Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan  —  WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called “a war of necessity” in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.

Even Monbiot says the science now needs “reanalyising”  —  Even George Monbiot, one of the fiercest media propagandists of the warming faith, admits he should have been more sceptical and says the science now needs to be rechecked: … Sure, Monbiot claims the fudging of what he extremely optimistically puts …

1 in 4 Borrowers Under Water  —  The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery.  —  Nearly 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes in the third quarter …

Lieberman Digs In on Public Option  —  Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking in that trademark sonorous baritone, utters a simple statement that translates into real trouble for Democratic leaders: “I'm going to be stubborn on this.”  —  Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a …

The small-d democratic case against the filibuster  —  “Are progressives really willing to take their chances with a future GOP-controlled Senate empowered to pass whatever they have 51 votes for?” asks Scott Winship.  “With the Supreme Court nominees who could be seated (to say nothing of other judgeships)?

Dobbs mulls White House bid  —  Former CNN host Lou Dobbs fueled already rampant speculation about his political future Monday, sending the clearest signals yet that he's mulling a bid for president—and leaving third-party political operatives salivating over the possibility of a celebrity recruit for the 2012 campaign.

The Values Question  —  It's easy to get lost in the weeds when talking about health care reform.  But, like all great public issues, the health care debate is fundamentally a debate about values.  It's a debate about what kind of country we want America to be.

Some Conservatives Push a ‘Purity Test’ for GOP Candidates  —  Conservative Republican Party activists want to withhold money from GOP candidates who stray too far from party orthodoxy.  —  Ten Republican National Committee members are distributing a plan to impose a purity test …

Yes, she can: Palin has a shot at the presidency  —  How Sarah Palin might win the White House  —  President Sarah Palin.  To many pundits and late-night comedians, this sounds like a punch line, and to many die-hard Democrats it sounds like a reason to leave the country.

Right and Left Join to Take On U.S. Over Criminal Justice  —  WASHINGTON — In the next several months, the Supreme Court will decide at least a half-dozen cases about the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption.  Civil liberties groups and associations …

Larson, Rangel, Murtha, Frank Join Obey's War Tax Bloc  —  I wondered yesterday how serious David Obey was about the idea of paying for the Afghanistan war with higher taxes.  Today the answer seems to be that he's pretty darn serious, with Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel …

Katie Couric Uses Christmas Poem To Campaign For ObamaCare  —  The advocacy on display Monday by “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric was almost unimaginable.  —  In her “Notebook” video posted at CBSNews.com, Couric read a poem fashioned after Clement Clarke Moore's classic “The Night Before Christmas.”

Top Republican lawmakers not attending State Dinner  —  While the White House is mum about who will be among the 300 or so lucky invitees to President Obama's first state dinner Tuesday night, word is already leaking out about who's not going to be there.  —  Chief among the non-attendees: top Republican lawmakers.

Beware the Result of Outrage  —  The biggest news story of last week?  —  O.K., maybe it was Oprah Winfrey announcing she was going to call it quits with her daytime show in 2011.  —  But it's a close call.  Though Oprah sucked up a lot of the media oxygen, last Thursday was an important …

Fiscally Responsible Stimulus With Front-Loaded Infrastructure Investments  —  Light rail construction in Seattle (cc photo by Oran Viriyincy)  —  On a call with bloggers earlier today to talk about job creation policies, Nancy Pelosi outlined a smart idea for “front-loading” …

Gee, that's De Pressing  —  Second estimate of third-quarter GDP out; growth rate marked down to 2.8%.  —  This is really quite grim.  At this growth rate it's far from clear that we're doing anything to reduce the output gap — the gap between what the economy could produce and what it's actually producing.