International:
McCain Voices 'Strong Reservation' For Army Chief Nominee
Arizona Sen. John McCain, a chief proponent of the Iraq war, wasted no time Thursday letting the Army general leading operations in Iraq know how little he thinks of his management of the war.

"While I do not in any way question your honor, your patriotism or your service to our country, I do question some of the decisions and judgments you have made over the past two and a half years as commander of Multi-National Forces in Iraq," McCain told Gen. George Casey.

"During that time, things have gotten markedly and progressively worse, and the situation in Iraq can now best be described as dire and deteriorating," McCain added.

No 10 kept Blair's questioning by police secret for a week
Tony Blair’s premiership was on the verge of complete paralysis on Thursday night after it emerged that he was interviewed a second time in secret by police investigating the cash for honours scandal.

Detectives questioned the Prime Minister for nearly an hour in Downing Street over claims that key aides tried to cover-up the affair. See a chronology of the main events in the cash-for-honours scandal here

Iran President Vows to Push Nuke Program

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched anniversary celebrations Thursday for Iran's Islamic Revolution with a defiant promise to push ahead with the country's controversial nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad suggested Tehran would announce next week that it is beginning to install a new assembly of 3,000 centrifuges in an underground portion of its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz that the U.S. has warned could bring further sanctions against the country. Read more

National:

Threat level raised for Super Bowl

The National Football League has boosted the law enforcement budget and heightened the security threat level for Super Bowl 41 because of terrorism fears.

The Super Bowl has been raised to a level one national security event, putting it on par in terms of manpower and resources with the US President's State of the

Union speech and the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

"We consider the Super Bowl so high profile that we see it as attractive to terrorists," said Milt Ahlerich, NFL vice-president of security.

The last Super Bowl to be given a level one security designation was the 2002 New Orleans Super Bowl held three months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon New York and Washington. [Are we safer now than 4 years ago?]

Florida Gov. plan to replace all touch-screen voting machines; wants paper ballots counted by scanning machir now?nes...
Eager to end six troublesome years of touch screen voting in Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist wants every county to switch to paper ballots by 2008.

Crist will ask the Legislature to spend more than $30-million to replace touch screens with an optical scan system that allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate’s name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader — the same way absentee ballots are cast.

Bush to request hefty Iraq war funds
President George W. Bush will request slightly more than $100 billion to cover war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of this year and an even larger amount for fiscal 2008 that begins on October 1, congressional sources said on Thursday.

The administration, which will submit the war cost proposals along with its annual budget on Monday, will provide details of its war spending plans to try to placate critics who have accused it of using a shadow budget to fund the war.

For the current fiscal year, the White House will ask Congress to approve an additional $93 billion for the Defense Department to conduct the two wars and about $7 billion for State Department activities, a Senate aide said.

Al Gore Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday...But then again -so was Rush Limbaugh.

Obama confirms Old State Capitol for presidential announcement

The Chicago Democrat plans to reveal whether he'll run for president at an outdoor event in the middle of February on the windy Illinois prairie. Temperatures on the date in question, Feb. 10, have plunged as low as 13 degrees below zero, although the average high is 37. More.

In Other News...

Reacting to yesterday's compromise between Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and John Warner (R-VA) on a resolution opposing escalation, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said, "These resolutions send mixed signals to our troops and our enemy."

9/11 Commission members said the intelligence agencies are still slow to share information, money, and personnel. "The Bush administration's execution of the DNI reforms recommended by our commission has been a failure," said John Lehman, a conservative member of the panel.

From The Right: Jonah Goldberg: Hillary's Failure to Connect A weird thing happened in Iowa this week. Hillary Clinton was campaigning for president - no, that's not the weird thing - and she paraphrased a question from the audience about what in her experience prepared her to deal with "evil and bad men." Before she could answer, the audience burst into laughter, and Clinton joined in.

From The Left:Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily: Official Lies Over Najaf Battle Exposed
Iraqi government lies over the killing of hundreds of Shias in an attack on Sunday stand exposed by independent investigations carried out by IPS in Iraq.

Quote Of The Day:

"What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would liked to have been treated." --House Min. Leader John Boehner (R-OH)

(Sources: FOXNews, DailyMail, StPetersburgTimes, Reuters, MyWay, DrudgeReport, PRNewswire, WashingtonPost, Bloomberg, TruthOut, About.com, TownHall, TheSouthern, Breitbart)