THE BOYS OF ENGLAND — spirit not fully crushed yet:

An 11-year-old boy demonstrated The Force when he defended his mom by hitting an attacker with a toy lightsaber.

The man, in his 30s, fled after being confronted by the youngster outside a bakery in Swardeston, near Norwich, England.

Police said the boy hit the man with his toy after the man had punched and verbally abused his mother as she approached her car.

Obviously, British educators must redouble their efforts. (Via Jonah Goldberg).

I GUESS THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT GREENHOUSE GASES AND THE PLANET:

The New York Times has figured out a way to bypass the massive journalist exodus from Iowa to New Hampshire, starting late Thursday. Two words: corporate jet.

Exhausted Times staffers will be transported, Sulzberger-style, out of Iowa starting around 6 a.m Friday morning.

Well, maybe they’ll pack them in like sardines, for efficiency’s sake.

TOM MAGUIRE:

Well – whether Obama wins by a little or a lot Hillary will be the Terminator candidate. She can’t be bargained with. She can’t be reasoned with. She doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop, ever.

But that doesn’t mean she can’t be defeated.

Predictions from Tom and his readers follow.

KEITH MILBY PREDICTS a second-place finish for Fred Thompson. That’s certainly defying the conventional pundit-wisdom. We’ll soon find out if he’s right . . . .

HOW THE FRENCH MEDIA are covering Iowa.

THE LATEST PJM POLITICAL is now available online.

WHAT BLOGS SHOULD DO: A.C. Kleinheider has been bird-dogging the Nashville election commission break-in, where hundreds of thousands of voter records were stolen.

BRING A HOT DISH AND SOME PBR: IowaHawk is liveblogging the Iowa caucuses.

NEVER LET A PHOTOGRAPHER WHO’S TAKING YOUR PICTURE GET TOO CLOSE: Here’s why.

DON’T MISS PJM POLITICAL tonight on XM Satellite Radio Channel 130 at 6 pm Eastern. Ed Driscoll emails: “This week’s XM show features an interview I did with Austin Bay this weekend in a Tex-Mex roadhouse in beautiful downtown Lampasas Texas (no, really!) on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, as well as your interview with Jonah on Liberal Fascism. Plus lots of coverage of Iowa, in-between.”

UPDATE: Never mind. Ed Driscoll just emailed again that it’s been put over until 7 pm tomorrow night, because of the wall-to-wall Iowa coverage. It’ll be online in a bit, though, and I’ll post a link when that happens.

NEW HAMPSHIRE BLOGGER JAY TEA endorses Fred Thompson.

UPDATE: Also a Thompson endorsement from Free Republic founder Jim Robinson.

THERE’S NOTHING MORE TIRING, apparently, than a war that’s now going well:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite their pledges to continue pushing to end the war in Iraq, face growing pressure from their rank-and-file Democrats to focus more attention on domestic, “pocketbook” issues in the upcoming election year.

Junior Democrats describe an “Iraq fatigue” setting in among some members after dozens of successful withdrawal votes failed to drive a wedge between Republicans and President Bush on the war strategy.

We’ll end the war — in fact, have largely done so if you mean “the war” in the narrow sense these folks obviously do — but not by skedaddling.

But you know, we should have foreseen that Congressional backbone would be in short supply way back during the Great Congressional Bug-Out of 2001. See this piece by Walter Shapiro, too. And this was a warning, too. Still, I guess Congress has done better, in some respects, than we might have expected.

WHAT’S GOOD FOR GENERAL MOTORS is good for the DNC. Or something like that.

A ROUNDUP OF Iowa predictions.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS with Karl Rove.

MICHAEL S. MALONE is bearish on Google. And Apple.

SLY, WRY, and dry.

ED DRISCOLL SPOTS breaking news from 2002.

I’D LOSE SLEEP JUST CONTEMPLATING THE PRICE TAG: A $50,000 high-tech bed.

A NEW HAMPSHIRE BLOGGER endorses McCain.

STRATEGYPAGE ON CASUALTIES IN IRAQ:

In hindsight, U.S. troops will get credit for keeping their own casualties down to historically low levels (compared to any other 20th century conflict). Professional soldiers have already recognized this feat, and are studying American techniques intensively. Less well appreciated are the efforts the Americans made to keep civilian losses down. But foreign military experts are coming to appreciate that this aspect of the war paid long term benefits. Iraqis saw, day by day, the efforts by American troops to avoid hurting civilians. Initially, Iraqis saw that as an American weakness, but in the long run they recognized it as a sensibility rarely seen in the Middle East. This will have long term consequences for relations between the United States and Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

PETRAEUS’S INTERVIEW WITH FOREIGN POLICY: Jules Crittenden comments.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF IRONY: Paks flee to relative safety of Afghanistan.

BACK TO THE FUTURE, with new, improved blimps! No, this is not a story about the Ron Paul campaign.

BILL BRADLEY reports from Iowa.