Thousands Protest Bush Policy  —  Actors, Activists, Politicians and a Presidential Candidate Among Demonstrators  —  A raucous and colorful multitude of protesters, led by some of the aging activists of the past, staged a series of rallies and a march on the Capitol yesterday to demand that the United States end its war in Iraq.

Protest Focuses on Troop Increase for Iraq  —  Tens of thousands of protesters converged on the National Mall on Saturday to oppose President Bush's plan for a troop increase in Iraq in what organizers hoped would be one of the largest shows of antiwar sentiment in the nation's capital since the war began.

Clinton concedes role in authorizing war  —  DES MOINES, Iowa - New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton blamed President Bush on Saturday for misusing authority given him by Congress to act in Iraq, but conceded "I take responsibility" for her role in allowing that to happen.

Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders  —  Boasts of a nuclear programme are just propaganda, say insiders, but the PR could be enough to provoke Israel into war  —  Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country …

In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice  —  The peers who elected Barack Obama as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review say he was a natural leader, an impressive student, a nice guy.  But in the 1990 Revue — the graduating editors' gleeful parody of their elite publication — they said quite a bit more.

Bin Laden, The Left and Me  —  As a conservative author, I'm used to a little controversy.  Even so, the reaction to my new book, "The Enemy at Home," has felt, well, a little hysterical.  —  "Ratfink writes new book," James Wolcott, cultural critic for Vanity Fair, declares in his blog.

ANTI-WAR PROTEST: WHERE IS EVERYONE?  —  I was too young for the May Day protest against the Viet Nam War held in Washington, D.C. in 1971.  My friends and I talked about going for weeks prior to the event, seeing ourselves as something as a cross between Che Guevara and Abbie Hoffman.

'If they pay we kill them anyway' - the kidnapper's story  —  In the second of two remarkable dispatches from behind Baghdad's front lines, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets the commander of a Shia death squad  —  Fadhel is a slim, well-muscled 26-year-old Mahdi Army commander with a thin goatee beard …

On Iran, Bush Faces Haunting Echoes of Iraq  —  As President Bush and his aides calibrate how directly to confront Iran, they are discovering that both their words and their strategy are haunted by the echoes of four years ago — when their warnings of terrorist activity and nuclear ambitions were clearly a prelude to war.

The Peace March.  —  Here's the peace march that took place today at about 1 p.m. on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin.  This clip shows the whole length of the parade.  Note the man at the front, just behind the banners, who is holding a sign that says "Vive Saddam."  (It's the third sign from the right.)

Giuliani Is Cautious as He Weighs '08 Decision  —  Rudolph W. Giuliani, who developed a national reputation for decisive and reassuring leadership after 9/11, now faces the odd challenge of having to reassure some supporters that he can be decisive about a very different issue: running for president.

Nestle CEO Pooh-Poohs Global Warming Fears  —  Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe claimed in Davos Friday that global warming is not really a problem.  He didn't use those exact words, but he said as much in a number of amazingly iconoclastic comments he made on a panel at the World Economic Forum devoted …

Africa on the Agenda but Darfur Glaringly Absent  —  In true WEF style, a galaxy of stars - from Blair to Bono and Bill Gates, from Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa to Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the President of Liberia and the first woman head of state in Africa - sat around the table …

Speedy Gonzales  —  Marisa Taylor and Greg Gordon write for McClatchy Newspapers: … For background on the U.S. Attorney scandal — it's not generally acknowledged to be a scandal, but it should be — see old Mahablog posts U.S. Attorneys: It's the Replacing, Stupid and The Purge.