Thompson's fall from grace  —  There was a time over the summer when Fred Thompson looked like he'd enjoy enormous support from the GOP's religious right base.  The Dobson crowd had already ruled out McCain and Giuliani, and skepticism over Romney lingered.

Poll finds Thompson appeals to churchgoers  —  Fred Thompson may have failed to impress Beltway insiders when he finally launched his run for the White House last month, but he is winning over a critical segment of the Republican coalition, new polling suggests.

Religious right straw victor: Romney, Huckabee too  —  Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and a late-comer to the anti-abortion cause, claimed a narrow victory today in a straw poll of Christian conservative voters assembled in Washington and collecting votes from members online.

Wiretapping Compromise Was Months in the Making  —  Last June, in a phone conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney, John D. Rockefeller IV, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, set down his conditions for revising the law governing the National Security Agency's eavesdropping.

Battered Spouses  —  Yesterday I said I felt a hissy coming on and today it's blown in with all the sincerity and gravitas of Tom DeLay speaking at a Martin Luther King day luncheon.  —  The Situation Room just led the half hour with this: … JC Watts later called Stark a "small person with a withered soul."