White House Adviser Briefed in October on Underwear Bomb Technique  —  By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball  —  White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan was briefed in October on an assassination attempt by Al Qaeda that investigators now believe used the same underwear bombing technique …

A New Low... Charles Johnson Now Supporting Child Porn in Classrooms & Fisting Kits at School Functions  —  Sick.  Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs reached a new low yesterday.  —  Johnson attacked this blog for reporting again on Barack Obama's safe schools czar.

U.S. Sees Window to Pressure Iran on Nuclear Fuel  —  WASHINGTON — As President Obama faces pressure to back up his year-end ultimatum for diplomatic progress with Iran, the administration says that domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Tehran's nuclear program …

Low favorables: Dems rip Rasmussen  —  Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama's popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.

Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional  —  If the government can mandate the purchase of insurance, it can do anything.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  President Obama's health-care bill is now moving toward final passage.  The policy issues may be coming to an end …

Limbaugh: “Based On What Happened To Me I Don't Think There's One Thing Wrong With The American Health Care System”  —  First, let's be clear that I'm personally happy that Rush Limbaugh is in good condition and came through his scare beautifully.  Let's also be clear: Limbaugh is touting …

Charges for cartoonist ‘attacker’  —  The 28-year-old Somali was carried into court on a stretcher  —  A Somali man has been charged with trying to kill a Danish artist whose drawing of the Prophet Mohammed sparked riots around the world.  —  The suspect, who was shot …

For Some in Japan, Home Is a Tiny Plastic Bunk  —  TOKYO — For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo's decrepit “capsule” hotels.  —  “It's just a place to crawl …

Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers  —  For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households.  But since 2000, the story is starkly different.  —  The past decade was the worst …

Why the Budget Will Never Be Balanced  —  To review some recent political history, after Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives enacted budgetary measures that led to large and growing deficits.  These were scaled back to some extent on a bipartisan basis in the late 1980s and during …

Massive Volcanic Eruption in the National Park this morning  —  At 03.45 this morning, we all woke to a massive eruption on Mt Nyamulagira, a volcano just across from our headquarters at Rumangabo station, about 15 kilometres to the west.  The eruption is from quite high up on the volcano, and it looks like it's a big one.