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Things are not working out as Democratic congressional leaders expected. For the first eight months of this year, they struggled to find some way to shut down the American military effort in Iraq. They took it for granted that we were stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, with continuous high casualties and very little to show for them. They pressed hard to get the Republican votes they needed to block a filibuster in the Senate and were cheered when some Republicans, like John Warner, seemed to lean their way. They worked hard over the August recess to pressure Republican House...

Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections.

A NEW REPORT from the centrist group Third Way complicates one's understanding of the 2006 midterm elections. There are already several competing theories of why last Election Day turned out the way it did. The storyline popular on liberal blogs is that in 2006 Democrats were true to liberal principles, fought back against the Bush machine, opposed the war in Iraq, and as a result the electorate woke up and took Congress away from the GOP.Another storyline that's popular among conservatives says Republicans lost control of both Houses for the first time since 1994 because the party strayed from the...

The Purple Heart on Kent Padmore's chest isn't for the shrapnel from an enemy rocket-propelled grenade that tore a cheek-to-cheek gash across his face. That wound was never documented; Padmore fixed it himself with a liquid suture in the rearview mirror of his Humvee. Padmore, a Marine reservist, works in civilian life as a City of Miami Fire-Rescue Department emergency medical technician, so he knew what to do. He patched himself up because he didn't want to steal precious time from the corpsmen in his unit, who were busy treating more seriously wounded Marines. Instead, the Purple Heart he wears...

In a move to increase its relevance in the presidential selection process, the Golden State is set to jump up its primary from June of 2008 to February 5th, less than a year away. This may benefit New York's presidential aspirants, and especially its Republican one. Last week I noted Giuliani's electric support at the California Republican Party convention. A recent poll has resoundingly brought forth the same message. This morning, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund notes the following numbers: With California moving its presidential primary to Feb. 5 of next year, what Golden State voters think about White...

The year 2006 was a complex time, marked in Iraq by violence, often of the sectarian variety, but also by progress. The past year was one of inclusiveness, as Iraq’s elected government functioned with representatives from nearly every sect and tribe. The year also saw major strides in security operations, as Iraqi Security Forces took the lead in law enforcement and anti-insurgent activity.Iraqis and their Coalition partners faced several challenges during the transformation from decades of dictatorship to a democratic government.Read 2006 year-in-review report here. 

The U.S. trade deficit climbed to a record high for the fifth straight year, with 2006 imports exceeding exports by $764 billion, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. The gap reflects higher oil prices, which increased the nation's import bill, and American consumers' rising appetite for foreign-made goods. The figures raised tensions in Washington, unleashing criticism on Capitol Hill of the Bush administration's pursuit of new trade deals. They also provoked a fresh round of demands for action against China, whose trade surplus with the United States swelled to a record $233 billion last year, according to the Commerce Department. The...

Former congressional candidate Vernon Robinson sounds resigned, and more than a little tired, when you ask him to explain his defeat. "The 2006 election was not a referendum on immigration," he says. "I would have liked it to be, but it didn't happen." That's an understatement. In the tumultuous political year of 2006, Robinson, a former city councilman from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, became one of the country's most notorious voices for a crackdown on illegal immigration. In March, as the Republican-led House of Representatives wrestled with a harsh reform bill that would build a wall on the border and classify...

Mild winter weather has something to do with it. So does heavy selling by financial funds. But a largely overlooked factor in the recent plunge in oil prices may portend an end to the multiyear rise in crude: For the first time in years, the developed world is burning less of it. Fresh data from the International Energy Agency show oil consumption in the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell 0.6% in 2006. Though the decline appears small, it marks the first annual drop in more than 20 years among the OECD countries, which...

One last post mortem Tonight I attended an informal dinner hosted by the Hoover Institution. The topic was the 2006 election. The dinner featured Stanford University political science professor David Brady and MIT political science professor Stephen Ansolabehere. Both are involved in (and the latter is heading) a massive empirical study of the 2006 election based on a survey of about 35,000 voters. It's early days when it comes to analyzing the data, but here a few of the professsors' observations: (1) dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq (including dissatisfaction among Republicans) played a huge role in the election, probably...

10 most underreported stories of 2006 WND readers, editors compile annual 'Operation Spike' list -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: January 3, 2007 The controversial movement to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada into what critics call a "North American Union" – in the face of what is already a massive, national illegal immigration and border security crisis – tops the list of the 10 most "spiked" or underreported stories of the last year, according to an annual WND survey. At the end of each year, news organizations typically present their retrospective replays of what they consider to have been the top news stories...

The year in review: From Pelosi to Pitt, perverts to Paris, Dave Barry offers a last laugh BY DAVE BARRY It was a momentous year, a year of events that will echo in the annals of history the way a dropped plate of calamari echoes in an Italian restaurant with a tile floor. Decades from now, our grandchildren will come to us and say, ''Tell us, Grandpa or Grandma as the case may be, what it was like to be alive in the year that Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears and Katie whatshername all had babies, although...

2006 was a busy year. The Religion of Perpetual Outrage, Islam dominated the news with riots, beheadings, and their quest for world domination. Please, before I begin our long journey through time, if I missed something, please feel free to enter a comment. Let’s have some fun with it! The United States in its infinite wisdom, elected a Islamic Congressman who wishes to ignore American custom and take the oath of office with his hand upon a koran, thus swearing his loyalty to Islam and their God of War, Muhammad. The Pope angered Muslims by using the words “jihad” and...

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This year, FOX listened to the American public and just said 'no' to O.J. Simpson. The cancellation of Simpson's interview, in which he would have hypothetically detailed how he killed his wife, made enough of an impact to become one of the American Film Institutes eight moments of significance for 2006. A 13-person jury selected these moments which may include accomplishments, trends, milestones, anniversaries, movements in technology and negative/positive influences on film, television and digital media. Regarding the decision to not air the Simpson special, AFI states, "2006 marked a moment when what didn't air on television was as compelling...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks finished the year with strong gains, with all three major stock averages booking their best performance since 2003. The Dow Jones At the unofficial 4 p.m. close on Friday, the final trading session of the year, marking a 16% gain for the year. This was the Dow's best performance since 2003. General Motors Corp. (

As 2006 passes into the history books, it might just end up being lost, as nothing of really great significance took place in the country. There also wasn't much in the way of world events that significantly affected life in Russia. Analysts summing up the last 12 months make mention of shake-ups in the Prosecutor General's Office and the Justice Ministry, as well as the Sakhalin-2 scandal, in which the state unexpectedly played the "concern about the ecology" card in order to increase Gazprom's share of the project's profits. But did these events make much of a wave with Russians?...

Top 10 Discoveries of 2006 Volume 60 Number 1, January/February 2007 How do you know it's been an extraordinary year in archaeology? When the discovery of the earliest Maya writing and a 2,500-year-old sarcophagus decorated with scenes from the Iliad don't crack ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 list: 1. Valley of the Kings Tomb KV63 was the first tomb to be excavated in the Valley of the Kings since Tutankhamun's in 1922. The chamber held seven 18th Dynasty coffins. 2. 3-Million-Year-Old Child After years of chiseling tiny bones out of sandstone blocks from Ethiopia's Rift Valley, paleontologists announced the discovery of a...

2006 GOLDEN GLOBES NOMINEES ANNOUNCED Leonardo DiCaprio and Clint Eastwood are seeing double this morning — the actor picked up Golden Globe nods for his lead roles in The Departed and Blood Diamond, while the director of the war movies Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima will also battle himself for a statue. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel led the way in the film categories with seven noms, while The Departed brought in six and Dreamgirls five — though none of the musical's were for writing or directing. As expected, royal subjects Forest Whitaker (The Last King of...

Former U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez defeated seven-term Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla in a runoff today, adding another Democrat to Congress and deciding Texas' final congressional seat. With more than half the precincts reporting in the state's largest district, Rodriguez had 57 percent to Bonilla's 43 percent. The two were the top vote-getters in a special election held Nov. 7, but neither got 50 percent, prompting the runoff. Rodriguez's win gives Congress another Democrat after the party won control of Congress in the November elections. Texas added one Democrat already in the suburban Houston 22nd Congressional District once held by Republican...