THE NEVADA CAUCUS: Poll: Nevada going to Clinton, Romney  —  Obama picks up no ground; Giuliani fades  —  Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Mitt Romney have comfortable leads in Nevada going into Saturday's presidential campaign caucuses, according to a new Review-Journal poll.

President Bush Discusses Economy, Growth Package  —  Fact Sheet: Taking Action to Keep Our Economy Healthy  —  THE PRESIDENT: Over the past several months I've held a series of meetings with my economic team on the outlook for the U.S. economy.  And before I left for the Middle East …

The martyrdom of John McCain  —  COLUMBIA, S.C. - The national media thinks John McCain is under siege again, and his campaign is only too happy to help reporters file their stories.  —  At a rally Thursday, outside McCain's headquarters just down the street from the state capitol here …

Mauling survivor said he yelled at tiger  —  (01-17) 18:05 PST SAN FRANCISCO — One of the two survivors of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attack that left a 17-year-old dead told the victim's father that the three had yelled and waved at the animal while standing atop the railing of the tiger's exhibit …

Placing the Candidates  —  Interesting chart from the Pew Center.  One piece of bad news for liberals is that it seems that the self-assessed ideology of the American people is still somewhat right of center.  It's also funny how unhinged Republicans' views of Hillary Clinton are.

Bobby Fischer, 1943-2008  —  Chess master Bobby Fischer has died in Iceland, the country that adopted him in 2005 after he became a pariah in most of the western world.  Reuters reaches Garry Kasparov for comment: … Fischer ended life, sadly, as a public freak, a deranged and bitter man overflowing …

The president of Florida  —  Just to be safe, I'm going to say right off the bat that Rudy Giuliani might be the smartest campaign strategist in many a year.  —  That way, if the improbable occurs and the former New York mayor wins the Republican presidential nomination, I can say I knew it all along.

Mitt Romney's Lobbyist Connections  —  In a tense exchange with an AP reporter on Thursday, Mitt Romney insisted that even though a registered lobbyist is one of his senior advisers, lobbyists do not “run” his campaign.  —  The claim is part of Romney's new self-styled outsider message …

Military: 75% of Baghdad areas now secure  —  About 75% of Baghdad's neighborhoods are now secure, a dramatic increase from 8% a year ago when President Bush ordered more troops to the capital, U.S. military figures show.  —  The military classifies 356 of Baghdad's 474 neighborhoods in the …

Callous Conservative  —  After watching Fred Thompson debate his Republican rivals, I have often wondered why he is not in the top tier of candidates.  He seems to have John McCain's honesty, without his razor-sharp edges, and Mitt Romney's conservatism, without his jaw-dropping inconsistencies.

Obama Debuts New Act in Vegas  —  LAS VEGAS (AP) - The White House campaign has brought a new act to Vegas.  Barack Obama has stepped up his campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he's trying to use humor to bring her down before this weekend's Democratic presidential caucus.

Misjudging McCain  —  He was right about the nuclear option.  —  JOHN MCCAIN HAS COME UNDER HEAVY FIRE from conservatives critical of his alleged apostasies.  To be sure, several of his stances—on tax cuts, illegal immigration, campaign-finance reform—stand at odds with the current mainstream of American conservatism.

THE NEW ‘LEPERS’  —  THE TIMES' TROUBLE WITH VETS  —  I'VE had a huge response to Tuesday's column about The New York Times' obscene bid to smear veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan as mad killers.  Countless readers seem to be wondering: Why did the paper do it?

50 WAYS TO BE A LOSER  —  I know I've been hitting on the Rudy collapse story for a while.  But it's just so vast there are a lot of points to cover.  Remember that the Rudy ‘plan’ (which on many levels is a phony anyway) was to plan for a knockout blow on February by winning big states like California.

White House Study Found 473 Days of E-Mail Gone  —  The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary …

Nicholas Burns and the Clinton Legacy at State  —  Reports indicate R. Nicholas Burns, the State Department's Number 3 official, will be stepping down.  A career foreign service officer, Burns will best be remembered for his most visible post: the Clinton administration's top State Department spokesman during the mid-1990s.