Cheney: Obama ‘trying to pretend’  —  Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of “trying to pretend we are not at war” with terrorists, pointing to the White House response to the attempted sky bombing as reflecting a pattern that includes banishing the term …

Al-Qaeda ‘groomed Abdulmutallab in London’  —  Sean O'Neill, Crime and Security Editor and Giles Whittell in Washington  —  The Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect organised a conference under the banner “War on Terror Week” as he immersed himself in radical politics while a student in London, The Times has learnt.

Poll: Americans most admire Obama, Clinton, Palin  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama is the man Americans admired most in 2009, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are virtually tied as the most-admired woman.

Ayatollah Khamenei's Jet Checked, Iran Supreme Leader May Flee To Russia If Necessary  —  WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?  —  Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei could flee to Russia should the situation in his country continue to spiral out of control, according to Radio Netherlands.

Administration sees ‘some linkage’ between Detroit suspect, al-Qaeda  —  The official said the president and his top advisers are “increasingly confident” that Al Qaeda was involved in the attempted attacker's plans.  —  Obama, in his remarks to reporters earlier in the day …

Rich Cling to Life to Beat Tax Man  —  Nothing's certain except death and taxes — but a temporary lapse in the estate tax is causing a few wealthy Americans to try to bend those rules.  —  Starting Jan. 1, the estate tax — which can erase nearly half of a wealthy person's estate — goes away for a year.

UK hostage released alive in Iraq  —  British hostage Peter Moore has been released alive from captivity in Iraq, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.  —  He said Mr Moore, an IT consultant from Lincoln who was seized in Baghdad in May 2007, was in good health and “absolutely delighted at his release”.

Bunker Mentality  —  Barack Obama's dangerous obsession with golf.  —  It's been a tough first year for President Obama, as critics throughout the body politic bemoan that Mr. Change-We-Can-Believe-In is looking more and more like Mr. Politics-As-Usual.  With the coming new year, however …

Obama and Our Post-Modern Race Problem  —  The president always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  America still has a race problem, though not the one that conventional wisdom would suggest: the racism of whites toward blacks.

Move Your Money: A New Year's Resolution  —  Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between …

Debate Over Full-Body Scans vs. Invasion of Privacy Flares Anew After Incident  —  The technology exists to reveal objects hidden under clothes at airport checkpoints, and many experts say it would have detected the explosive packet carried aboard the Detroit-bound flight last week.

E-mails inside AIG reveal executives struggling with growing crisis  —  The probing e-mails came from every direction inside insurance giant American International Group during the summer and fall of 2007, all with the same underlying question:  —  Could Joe Cassano back up his assurances …