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Mitt Romney still isn't going to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2008. I know he's the trendy choice, but barring a significant shift in the party, he doesn't stand a chance of getting past the primaries. He's got to tack too far to the left in order to effectively govern in Massachusetts, and that's

On the way into work this morning, I heard a commercial from Mitt about stem cell research. This is a very topical issue in Massachusetts right now; our House and Senate just passed bills concerning this research which explicitly allow both embryonic stem cell research and something called "somatic cell nuclear transfer."

Romney came out against the latter, but -- in the radio ad -- explicitly states his support for embryonic stem cell research. This is probably necessary for him from a political standpoint; he can't afford to get too far away from the mainstream of Massachusetts politics, and the mainstream is in favor of the entire bill. If he wrote off embryonic stem cell research entirely, the reaction would be fairly intense, and you can't run for President from a state that dislikes you. Let alone govern effectively.

On the other hand, it's going to kill him on the national scene. This is a hot ticket issue for people who vote in the primaries. It won't affect him in New Hampshire or Iowa, but it'll be a big deal for Super Tuesday. In 2000, Bush didn't stomp McCain until Super Tuesday, in the south; I'd predict the same kind of dynamic here.

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A few months ago, Ryan of the Dead Parrot Society debunked the claim that certain photographs of an execution on Haifa Street, in Baghdad, were taken from close range. Ryan is the online producer for a Washington State newspaper; he has experience with news photography and the ability to ask real photographers questions. So he did. He found out that the photos in question were almost certainly taken from a distance.

This hasn't stopped Powerline and Michelle Malkin from continuing to perpetuate the myth that the photographers were standing right next to the execution.

That issue seems, at first, as if it's tangential to the bigger question of cooperation -- but it's not really. Consider: if I say "the photographer got a picture of the execution from a block away, which proves that the terrorists knew the photographer was there," does that sound reasonable? Not so much. That's very different than saying "the terrorists were right next to the photographers, so the terrorists must have had a reason to leave the photographers alone."

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Now, that's pretty close to being a government. Good news.

It'll be interesting to see who winds up in the cabinet. More specifically, it'll be interesting to see who gets to be the oil minister. The Kurds want it, but they probably got the right to have their own independent army (people keep saying militia. It's got tanks and artillery; it's an army in my book), so maybe they gave up the ministry. And what happens to Kirkuk?