At conservatives' conference, little love is expressed for GOP  —  WASHINGTON — Leading conservatives yesterday attacked the Republican party as big-government, free-spending coddlers of illegal immigrants and said the country's conservatives should withhold support from the GOP's current slate …

Reading Hillary Rodham's hidden thesis  —  Clinton White House asked Wellesley College to close off access  —  Hillary Rodham, in a 1965 freshman photo when she was president of Wellesley College's Young Republicans, with the cover page of her senior thesis from 1969 on radical organizer Saul D. Alinsky.

YouTube Oppo Of The Day  —  1. Sen. Barack Obama, speaking in a fairly impoverished Cleveland, saying he wants "everybody here to pony up five dollars, ten dollars for this campaign.  I don't care how poor you are, you've got five dollars."  —  2. An anti-Giuliani video, just in time for CPAC.

Plame film in works at Warner Bros.  —  Studio sets movie about CIA leak scandal  —  Warner Bros. is developing a feature on the lives of Valerie Plame and Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the married couple drawn into a D.C. firestorm.  —  Plame's status as a CIA agent was revealed …

A new twist to an intriguing family history … WASHINGTON // Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.  —  But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now …

Lieberman On Appointment Of Kiley: 'It's A Good First Step'  —  This morning on his radio show, Don Imus questioned Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) about his reaction to the conditions at Walter Reed, saying, "If you're somebody who thought the war was such a wonderful idea, as you did, and continues to support this idiotic exercise...

Honey, I'm Dead!  —  HOW GOD REWARDS A FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBER.  —  A female suicide bomber detonated a vest filled with explosives at a university in Baghdad Sunday, killing more than 40 people.  If male martyrs can expect to find 72 virgin maidens in paradise when they die, what rewards can female suicide bombers expect?

Self-Referential Feedback Loop  —  Let me respond to Ezra Klein's response to Justin Fox's delightful bit about us mainstream sorts trying to be bloggers.  —  Now, I like Ezra.  He's a smart guy.  We have the same last name and all...But he's wrong about this: … To which I can only say, what security?

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Speaks  —  Justice Thomas talks about the lasting influence of the man who guided him through his years at Holy Cross and why he's not a beneficiary of affirmative action  —  Of all the influences in the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas …

When Dick Cheney Talks, Pakistan Listens  —  Brian Ross and Habibullah Khan Report:  —  Pakistan intelligence sources say a second high-ranking Taliban leader has been taken into custody, as the country appeared to be responding to Vice President Dick Cheney's showdown meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Saudi Arabian oil declines 8% in 2006  —  Saudi Arabian oil production, Jan 2006-Jan 2007, from four different sources.  Linear trends fitted to each series.  Graph is not zero-scaled to better show changes.  Click to enlarge.  Source: US EIA International Petroleum Monthly Table 1.1 …

Second Shift  —  The BBC reports: … "Gee," remarks Jessica Valenti, "wonder why that is."  Well, I like to wonder.  Later, the piece gives us the specific numbers: "an employed woman does 15 hours a week of housework when she lives with her employed partner, up from 10 hours when single."

Libby Jurors Raise Question About Reasonable Doubt  —  The jury in the Scooter Libby trial sent two questions to the Judge today before leaving early for the weekend.  You can view them here.  —  The one about reasonable doubt is the most interesting. … The jury instruction on reasonable doubt is here.

Who's Pretending?  —  It's a subject that's been strangely on my mind the last few weeks: Which national figures are true believers in what they preach and which ones are low-level or high level frauds?  Who's got the fire in the belly, and who's a latter day Elmer Gantry?  What follows is just my opinion.