Houston Is Largest City to Elect Openly Gay Mayor  —  HOUSTON — Houston became the largest city in the country to elect an openly gay mayor Saturday night, as voters gave a solid victory to the city controller, Annise Parker.  —  Cheers erupted at Ms. Parker's campaign party as her opponent …

Late Night: If “Freedom” Means Having to Look at Mitch McConnell's Raisiny Ass, I for One Welcome Our New Commie Healthcare Overlords  —  OMG, he's raising his kilt!  Look away, look away!! (graphic with help from watertiger)  —  The Red State Trike Force never fails to delight and amaze.

Drug money ‘saved banks from crisis’  —  Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions  —  Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Larry Summers: Job growth by Spring  —  Larry Summers, the president's chief economic adviser, says the shedding of jobs in an economy emerging from recession should end by Spring.  —  “It will take time,” Summers said in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union with John King today.

Fables of the Reconstruction  —  (Or, How to Make Your Own Hockey Stick)  —  Please pardon the departure from the usual Iowahawk bill of fare.  —  What follows started as a comment I made over at Ace's last week which he graciously decided to feature on a separate post (thanks Ace).

Hollywood's Brilliant Coda to America's Dark Year  —  ON Christmas Day, Hollywood will blanket America with a most unlikely holiday entertainment.  That's when “Up in the Air,” the acclaimed new movie starring George Clooney, will spread from its big-city engagements to more than 2,000 screens.

WMD not point of Iraq war, Tony Blair says  —  Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the staunchest ally of President Bush, says that absent the WMD claims, he still would have found an argument for invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.  —  Tony Blair, seen here at the United Nations …

Senate Democrats end GOP filibuster of spending bill  —  Vote set for Sunday on package that funds half of federal government  —  The Senate cleared a key parliamentary hurdle Saturday on a spending bill that finances almost half the federal government and increases funding for the agencies it covers by an average of 10 percent.

Ask Ashley  —  Spitzer's babe answers all your love-life questions!  —  Sure, she's made some mistakes.  But now Ashley Dupre, the former escort who brought down Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is sharing what she's learned in her new sex, love and relationship column — exclusively in the New York Post.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Climate change emails row deepens as Russians admit they DID come from their Siberian server  —  The claim was both simple and terrifying: that temperatures on planet Earth are now ‘likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years’.