Giuliani Loses Lead In Republican Race  —  Ex-Mayor Is Tied With Romney In National Poll of Republicans  —  WASHINGTON — Rudy Giuliani has lost his national lead in the Republican presidential race, creating the party's most competitive nomination fight in decades just two weeks before voting starts.

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.

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.

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 …

Time drops Kristol, Krauthammer.  —  Starting next month, neither “William Kristol nor longtime contributor Charles Krauthammer will be on contract” at Time magazine as columnists.  Krauthammer said the decision to cut ties was “mutual,” and Kristol responded only that he has “a lot of things that occupy me.”

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 …

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 …

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 Supremacist Donation  —  Usually when a candidate receives a campaign donation from a disreputable donor, the money either gets returned or donated to a charity.  Ron Paul wants to be a maverick, however, so he will keep the $500 from Stormfront founder Don Black.

Giuliani opens door to talks with Iran  —  (CNN) — Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani Wednesday said he would be open to diplomatic talks with Iran but only if certain preconditions were established.  —  “I would want to make sure there was a chance it would work,” Giuliani told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in Columbia, Missouri.

“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 …

Statement of Congressman Ted Poe (TX-02) before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security of the House Committee on the Judiciary  —  Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Members of the subcommittee.  Thank you for quickly organizing and holding this important hearing.

Tucker Attacks John Edwards For Remembering Homeless Vets In Holiday Ad  —  On Wednesday's Tucker, the hopefully 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.

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 …