After Obama Rally, Dems Pin Blame On Bush  —  As audience members streamed out of Pres. Obama's rally on behalf of AG Martha Coakley (D) here tonight, the consensus was that the fault for Coakley's now-floundering MA SEN bid lies with one person — George W. Bush.

What Didn't Happen  —  Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration's political strategy.  The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much — in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the economy.  —  I disagree.

Taliban attack in downtown Kabul  —  Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — An attack in which the Taliban claimed to have infiltrated key government sites in central Kabul killed five people on Monday morning, hospital officials said.  —  Thirty-eight other people were injured, said Dr. Kabir Amiri, head of Kabul hospitals.

Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left  —  The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores.  Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question.

The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle  —  1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”  —  When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.”

Wall St. Weighs a Challenge to a Proposed Tax  —  Wall Street's main lobbying arm has hired a top Supreme Court litigator to study a possible legal battle against a bank tax proposed by the Obama administration, on the theory that it would be unconstitutional, according to three industry officials briefed on the matter.

Fewer Americans think Obama has advanced race relations, poll shows  —  Soaring expectations about the effect of the first black president on U.S. race relations have collided with a more mundane reality, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.  —  On the eve of President Obama's inauguration …

Review of Jet Bomb Plot Shows More Missed Clues  —  WASHINGTON — Worried about possible terrorist attacks over the Christmas holiday, President Obama met on Dec. 22 with top officials of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security, who ticked off a list of possible plots …

The prophetic voice  —  When Martin Luther King, Jr. brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor's Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow.  In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community.

Brown smiles at ‘curling iron’ jibe  —  Democrats made hay earlier today of the report of an ugly comment at a Scott Brown event: “Shove a curling iron up her butt” a crowd member shouted of Coakley in West Springfield.  —  The video above appears to show Brown smiling at the line and nodding …