What Hillary Clinton Gets Out Of A Cabinet Spot, And Other Thoughts  —  1. There's was a private meeting.  Contrary to what I said earlier, Rahm Emanuel wasn't in the room.  He was in DC.  But no one was in the room with the principals.  —  2. The meeting was not a formal interview …

Leahy Becomes First Senator To Demand Lieberman's Ouster From Homeland Security Committee  —  We now have our first Dem Senator who has come on the record and called for Joe Lieberman to be booted from his plum spot on the Homeland Security committee.  —  In an interview with Vermont Public Radio today …

A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney?  —  Gene Burns is one of the nation's most popular talk radio hosts.  For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture.  But last night, after watching Torturing Democracy and realizing that he had not understood …

Lungren will challenge Boehner for top GOP spot  —  Rep. Dan Lungren announced Friday that he will challenge Rep. John Boehner for House Republican leader.  —  Lungren (Calif.) is considered a longshot to unseat Boehner (Ohio), who moved quickly after last week's election to shore up support in the GOP Conference.

“THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:” Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good.  “There's nothing going on.  I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons …

More Allegations of Misconduct in Alabama Governor Case  —  Next month in Atlanta, a federal court will hear the high-profile appeal of former Alabama governor Don E. Siegelman, whose conviction on corruption charges in 2006 became one of the most publicly debated cases to emerge from eight years …

Campaign Bogeyman William Ayers Talks to ‘GMA’  —  'Good Morning America's' Chris Cuomo Grills '60s Radical Bill Ayers  —  William Ayers, the 1960s radical whose violent history became a focal point in the 2008 presidential election, said today that the Republicans unfairly “demonized” …

Bailout to Nowhere  —  Not so long ago, corporate giants with names like PanAm, ITT and Montgomery Ward roamed the earth.  They faded and were replaced by new companies with names like Microsoft, Southwest Airlines and Target.  The U.S. became famous for this pattern of decay and new growth.

Vladimir Putin ‘wanted to hang Georgian President Saakashvili by the balls’  —  Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” — a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace.

Vote tally trend favors Begich for Senate  —  SENATE RACE: With Stevens strongholds still uncounted, leader isn't celebrating yet.  —  scockerham@adn.com  —  More than half the absentee and questioned ballots still to be counted in Alaska's U.S. Senate race come from areas of the state …

Obama gets the Clinton band back together  —  Here's how you can tell the campaign is over and the transition has begun: Barack Obama's aides now wear suits and ties, their desks are in the Federal Building on 6th Street in Washington, D.C.—and Clintonites are everywhere.

The Loss Of Individual Liberty  —  The challenge for this generation is to get it back.  —  Over dinner with Milton Friedman several years before he died, I offered the great man a compliment.  He refused it.  —  I had just re-read God and Man at Yale, the 1951 book in which William F. Buckley Jr. …

McCain Campaign Retrospective  —  I wrote a piece for the new issue on the McCain campaign, focusing especially on the endgame and the fight over Palin.  I know a lot of people are already sick of this stuff, but I wanted to talk to people in the campaign to satisfy my curiosity as much as anything else.

Free the GOP  —  The Party Won't Win Back the Middle as Long As It's Hostage to Social Fundamentalists  —  Four years ago, in the week after the 2004 presidential election, we were working furiously to put the finishing touches on the book we co-authored, “It's My Party Too …

Obama Ties Automaker Rescue to Regulation  —  Top advisers to President-elect Barack Obama are helping to draft an auto industry rescue plan that would bring new government oversight, including the possibility of an auto czar who could ensure the money was being used wisely.

Court to rule on campaign films, judge recusal  —  The Supreme Court on Friday added five new cases to its decision docket for the current Term, including a test of the constitutionality of a federal campaign finance ban as applied to a critical movie about Sen. Hillary Clinton when she was running …

Depression Economics Returns  —  The economic news, in case you haven't noticed, keeps getting worse.  Bad as it is, however, I don't expect another Great Depression.  In fact, we probably won't see the unemployment rate match its post-Depression peak of 10.7 percent, reached in 1982 (although I wish I was sure about that).