Thompson motivation hard to pinpoint  —  Fred Thompson prefers plain talk.  So he might bridle at using a famous Winston Churchill quote to sum up his presidential campaign: "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."  —  But with fewer than 50 days to go until the Iowa caucuses …

New boss turns the tables on Al Qaeda  —  Ex-Sunni insurgent becomes U.S. ally  —  The once-dreaded Al Qaeda in Iraq stronghold of Amariyah has a new boss, and he's not shy about telling the story of the shootout that turned him into a local legend and helped change the tenor of the Iraq war.

Political crisis deepens in Lebanon  —  BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's political tumult intensified as President Emile Lahoud said the country is in a "state of emergency" and handed security powers to the army before he left office late Friday without a successor.  The rival, pro-Western Cabinet rejected the declaration.

Iraqi school guard, wife beheaded as children watch  —  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple's children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday.  —  The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali …

Hillary criticized for press strategy  —  When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to get a message out, her presidential campaign handpicks news outlets.  Or, in some cases, bypasses the media entirely.  —  The New York Democrat's third-quarter fundraising blowout was leaked to the Drudge Report.

Column One: American folly  —  The mood is dark in the IDF's General Staff ahead of next week's "peace" conference in Annapolis.  As one senior officer directly involved in the negotiations with the Palestinians and the Americans said, "As bad as it might look from the outside, the truth is 10 times worse.

A Warm and Fuzzy Taliban?  —  I guess the Taliban isn't so bad after all, well..... that's what Islamic activist and journalist Yvonne Ridley implies as she recounts her experiences as captive.  As I wrote in my submission to New University, Ridley painted a rosy picture of the regime:

Huckabee: I'm Against Illegal Immigration, But I'm Not A Lunatic About It  —  ABC News has posted a pretty compelling interview with Mike Huckabee about immigration.  In it, Huckabee was asked about charges from rivals that he's soft on immigration because he supported the children …

French prosecutors throw out Rumsfeld torture case  —  PARIS (Reuters) - The Paris prosecutors' office has dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld accusing the former U.S. defense secretary of torture, human rights groups who brought the case said on Friday.

Collapse of Rail, Subway Strike Is a First Success for Sarkozy  —  President Sarkozy of France is on the verge of a breakthrough in his ambitious plan to wean his country off the restrictive working practices he believes stand in the way of national prosperity.

Vanity Fair sued over neo-Nazi interview  —  An interview with one of Germany's most notorious neo-Nazis has landed Vanity Fair magazine in a heap of trouble.  —  Arno Lustiger, a Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor, has started proceedings to sue the magazine's German edition for publishing …

My Impressions of Rachel Paulose  —  I have been reading many media accounts of Rachel Paulose, the U.S. Attorney of Minnesota.  As one who has been very critical of the Bush Administration and of how it has politicized the DOJ, I ordinarily would not be very sympathetic to Rachel.

City Homicides Still Dropping, to Under 500  —  New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, by far the lowest number in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics became available in 1963.  —  But within the city's official crime statistics …

For Romney & Company, Campaign Is All Business  —  Presidential campaigns, with their boiler-room pressure, news media scrutiny and organizational challenges, have always functioned as something of a dress rehearsal for the White House.  How do the candidates make tough decisions?

Can You See Me Now?  —  Federal agents routinely request tracking data from cellphone companies to determine the travel and assembly habits of suspects, and courts have granted them unusual leeway in obtaining the data.  Are these terrorist suspects that could present a clear and imminent danger to the lives of Americans?

The Real Surge  —  Newly graduated soldiers hold up Iraq flags as they march during their graduation ceremony at the Besmaya army camp in Baghdad November 18, 2007.  Reuters photo.  —  While the "surge" of five US brigades plus their accompanying support elements, about 30,000 US troops total …