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.

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.

McCain, You Depress Me  —  My colleague Leon has been “rather stirred” by many things about John McCain, including his “decency about immigrants."  I'm rather stirred by that too — it is my favorite thing about McCain, his capacity to argue that it's a profoundly American imperative …

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.

The Constitution is Not a “Living, Breathing Document”  —  This morning I heard that one of the other candidates commented that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document."  —  Frankly, I assumed this came from Senator Clinton or Senator Obama.  It is identical to what Al Gore …

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 …

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 …

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.

FOX ATTACKS!  “Non-Existent” Veterans  —  Embed code for your site:  —  Sign the letter to Bill O'Reilly demanding he apologize to the “non-existent” homeless vets here.  —  To Bill O'Reilly: Homeless veterans exist.  I met some.  —  In a previous post, I wrote about Bill O'Reilly's bizarre assertion …

McCain Lies His Head Off; NY Times Asleep at Switch  —  One of the most common-supply-side talking points is that tax cuts always lead to higher tax revenues.  It's not really true (revenues crashed after the 2001 Bush tax cuts) but even if it were, it's misleading: Tax revenues tend to rise …

Huck Hoax: Why He Won't Break Out  —  Mike Huckabee has pulled a neat trick.His appeal so far has been limited exclusively to evangelicals, yet the press has taken him seriously as a new populist force in the Republican Party who could at any moment “break out” to appeal to lower-income voters.

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 one anyway) was to plan for a knockout blow in February by winning big states like California.

The Perils of Identity Politics  —  Let us give hearty thanks and credit to Rudy Giuliani, who has never by word or gesture implied that we would fracture any kind of “ceiling” if we elected as chief executive a man whose surname ends in a vowel.  —  Yet actually, it would be unprecedented …

Hillary Personally Slams Obama Over Reagan Comments  —  The Hillary campaign clearly made a decision to go all out on Obama's Reagan comments today.  Hillary herself just lit into Obama over them in Las Vegas, according to a transcript provided by her campaign: