Give us guns - and troops can go, says Iraqi leader  —  Listen to the interview with Nouri al-Maliki  —  America's refusal to give Baghdad's security forces sufficient guns and equipment has cost a great number of lives, the Iraqi Prime Minister said yesterday.

Republicans Halt Ethics Legislation  —  Senate Republicans scuttled broad legislation last night to curtail lobbyists' influence and tighten congressional ethics rules, refusing to let the bill pass without a vote on an unrelated measure that would give President Bush virtual line-item-veto power.

McCain no longer rocks in Granite State  —  As Mitt, Hillary, Barack and a dozen others jump into the presidential stampede, something interesting is happening in New Hampshire.  —  For seven years, conventional wisdom has said that the state's pivotal independent voters would line …

A New Chance for Peace?  —  I am concerned that public discussion of my book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" has been diverted from the book's basic proposals: that peace talks be resumed after six years of delay and that the tragic persecution of Palestinians be ended.

Congressional Procession of Iraq Proposals Likely to Lead Nowhere  —  "You cannot run a war by committee," Vice President Cheney said over the weekend.  —  Oh?  Just watch them.  —  Lawmakers were introducing Iraq legislation at a mad pace yesterday, at one point in the afternoon scheduling news conferences in half-hour intervals.

Court to Oversee U.S. Wiretapping in Terror Cases  —  The Bush administration, in a surprise reversal, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction over the National Security Agency's wiretapping program and would end its practice of eavesdropping without warrants on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists.

Bush Faces Deepening War Opposition, Demand for Congress to Act  —  Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush failed to rally public support with his nationally televised speech announcing plans to send more soldiers to Iraq, as most Americans say they want Congress to find a way to stop the troop increase.

FACT CHECK: Bush Has Cut Funding For Cancer Research  —  Health officials reported yesterday that cancer deaths in the United States dropped for the second year in a row.  President Bush teed off this news with a speech at the National Institutes of Health, touting the increased funding for cancer research since 2001:

Newspaper Columnist Art Buchwald Dies at 81  —  Art Buchwald, 81, the newspaper humor columnist for more than a half-century who found new comic material in the issues that come up at the end of life, died of kidney failure last night at his son's home in Washington, his family announced today.

Iran's discontent with Ahmadinejad grows  —  TEHRAN, Iran - Prices for vegetables have tripled in the past month, housing prices have doubled since last summer — and as costs have gone up, so has Iranians' discontent with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his focus on confrontation with the West.

Van Hollen and Dean bury hatchet  —  Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the new chief election strategist for the House Democrats, welcomed Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean to his office Tuesday for a "jovial" meeting in which the two pledged to work together during the 2008 election cycle.

Time Inc. Lays Off More Than 250  —  Time Inc. began laying off more than 250 people today at its top magazines, including its most profitable title, People, which said it was shutting down its Washington, Miami and Chicago bureaus entirely.  —  Employees in those bureaus said they were …

Speaking Chic to Power  —  LAUDING someone for their style on Capitol Hill is a lot like celebrating the best surfer on Florida's Gulf Coast — it's all relative, and some would argue irrelevant.  Washington has never embraced fashion (nor, for that matter, has the fashion world embraced Washington), and for understandable reasons.