Death Toll Rising in India in Coordinated Attacks  —  NEW DELHI — Coordinated terror attacks struck the heart of Mumbai, India's commercial capital, Wednesday evening, targeting at least two five-star hotels, the city's largest commuter train station, a historic movie theater and a hospital.

Franken loses absentee ballot appeal  —  The state Canvassing Board today rejected Democrat Al Franken's request to count absentee ballots his campaign says were wrongly rejected by poll judges.  —  Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's team had argued that the board lacks the power to include those ballots in the recount.

Bush's Last Days: The Lamest Duck  —  We have “only one President at a time,” Barack Obama said in his debut press conference as President-elect.  Normally, that would be a safe assumption — but we're learning not to assume anything as the charcoal-dreary economic winter approaches.

The Irrelevant House Republicans  —  Elizabeth Drew has an interesting piece on “The Truth About the Election” but I wanted to comment on this one point: … The thing of it is that it doesn't really matter what Eric Cantor thinks.  The House Republicans are, in effect, irrelevant.

A NEW DAY FOR TURKEY.  —  Like Matt, I have strong sectarian feelings against turkey.  But unlike him, I'm a political realist, I believe in mitigation, not abolition.  So as long as turkey is going to sit like a colossus atop the Thanksgiving meal, we may as well figure out a way to reduce its suck factor.

Exclusive: NY Rail Plot Details Based on ‘Reliable’ FBI Source  —  New Information in Last 48 Hours Led to Public Warning  —  Uniformed police officers have flooded New York City's Penn Station, home to the Long Island Rail Road, following a warning from the FBI of a “plausible but unsubstantiated” …

Lieberman Contributed to GOP Senate, House Candidates  —  Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-Conn.) support of John McCain's presidential campaign was well known.  His contribution to Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) was not.  (By Melina Mara — The Washington Post Photo)  —  By Paul Kane

Michelle Obama's ‘Mommy’ Stamp  —  When Michelle Obama took to describing her new role as mom in chief, my first reaction was to wince at her words.  My second reaction was to identify with them.  —  I was okay, actually, with what Obama said.  But I worried: Did she have to say it out loud, quite so explicitly?

No New Torture Probes  —  There has been much speculation about how the Obama administration will deal with what many view as the Bush administration's harsh, abusive and illegal interrogation program.  Some have called for an investigation by Congress or the Justice Department, possibly leading to criminal sanctions.

Send Bill Clinton to the Senate  —  Amid the blizzard of résumés blanketing Washington as the Obama era dawns, there is a superbly qualified candidate for full employment whose name has been overlooked.  We refer, of course, to William Jefferson Clinton, America's 42nd chief executive and commander in chief.

The Strategic Presidency  —  I've now done a kind of scan-read of Team of Rivals à la a person preparing for a college final.  And I have to say that, like Daniel Drezner and most others I've spoken to, what Obama's doing doesn't actually seem to follow that template in anything other than a very superficial sense.

Lori Drew Not Guilty of Felonies in Landmark Cyberbullying Trial  —  LOS ANGELES — Lori Drew, the 49-year-old woman charged in the first federal cyberbullying case, was cleared of felony computer-hacking charges by a jury Wednesday morning, but convicted of three misdemeanors.

About that advisory board  —  Too big to fail?  —  A thought I've had: there have been some complaints from movement progressives about the centrism/orthodoxy of Obama's economics appointments.  To some extent this was unavoidable, I think: someone like the Treasury secretary …

Re: Which History?  —  Mark K, while I was down in Australia a while back, they had a big Education Summit going on, and the then Prime Minister, the great John Howard, used a marvelous phrase to me about how they wanted to teach Oz history — as an “heroic national narrative”.  We don't do that.