International:
OPEC to cut output in February
OPEC ministers agreed today to hold oil production unchanged for now but set the stage for a cutback of half a million barrels a day in February. Oil rose above $62 a barrel in response. The decision -- made in a closed meeting of the 11-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries -- was confirmed by OPEC President Edmund Daukoru, who also is oil minister of Nigeria, with ministers from other member nations. More here

White House Says Sen. Nelson's Visit to Syria Sends Mixed Message

Nelson emerged from a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Wednesday, saying Assad was willing to help control the Iraq-Syrian border. The Florida Democrat said he viewed Assad's remarks as "a crack in the door for discussions to continue. I approach this with realism, not optimism."

But White House press secretary Tony Snow said the trip by Nelson, a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, and future visits to Syria expected by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., send an unhelpful, mixed message to the Syrians.

"We want to make sure that they understand that just because they have visitors does not mean that the position of the United States government has changed," Snow said.

National:
Leahy vows to repair Bush 'damage'
Incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy said yesterday that he plans to rein in President Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants, rewrite the policy for handling terrorism detainees and more closely scrutinize nominees to the federal courts.

"As a Democratic majority prepares to take the lead on the Judiciary Committee, we do not have the luxury of starting with a completely clean slate," the Vermont Democrat told an audience at Georgetown University Law Center. "We begin knowing that we have a duty to repair real damage done to our system of government over the last few years."

Mr. Leahy accused Mr. Bush of "corrosive unilateralism," eroding the privacy rights of Americans, erasing constitutional checks and balances, and "packing" the federal judiciary.

McCain asks Iraq PM to break with cleric

Sen. John McCain took his controversial proposal for curbing Iraq's sectarian violence to Baghdad on Thursday, calling for an additional 15,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops and joining a congressional delegation in telling Iraq's prime minister he must break his close ties with a radical Shiite cleric.

The lawmakers' trip came as the bloodshed showed no signs of abating. At least 74 more people were killed or found dead, including 65 bullet-riddled bodies bearing signs of torture. And gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped as many as 70 shopkeepers and bystanders from a commercial area in central Baghdad in what was apparently an attack against Sunnis; at least 25 were later released, police said.

In Other News...

"The Bush administration asked an appeals court Wednesday to overrule a federal judge and allow the White House to keep secret any records of visitors to Vice President Dick Cheney's residence and office."

Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) "underwent emergency brain surgery overnight after falling ill at the Capitol and was in critical condition early this morning, introducing a note of uncertainty over control of the Senate." CNN reports Johnson has been diagnosed with a congenital arteriovenous malformation.

Yesterday President Bush and Vice President Cheney met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said that they "do not favor adding significant numbers of troops to Iraq."

Karl Rove "disclosed during a Washington speaking engagement last week that he will not return to his lifetime profession as a political consultant when he leaves the White House. Rove referred to himself as 'a former political consultant' and said that he was leaving the game."

The Bush administration's handling of a Hurricane Katrina housing program was "a legal disaster," according to a federal judge. The judge "ordered officials to explain a computer system that can neither precisely count evacuees nor provide reasons why they had been denied aid."

From The Right:
William Rusher: Time for more troops Hitherto, I have refrained from wading into the argument over whether we need more troops in Iraq because I am not a military expert and felt obliged to defer to what President Bush has consistently said was the stated belief of the generals in charge that no more were needed.

From The Left:
Timothy Garton Ash: Bush Has Created a Catastrophe in Middle East "What an amazing bloody catastrophe. The Bush administration's policy towards the Middle East over the five years since 9/11 is culminating in a multiple train crash. Never in the field of human conflict was so little achieved by so great a country at such vast expense. In every vital area of the wider Middle East, American policy over the last five years has taken a bad situation and made it worse."

Quote Of The Day:
"It may cost some people their credibility"

Tony Snow in response to Bill Nelson's (D-FL) trip to Syria

(Sources: TownHall, Center For American Progress, Washington Times, TruthOut, PoliticalCartoons.com, DrudgeReport, Boston Globe, HuffingtonPost, FOXNews, ThinkProgress, WashingtonPost, MSNBC, AP)