McCain closing gap with Romney  —  In N.H. poll, Obama inches ahead of Clinton  —  Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination was all but dead this summer, has made a dramatic recovery in the Granite State 2 1/2 weeks before the 2008 vote …

Dec. 23: Ron Paul  —  MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: Our Meet the Candidates 2008 series continues, an exclusive interview with Republican Ron Paul.  He has served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 18 years.  In 1988 he was the Libertarian Party candidate for president.

Daily Kos Supporting the Troops for Christmas  —  As I write, this is currently the number one recommended diary at Daily Kos: a long exercise in crackpot moral equivalence that compares US troops holding Bibles with a Palestinian female suicide bomber holding a Koran.

Times Democratic caucus endorsement: Hillary Clinton passes the test  —  Hillary Clinton passes test after test after test.  This Clinton arrived for the caucus campaign with much, much more experience than the first Clinton to stump across Iowa.  In campaign speeches and in an interview …

Giuliani Claims It Would Have Been ‘Impossible’ To Give 9/11 Firefighters Working Radios  —  Today on ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos pushed former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani on why the radios for the 9/11 firefighters didn't work.  Giuliani dodged the question …

U.S. illegal immigrants ‘self deport’ as woes mount  —  PHOENIX (Reuters) - Mexican illegal immigrant Lindi sat down with her husband Marco Antonio in the weeks before Christmas to decide when to go back to Mexico.  —  She has spent three years working as a hairdresser in and around Phoenix …

SUNNI AWAKENING UPDATE....I've mentioned a few times before that our “bottoms up” strategy of supporting Sunni tribes in the provinces surrounding Baghdad carries a number of risks.  The biggest risk, I suppose, is that once the tribes finally feel safe from the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq …

Rush responds to Huck peace offering  —  Rush Limbaugh — responding to Mike Huckabee's peace offering — said today that he doesn't need to talk with the former Arkansas governor.  —  “I saw his comments and accept them as honest, sincere and genuine,” Limbaugh wrote in an e-mail.

William “The Bloody” Makes His New Year's Predictions  —  Somebody has been hitting the eggnog really hard.  William “The Bloody” Kristol makes his predictions for the coming year.  They would be scary if they weren't just so completely ridiculous, but at least Kristol is continuing his habit of being completely and utterly wrong.

Aquatic Apes  —  Someone calling himself “Scylla” decided to try waterboarding himself on an experimental basis to see if he thought it should qualify as torture: … Seth Roberts read the account and made some musings about human evolution: … Well, someone else read that post …

CIA chief to drag White House into torture cover-up storm  —  THE CIA chief who ordered the destruction of secret videotapes recording the harsh interrogation of two top Al-Qaeda suspects has indicated he may seek immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before the House intelligence committee.

Times GOP caucus endorsement: John McCain — Time for a real hero  —  John McCain's “Straight Talk Express” plows through where other Republicans steer clear.  —  Mitt Romney addresses the deficit by exhorting Republicans to “stop acting like Democrats."  McCain doesn't resort to name calling.

Unpaid credit cards bedevil Americans  —  SAN FRANCISCO - Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come.