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.

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

Congress Votes to Spare Millions From Alternative Tax  —  WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to spare millions more Americans who do not consider themselves “rich” from being ensnared in a tax device originally designed for people who really are.

Kristol, Krauthammer Are Out of Time  —  Bill Kristol.  —  Two conservative Time magazine columnists are on their way out the door: Neither William Kristol nor longtime contributor Charles Krauthammer will be on contract with the magazine starting next month.

Sondra K-Grande Conservative Blogress Diva 2008  —  When we launched the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva contest this year, we expected to have a number of blogresses nominated and seconded as we did.  So, we assumed a run-off would be necessary.  —  What we did not anticipate was the number of glitches in this year's competition.

Did Huckabee Have Gastric Bypass Surgery?  —  Zogby says that we're in the middle of a Huckaboom — they find that Mike Huckabee is within 1 point of Giuliani in the national polls.  Whether the Zogby poll is an outlier or not, Huckabee's surge over the past two months has been remarkable …

Curious Huck  —  Mike Huckabee is now becoming a very divisive figure in the Republican party.  It's not his faith or his Merry Christmas commercial that many conservatives question (I certainly don't), but it's his record as governor and his stated positions on the war, foreign policy generally, taxes, spending, and illegal aliens.

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.

Huckabee Iowa Manager: ‘War on Terror a Theological War’  —  Mike Huckabee might want to “revise and extend” the remarks of his Iowa campaign manager.  Appearing on this evening's Tucker on MSNBC, Bob Vander Plaats stated that “we're fighting a radical religion in Islam” and that “the war on terror is a theological war.”

Video: Hillary's unintentionally revealing Christmas ad  —  My jaw dropped when I watched this one the first time.  Hillary's Christmas ad says nothing at all about Christmas.  The gifts make the connection, of course, but check out what the gifts are: universal health care, bring the troops home, etc.

Slave labour that shames America  —  Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food  —  Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching …