Romney leads McCain in Michigan poll  —  Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who badly needs to win Tuesday's Michgian primary, has an eight-point lead over Sen. John McCain of Arizona in a McClatchy-MSNBC poll of Michigan voters to be released Sunday.  —  Romney had a narrower lead …

Sex and the Teenage Girl  —  THE movie “Juno” is a fairy tale about a pregnant teenager who decides to have her baby, place it for adoption and then get on with her life.  For the most part, the tone of the movie is comedic and jolly, but there is a moment when Juno tells her father about her condition …

Deplorable Campaigning  —  Mike Huckabee: “Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives,” he told reporters, “were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.”

The Media Does It Again  —  Today, the NY Times has the first part of a special series - War Torn:Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles.  It appears that the troops are coming home and becoming murderers. … And we're presented with a litany of tragedy.

A CASE STUDY IN RESISTANCE  —  In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville famously concludes with a warning of the kind of despotism to which democratic are especially susceptible.  Tocqueville warns that the passion for equality will give rise to a certain kind of degradation in which citizens …

McCaskill to endorse Obama  —  WASHINGTON — Sen. Claire McCaskill will endorse Barack Obama's presidential bid Sunday, a boost that comes as the Democratic presidential showdown intensifies in Missouri and the raft of other states set to vote on Feb. 5th.  —  McCaskill had intended …

Durbin warns Bill Clinton  —  Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the second-ranking party leader in the Senate, says President Bill Clinton's comments about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are getting “too personal” and called on the former president to refrain from attacking Obama's integrity.

Liberal Fascism And Its Critics  —  Here is some free advice for liberals who don't care much for Jonah Goldberg or his (bestselling) new volume: Either confine yourself to dismissive snark, of the sort perfected by my colleague Matt, or buckle down and actually read the damn thing.

Cloudy Fortunes for Conservatism  —  Well, this wasn't the plan.  —  As pretty much everyone has noticed, the Republican race hasn't exactly followed any of the scripts laid out for it.  Mitt Romney has been hacked apart like the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

Scotland Yard believes Al-Qaeda assassinated Benazir Bhutto  —  BRITISH officials have revealed that evidence amassed by Scotland Yard detectives points towards Al-Qaeda militants being responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.  —  Five experts in video evidence and forensic science …

So We Thought.  But Then Again . . .  HARRY S TRUMAN once said he wanted to talk to a one-armed economist, “so that the guy could never make a statement and then say: ‘on the other hand.’ ” Yet economic knowledge continues to progress in unexpected ways.  Here are a few of the things we learned in the last 12 months:

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.

The Race for the American Mind  —  Last year's scamnesty bill had widespread support among the powers-that-be, with the president, the Democrat majority and mainstream media all singing its praises.  Yet it went down to defeat, slain by a new-media coalition of talk radio and blogosphere warriors.

Iraq Passes Bill on Baathists  —  Plan Would Ease Limits on Former Hussein Followers  —  The Iraqi parliament passed a bill Saturday intended to make it easier for former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to government jobs and collect their pensions, a significant achievement …