PELOSI CALLS BUSH TO COMPLAIN OF CHENEY'S COMMENTS ON DEMOCRATS' IRAQ STRATEGY  —  WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday phoned President Bush to air her complaints over Vice President Dick Cheney's comments that the Congressional Democrats' plan for Iraq would "validate the Al Qaeda strategy."

In Both Parties, 2008 Politeness Falls to Infighting  —  The sun was not yet up yesterday, and members of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign team were confronted with the kind of attack that most infuriates them: one questioning the character of Mrs. Clinton and her husband.

National Guard May Undertake Iraq Duty Early  —  The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush's buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.

GOP 'darlings' slow to sign tax-cut pledge  —  The two front-runners for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination — Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani — have not signed an anti-tax-increase pledge that has been embraced by several of their rivals.

A Lack of Courage In Their Convictions  —  Indiscriminate criticism of President George W. Bush is an infectious disease.  Some conservatives seem to have caught it, but congressional Democrats might be crippled by it.  —  Consider some conservatives' reflexive rejection …

Obama's Worn-Out Economic Ideas  —  Senator Barack Obama recently said, "let's allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country's middle class again."  —  Ironically, he said it at a time when Detroit automakers have been laying off unionized workers by the tens of thousands …

REMEMBERING THE INDISPENSABLE MAN  —  Today is the anniversary of the birth of George Washington.  Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington's greatness was the rarest, the most necessary, and, at this remove in time, the hardest to understand.

Iranian official offers glimpse from within: A desire for U.S. ally … TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — As I sat down recently with a senior Iranian government official, he urgently waved a column by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times in my face, one about how the United States and Iran need to engage each other.

Iraq Insurgents Employ Chlorine in Bomb Attacks  —  A truck bomb that combined explosives with chlorine gas blew up in southern Baghdad on Wednesday, and officials said it might represent a new and deadly tactic by insurgents against Iraqi civilians.  —  It was at least the third truck bomb …

Tom Vilsack's Very, Very Bad Idea  —  I didn't watch the Democratic debate (debates?  This early??), but then I noticed (h/t Atrios and Matt Yglesias) that Jonathan Singer at MyDD wrote this: … Price indexing?  Yikes.  Like Matt, I didn't want to leap to conclusions …

The Spanish Connection  —  What the 9/11 Commission didn't consider.  —  The 9/11 Commission relied on information derived from two captured al Qaeda perpetrators for much of its picture of the conspiracy leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Scooter Libby and Reputation  —  Prosecutions that wreak ruin on a lifetime. … The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is the closest version of a Red Queen trial this country has had in a long time.  One says that knowing it might start a stampede from past defendants laying claim to the most upside-down prosecution.

Committee kills abortion ban  —  PIERRE—An abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and health of the mother was rejected Wednesday morning by legislative committee in Pierre.  —  The Senate State Affairs Committee just voted 8 to 1 to kill HB1293 without a vote of the full Senate.