Next stop Manchester ... and Lansing and Carson City and Columbia and....

Caucus day is getting closer - and tighter

The West Wing comes to Iowa

The Iowa polls show ... that the polls show nothing in Iowa

The Politico has a good rundown today of how Bhutto's assassination may affect the presidential campaign. In short, the conventional wisdom is that it will help Hillary Clinton and John McCain by allowing them to emphasize their experience in military affairs and portray themselves as steady hands at the wheel during a tumultuous and uncertain time.

It's Boxing Day today, but here in the US, we like to call it Return That Ugly Sweater You Got For Christmas To The Store Day. I bet Hillary Clinton would like return this lump of coal front page New York Times story by Patrick Healy challenging her claim that she was involved in key foreign policy decisions during her tenure as first lady.

A very merry Christmas to you all, no doubt the residents of Iowa are taking a well-earned break from the relentless campaigning they have faced in the past month. It seems all the candidates are taking a break for today - except Chris Dodd, who has been busy packing supplies for US troops abroad and generally not letting up.

The question of the day is this: can Mitt Romney survive a loss in Iowa?

It's Sunday, and as the candidates freeze in Iowa today, the rest of the country sits around and leisurely peruses the opinion pages over their morning coffee. Frank Rich says that "change" will trump "experience" this year. David Broder is thunderstruck by Obama's stump speech.

Nice to see that since the glory days of anti-Vietnam protests, marching for civil rights and demanding sexual equality, students in the US are held in as low esteem as their UK counterparts these days. As CNN.com says today, if they can drag themselves away from computer games, hitting that bong one more time or generally lounging around not doing much, their input could be very significant in the Iowa caucus.