John Howard loses in Australia  —  Australian PM John Howard, staunch US ally and outspoken critic of jihad and the global spread, lost his re-election bid.  He was Australia's second-longest serving prime minister behind Liberal Party founder Sir Robert Menzies.  All Americans should mark the end of his tenure with gratitude.

As Democrats See Iraq Gains, a Shift in Tone  —  As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there …

'BLAME U.S. FOR 9/11' IDIOTS IN MAJORITY  —  'PLOTS' THICKEN IN SHOCKING POLL  —  Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found.  —  And that's not the only conspiracy theory with a huge number of true believers in the United States.

Poll says Chavez loses Venezuela referendum lead  —  CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally.

lib  •er  •tar  •ian  —  a person who believes in the doctrine of the freedom of the will  —  2. a person who believes in full individual freedom of thought, expression and action  —  3. a freewheeling rebel who hates wiretaps, loves Ron Paul and is redirecting politics

Who Needs Experience?  —  Hillary Clinton declared the other day — apropos of whom, she didn't say, or need to — "We can't afford on-the-job training for our next president."  Barack Obama immediately retorted, "My understanding is that she wasn't Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.

GOP looks like the party of diverse ideas  —  Democrats, meanwhile, have got a woman, a black, a Hispanic and a preening metrosexual - and they all think exactly the same.  —  Recommend  —  Only five weeks left to the earliest Primary Day in New Hampshire history, and still …

Mitt calls for judge to resign  —  Several warnings ignored, documents show  —  Presidential hopeful Gov. Mitt Romney yesterday demanded the resignation of his own judicial nominee after she sprang a violent convicted killer over the summer, as new details emerged showing that the judge ignored warnings …

Illegal immigrant rescues boy in desert  —  PHOENIX - A 9-year-old boy looking for help after his mother crashed their van in the southern Arizona desert was rescued by a man entering the U.S. illegally, who stayed with him until help arrived the next day, an official said.

Social Security to become key issue  —  WASHINGTON - Three years after the collapse of President Bush's plan for private Social Security accounts, Republican presidential contenders are eager to try again.  Not so the Democrats, who gravitate toward increasing payroll taxes on upper-income earners to fix the program's finances.

The Iranian Line  —  Interesting stuff: "Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that his country could suspend uranium enrichment if the United States and Western Europe agreed to acknowledge that its nuclear program was peaceful."

The San Francisco Chronicle deceives its readers through comment-deletion trickery  —  [UPDATE 1, Sat., 11-24-07, 12:30pm: Software Exec Brags About Crypto-Deletion Feature; see below.]  —  [UPDATE 2, Sat., 11-24-07, 2:20pm: Reader Documents "Graylist" of Banned SFGate Users Who Don't Know They're Banned; see below.]