An unlikely treasure-trove of donors for Clinton  —  The candidate's unparalleled fundraising success relies largely on the least-affluent residents of New York's Chinatown — some of whom can't be tracked down.  —  NEW YORK — Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls.

Randi Rhodes statement on "mugging"/falling down incident  —  Speaking on her radio show today, Air America Radio's Randi Rhodes spoke about her supposed mugging.  She said she was watching football in an Irish pub and went outside for a smoke.  The next thing she knew she was on the ground …

Pelosi's Armenian Gambit  —  There are three relevant questions concerning the Armenian genocide.  —  (a) Did it happen?  —  (b) Should the U.S. House of Representatives be expressing itself on this now?  —  (c) Was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's determination to bring this to a vote …

Evangelicals Lukewarm Toward GOP Field  —  For months, Republican presidential candidates such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John McCain have courted evangelical Christians, meeting with religious leaders throughout the Midwest and the South.  —  Today, thousands of Christian conservatives …

Democratic Lawmaker Pushing Immunity Is Newly Flush With Telco Cash  —  Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans.

Libertarians Rising  —  To oversimplify: Democrats are for Big Government; Republicans are against it.  —  To oversimplify somewhat less, Democrats aren't always for Big Government, and Republicans aren't always against it.  Democrats treasure civil liberties, whereas Republicans …

Anti-War Veteran Quits Anti-War Organization  —  Frustrated by the lack of progress toward surrender in Iraq, veteran John Bruhns has quit the anti-war group AAEI: … I have a 'personal connection' to Bruhns: I've received at least one robocall from him (and if memory serves, several).

Cheney hand seen behind leaks of 'misleading' stories  —  Allegations that a Syrian envoy admitted during a United Nations meeting Oct. 17 that an Israeli air strike hit a nuclear facility in September are inaccurate and have raised the ire of some in the US intelligence community …

Senators Clash With Nominee About Torture  —  President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, declined Thursday to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects.

Death of the Machine  —  "There are two things that are important in politics.  The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."  So declared Mark Hanna, the great Gilded Age political boss.  —  Karl Rove has often described Hanna as his role model.

From the Back of the Pack  —  Rindge, N.H.  —  The first thing you notice about Mike Huckabee is that he has a Mayberry name and a Jim Nabors face.  But it's quickly clear that Huckabee is as good a campaigner as anybody running for president this year.  And before too long it becomes easy …

Nobel winner: I didn't mean blacks are inferior  —  LONDON, England (CNN) — Nobel laureate biologist Jim Watson apologized "unreservedly" Thursday for stating that black people were not as intelligent as whites, saying he was "mortified" by the comments attributed to him.

Martin: Obama's black wakeup call  —  (CNN) — If the advisers around Sen. Barack Obama want to continue to delude themselves into thinking they have lots of time for black voters to get around to figuring out their candidate's record on issues they care about, then the latest CNN poll surely must …