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... In '98 when I had a tough election campaign here in Massachusetts, uh, he came up the final night -- the day before the election --We went to the North end of Boston -- the Italian section.  We kind of had a little, uh, parade for the North end.  We ended up at, uh, uh, an Italian restaurant having "pizzer" and beer.  And then we went and had a couple of cigars.  That's a very fond memory of Rudy helping me out when I needed some help.  And he was there for me, and I'm very proud to be there for him."

"I respect Mitt Romney and I like Mitt Romney ... and I do give Mitt points for not raising any broad-based taxes during his four years as governor.  But I think Rudy Giuliani's record on fiscal matters is far superior because he had broad-based tax relief in New York City, the tax burden in New York City went down about 17 percent during his eight years as Mayor, whereas in Massachusetts, the tax burden went up 10 percent during Mitt Romney's four years."

In anticipation of the introduction and vote on a massive appropriations bill this week, Republican staffers, outside interest groups, and spending watchdogs are preparing for a frantic race to figure out what exactly is in this bill.

Republicans have been largely locked out of drafting meetings for the omnibus spending bill, which funds almost every federal agency.  Despite the Democrat’s new transparency rules this year, this appropriations measure is moving as an “amendment between houses”, which exempts the bill from earmark disclosure rules. I find this especially disturbing because Democrats, since winning the election, have peddled transparency and accountability ad nauseum as mandates from the American people to which they hold sacred.  Now, on the eve of this massive collection of spending bills worth billions of dollars of taxpayer money, their mandate is suddenly nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, even as they prepare to blitzkrieg enormous legislation stuffed full of secret earmarks in absolute silence, we now see what transparency really means to the Democrats.

Last week the Rules Committee approved a rule to introduce the bill Tuesday and fast-track it to the floor the same day.  This skirts normal procedures which require 72 hours notice before a bill goes to the floor.  To prevent this, Republicans offered an amendment that would have required a published list of earmarks, but the amendment was defeated. 

This bill was anticipated to come to the floor last night, but Democratic leaders pulled the bill in light of the inability to reach consensus among their own caucus, not to mention Republicans, concerned with the fiscal ramifications and undisclosed pork throughout the bill.

Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) claims Republicans were bargaining in bad faith, but the truth is we were never invited to the table.

One of the great challenges will be finding where they buried earmarks in thousands of pages of legislation in only a few hours.

The authoritative Encyclopedia of Mormonism, published in 1992, does not refer to Jesus and Satan as brothers. It speaks of Jesus as the son of God and of Satan as a fallen angel, which is a Biblical account.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Huckabee's question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith rather than clarify doctrine.

DES MOINES, IA -- The last GOP debate until IA: The seemingly endless debate parade of 2007 began -- on the Republican side -- at the Reagan Library in California, underneath Reagan's own Air Force One. It took us to Columbia, SC (where the GOP candidates sparred for the first time), to Manchester, NH (where audio/lightning troubles allowed Rudy to joke, after receiving a question on abortion and Catholic faith, that perhaps God was trying to punish him), and then to here in Des Moines (where Brownback -- remember him? -- targeted Romney on abortion). It continued on to the economic debate in Dearborn, MI (where Thompson made his first appearance), to Orlando, FL, then to St. Petersburg, FL for the YouTube debate, and then the Spanish-language one on Univision last Sunday. Now it's come to this: the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses; the Democrats have theirs here tomorrow. And with all of the cable news networks carrying this debate live, what would have been an under-watched afternoon affair in Iowa is perhaps turning into the most important debate of the cycle.

She's in big trouble and he knows it," a top Democratic operative and Hillary Clinton booster told the Daily News.

Sources familiar with the ex-President's thinking say he doesn't believe his wife's situation is desperate. But he's unhappy with her operation - once hailed as a juggernaut - and concerned she could lose the Democratic nomination without major alterations in strategy and staffing.

Bill Clinton is mulling "a lot of different ideas and a lot of different scenarios to fix this," an official who regularly speaks with him said. "He will come up with literally dozens of ideas. The trick will be to figure out the most important one or two to get her out of this downtrend."

Another Democrat with close connections to the Clinton campaign describes Bill Clinton as "very engaged and very agitated. He's yelling at [chief strategist] Mark Penn a lot."