Israeli Attack Kills Scores Across Gaza  —  GAZA CITY — The Israeli Air Force on Saturday launched a massive attack on Hamas targets throughout Gaza in retaliation for the recent heavy rocket fire from the area, hitting mostly security headquarters, training compounds and weapons storage facilities …

GOP chair ‘appalled’ by ‘Magic Negro’ CD  —  Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan issued a statement Saturday distancing the party's leadership from one of the GOP's best-known operatives, Chip Saltsman, who distributed a CD containing “Barack the Magic Negro” …

The Net-Zero Gas Tax  —  A once-in-a-generation chance.  —  Americans have a deep and understandable aversion to gasoline taxes.  In a culture more single-mindedly devoted to individual freedom than any other, tampering with access to the open road is met with visceral opposition.

The Disaster In Tennessee  —  I'm late to this story, but: what's happening in Tennessee sounds horrific: … This is much bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill.  You can see aerial video here.  I find it disturbing that the amount of fly ash now thought to have been released is over twice …

As a Candidate, Kennedy Is Forceful but Elusive  —  Caroline Kennedy, the woman who would be New York's next senator, is sure of one thing.  Among all the hopefuls seeking to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, she said on Saturday, there is no better choice.

Caroline Kennedy: ‘Unconventional’  —  In that limited gene pool that has fueled American politics for several decades now - the Kennedy, Clinton and Bush clans - Caroline Kennedy maintains that she represents an “unconventional choice” for the New York Senate seat of Hillary Clinton.

Samuel Huntington, 81, political scientist, scholar  —  ‘One of the most influential political scientists of the last 50 years’  —  Samuel P. Huntington - a longtime Harvard University professor, an influential political scientist, and mentor to a generation of scholars in widely divergent fields - died Dec. 24 on Martha's Vineyard.

Phila. man shot because family talked during movie  —  A South Philadelphia man enraged because a father and son were talking during a Christmas showing of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button took care of the situation when he pulled a .380-caliber gun and shot the father, police said.

Theodore Roosevelt Was No Conservative  —  There's a reason he left the GOP to lead the Progressive Party.  —  We know that Barack Obama and his allies identify themselves as “progressives,” and that they aim to implement the big-government liberalism that originated in America's Progressive Era and was consummated in the New Deal.

There's No Pain-Free Cure for Recession  —  Belt-tightening is required by all, including government.  —  As recession fears cause the nation to embrace greater state control of the economy and unimaginable federal deficits, one searches in vain for debate worthy of the moment.

Bill Kristol's Year Up at ‘NYT’: Will He Get Axed?  —  NEW YORK Exactly one year ago this weekend the Huffington Post broke the news that, as Jim Morrison might have put it, the Kristol Ship was about to sail at The New York Times.  Much uproar ensued across the blogosphere.

By Saying Yes, WaMu Built Empire on Shaky Loans  —  “We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe's-Home Depot did to their industry.  And I think if we've done our job, five years from now you're not going to call us a bank.”

Politico reviews the year in American “political journalism”  —  Politico's media reporter, Michael Calderone, does an unintentionally superb job of conveying the vapid, wretched soul of the American political media, with his list of what he calls — without any irony at all — “The Top Ten Political Scoops of 2008”:

Obama's Vacation: Power Returns to Oahu  —  HONOLULU — A thunderstorm knocked out power across Oahu island Friday night, crippling the island of 900,000 people and interrupting the vacations of thousands of tourists, including President-elect Barack Obama.  —  Electrical crews …