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.

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.

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 …

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?

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 …

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.