Obama Is Under Fire Over Panetta Selection  —  Current, Ex-CIA Officials Criticize ‘Opaque’ Process  —  President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday that he has selected a “top-notch intelligence team” that would provide the “unvarnished” information his administration needs, rather than “what they think the president wants to hear.”

Obama Warns Trillion-Dollar Deficit Potential  —  WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday braced Americans for the unparalleled prospect of “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come,” a stark assessment of the budgetary outlook that he said would force his administration …

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 …

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?

Synagogue set ablaze and anti-Semitic assaults soar in UK following Israel's invasion of Gaza … The number of anti-Semitic attacks in London has risen sharply following Israel's land assault on Gaza, Jewish community groups said today.  —  Their leaders have compiled a dossier of attacks …

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.”

Sarkozy says Israel, Palestinians OK Gaza plan  —  PARIS (AP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy says Israel and the Palestinian Authority have accepted an Egyptian-French plan for Gaza.  —  Sarkozy says he “strongly welcomes the acceptance by Israel and the Palestinian Authority …

Militant Islam Threatens Us All  —  Hamas rockets have the same terror goal as Hitler's blitz.  —  Imagine a siren that gives you 30 seconds to find shelter before a Kassam rocket falls from the sky and explodes, spraying its lethal shrapnel in all directions.

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe  —  The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context.  Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians.

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.

Specter Attacks Choice for Attorney General  —  WASHINGTON — A leading Republican senator issued a broad attack on Tuesday on President-elect Barack Obama's pick as attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., questioning his political independence.  —  The senator, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania …

The End of White America?  —  ANOTHER MOMENT FROM The Great Gatsby: as Fitzgerald's narrator and Gatsby drive across the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan, a car passes them, and Nick Carraway notices that it is a limousine “driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl.”

The DOJ pursues the “real criminal” in the NSA spying scandal  —  There are few viewpoints, if there are any, which trigger more fervent agreement across the political and media establishment than the view that George Bush, Dick Cheney and other top officials should not be criminally investigated …

City of Cold Shoulders  —  THE scene of Roland W. Burris being escorted from the Senate by the Capitol police on Tuesday could be only the first act of an unpleasant and distracting drama.  But in the days since Mr. Burris's appointment to Illinois's junior Senate seat was announced …

Boost Private Investment to Boost the Economy  —  Excessive spending is what got us into this mess in the first place.  —  These days it seems like it is our patriotic duty to consume more.  And if we don't choose to spend more money ourselves, the government will do it for us.  —  But wait a minute.

Many Cubans Expect Obama to End Bilateral Hostilities  —  Many Islanders Expect Better Relationship With U.S. Under New President  —  HAVANA — Vicente González says that although Barack Obama is no Karl Marx — “he is a capitalist and likely an imperialist” — he has high hopes …

Job weakness continues, reports show  —  ADP says the private sector shed 693,000 jobs in December, while Challenger shows employers unveiled 166,348 job cuts.  —  NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Separate employment reports released Wednesday showed the labor market continued to get battered in December.

Baghdad shrine ban for women  —  Iraqi authorities have closed a major shrine in Baghdad's Kadhimiya area to women amid security concerns as a Shia religious ceremony reaches its climax.  —  Ashura is among the holiest days for Shia Muslims, but women will be barred from the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine.

Kmiec v. Kmiec regarding Heller: Douglas Kmiec has sharply criticized the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller.  E.g., Slate, July 8, 2008 (majority opinion amounts to unjust rule by judicial fiat); Tidings, July 11, 2008 (Heller majority misconstrued the Second Amendment …

House panel to look at Rod Blagojevich's alleged hiring improprieties  —  Governor could be impeached by the end of the week  —  SPRINGFIELD — The focus turns back to Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Wednesday as a House committee weighing his political fate delves into alleged hiring irregularities …