …

Update: In FL-13, Court Battle Begins As Counting Continues  —  Lawyers for Democratic House candidate Christine Jennings threw down the gauntlet yesterday, asking a state court to secure electronic voting machines and data used in the election.  —  The move would preserve the equipment …

Swimming with anvils  —  Tony Blair is due to meet with the Iraq Study Group via video conference today, and shares the group's reported enthusiasm for talks with Iran and Syria.  Blair also is proposing a comprehensive Middle East peace plan as an aid to peace in Iraq.

Former President Bush Blames 'Bloggers' for 'Ugly' Political Climate  —  Last night on Fox News, former President George H.W. Bush said the current political climate has "gotten so adversarial that it's ugly."  Asked to offer an explanation for why there is this "incivility," Bush pinned the blame on bloggers.

EXCLUSIVE-UN report links Somali Islamists, foreign militants  —  A web of nations and armed groups are fuelling Somalia's march to war, according to a U.N. commissioned report that offers detailed evidence of cooperation between Somali Islamists and established Islamic militants.

The Karl Rove crush … My favorite article from the just-completed campaign season appeared in the October 9 issue of Time, in which Mike Allen and James Carney wrote a detailed piece about why Republicans were not worried about the upcoming elections.  "The G.O.P.'s Secret Weapon," read the bold headline.

For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is 'God's Foreign Policy'  —  As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel.

Dated Kerry, Married Dean  —  Who won the election for Democrats last week?  Apportion a large measure of credit to the national environment and to Republican mistakes.  Give the Democratic grassroots, who cultivated candidates, knocked on doors and raised money for people and causes ignored (at first) by the national party.

The Media Are the Enemy  —  You're not going to believe this one.  —  All our suspicions about mainstream media slanting and distorting the news from the Middle East are confirmed in a bombshell of a post by Bruno Stevens, at the Lightstalkers pro photographers' forum: The Lebanon 'garbage dump' story: complete explanation.

Judge Says Crack Sentencing Goes Too Far  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge who served as a top drug policy adviser to the first President Bush and advocated harsher penalties for crack cocaine crimes said Tuesday the policy had gone too far and was undermining faith in the judicial system.