Top Items:
Adam Nagourney / New York Times:
Big States' Plan for Earlier Primaries Scrambles Race — As many as four big states — California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey — are likely to move up their 2008 presidential primaries to early next February, further upending an already unsettled nominating process and forcing candidates …
Discussion:
Balkinization, Dick Polman's American Debate, PoliBlog (TM), The Carpetbagger Report and CQPolitics.com
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Opinion Journal:
Senators-in-Chief — Congress has no Constitutional power to micromanage a war. — To understand why the Founders put war powers in the hands of the Presidency, look no further than the current spectacle in Congress on Iraq. What we are witnessing is a Federalist Papers illustration …
Discussion:
Redstate, The Mahablog, Right Wing Nut House, The American Street, Outside The Beltway, Sister Toldjah and Washington Post
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Daniel Henninger / Real Clear Politics:
Talking Ourselves Into Defeat — The United States is talking itself into defeat in Iraq. Its political culture is now in a downward spiral of pessimism. In the halls of Congress, across endless newspaper columns, amid the punditocracy and on Sunday morning talk shows—all emit a Stygian gloom about America.
Anne Flaherty / Associated Press:
Dems seek GOP support on Iraq resolution — WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats won their first major vote against the Iraq war. Now they need to get some Republicans on board. — A resolution swiping at President Bush's Iraq war plans is headed to the full Senate as early as next week …
Tony Karon / Time:
2008: Hillary vs McCain? — Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner to win the Democratic party's nomination for President in 2008, but the Republican race will be a close contest between Senator John McCain and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani — with McCain edging Giuliani by a three- to four-point margin.
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Marcus Baram / ABCNEWS:
Hillary's Hollywood Friends Switch Sides
Hillary's Hollywood Friends Switch Sides
Discussion:
Roger L. Simon, Captain's Quarters, The Heretik, Blue Crab Boulevard, Right Voices and NewsBusters.org
William Beutler / Blog P.I.:
Hillary in Blogistan: On Blogads, The Netroots and Peter Daou — Hillary Clinton did not wait long after her weekend presidential campaign announcement to step foot in the blogosphere: By Monday her technically fledgling but long-assumed campaign had a major step toward engaging web users …
Roger Simon / The Politico:
The Money Just Wasn't There for Kerry — As John Kerry just found out, $13 million is sometimes not enough. — That amount, which the senator from Massachusetts still had on hand after running for the presidency four years ago as the Democratic nominee, is only a fraction …
Rowan Scarborough / Washington Times:
Rumsfeld's transition raises questions — Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department. — On Jan. 4, Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said.
Eric / Classical Values:
THE YEAR THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME? — In China, it's the Year Of The P-P-P-Pig! — Yay! Right? — Not in China. According to this detailed WSJ report, the Chinese government is systematically censoring all mentions of pig and pig images — putting Western advertisers in a mad editing scramble:
Micah L. Sifry / Personal Democracy Forum blogs:
2008: Who's Ahead Online (Rs) — It's taken me a little longer than I had hoped to pull together the data on how the Republican presidential candidates are doing in terms of bottom-up support for their campaigns online, for which I apologize. Here's the headline: They're almost invisible on the web.
Howie Klein / Firedoglake:
Blue America: A Chat with Senator Dodd, Part II — Yesterday Senator Chris Dodd refused to back down when Beltway Establishment symbolism and nonbinding advocate Joe Biden tried to pressure him to withdraw his legislation to force Bush to ask Congress for permission to escalate his war in Iraq.
ESPN:
Being Inmate No. 1187055 — Genarlow Wilson is standing on a threshold all right, at the end of the last hall of Burruss Correctional Training Center, an hour and a half south of Atlanta. He's just a few feet from the mechanical door that closes with a goosebump-raising whurr and clang.
Nibras Kazimi / New York Sun:
Turnaround in Baghdad — There has been a flurry of press reports recently about insurgents battling American and Iraqi security forces on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and around the rural town of Buhruz in Diyala Province. These same insurgents also claimed to have shot down a Black Hawk helicopter near Buhruz.
Discussion:
Redstate
Robert D. Novak / Washington Post:
The Democrats' Rude Rebuff — When President Bush called for a bipartisan "special advisory council" of congressional leaders on the war against terrorism in his State of the Union address, he had in his pocket a rude rejection from Democratic leaders. Thank you very much …
Discussion:
CorrenteWire, The Carpetbagger Report, Middle Earth Journal, The Impolitic, The Heretik, Blue Crab Boulevard and INSTAPUTZ
Greg Gutfeld / The Huffington Post:
New Trend on The Rise: the Patriotic Terrorist — Whenever I visit this lovely blog, I usually run into someone - a "leftist," if you will - who finds pleasure in things that make our country or the President look bad. I suppose I could say these angry types are no better than cheerleaders for terrorism.
Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone:
Run, Al, Run — The ideal candidate for the Democrats may be the man who won the popular vote in 2000 — and who opposed the war in Iraq from the very start — A stiff Vice President campaigns on his administration's legacy of unprecedented prosperity. Looks terrible on TV.
Tyler Cowen / New York Times:
Incomes and Inequality: What the Numbers Don't Tell Us — The growing inequality in wealth and income has led many people to question whether the contemporary American economy is rigged in favor of the rich. While there is little doubt that the gap between the wealthy and everybody else …
Mark Trevelyan / Reuters:
Climate change seen fanning conflict and terrorism — LONDON (Reuters) - Global warming could exacerbate the world's rich-poor divide and help to radicalize populations and fan terrorism in the countries worst affected, security and climate experts said on Wednesday.