50-41!  —  Scott Rasmussen just told my pals at Fox 25 that the current margin in the US Senate race is Coakley 50, Brown 41.  This is wayyyyy to close for a Massachusetts Democrat.  —  A Republican win in Massachusetts is still a longshot, but these numbers are in the range of the possible.

The Tea Party Teens  —  The United States opens this decade in a sour mood.  First, Americans are anxious about the future.  Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey.  Only 27 percent feel confident …

How Visa, Using Card Fees, Dominates a Market  —  Every day, millions of Americans stand at store checkout counters and make a seemingly random decision: after swiping their debit card, they choose whether to punch in a code, or to sign their name.  —  It is a pointless distinction to most consumers …

Democrats Considering Health Care-Immigration Deal To Overcome Key Sticking Point  —  Lawmakers who want to extend health coverage to illegal immigrants will not block the passage of the final health care reform bill so long as the White House offers a substantive promise to start pushing comprehensive immigration legislation this year.

Freed Guantánamo inmates are heading for Yemen to join al-Qaeda fight  —  At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country's Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.

MI5 told US about Detroit bomber's terror links ‘a year ago’  —  Britain told American intelligence agents more than a year ago that the Detroit bomber had links to extremists, according to Downing Street.  —  The prime minister's spokesman indicated that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was named …

White House Spokeswoman Says Different Bertha Lewis on Visitor's Log  —  UPDATE: According to Politico's Ben Smith, the Bertha Lewis who went to the White House is not ACORN's CEO but another woman named “Bertha Lewis.”  I contacted Smith to tell him that Big Government would offer a correction if the …

Personal Bankruptcy Filings Rising Fast  —  The number of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy rose by nearly a third in 2009, a surge largely driven by foreclosures and job losses.  —  And more people are filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which liquidates assets to pay off some debts and absolves the filers of others.

Secret Service confirms third crasher at White House state dinner  —  Another uninvited guest made it into the White House state dinner made famous by gate-crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the Secret Service announced Monday — exposing more holes in the security perimeter around President Obama.

New scanners break child porn laws  —  The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.  —  Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines …

Brit Hume's off message: Have faith, Tiger Woods, as long is it's Christianity  —  In “North by Northwest,” cold and heartless bureaucrats in Washington realize they may have inadvertently sent a frivolous but innocent advertising man to his death, and one of them says, “It's so horribly sad — why do I feel like laughing?”

What Spitzer, Sanford, Ensign and Edwards Could Learn From John Profumo  —  In politics, a new year inevitably brings tidings of hope and dreams of regeneration to those who have embarrassingly stumbled along the corridors of power.  If only the change in calendar also carried with it a dollop of self-awareness.

Bennett gets new challenger  —  Politics » Mike Lee was general counsel to Huntsman  —  Attorney Mike Lee plans to join the field of candidates challenging Sen. Bob Bennett for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.  —  Lee, a prominent Salt Lake City attorney who lives in Alpine …

Group Gives Up Death Penalty Work  —  Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.  —  There were other important death penalty developments last year …

Health debate resumes with WH meet  —  The health care debate resumes in earnest on Tuesday after more than a week of quiet following Senate passage of its landmark bill on Christmas Eve.  —  The four relevant House chairmen will meet with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team …

GOP Chief: Republicans ‘Screwed Up’ After Reagan  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele offers a simple explanation for why the GOP all too often lost touch with typical Americans since the Ronald Reagan era: “We screwed up,” he claims in a new book offering a blueprint for the party's resurgence.

Who Is the Enemy?  — By: Victor Davis Hanson  —  I don't think anyone knows quite what this administration's anti-terrorism policy is.  Last August, Obama's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, lambasted the Bush administration, citing “the inflammatory rhetoric, hyperbole and intellectual narrowness …

Grayson: Satan should write foreword to Cheney book  —  The Prince of Darkness himself might be best-suited to write the foreword to former Vice President Dick Cheney's forthcoming book, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) suggested Monday.  —  Grayson, during an appearance on MSNBC …

Health Spending Rises in 2008, but at Slower Rate  —  Health spending grew in 2008 at the slowest pace in 48 years as the recession throttled back the explosive growth of health costs, the federal government reported Monday.  —  Health spending topped $2.3 trillion in 2008, up 4.4 percent from the previous year.

BeautifulPeople.com axes holiday weight gain members  —  Dating and social network site BeautifulPeople.com has axed some 5,000 members following complaints that they had gained weight.  —  The members were singled out after posting pictures of themselves that reportedly showed they had put on pounds over the holiday period.

Revisionaries  —  How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids' textbooks.  —  Don McLeroy is a balding, paunchy man with a thick broom-handle mustache who lives in a rambling two-story brick home in a suburb near Bryan, Texas.  When he greeted me at the door one evening last October …

A Crime Theory Demolished  —  If poverty is the root cause of lawlessness, why did crime rates fall when joblessness increased?  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s …

Guantánamo: The Definitive Prisoner List (Updated for 2010)  —  Please support my work!  —  Back in March, I published a four-part list identifying all 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002, as “the culmination of a three-year project …

Top House Liberal Rips Dem Plan To Skip Conference To Pass Health Care  —  Uh oh.  Looks like the Dem leadership's plan to quickly pass health care reform by skipping House-Senate conference negotiations has further alienated House liberals — a potential problem, since liberal support …