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.

Blair House Mystery Solved: It's John Howard  —  The veil is lifted.  We now know who is booked at Blair House, kicking President-elect Barack Obama and his family to the waiting list and across Lafayette Park to the Hay-Adams Hotel.  —  The only overnight visitor at the presidential guest manse …

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 …

Obama's Remarks on His Pick for Chief Performance Officer  —  The prepared remarks of President-elect Barack Obama in Washington on his pick for White House chief performance officer.  —  Good morning.  —  By now, we all know that we are facing a crisis in our economy …

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?

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

Team Sarah Infiltrated  —  Administrators of Team Sarah have uncovered evidence on a left-wing online thread that some Internet trolls sought to discredit the organization by posing as conservative racists on Team Sarah's forums.  —  Team Sarah, an online community supportive of Gov. Sarah Palin …

CIA Man: Spies' Reaction to Panetta ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’  —  A retired senior CIA operations officer who quit last summer after 20 years tracking terrorists says the rank-and-file reaction to President-elect Obama's choice of Leon E.Panetta to run the spy agency has been “overwhelmingly negative.”

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 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.

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.

ABC: Anything But Cole  —  Juan Cole is running two campaigns on his blog.  One is against Israel—business as usual for Cole.  The other is promoting his blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards competition (Middle East category), where there are ten finalists (I am one).