Bhutto's Assassination Deals Blow to U.S. Goal for Pakistan  —  The assassination today of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is a major blow to the U.S. goal of stabilizing Pakistan, a volatile ally with nuclear weapons that has served as a frontline against extremism since the Sept. 11 …

Obama runs even with Clinton in two key states  —  A new Times/Bloomberg Poll finds them statistically tied in New Hampshire and in a three-way race with Edwards in Iowa.  GOP's Huckabee has a big lead in Iowa but trails Romney by a wide margin up north.  —  WASHINGTON — Barack Obama …

Be Reasonable  —  As Iowa sizes up the candidates, so do I.  —  By next week politically active Iowans will have met and tallied their votes.  Their decision this year will have a huge impact on the 2008 election, and a decisive impact on various candidacies.  Some will be done in.  Some will be made.

Pastors Urged To Caucus By Huckabee Supporters  —  Here's an explicit example of how Mike Huckabee is relying on an outsourced Get-Out-The-Caucusers effort and on the implied support of pastors — under the radar.  —  Pastor Rick Scarborough is hosting a conference call with Iowa pastors …

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a UNuch can't  —  This is a waste of a perfectly good ficticious super hero. … The UN has to resort to fiction to bolster its image because a book about the UN doing any good would by definition have to be a work of fiction.

Trouble With Trade  —  While the United States has long imported oil and other raw materials from the third world, we used to import manufactured goods mainly from other rich countries like Canada, European nations and Japan.  —  But recently we crossed an important watershed …

Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned to Giuliani for Help  —  In western Virginia, far from the limelight, United States Attorney John L. Brownlee found himself on the telephone last year with a political and legal superstar, Rudolph W. Giuliani.  —  For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team …

Iowa Saturated by Political Ads  —  DES MOINES — One week before Iowa kicks off the presidential nomination contest, the campaigns are spending three times as much money flooding the airwaves and the Internet as candidates did in 2004, hoping to sway the huge number of undecided voters after months of on-the-ground appeals.

Stem cell, contraception groups paid Huck  —  Mike Huckabee last year accepted $52,000 in speaking fees from a bio-tech giant that wants to research human embryonic stem cells, a non-profit working to expand access to the morning after pill and a group pushing to study whether tightening gun control laws will reduce violence.

Priests brawl at Jesus' birthplace  —  BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning on Thursday.