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International:

London Braces for Attack

British intelligence and law enforcement officials have passed on a grim assessment to their U.S. counterparts, “It will be a miracle if there isn’t a terror attack over the holidays in London,” a senior American law enforcement official tells ABCNews.com.

U.S. transfers security to Iraq in Shi'ite south

U.S. forces ceded control of southern Najaf province to Iraqi police and soldiers, who marked the occasion yesterday with a parade and martial-arts demonstrations. The handover of Najaf came as new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited Baghdad, seeking advice from top commanders on a new strategy. About 1,500 police officers, soldiers and security personnel staged a parade around an infield of stubby brown grass, in festivities complete with warriors on horseback. At one point, a small group of soldiers bit into a live rabbit and frogs as a traditional display of ferocity for elite troops in Iraq. [Freedom's truly 'on the march']

National:
Executive Power

Last week, President Bush issued a signing statement in connection with legislation "permitting U.S. sales of nuclear fuel and reactors to India for the first time in 30 years." In the statement, Bush says his signature "does not constitute my adoption of the statements of policy (in the law) as U.S. foreign policy." He also says he will "consider how releasing data requested by lawmakers might 'impair foreign relations.'" Congress stipulated in the law that presidents "should report annually on India's cooperation in restraining Iran's nuclear program, which Bush has condemned as a major international threat." The American Bar Association has condemned the [signing statement] practice, calling it "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." Since taking office, Bush has issued more than 750 signing statements, a record for any administration.

Inspector General: Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger Hid Classified Docs The report was issued more than a year after Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents.

Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinton administration witnesses for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission. Berger was authorized as the Clinton administration's representative to make sure the commission got the correct classified materials.

Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, said in a statement that the contents of all the documents exist today and were made available to the commission.

In Other News...
After a meeting in Iraq with U.S. generals, Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that commanders "out here have expressed a concern about" President Bush's plan to increase U.S. troop levels in Iraq.

Economic growth slowed to a 2 percent pace in the late summer, more sluggish than previously thought, as the real-estate bust weighed on overall business activity.

"The Pentagon wants the White House to seek an additional $99.7 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," the Associated Press reports. "The military's request, if embraced by President Bush and approved by Congress, would boost this year's budget for those wars to about $170 billion." "Overall, the war in Iraq has cost about $350 billion."

Yesterday, President Bush said he would support a federal increase in the minimum wage only if it were tied to tax breaks for small businesses.

The political opponents of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "won local council elections...in an embarrassing blow to the hard-line leader that could force him to change his staunch anti-Western stance and focus more on domestic issues."

President Bush yesterday "signed a bill that extends the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent agency that oversees $32 billion in American expenditures on the rebuilding of Iraq, into 2008."

From The Right: Matt Towery: The dying dollar
As a component of George W. Bush's world of "globalism," the status and health of the U.S. dollar deserves close scrutiny here at the end of 2007, closer than my mention of it in a recent column.

From The Left: AP: Wilson Challenges Subpoena in CIA Case
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, accused of lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, subpoenaed Wilson as a defense witness this month. Wilson asked a federal judge Wednesday not to force him to testify in the CIA leak case, and he accused former White House aide Libby of trying to harass him on the witness stand.

Quote Of The Day:
“After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic declassification of records.”
NY Times on the fact that at midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents that are 25 years old or older will be instantly declassified.

(Sources: TownHall, FOXNews, NYT, TruthOut, CenterForAmericanProgress, WashingtonPost, Whitehouse website, Reuters, LittleGreenFootballs, WashingtonTimes, PoliticalCartoons.com)