Paul leads in Iowa  —  Newt Gingrich's campaign is rapidly imploding, and Ron Paul has now taken the lead in Iowa.  He's at 23% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 14% for Gingrich, 10% each for Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, 4% for Jon Huntsman, and 2% for Gary Johnson.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il, 69, Has Died  —  SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Kim Jong Il, North Korea's mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died.  He was 69.  —  Kim's death was announced Monday by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

NY lawmaker: GOP taking ‘principled’ stance on payroll tax bill  —  Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) responded to criticism that House Republicans were playing politics with the payroll tax cut, saying the GOP was “principled,” trying to “do what's right,” and suggesting that her party's stance …

14-Year-Old Challenges Perry's Anti-Gay Views  —  A 14-year-old bisexual high school student challenged Rick Perry on his support for reinstating Don't Ask, Don't Tell during an event in Decorah, Iowa, asking the Texas governor why he is “so opposed to gays serving openly in the military …

California politician advocates assassination of Obama and family  —  Like this?  Subscribe to get instant updates.  —  Facebook faux pas: California libertarian and Tea Party darling Jules Manson is caught calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama and his children.

Bye-bye, Keynes?  —  “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”  —  The eclipse of Keynesian economics proceeds.  When Keynes wrote “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” …

Professor claims NYU fired him after he gave James Franco a ‘D’  —  James Franco's tired James Dean act got an NYU professor booted from the school last year — after the teacher dared to give the overhyped Hollywood hunk a “D” for blowing off class, a lawsuit charges.

Regarding Christopher  —  Christopher Hitchens, my colleague for twenty years, was clever, hilarious, generous to his friends, combative, prodigiously energetic and fantastically productive.  He could write with equal ease about Philip Larkin, capital punishment, Henry Kissinger and having his balls waxed.

Pelosi's Expert Was Also Business Partner  —  Former Speaker Brought Family Friend to the Hill  —  In May 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to a podium in the Capitol to introduce a half-dozen economic experts she had convened for a meeting on how to jump-start the economy.

Occupy the Progressive Movement  —  It was during the fifth or sixth major argument within the netroots in 2011 about the Obama Administration that the first protestors attempted to Occupy Wall Street in mid-September.  Within days the talk of primary challenges, donor strikes …

Texas Cities Won the Recession, and They're Winning the Recovery  —  Lone Star metros have dominated every phase of the Great Recession, but there's trouble on the horizon for some of Texas' strongest cities  —  Welcome to the third phase of the Great Recession.

Will China Break?  —  Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble.  There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking …