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.

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.

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 …

Unions Pouring Resources Into Nevada Caucus Fight  —  With Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama eager to win the Democratic caucuses in Nevada next Saturday, labor unions backing Mr. Obama are in a surprisingly intense, expensive fight with those supporting Mrs. Clinton.

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.

AN APOLOGY TO FRED THOMPSON  —  I am a latecomer to the gentlemen of Red State Update, not to be confused with the gentlemen of Red State.  In the video below, Jackie extracts an apology to Fred Thompson from Dunlap.  The video is suggestive of the kind of hard feelings the intraparty race …

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 …

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.

Huckabee Splits Young Evangelicals and Old Guard  —  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 of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

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.