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.

All's Well  —  When I heard that Bill Kristol was leaving Time I got seriously worried about the state of the world.  After all, everyone knows that conservative pundits don't get held accountable for saying tons and tons of wrong stuff — that's not how it works.

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.

Because Oil Companies And Pizza Hut Couldn't Afford It  —  I've figured out how to get conservatives and liberals together on the issue of pork.  All we need to do is show how earmarks put money in the pockets of a progressive bete noir, and if possible, throw in a dash of Congressional cluelessness.