Musharraf Releases Highest Ranking Taliban Ever Captured  —  Parvez Musharraf needs more militants to militate against in order to affirm the presence of his totalitarian military in Pakistan's civilian sphere.  As I noted in my article Pakistan, Prince of Denmark, this means that Musharraf …

Obama and Clinton Duel for Iowa Democrats  —  In back-to-back speeches Saturday before thousands of Iowa Democrats, Senator Barack Obama pointedly suggested that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was running a "poll-driven campaign" out of fear of what Republicans might say about her in a general election.

Innocent mistakes  —  So there's a campaign on to exonerate Ronald Reagan from the charge that he deliberately made use of Nixon's Southern strategy.  When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that …

Abdicate and Capitulate  —  It is extraordinary how President Bush has streamlined the Senate confirmation process.  As we have seen most recently with the vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as attorney general, about all that is left of "advice and consent" is the "consent" part.

This Is Your Brain on Politics  —  This article was written by Marco Iacoboni, Joshua Freedman and Jonas Kaplan of the University of California, Los Angeles, Semel Institute for Neuroscience; Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania …

"Pure Islam" and Michael van der Galiën  —  Michael van der Galiën is a 23-year-old American Studies student at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands, and correspondent in the Netherlands for Pajamas Media.  In a post entitled "Islamic Law and Violence," …

Intel official: Expect less privacy  —  WASHINGTON - As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.  —  Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr …

The surprising truth about Rage Boy, America's hated poster-boy of Islamic radicalism  —  Don't you hate Islamic Rage Boy?  'MoBlows', writing on the Jihad Watch website, certainly does.  —  "I just want to put my fist down his throat," he says.  The 'boy' in question rose to prominence earlier …

Romney, Clinton ahead, vulnerable in N.H. poll  —  Race still open, analysts say  —  Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Hillary Clinton remain the clear front-runners in the New Hampshire presidential primary, but both have vulnerabilities that could erode their support among voters in the weeks ahead …

Bob Schieffer's Commentary On Pat Robertson, God And Rudy Giuliani  —  Bob Schieffer's commentary on this morning's Face The Nation was a tongue in cheek indictment of Pat Robertson's puzzling endorsement of Rudy Giuliani.

Spooks refuse to toe Cheney's line on Iran  —  WASHINGTON - The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program.

McCain talks big on seven-candidate Sunday  —  John McCain says flat out he'll win New Hampshire, Barack Obama touches the third rail known as Social Security, and Bill Richardson is sure about one thing — you might find UFOs on "The X-Files" but not in New Mexico.

White House frustrated with Brown over Iran  —  By Tim Shipman in Washington and Philip Sherwell in New York  —  The Bush administration is losing patience with Gordon Brown over Iran, with senior American diplomats frustrated by his reluctance to declare bluntly that the Islamic state must never be allowed nuclear weapons.

CAIR Meets Radical Palestinian Cleric  —  Unindicted co-conspirators CAIR are boasting about a meeting in their Washington DC headquarters with Palestinian Islamist cleric Tayseer al-Tamimi—who is well-known for raving about Jerusalem being an "Islamic city," claiming that Zionist plots …