Porn industry seeks federal bailout  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion …

I want to play poker with Harry Reid.  Really I do.  —  Rather than call for a special election in Illinois, Reid sends a letter to Blagojevich signed by everyone in the Democratic caucus asking him to step down.  They assert that they will not seat anyone he appoints.  —  Harumph.

White House Asked Howard To Stay In Blair House To Give ‘Some Plausible Reason’ For Refusing Obama  —  In December, President-elect Obama asked the White House if he and his family could move into Blair House — the White House's guest house — a week early, so that his daughters Malia and Sasha could start school.

Joe the Plumber to become war correspondent  —  TOLEDO, Ohio - Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter's notebook.  —  The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com.

Fiasco at the Army War College  —  Did faculty members at the Army War College curtail their criticism of the Iraq war for fear of institutional retaliation?  —  That seems to be the bottom line in a situation I stumbled across just a few days ago.  A friend passed along a 2005 e-mail note …

Stop Juan Cole  —  Juan Cole is decrying all the neocons he's forced to compete with in the 2008 Weblog Awards for Best Middle East or Africa Blog.  He thinks Helena Cobban — a deranged Hezbollah supporter — should have been nominated instead of someone like me.

Feinstein says she supports Panetta for CIA  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  WASHINGTON - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday she intends to support President-elect Barack Obama's choice for CIA chief …

McCain Starts ‘Country First’ PAC  —  Less than two weeks from the inauguration that he hoped would usher in his own presidential administration, Senator John McCain announced the formation of a new political action committee that will work to promote Republican causes.

Protester Calls for Jews to ‘Go Back to the Oven’ at Anti-Israel Demonstration  —  Like many other protests of Israel's campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse.

Kemp diagnosed with cancer  —  Former GOP vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, 73, has been diagnosed with cancer.  —  According to a statement from his consulting firm, Kemp Partners, doctors are still testing Kemp before determining a course of treatment.

Sweet on Caroline  —  Ask not, you know, what your country can, like, do for you.  Ask what you, um, can, you know, do for your country.  —  After a lifetime of shying away from the public spotlight, Caroline Kennedy asked herself what she could do for her country.

Israel Resumes Strikes in Gaza after Three-Hour Lull  —  Israel's security cabinet Wednesday approved a continuation of its ground assault in the Gaza Strip, and resumed strikes against the territory after a brief lull it called to expedite the distribution of humanitarian aid.

PARTISAN SELF-DECEPTION.  —  Matt Yglesias notes that left-of-center commentary has been notably more pessimistic on the state of the economy than right-of-center commentary.  He offers three hypotheses (left-wing positions are psychologically correlated to pessimism, pessimism was correct …

The Mideast's Ground Zero  —  The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch.  But it's all too familiar.  It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel?  Can the Jews have a room?

Get out of the way, you old fogies  —  Warning: This column is replete with ageism — a hazardous prejudice to have in a nation growing progressively older.  —  The average American's life expectancy (or, as it's referred to in Washington, the “junior senator") is now a crusty 77 years.

The best reporter in Gaza  —  Ibrahim Barzak is one of the best reporters I know.  —  We got to know each other back in 1992, when he was about 16; I had just started with AP, and he had inherited his father's correspondency.  Hikmet Barzak, who married late in life, had died after reporting Gaza for the AP since the 1950s.