BOXER'S LOW BLOW  —  Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go - attacking Secre tary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman.  —  Boxer was wholly in character for her party …

GOP hits Pelosi's 'hypocrisy' on wage bill  —  House Republicans yesterday declared "something fishy" about the major tuna company in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district being exempted from the minimum-wage increase that Democrats approved this week.

Poll: Two-thirds of Americans oppose more troops in Iraq  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Two out of three Americans oppose President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday indicates.  —  Nearly two-thirds of those polled also say Bush has no clear plan for Iraq.

Clock Ticking on Dems' 100-Hour Agenda  —  WASHINGTON (AP) - The clock is ticking for House Democrats, but it's hard to tell what time it is.  —  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was touting a plan to push six bills through a Democratic House in 100 hours or less as early as June of last year.

Lam is asked to step down  —  Job performance said to be behind White House firing  —  The Bush administration has quietly asked San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, best known for her high-profile prosecutions of politicians and corporate executives, to resign her post, a law enforcement official said.

Unveiled Threats  —  A Bush appointee's crude gambit on detainees' legal rights  —  MOST AMERICANS understand that legal representation for the accused is one of the core principles of the American way.  Not, it seems, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.

Note from Flynt Leverett: Most Important Parts of Bush Speech About Iran — Not Iraq  —  I asked former CIA and Bush administration National Security Council senior official Flynt Leverett for a quick summary of his thoughts on President Bush's Address to the Nation.

Getting Iraq to Work  —  New York City's successes have lessons for Baghdad.  —  The American mission in Iraq must succeed.  Our goal—promoting a stable, accountable democracy in the heart of the Middle East—cannot be achieved by purely military means.  —  Iraqis need to establish a civil society.

Risk-Assessment Plan Is Withdrawn  —  The Bush administration yesterday withdrew a proposal to change the way federal agencies assess environmental hazards, health threats and other risks, after an expert panel declared that it was so scientifically flawed that it "could not be rescued."

The Question of the Day  —  Jim Webb is really one of the most exciting things to happen to our politics recently; the personification of potentially worthy electoral trends who's managed to pull it off not by embracing militarism but by showing that good sense in national security policy …

Intelligence Chiefs Pessimistic In Assessing Worldwide Threats  —  Negroponte Cites Resilience of Al-Qaeda, Iraqi Insurgency  —  Iraq is at a violent and "precarious juncture," while al-Qaeda is significantly expanding its global reach, effectively immune to the loss of leaders in battle …

The Two Vacuums  —  Neither Iraqis nor Democrats seem ready to do what's required of them.  —  I had the odd and wholly unexpected experience of feeling supportive of a troop increase until I saw the president's speech arguing for it.  What a jarring, furtive-seeming thing it was.

Agents Say Fast Audits Hurt I.R.S.  —  Top officials at the Internal Revenue Service are pushing agents to prematurely close audits of big companies with agreements to have them pay only a fraction of the additional taxes that could be collected, according to dozens of I.R.S. employees …