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.

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.

Bush Says He's Open to Change in Iraq, but ...  President Bush spent more than an hour on Monday with the independent panel examining strategic options for Iraq, and cautioned afterward that while he was open to new ideas, it was important for "people making suggestions to recognize …

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.

The Military Commissions Act in action  —  The Bush administration's treatment of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri ought to be shocking and horrifying.  Instead, it is now not only depressingly familiar, but also something that is formally sanctioned by the U.S. Congress.

Get Jim in Here, Pronto!  —  If I told you that there was something in Washington called the Baker commission but didn't tell you what it was about, you still could probably name many of its members.  If you are of a certain age, you might wonder, "Jim or Howard?"  And you might have a quibble or two.

Blogging for Bolton  —  The Democrats want John Bolton's scalp.  This is a moment for conservatives to stand up to the Left's empty, vindictive obstructionism and support a strong voice for America's interests at the corrupted, soft-on-jihad offices of Turtle Bay.  —  We're videoblogging for Bolton over at Hot Air.

Al-Qaida plotting nuclear attack on UK, officials warn  —  Vikram Dodd  —  British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaida is determined to attack the UK with a nuclear weapon, it emerged yesterday.  The announcement, from an officially organised Foreign Office counter-terrorism briefing …

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.

Mo. Panel's Report Links Immigration To Abortion  —  A Republican-led legislative panel says in a new report on illegal immigration that abortion is partly to blame because it is causing a shortage of American workers.  —  The report from the state House Special Committee on Immigration Reform …

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 …

Bring On the Seinfeld Congress  —  A do-nothing Congress is bad for the local economy.  But it's fine for the rest of the country.  —  To continue reading this article, you must be a subscriber to TimesSelect.  Log in now.  —  What is TimesSelect?  —  Newspaper subscribers, upgrade to TimesSelect for free now.

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.

The Trash Princess  —  Why Americans love to hate Paris Hilton  —  Maybe 500 channels and an epidemic of bloggerhea mean that Americans have less of a common culture, but we all still share . . . Paris Hilton.  The naughty blond heiress is, like, wallpapering our brains.