Two senior Hamas terrorists killed in IAF strike  —  Senior Hamas terrorist Hussam Hamdan, who was in charge of Grad-type rocket launches into Beersheba and Ofakim, was killed in an IAF strike on Khan Yunis on Sunday afternoon.  —  Another senior Hamas terrorist, Muhammad Hilo, was also killed in the same airstrike.

Charity homes built by Hollywood start to crumble  —  RESIDENTS of a model housing estate bankrolled by Hollywood celebrities and hand-built by Jimmy Carter, the former US president, are complaining that it is falling apart.  —  Fairway Oaks was built on northern Florida wasteland by 10,000 volunteers …

State government grinds to standstill  —  The governor was arrested by the FBI and faces impeachment proceedings, his appointee to a U.S. Senate seat is in limbo and the state treasury is in shambles—a combination that has turned Illinois into a national punch line.  —  But who's laughing around here?

The End of the Financial World as We Know It  —  AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics.  We've been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing.

SURVEILLANCE STATE RUN AMOK.... In July, the Washington Post reported on undercover Maryland State Police officers conducting surveillance on war protesters and death penalty opponents.  Today, we learn that the monitoring was worse, and more pervasive, than first believed.

He should get tough with Israel.  —  In Search of the High Ground: In July, Obama got a bird's-eye view of the Holy Land with Livni (right) and Defense Minister Ehud Barak  —  From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009  —  Jews worry for a living; their tragic history compels them to do so.

A President Forgotten but Not Gone  —  WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella.  So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down.  Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43.

16 days till Inauguration — Game on: The President-elect is scheduled to arrive at Andrews this evening — Plus ‘Article of the Month’  —  SIREN: Bloomberg News says Labor Department figures out Friday are likely to show U.S. job losses for the year were the worst since 1945.

Fears over earthquake ‘swarm’ at Yellowstone National Park  —  Hundreds of earthquakes have hit Yellowstone National Park, raising fears of a more powerful volcanic eruption.  —  The earthquake swarm, the biggest in more than 20 years, is being closely monitored by scientists and emergency authorities.

Orwell, blinding tribalism, selective Terrorism, and Israel/Gaza  —  Former McCain-Palin campaign spokesman and current Weekly Standard editor Michael Goldfarb notes that Israel, a couple of days ago, dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a Gazan home which killed a top Hamas leader …

As My Son Goes to War, I Am Fully Israeli At Last  —  “I just heard on the news that Gavriel's base has been shelled,” my wife, Sarah, said to me last Tuesday, referring to our 19-year-old son, a member of an Israeli army tank unit waiting on the Gaza border for the order to enter.

Senate race certification set for Monday with Franken up 225 votes  —  The Supreme Court has yet to rule on Coleman's request to consider more wrongly rejected ballots.  —  DFLer Al Franken won an impressive share Saturday of what may be the last ballots tallied in the U.S. Senate recount …

China rattled by Sun King attack  —  An elite dissident has split party leaders with criticism of their ‘sham’ reforms  —  THE most prominent dissident still living in China has attacked the Communist party's economic reforms and compared Deng Xiaoping, its late leader, to Louis XIV.