Poll: Iowa's GOP Race is Battle Between Huckabee, Romney  —  The race for Iowa's Republican caucuses has narrowed to a two-person battle between former governors Mike Huckabee (Ark.) and Mitt Romney (Mass.), with Huckabee now perched atop the field, propelled by a big jump in support among religious women.

NY Times changes CIA headline for WH  —  The New York Times has changed the subheadline in Wednesday's front-page story on the CIA's destruction of secret interrogation tapes, following a formal request by the White House.  —  The correction has already been made online …

Fred Thompson: Lazy as charged  —  WAVERLY, Iowa — When is retail politics not retail politics?  When candidates refuse to get off their big buses and go do it.  —  Fred Thompson rolled into this small town on the Cedar River in north-central Iowa on a giant brown bus Tuesday.

Interesting Obama history  —  I've been alerted to an interesting Boston Globe article about Barack Obama's role, when he was in the Illinois legislature, in the attempt to get the state committed to universal health care.  It turns out that the story very much prefigures the debates we're having right now.

TOM TANCREDO TO DROP OUT OF PRESIDENTIAL RACE  —  Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo plans to drop out of the race during an announcement Thursday afternoon in Des Moines, Iowa, GOP sources close to the campaign have told FOX News.  —  Tancredo, who has aggressively pushed …

UPDATE: NATIONAL ENQUIRER WORLD EXCLUSIVE: JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL!  —  Presidential candidate John Edwards is caught up in a love child scandal, a blockbuster ENQUIRER investigation has discovered.  —  The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to Edwards …

Reid's Relationship With Bush Enters Deep Freeze  —  WASHINGTON — Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has called President Bush a loser and a liar and has referred to him derisively as King George.  Mr. Reid has also apologized — but only, he likes to point out, for the “loser” line.

Person of the Year: Vladimir Putin  —  A Tsar Is Born  —  No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin's.  The Russian President's pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved …

Paul to keep donation from white supremacist  —  WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) - Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn't plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday.

Hearing on KBR Rape Case  —  The Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security has just concluded a hearing, “Enforcement of Federal Criminal Law to Protect Americans Working for U.S. Contractors in Iraq."  Rep. Ted Poe (TX-02), Jamie Leigh Jones (pdf), a former employee of Kellogg …

“Mitt Romney...Helped Save My Daughter”  —  At first blush, this seems like a genuinely great campaign ad — the story of how Mitt Romney basically closed down his business, Bain Capital, in 1996 when the daughter of one of his partners went missing in New York City and Romney sent dozens …

Torture Tapes are the Watergate of Our Times  —  As I write these words on the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 19, high- and low-level officials of the Bush administration involved in torture, and the destruction of the torture tapes, are consulting their criminal lawyers as The New York Times reports …

Tucker Attacks John Edwards For Remembering Homeless Vets In Holiday Ad  —  On Wednesday's Tucker, the soon to be unemployed host gets riled up because Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, had the nerve to mention homeless veterans and those less fortunate in his holiday ad.

Strategy that is making Iraq safer was snubbed for years  —  When Army Capt. Jeremy Gwinn's company patrolled Baghdad in 2005, the approach toward roadside bombs was simple: avoid them or die.  —  By early 2006, that strategy had begun to shift: Instead of hunting for the bombs, the soldiers hunted for bombmakers.

Poll: Huckabee Leads, Dems Tied In S.C.  —  GOP Hopeful Huckabee Propelled By Evangelicals, While Clinton And Obama Experience “Reverse Gender Gap"  —  (CBS) One month before the first votes are cast in South Carolina, a new CBS News poll finds Republican Mike Huckabee with a comfortable …