memeorandum: Edwards says he's anti-poverty candidate (Jennifer Loven/Associated Press)

9:05 PM ET, December 19, 2007

Top Items:

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.

Discussion: The Corner, Jonathan Martin's Blogs and New York Times

John Harwood / Wall Street Journal:

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.

Discussion: Taegan Goddard's … and The Strata-Sphere

CBS News:

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 …

Discussion: The Palmetto Scoop

Deacon / Power Line: MORE MUSH FROM THE HUCK — This was Mike Huckabee's comment …

IMAO.US:
The Official IMAO Republican Primary Endorsement

Discussion: Daily Pundit

Byron York / The Corner: What Huckabee Really Means — Mike Huckabee was on the “Today” show this morning.

David Freddoso / The Corner:
That Rasmussen Poll... ...in Iowa suggests that John McCain …

Discussion: Weekly Standard, Rasmussen Reports, TPM Election Central, Riehl World View and Captain's Quarters

Michael Calderone / The Politico:

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 …

Discussion: The Carpetbagger Report, HorsesAss.Org, Wonkette, The Raw Story, JURIST, The Gun Toting Liberal™ and Democrats.com

Klaus Marre / The Hill:

White House asks NYT to remove sub-headline from CIA tape story — The White House on Wednesday took the rare step of publicly asking The New York Times to change the sub-headline of a story on the destruction of CIA tapes showing the interrogations of suspected terrorists.

Discussion: White House, TPMmuckraker, Washington Post, Agence France Presse, On Deadline, Associated Press, New York Observer, Firedoglake, Talking Points Memo and Balkinization

Dan Froomkin / Washington Post:
The Tell-Tale Stall — The best indicator of how seriously …

Discussion: CNN, Think Progress, Cliff Schecter, Salon, The Carpetbagger Report and TPMmuckraker

National Enquirer:

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 …

Discussion: Riehl World View, Wonkette, DBKP, THE REACTION, Tim Worstall Tabloid Edition, MoJoBlog, Clayton Cramer's BLOG, Doug Ross, Right Wing News, The Corner, Vox Popoli and Outside The Beltway

Tom Tancredo / You Decide 08!:

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 …

Discussion: Tammy Bruce, Marc Ambinder, Salon and LewRockwell.com Blog

Jonathan Martin / The Politico:

Tancredo to get out? — Tom Tancredo has scheduled a press conference in Des Moines tomorrow afternoon to make a “major announcement regarding the campaign,” according to a media advisory his campaign sent out today. — Asked whether Tancredo intended to drop out of the race …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Pajamas Media, M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Comments from Left Field, The Stump, Hot Air and race42008.com

Greg Sargent / Horses Mouth:

Krugman Dogged By Rumor That His Son Works For Hillary — Regular readers of this site will recognize that this headline is a tongue-in-cheek one, I hope. But as it happens, Krugman is being dogged by such a rumor, though it happens to be false. — Over at Election Central …

Paul Krugman:
Interesting Obama history

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias, Liberal Values, Comments from Left Field and THE LIBERAL JOURNAL

Greg Sargent / TPM Election Central:
In An Interview With TPM, Krugman Ramps Up Case Against Obama

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Newsweek, TalkLeft, Open Left, Clive Crook, TIME and Pottersville

Adi Ignatius / Time:

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 …

Discussion: Associated Press, Weekly Standard, Fausta's blog, The Nation, PERRspectives Blog, AMERICAN DIGEST, Gates of Vienna, The Sundries Shack, Doug Ross, Captain's Quarters, Wonkette, The Moderate Voice, Truthdig, Macsmind, Sweetness & Light, On Deadline and The Glittering Eye

Michael Goldfarb / Weekly Standard:
McCain: Man of the Year Should Have Been Petraeus

Discussion: Boston Herald, A Chequer-Board of Nights …, The Campaign Spot and BLACKFIVE

Roger Simon / The Politico:

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.

Discussion: CBS News, Hot Air, The Stump, Political Machine, Stop The ACLU and Riehl World View

David M. Herszenhorn / New York Times:

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.

Discussion: The Crypt's Blogs, The Hill, Right Voices, Los Angeles Times, Macsmind, Don Surber and MSNBC

Brian Faughnan / Weekly Standard:
Does Harry Reid Need a Psychiatrist?

Discussion: The Crypt's Blogs

MeMeMeMeMe / Little Green Footballs:

Fire in Cheney's Office Causes Leftists to Rant Uncontrollably — There was a fire in Dick Cheney's office this morning, and as usual the leftist blogosphere is brimming over with lunatic ranting. — At Think Progress, the Morlocks who inhabit their comments are sure this is a ploy to cover up the destroying of documents.

Discussion: Daily Kos, A Blog For All, Corrente and Gateway Pundit

CNN:
Fire hits building next door to White House

Discussion: Associated Press, Think Progress, The Lede, Breitbart.tv and Outside The Beltway

John Podhoretz / Commentary:

“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 …

Discussion: Captain's Quarters and The Daily Dish

Brent Budowsky / The Hill:

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 …

Discussion: Comments from Left Field, Left in the West and TPMCafe blogs