memeorandum: DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY....In October, David Brooks … (Steve Benen/Washington Monthly)

1:35 PM ET, December 29, 2007

Top Items:

Huckabee Slipping — WASHINGTON — While public polls show Mike Huckabee leading Mitt Romney in Iowa, a new survey of an oversized sample shows Huckabee slipping and no longer ahead of Romney. — A private corporate interest commissioned a phone bank survey of 15,000 Iowans …

Discussion: Captain's Quarters and Power Line

Washington Post:

Romney Eyes Huckabee Lead — Onetime Favorite Launches 11th-Hour Attacks — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched a fresh attack Friday on rival Mike Huckabee, raising the stakes in the tense two-person contest in Iowa that could prove critical to both candidates' hopes of winning the GOP nomination.

Discussion: The New Republic, Captain's Quarters, Boston Globe, The Caucus, MSNBC, PoliGazette and The Politico

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY....In October, David Brooks, in an otherwise fawning column about Mike Huckabee, conceded that “his foreign policy thinking is thin." That was obviously a dramatic understatement. — Earlier this month, he didn't know what the National Intelligence Estimate was.

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias

Los Angeles Times:
Romney at center of GOP ad battle

Discussion: Hot Air, Hotline On Call and Riehl World View

David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times:
Remarks on Pakistan Are Tailing Huckabee

Discussion: Betsy's Page, Wizbang, CALIFORNIA YANKEE and MSNBC

Marc Hansen / Des Moines Register:
McCain could be comeback codger

Discussion: The Caucus

Patrick Healy / New York Times:
Crisis Overseas Is Sudden Test for Candidates

Discussion: The Politico, MSNBC, Jules Crittenden, PoliGazette, Prairie Weather, Brendan Nyhan, Democratic Strategist, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The Swamp and Hot Air

CNN:

Bhutto exhumation okay, Pakistan official says — ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — The Pakistani government has no problem with officials from Benazir Bhutto's political party exhuming the slain opposition leader's body if they see a need to do so, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Saturday.

Discussion: Guardian, The Newshoggers, The Moderate Voice, Associated Press, Hindustan Times, The Gun Toting Liberal™, Voice of America, At-Largely, Time, Registan.net, American Thinker, Macsmind, The Impolitic, Doug Ross, On Deadline and Blogs of War

Telegraph:

Pakistan offers to exhume Benazir Bhutto — The Pakistan government today offered to exhume the body of Benazir Bhutto, as the row over the murdered opposition leader's cause of death intensified. — The Interior Ministry claims the former leader died after hitting her head …

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, Agence France Presse, New York Times, A Blog For All, Jules Crittenden, PoliGazette, Time and New York Post

Washington Post:

The Pakistan Test — Some presidential candidates show they can respond quickly to a foreign policy crisis. Some flunk or foul. — THE ASSASSINATION of Benazir Bhutto presented U.S. presidential candidates with a test: Could they respond cogently and clearly to a sudden foreign policy crisis?

Discussion: Ben Smith's Blogs, TalkLeft and CNN

Washington Post:
U.S. Fears Greater Turmoil In Region

Discussion: AMERICAblog, PBD, Prairie Weather and MSNBC

Faiz / Think Progress:

Kristol: The New York Times ‘Should Be Prosecuted,’ 'It Isn't A First-Rate Newspaper' — For years, Bill Kristol has been at the forefront of a vitriolic right-wing crusade against the New York Times. Sadly, the Times has chosen to reward him for it. — After the New York Times …

Discussion: Unqualified Offerings

Carpetbagger / The Carpetbagger Report:

Kristol gets an unearned promotion — Recently cast off from Time magazine, presumably for writing shallow, predictable tripe, the Weekly Standard's William Kristol is getting a promotion of sorts. … If the report is accurate, and Kristol is joining the Times' roster …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, alicublog, Lawyers, Guns and Money and Angry Bear

Jesus H Christ / The Huffington Post:

Bill Kristol To Become New York Times Columnist In 2008 — The Huffington Post has learned that, in a move bound to create controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008. Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative who recently departed …

Matt Bai / New York Times:

Invisible Blogger — The sidewalks of Harlem's main thoroughfares are wide and inviting, and in the 1960s the kids playing “boxball” shared the asphalt squares with some of the greatest orators in creation. The most famous spot for speechifying was the “Speakers' Corner” …

Discussion: Althouse, Tom Watson, Liberty Street, driftglass, Chris Dodd National Blog, American Street and TBogg

Jesse Wendel / Group News Blog:

NY Times Magazine: Steven Gilliard Jr. — Steve Gilliard. — NY Times Magazine photo courtesy of the Gilliard family. — Our Friend & Mentor, Steve Gilliard — God, I miss Gilly. — Every day, every week. — There's a tendency to put the dead up on pedestals. It isn't like that.

San Francisco Chronicle:

Democrats rip Bush's pocket veto of military policy bill — KEY REASON: One aspect of law could have led to legal claims against Iraq — (12-29) 04:00 PST Crawford, Texas — For months, President Bush harangued Democrats in Congress for not moving quickly enough to support the troops …

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, MSNBC and Washington Post

Michelle Malkin:

Impeachment Watch: Extreme BDS in Vermont — Frustrated by the failure of the Dem leadership to carry through with impeachment, some Bush-haters in Brattleboro, Vermont want to subject President Bush and VP Cheney to arrest if they set foot in their town. Consider it sort of a do-it-yourself impeachment alternative:

Discussion: Hot Air, Dr. Sanity, JammieWearingFool and Runnin' Scared

Associated Press:
Activists want Bush, Cheney subject to arrest

Discussion: Impeach Bush For Peace, The Jawa Report, Buck Naked Politics and Rook's Rant

Associated Press:

Girl won Hannah Montana tickets with fake essay — GARLAND, Texas (AP) — An essay that won a 6-year-old girl four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert began with the powerful line: “My daddy died this year in Iraq." — While gripping, it was not true — and now the girl may lose her tickets …

Discussion: Scared Monkeys and Blogs of War

Bill Minor / Clarion-Ledger:

Has Barbour set stage for ‘lifetime job’ for GOP Senate seat? — At the height of the holidays, Gov. Haley Barbour merrily trampled years of precedents and legal stops to hand the Mississippi Republican Party a shiny Christmas gift labeled “U.S. Senate Seat for Life.”

Discussion: Hattiesburg American

Greg Giroux / CQ Politics:
Lott's Mississippi Senate Successor Gets Named on Monday

Discussion: Cliff Schecter

Military.com:

Britain Drops ‘War on Terror’ Label — The words “war on terror” will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country's chief prosecutor said Dec. 27. — Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless “death cult.”

Discussion: Neptunus Lex, Cliff Schecter, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS and Washington Times