The Wall Street Journal writes that tonight’s Iowa caucus presents “the first test of whether a populist message can resonate in the 2008 campaign. In the frantic closing days, as candidates have touted their resumes and needled their opponents, two leading contenders from each party — Democrat John Edwards and Republican Mike Huckabee — have ramped up their anti-corporate, anti-Wall Street rhetoric.”
The Bush administration will “open up nearly 46,000 square miles off Alaska’s northwest coast to petroleum leases next month, a decision condemned by environmental groups that contend the industrial activity will harm northern marine mammals.”
Supporters of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) conducted a sit-in at his Brooklyn office yesterday, calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. The activists want Nadler to use his position as the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution to force a hearing on the matter.
This holiday season, no Marines based out of Camp Pendleton died in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan — the first time a month has gone by without a death since March 2006. “I look at it as good news,” said Staff Sgt. Johnathan Turner, a veteran of three tours of duty in Iraq. “It means things are getting better over there.”
“Iran’s leaders are no longer supplying weapons or training to Islamic militants in Iraq,” according to a spokesman for Gen. David Petraeus, who “sees Iran as following through on assurances it made to Iraqi and U.S. officials last fall not to assist extremists in Iraq.” Petraeus also credited the Syrian government for cutting the flow of al Qaeda fighters into Iraq.
“U.S. admissions of Iraqi refugees are nose-diving amid bureaucratic in-fighting despite the Bush administration’s pledge to boost them to roughly 1,000 per month, according to State Department statistics.” For the past three months, the number of refugees admitted has declined, hitting just 245 in December.
Former Sen. Conrad Burns, (R-MT), who received extensive contributions from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, “is no longer under investigation by the Justice Department for his connections” to Abramoff.
An FEC audit revealed that “Sen. Arlen Specter’s 2004 re-election campaign collected more than $1 million in excessive contributions, failed to properly disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in receipts from political party committees and political action committees, and missed a key reporting deadline before the primary election.”
And finally: Author Nora Ephron isn’t happy about Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol receiving a column in The New York Times. Number five on her list of New Year’s resolutions is to get Kristol “fired” from the paper. “I don’t think any actual work is going to be required in this area; this will come to pass as soon as he starts writing for the paper and whoever hired him actually reads his copy,” she writes.
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