Hillary without tears  —  Why it's time to close the book on the Clintons — and herald the Obamas!  Plus: Iran war hawks, Russian drag queens and the genius of Zeppelin.  —  As her husband has dragged his numerous female play objects before her and has humiliated her on the public stage year after year …

McLead in SC  —  Rasmussen has McCain jumping ahead of Huckabee for the Jan. 19 South Carolina primary...  Romney is at 16 percent, Thompson at 12, Giuliani at 6, Paul at 5.  If Romney drops out after Michigan, does that suddenly make Thompson viable?  Does it give Huckabee or McCain a boost?

And Cuomo Too  —  I suppose there could be lots of tea leaf reading in this one, but now its AG Andrew Cuomo on Talk 1300, minutes after the governor came on.  Cuomo, to be fair, has been on the radio show a few times, if memory serves me, but his take on Hillary's win in NH …

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Telephone companies cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time, according to a Justice Department audit released Thursday.

2005 Use of Gas by Blackwater Leaves Questions  —  WASHINGTON — The helicopter was hovering over a Baghdad checkpoint into the Green Zone, one typically crowded with cars, Iraqi civilians and United States military personnel.  —  Suddenly, on that May day in 2005, the copter dropped CS gas …

Two Houses Divided  —  Piggybacking on columns by Harold Meyerson and Karl Rove that discuss the intra-party fault lines that the Obama-Clinton race has opened, or re-opened, among the Dems, Matt Continetti writes: … At the moment, though, there's a big difference between the two parties' divisions …

U.S.: Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats  —  Chilling Threat Could Have Come From the Shore or Another Ship, Navy Says  —  Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat …

Lewisville cab driver had been investigated for previous abuse  —  Sarah Said's final phone call rang into the Irving police dispatcher about 7:30 p.m. on New Year's Day: “I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying ..."  —  About an hour later, a man walked up to an orange cab parked at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving.

The Surge Worked  —  It was exactly one year ago tonight, in a televised address to the nation, that President George W. Bush announced his fateful decision to change course in Iraq, and to send five additional U.S. combat brigades there as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy and under the command of a new general, David Petraeus.

Lawmaker Tied to Abramoff to Retire  —  WASHINGTON — Representative John Doolittle of California, once a rising star in the Republican Party but more recently under investigation in a scandal involving the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, announced his retirement from Congress on Thursday …

Getting It Wrong  —  THE failure of the New Hampshire pre-election surveys to mirror the outcome of the Democratic race is one of the most significant miscues in modern polling history.  All the published polls, including those that surveyed through Monday, had Senator Barack Obama comfortably ahead …

TIME TO APOLOGIZE, HUGH  —  On the day of the New Hampshire Primary, I spent a good deal of time on the radio with my friend and Townhall colleague Hugh Hewitt, debating issues and candidates both on his show and my own.  —  Hugh's a great guy, and one of the best political commentators in the country …

New Estimate of Violent Deaths Among Iraqis Is Lower  —  A new survey estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of the country.  Roughly 9 out of 10 of those deaths were a consequence of U.S. military operations, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare.

Romney's Fishy Delegate Claim  —  Why is the former Massachusetts governor telling folks that he leads in delegates?  —  In Boston today, Romney told supporters, “we have more delegates than any other Republican candidate running for president."  —  Here's the ABC News GOP Delegate Estimate: