Polls don't reflect Obama's star power  —  The Democrat creates a stir wherever he goes, but runs far behind Clinton nationally.  Some observers are puzzled; others say he's too gentle.  —  DES MOINES — Hutton Street, a modest, racially mixed working-class neighborhood on the city's east side …

Record numbers go abroad for health treatment with 70,000 escaping NHS  —  Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.  —  And by the end of the decade 200,000 "health tourists" …

Tancredo says he's leaving Congress  —  Even if he loses his long-shot bid for the White House, Rep. Tom Tancredo will be leaving the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of 2008.  —  Tancredo, 61 , waited until after the Colorado Rockies' last out of the World Series on Sunday night …

Fearing Fear Itself  —  In America's darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror."  But that was then.  —  Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance …

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: G.I. Joe was just a toy, wasn't he?  —  Hollywood now proposes that in a new live-action movie based on the G.I. Joe toy line, Joe's — well, "G.I." — identity needs to be replaced by membership in an "international force based in Brussels."

U.S. Guns Behind Cartel Killings in Mexico  —  TIJUANA, Mexico — Assassins blasted Ricardo Rosas Alvarado, a member of an elite state police force, with a blizzard of bullets pumped out of AK-47 assault rifles.  —  Alvarado crumpled at the wheel of his sedan, yet another victim of the weapons known here as …

The Wiretap This Time  —  EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States.  They also agreed to "immunize" American telephone companies …

F.C.C. Set to End Sole Cable Deals for Apartments  —  The Federal Communications Commission, hoping to reduce the rising costs of cable television, is preparing to strike down thousands of contracts this week that gave individual cable companies exclusive rights to provide service to an apartment building, the agency's chairman says.

THE INVISIBLE PRIMARY—INVISIBLE NO LONGER  —  A First Look at Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Campaign  —  In the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, the media had already winnowed the race to mostly five candidates and offered Americans relatively little information …

Bastiat Meets His Match as Indian Writer Wins Prize  —  An Indian writer and blogger, Amit Varma, has won the Bastiat Prize, awarded for wielding a witty pen in the defense of free markets and institutions.  —  Mr. Varma garnered the $10,000 prize, sponsored by the London-based …

Giuliani's iron fist  —  COULD THE United States actually elect as president a Yankee fan who has been rooting for the Red Sox?  A father whose own children would boycott his inauguration?  A husband whose first wife was his cousin and whose current wife can't remember how many times she married?