Did yesterday's hostage crisis teach us anything about Hillary Clinton?  —  You might think we got a chance to see how she deals with a crisis, but that's not really so.  She had no executive authority in the matter.  The local police had to handle the situation.

Why I Parted Ways With Chávez  —  ON Dec. 17, 1982, three of my fellow officers in the Venezuelan Army and I swore our allegiance to the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army 2000.  We considered ourselves to be at the birth of a movement that would turn a critical eye on Venezuela's troubled social …

SHAG FUND — IT'S ON US!  —  Yesterday, every reporter who wanted a copy, was allowed to go down to City Hall and pick up copies of the city financial records that were the basis of the original Shag Fund report in the Politico.com.  That's how we found out about the weird $400,000 prepayment …

Washington Post Editors Again Refuse To Label GOP Falsehoods What They Are: False  —  You'd think that The Washington Post's editors would have been chastened by yesterday's courageous New York Times piece that aggressively fact-checked Rudy Giuliani's multiple falsehoods and called them out for what they are — "false."

Good Morning  —  Welcome to the new Firedoglake.  As you can see, we've been busy making a few changes.  —  The biggest change will be in the comment section, where we're going be implementing registration to keep the load on both our servers and our moderators from getting any heavier.

Gospel Truth  —  AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot.  The shocker: Judas didn't betray Jesus.  Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed.

Mr. Smith Goes To Beirut  —  I criticized W. Thomas Smith's Lebanon blog, hosted by National Review Online, a few months ago.  It's good to see that other American journalists are picking up on the scent.  Yesterday, National Review ran a retraction of some of Smith's posts, and Smith commented on the matter himself.

Helen Thomas pwned by Dana Perino Video added  —  Heh. … I would say that Thomas is a disgrace to her profession, but it was their choice to put her on the front row in these gaggles.  It's therefore their call whether she's a disgrace or not, and if they think she is they'll move her off the front row.

Death, Taxes and Mrs. Clinton  —  Only two of them are inevitable.  —  I will never forget that breathtaking moment when, in the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this fall, the woman from Ohio held up a picture and said, "Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards, this is a human fetus.