Bush accepts Bolton's U.N. resignation  —  WASHINGTON - Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.  —  Bolton's nomination has languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee …

Rumors: Al-Sadr dead, Abu Deraa dead, Saddam dead spared?  —  The Al-Sadr rumor is paper thin.  It showed up on a Sunni message board, then got picked up at Free Republic, now it's here.  Why?  Because news today has been so slow, Fox had to resort to this:  —  So never mind about al-Sadr.

Bush Meets With Rival of Iraqi Leader  —  President Bush met today with one of the most powerful Shiite leaders in Iraq — a political rival of Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki — and urged him to "reject the extremists that are trying to stop the advance of this young democracy."

Liberaltarians  —  Brink Lindsey is vice president for research and author of The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture, which will be published this spring.  —  The conservative movement—and, with it, the GOP—is in disarray.

NORTH KOREA SUSPECTED OF COLLECTING MILLIONS IN REINSURANCE FRAUD  —  NEW YORK — The cash-strapped regime of North Korea, which has a worldwide reputation for its criminal dealings in weapons sales, drugs and near-perfect counterfeit U.S. $100 bills, may have found a new illicit source …

NASA Says It Will Set Up Polar Moon Camp  —  NASA announced Monday it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts return to the moon.  —  It is a sweeping departure from the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s …

Trapped in the Closet  —  Mark Foley's ambition to be a politician became the family dream.  He was always in a hurry.  His doting parents had no problem with his dropping out of Palm Beach Junior College at age 20; they helped him open a diner in downtown Lake Worth and turn it into the platform for his grandiose goals.

Gwyneth Paltrow: I'm Proud to Be American  —  Gwyneth Paltrow is "deeply upset" over stories claiming she made anti-American remarks, and tells PEOPLE exclusively that she never said anything against her native country.  —  "First of all I feel so lucky to be American.

Dead Russian spy to be buried as a Muslim  —  Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian intelligence agent poisoned in London, is to be buried according to Muslim tradition after converting to Islam on his deathbed.  —  The spy's father, Walter Litvinenko, said in an interview published today that his son …

Islamic group wants Ellison critic removed from Holocaust council  —  WASHINGTON - An Islamic civil rights group said Monday that a columnist who criticized Rep.-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Quran during his ceremonial swearing-in should be removed from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Video: Comedy Central Plans Cartoon Mocking Bush Administration  —  Oy. … Honestly, I don't have a problem with political satire, even when it mocks the Bush administration or Republicans (SNL's skit on Rice's confirmation is one of my favorites), but I do have one requirement: it has to be funny.

Obama Meets Party Donors in New York  —  Senator Barack Obama treaded onto Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's home turf last night to meet with prominent Democratic donors and feel out those who might prefer the sound of President Obama to President Clinton (as in Hillary, not Bill).

Military mockery  —  Democrats harbor outdated, outlandish views of those who serve our nation  —  "Making mock o' uniforms what guards you while you sleep is cheaper than them uniforms, and they're starvation cheap."  —Rudyard Kipling, (Tommy) 1892  —  Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. …

Biden charms local GOP  —  It was unlike most Columbia Rotary Club luncheons.  —  The speaker was U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, a likely candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.  —  The chief topic: the Iraq war.  —  The audience: predominantly Republican.

Bush Sticks to His Guns  —  While George W. Bush's many critics and detractors portray him as facing the same dilemma as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Bush himself seems determined to proceed the way Harry Truman did in Korea — or, as some might put it, as Winston Churchill did after Dunkirk.

After a Rush, Pace of Levee Work Downshifts  —  NEW ORLEANS — For months, the Army Corps of Engineers raced through the city, frantically patching broken levees and building floodgates to prepare for a hurricane season, now ended, that produced no hurricanes here.