No better place to hang out tonight for the Iowa Caucus (Cauci?) than Iowahawk’s place.

Everyone (well, not everyone, but the conventional wisdom) is writing off Fred Thompson.

But this prognostication raises a question that (as far as I know) has never been asked. Everyone assumes that if Fred drops out, he throws his support to his old bud McCain. But what if Thompson does much better than expected, and after South Carolina, McCain drops out? Where does his support go? Will he explicitly endorse Thompson? And even if not, will his voters go there anyway?

It’s hard to see them going to Huckabee, Romney or Giuliani. What do they have to offer the conservatives and hawks who were with McCain (assuming that’s why they were with him). Neither Huck or Mitt has been very strong on the war (that’s a vast understatement with respect to Huckabee, who seems to be a Republican version of Jimmy Carter). And Rudy seems too socially liberal to attract McCain voters (many of whom are presumably attracted by his pro-life position).

If Fred comes in third (and two positions above McCain) in Iowa, as predicted above, he will probably have enough momentum to ignore New Hampshire and raise money for South Carolina. Particularly since he will have shown that he didn’t “enter too late” (the other candidates entered too early, as he continually points out) and that he can do well when he focuses on a needed state.

The key point is that with all of these polls, no one has a majority. The real question is: where will people go when their favorite flames out? People should be asking that about every candidate, not just Fred. This is still anyone’s (well, OK, not Ron Paul’s, or the other minor candidates’) race, in that if one can pick off the votes of the others, they can rapidly raise their percentage to a majority. This seems like good news for Fred to me, if he can do well tonight. This is a result of the fact that there’s no Republican incumbent.

And if no one can, then things will be very interesting at the convention. It seems to me that if it ends up brokered, that ends up being good for the most genuine heir to Ronald Reagan as well.

The Lakota are declaring their independence.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free — provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

They have really gotten a raw deal, having had socialism imposed on them by the Great White Father back east for all these decades.

It will be interesting to see how many countries recognize them (Venezuela and other America haters are a sure bet).

It also will be interesting to see what they actually do, and what Washington’s response will be. Will they implement border controls?

…from 2007. A roundup by John Hawkins. He’s got them from both sides of the aisle, but the vast majority are clear products of Bush derangement.

Bill Whittle has a long ode to John Boyd.

A lot of this theory applies to NASA as well. Unfortunately, space isn’t important enough to compel the government to do it well.

Such is the low esteem of George Bush’s America in the rest of the world that Britain and France are fighting over which of them is our closest ally.

After decades of Anglo-French rivalry, in which France has vehemently deplored the global influence America and Britain have attained and what every president of France since Charles de Gaulle has described as “Anglo-Saxon culture,” Mr. Sarkozy claimed during his visit to Washington last week that France, not Britain, is now America’s best friend and partner.

Mr. Brown, who has been portrayed on both sides of the Atlantic as having distanced himself from America to avoid the charge against his predecessor, Tony Blair, that he was Mr. Bush’s “poodle,” fought back last night, claiming in a speech at a banquet thrown by the lord mayor of the city of London that the French president’s bid to usurp Britain’s traditional place alongside America would not succeed.

I hear the Democrat candidates bloviate on the campaign trail about how they’re going to “repair our relations” with the rest of the world, and wonder on what planet they’re living. Hilarious.

…and I’ll tell you no…well, you know the old saying…

Hillary! doesn’t seem to be on a listening tour this time around:

Iowa Falls resident Alene Rickels, 51, when asked her thoughts about the event, said:

Did Mike Huckabee, aspiring to be the Nanny-In-Chief, have gastric bypass surgery?

It wouldn’t shock me. I see him as a Republican version of Bill Clinton, minus the womanizing (including the involuntary relations with women).

[Update on New Year’s Eve]

This seems to be a pretty good refutation of the speculation. Not that it makes me any more inclined to vote for a nanny, even one who follows his own advice.

Fred Thompson bypasses the MSM:

I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don

Intrade shows Clinton trading at about $0.67 on the dollar for winning the democratic nomination despite trailing Obama for winning Iowa and South Carolina primaries. Giuliani is leading trading at about $0.30 on the dollar for winning the republican nomination despite being behind in NH, IA, MI and SC.