Militant Group Is Out of Baghdad, U.S. Says  —  American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the "surge" to depart as planned.

Cheney's Impeachment Literally Fell 'Off the Table'  —  Maybe now we know what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meant when she said impeachment was "off the table."  —  Lawmakers' voting cards on the issue were literally just that — off the table — during Tuesday's brouhaha …

Exclusive: FBI: Al Qaeda May Strike U.S. Shopping Malls in LA, Chicago  —  Richard Esposito and Vic Walter Report:  —  The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing a series of holiday attacks on U.S. shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, according to an intelligence report distributed …

Poll: Clinton lags in quest for male voters  —  WASHINGTON — More than eight in 10 Republicans and more than half the married men in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll say they definitely wouldn't vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton for president.  —  The poll provides an early snapshot of who's ruling out Clinton …

US fears Israeli strike against Iran over latest nuclear claim  —  Tom Baldwin in Washington, James Hider in Jerusalem and Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor  —  A claim by President Ahmadinejad that Iran has 3,000 working uranium-enriching centrifuges sent a tremor across …

Generational test for Republicans  —  Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), once a skeptic of global warming, got a hint that the political winds might be shifting when a longtime supporter warned that he might vote against Inglis if he "didn't clean up his act on the environment."

Huckabee: All Hands On Deck In Iowa  —  Ex-AR Gov. Mike Huckabee will spend most of the next 65 days in Iowa and has moved the majority of his staff to the state in an effort to capitalize on a sense that he's gaining ground here.  —  Here's excerpts of an interview I conducted with Huckabee last night.

AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is A Cover-Up  —  Earlier today we flagged that Mark Klein, who uncovered a secret surveillance room run by the NSA while employed as a San Francisco-based technician for AT&T, is in Washington to lobby against granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies.

Study: 1 out of 4 homeless are veterans  —  WASHINGTON - Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.  —  And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans.

AND SOLVES THE MYSTERIES OF DATING.  —  When economists began broadly applying their theories of rational choice-making, love and marriage were among the first areas they colonized.  Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker laid the foundations back in 1973 with his two-part article "A Theory of Marriage."

Beshear's win boosts party, candidacies  —  BOSWELL TO CHALLENGE LEWIS  —  RALESSI@HERALD-LEADER.COM  —  FRANKFORT — Fresh off Tuesday's election wins, Democrats turned their focus to 2008 campaigns, with the new governor pledging to take a hands-on role, an expected change …

Tax Proposal From Rangel Could Benefit His Donors  —  The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed legislation that would effectively halt some current tax audits of people who get a tax break for living and operating a business in the United States Virgin Islands.

The Comeback of a War President  —  He may be America's most unpopular politician, but George W. Bush is no lame duck.  As a wartime president, Bush dominates the political agenda.  He is discreetly influencing his party's choice of presidential candidate while committing his country …

Rare welcome to a red-blooded conservative  —  And get ready for some unpredictable ideas.  —  'Odd.  " It is, indeed, odd to write a column every other Thursday for a paper that used that very word to describe me.  Actually, odd was one of the nicer terms used in The Inquirer to describe me.

In First Bush Veto Override, Senate Enacts Water Bill  —  The Senate voted overwhelmingly today for a popular $23 billion water projects measure affecting locales across the country, thereby handing President Bush his first defeat in a veto showdown with Congress.