[AfterDowningStreet.org]
Following Hungary, Nicaragua, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, Tonga, Portugal, Singapore, Norway, Ukraine, The Netherlands, Japan, Italy, Slovakia and Poland, Australia has announced its decision to withdraw its military troops from Iraq.

[Online Journal]
By now it should be crystal clear that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are totally unfit for the leadership positions that they hold in Congress; and so the members of the House and Senate should take immediate steps to force them to resign or to remove them from their positions. Their stonewalling of the American people can no longer be tolerated. Both now have proven that they no longer represent the best interests of this nation.

[Yahoo! News]
War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has written ina new report. It keeps going up, up and away, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said of the money spent in Iraq since U.S. troops invaded in 2003.

[The Center For Public Integrity]
George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

[Yahoo! News]
The Supreme Court has allowed Texas to print presidential primary ballots without Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich's name due to his refusal to sign a loyalty oath to the party.

[Breitbart.com]
The Bush administration will notify Congress on Monday of its intent to sell $20 billion in weapons, including precision-guided bombs, to Saudi Arabia. Although the administration has staunchly defended the sale as critical to U.S. interests, its desire to sell Saudi Arabia sophisticated weaponry has raised eyebrows from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who say the transfer of Joint Direct Attack Munitions technology would lend it highly accurate targeting abilities that could threaten Israel. Those concerns have not been assuaged by the administration's plan to counterbalance the Saudi sale with $30 billion in military assistance to Israel—a more than 25 percent increase over the next 10 years.

[Editor & Publisher]
Dennis Kucinich said Thursday he wants a recount to ensure that all ballots in his party's contest were counted. The Ohio congressman cited "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors" about the integrity of Tuesday's results.

[NPR]
Buying a temporary peace? Some 70,000 former insurgents are now being paid $10 a day by the U.S. military.

[Telegraph.co.uk]
The United States has entered its first full-blown economic recession in 16 years, according to investment bank Merrill Lynch.

[The Washington Post]
George McGovern calls for impeachment of Bush/Cheney.

[MSNBC]
Obama, Huckabee win Iowa caucuses.

[ABC News]
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has appointed an outside prosecutor to oversee the case.