And now for some shoddy war reporting...from an NRO milblogger  —  Ugh.  This is bad on many levels.  W. Thomas Smith, Jr., a former Marine and milblogger who writes at National Review Online's The Tank (and whose work in Iraq I've praised and linked to here), posts a long-winded defense of bogus …

Chavez 'wins Venezuela referendum'  —  Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, is heading for victory in a referendum on allowing him to remain in power as long as he keeps winning elections, two government-linked sources said citing exit polls.  —  Three exit polls showed Chavez won …

More on Romney Religion Speech  —  The venue is not a surprise, since Romney has given a previous major address (on defense policy) at the Bush library, and the two families are very close.  And Texas, of course, was also the venue for John F. Kennedy's famous speech on religion in 1960 …

Jeb'd  —  state of Florida. … Don't know if Siedle has information or if he's just making a guess, but I too suspect that the last gasp of Big S**tpile involved finding marks in state and local governments.

More gay men describe sexual encounters with U.S. Sen. Craig  —  Allegations made since news of the Minneapolis case broke lend weight to rumors about Craig. … David Phillips.  Mike Jones.  Greg Ruth.  Tom Russell.  —  Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations …

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens  —  AMERICA has told Britain that it can "kidnap" British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.  —  A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens …

Wary of Mohammed teddy row, UK author changes characters  —  2 Dec 2007, 1814 hrs IST , Rashmee Roshan Lall , TNN  —  LONDON: First there was Mohammed the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian .  Now there is Morgan the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian .  A British children's author who named …

Fire Dept. Suspends Apprentice For Noose, Note  —  The Baltimore Fire Department has suspended a paramedic apprentice who admitted placing a threatening note and a rope shaped like a noose inside a firehouse.  —  Fire officials say the paramedic, Gary Maynard, is the one who initially reported finding the note and the rope.

TEDDY BEARS, PARKED CARS AND MORAL EQUIVALENCE  —  The Washington Post online has a religion section called On Faith, which features liberal commentary on various issues relating to religion and public life.  Today's column, "Sudan and Saudi Arabia: Who Speaks for Islam?," is by John Esposito and John Voll, both of Georgetown.

Huckabee: 'a different kind of Jesus juice'  —  The Republican's idiosyncratic agenda in Arkansas — a health plan, taxes for parks — was always driven by faith, he says.  —  LITTLE ROCK, ARK. — In 2005, a Republican state senator named Jim Holt introduced a bill to deny public benefits …

Israelis hit Syrian 'nuclear bomb plant'  —  Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Michael Sheridan in Seoul  —  ISRAEL'S top-secret air raid on Syria in September destroyed a bomb factory assembling warheads fuelled by North Korean plutonium, a leading Israeli nuclear expert has told The Sunday Times.

The GOP Race: Huge Changes In Iowa  —  The new poll from the Des Moines Register shows some dramatic changes in the Republican race in Iowa.  The headline is that Mike Huckabee, who was 17 points behind Mitt Romney in the paper's October poll, now leads Romney by five points.

Whaddayamean "neck-and-neck"?!?  —  Quico says: For the record, that C21 poll released last night leaves the final chart of the most recent, most relevant polls looking like this:  —  The final Big Poll Chart (which includes every survey I could get my hands on) has gotten a bit unwieldy, just because it has so much data in it by now.

Is misdeed a creation of political doctrine?  —  Is this state's education agency being driven by a political orthodoxy so fierce that it dumped its science director for passing along a harmless e-mail?  It's possible.  —  Chris Comer was director of the science curriculum …