John McCain clearly the best in GOP primary  —  FOR SOUTH CAROLINA, and to some extent for the nation, the choice among Republican candidates for president has come down to two men.  —  First Rudy Giuliani, then Mitt Romney looked at political realities and fled the Palmetto State, deciding their priorities lay elsewhere.

Sorry, Barack, You've lost Iraq.  —  Bush's efforts to negotiate a long-term U.S-Iraq pact may remove troops as an '08 election issue for Obama, Clinton.  —  Camp Arifjan in the desert kingdom of Kuwait, America's depot to the Iraq war, feels about as far away as you can get from South Carolina …

Outrage of the Week: Canadian Publisher Persecuted for Mindcrime  —  An excellent opening statement by Ezra Levant, at his Canadian Human Rights Commission “hearing” for publishing the Danish cartoons of blasphemy.  This hearing is an outrage, and Levant is brilliant here.

Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles  —  Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.  —  This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow …

Red State Update Apologizes to Fred Thompson  —  I love these guys:

Anti-war Soros funded Iraq study  —  A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros.  —  Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal.

Teachers Sue to Block Hotel Workers' Union Vote in Nevada Caucus  —  LAS VEGAS — Nevada's state teachers union and six Las Vegas area residents filed a lawsuit late Friday that could make it harder for many members of the state's huge hotel workers union to vote in the hotly contested Jan. 19 Democratic caucus in Nevada.

Organs to be taken without consent  —  Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to take organs from dead patients without explicit consent.  —  Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that such a facility would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year.

Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Distorting Her Words  —  RENO, Nev. — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday accused Senator Barack Obama's campaign of distorting remarks she made to suggest that she had cast aspersions on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ben Nelson To Endorse Obama  —  Now this is a predictable development as Ben Nelson is the king of bipartisanship, voting with Republicans more than any other Democrat: … Again, the national implications for me are not positive for Obama, they are negative.

Clinton camp hits Obama |  Attacks ‘painful’ for black voters  —  Many in state offended by criticism of Obama, remarks about King  —  Sharp criticism of Barack Obama and other comments about Martin Luther King Jr. — all from people associated with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign …

Young Evangelicals Embrace Huckabee as Old Guard Balks  —  WASHINGTON — Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism …

A Combative Thompson Sways Voters  —  MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — John and Ann Berenberk dutifully watched the umpteenth Republican presidential debate on television on Thursday night and had an epiphany.  It was about the candidate they had previously referred to as the tall, silent one.  Fred D. Thompson.