The Paygo Farce  —  Democrats admit it was all a big confidence game. … Well, as Emily Littela, the half-witted Gilder Radner character on Saturday Night Live, would have put it: "Never mind."  Last week Congressional Democrats formally renounced their ballyhooed budget pledge to offset …

Republican Candidates Firm on Immigration  —  In front of what will probably be their most pro-immigration audience, Republican candidates toned down their rhetoric but told Spanish-language television viewers in a debate on Sunday that they would take strong measures to close off the country's borders to illegal immigration.

Oprahpalooza in South Carolina  —  (Photo: Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times)  —  COLUMBIA, S.C. — It was a staggering sight.  Upwards of 29,000 people at a political rally.  And the Democratic primary in South Carolina is not until Jan. 26.  —  The Double O Express …

Winfrey wows crowd  —  29,000 attend Columbia rally for Obama  —  In what Sen. Barack Obama described as the best-attended rally of the political season for any candidate, more than 29,000 attendees jammed Williams-Brice Stadium Sunday.  —  Media mogul Oprah Winfrey rallied the crowd of supporters …

Students stone police in Iran riot  —  Students defied a clampdown on protests in Iran yesterday by tearing down the gates of Tehran university.  —  They chanted slogans against President Ahmadinejad and carried placards saying "Live free or die", "No war, no fascism" and "Women must decide their fate, not the state."

U.S. Mortgage Crisis Rivals S&L Meltdown  —  Toll of Economic Shocks May Linger for Years; A Global Credit Crunch  —  The home has long been the bedrock asset of most American families.  Now, its value has become the biggest question mark hanging over the global economy and financial system.

Henry Paulson's Priorities  —  By Bush administration standards, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, is a good guy.  He isn't conspicuously incompetent; and he isn't trying to mislead us into war, justify torture or protect corrupt contractors.  —  But Mr. Paulson's actions reflect the priorities of the administration he serves.

Sunday horror: Church shootings in Colorado; gunman killed by armed female church security staffer  —  Update 12/10 8:30am.  The gunman was wearing a tactical helmet and body armor.  —  By now, you've read about the two tragic church shootings incidents in Colorado earlier today.

Lawrence O'Donnell Loses His Ever-Loving Mind on McLaughlin  —  A sane, if highly flawed, discussion of Mitt Romney's "Faith In America" speech on the McLaughlin Group was cold-cocked into the realm of crazy-faced anger by guest panelist Lawrence O'Donnell this morning, who started off by criticizing Romney …

Calling a censor a censor — censored!  —  Canada does not have our First Amendment.  It does not have as strong a protection for free speech as we do here in the U. S. of A.  —  I can say this even as America's free speech rights have been eroded by McCain-Feingold and other meddling regulations.

A Joint Investigative Committee Should Expose the Torture Coverup  —  There is a simple way for Speaker Pelosi and Congressional Democrats to counteract the implicit blackmail to which they were subjected in Sunday's Washington Post.  Go public.  They should call the White House's bluff …

Vigilantes kill 40 women in Iraq's south  —  BAGHDAD - Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against "violating Islamic teachings," the police chief said Sunday.

JOSH SHAFFER  —  RALEIGH - Through the bomb threats, the death threats, the arsonists and the insults that have marked her career, Susan Hill steels herself with the memory of a 13-year-old girl.  —  It was January 1973, Hill's first day on the job in Florida's first abortion clinic outside Miami — one week after Roe v. Wade.

Paul turns down invitation to seek Libertarian Party nomination  —  Lake Jackson congressman won't run for president on third-party ticket.  —  WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Ron Paul turned down a Libertarian Party invitation on Sunday that could have kept him in the 2008 presidential race …

CAUGHT YOUTHENING: Maureen Dowd's latest column begins: … But if you're imagining Dowd as a pigtailed six-year-old in the back of the family station wagon, think again.  The temple was finished in 1974.  Maureen Dowd was born in 1952.  So she was a "kid" who was old enough to vote and drink.