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.

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.

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.

An Astonishing Turnaround on Iraq  —  An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings attached.  Think about this a moment.  Last winter, after Democrats captured the Senate and House …

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.

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 …

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.

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.”

E.P.A. Says 17 States Can't Set Emission Rules for Cars  —  WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.  —  The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson …