Let's have some fun in Michigan  —  In 1972, Republican voters in Michigan decided to make a little mischief, crossing over to vote in the open Democratic primary and voting for segregationist Democrat George Wallace, seriously embarrassing the state's Democrats.

HUMAN EVENTS Endorses Fred Thompson  —  The 2008 presidential election is the most unusual and most important in many years.  It's been more than five decades since such a race didn't feature an incumbent President or Vice President.  Since World War II, America has not had a presidential election …

LAS VEGAS STOP: Clinton pitch hits home  —  Democratic hopeful goes door to door  —  People in the Las Vegas neighborhood saw all the cameras and trucks and buses and police on the streets Thursday, and they began to trickle out of their houses to find out what was going on.

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL, WHO'S THE BIGGEST PANDERER OF ALL?....Mike Huckabee currently has the loopiest tax proposal on the table, a 30% national sales tax that he supports because he read a book about it once and thought it sounded kinda neat.  It's unworkable, hugely regressive …

Snow falls on Baghdad for first time in memory  —  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Snow fell on Baghdad on Friday for the first time in memory, and delighted residents declared it an omen of peace.  —  “It is the first time we've seen snow in Baghdad,” said 60-year-old Hassan Zahar.  “We've seen sleet before, but never snow.

THE AD MS. DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE  —  The American Jewish Congress submitted this understated advertisement about the status of women in Israel to Ms. Magazine.  Underneath the attractive photographs of Israel's foreign minister (Tzipi Livni), Supreme Court president (Dorit Beinish) …

Racial tensions roil Democratic race  —  A series of comments from Senator Hillary Clinton, her husband, and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary as the candidates head south to heavily African-American South Carolina.

John Edwards is a loser.  He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31.  Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses.  He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency.  Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now.

Obama Lands Arizona Gov.'s Endorsement  —  UPDATE, 11:45 am: The Post's Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray scored an interview with Napolitano in which she confirmed her endorsement.  “I think we need fresh voices and fresh messages of unity and coming together,” Napolitano told the duo.

Paul the Peter  —  Andrew Sullivan: … [Me] Just so.  Furthermore, I doubt Paul has ever been any different.  I had a most interesting email yesterday from a friend in Texas.  My friend's father was a slightly-cranky far-rightist who'd corresponded with Paul in the early 1980s.

Judge nixes hearing on destroyed CIA tapes  —  WASHINGTON (AFP) — A federal judge Thursday rejected a request by war-on-terror detainees in Guantanamo who sought a hearing on the destruction of videotapes showing CIA interrogations of terror suspects, a court source said.

“We're all fascists now”  —  Jonah Goldberg is not a popular man among liberals.  The son of Lucianne Goldberg, the literary agent who played a pivotal role in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he already had that as a strike against him when he began his career as a conservative political commentator in the late 1990s.

Sliming Obama  —  Dueling chain e-mails claim he's a radical Muslim or a ‘racist’ Christian.  Both can't be right.  We find both are false.  —  If these two nasty e-mail messages are any indication, the 2008 presidential campaign is becoming a very dirty one.

Wiretap Politics  —  Senator Chris Dodd's Presidential campaign died with a whimper in Iowa.  But he still seems to be dictating national security policy to fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill, and unless the Bush Administration is willing to fight, perhaps to the next President too.

The Fraud of Voter ID Laws  —  Voting irregularities?  There may be ballot box stuffing, electronic voter machine hacking, and list manipulation.  Voter ID laws, however, don't address these problems.  —  Everything was supposed to change after Bush v. Gore.

Menino decries clinics in retailers  —  Urges health council to bar infirmaries from opening in city  —  Mayor Thomas M. Menino embarked on a highly public campaign yesterday to block CVS Corp. and other retailers from opening medical clinics inside their stores, an effort that exposed …