Sen. Ben Nelson said that he would vote to allow the Senate health care bill to move to the floor for debate, even though he said yesterday that the abortion language in the bill is not acceptable to him.

His decision leaves Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu as the remaining holdouts.

Controversy has exploded onto the Internet after a major global-warming advocacy center in the UK had its e-mail system hacked and the data published on line. The director of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit confirmed that the e-mails are genuine — and Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun report that those e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming…

The 2,074-page Senate health care bill would take 34 hours to read cover to cover — and that’s just what Sen. Tom Coburn wants done on the Senate floor.

The Oklahoma Republican has threatened to invoke parliamentary rules to force the Senate clerk (or more likely, a team of clerks) to read the massive bill before the full Senate begins formal debate on the legislation.

“Reviewing” Sarah Palin’s new book is quite an assignment. There are a lot of pages. And not many pictures. But here goes:

Despite the involvement of a professional ghostwriter, Republican ex-Gov. Sarah Palin has penned one of the most powerful pieces of personal or political literature in a generation of American books. It’s “Going Rogue: An American Life” (HarperCollins, $28.99).

A little more than a year after his election, President Obama said his administration has laid the groundwork for success on global and domestic matters.

“I think that we’ve restored America’s standing in the world, and that’s confirmed by polls,” he told CNN’s Ed Henry in a wide-ranging interview this week during his trip to China.

On his recent trip to Asia, President Obama found China, Japan and South Korea - like many nations these days - in no mood to hear more American lectures.

Beijing is worried about owning so much American debt. Tokyo is tiring of an American military base in Okinawa, and wants to redefine its relationship with us. Seoul is starting to doubt American commitment to keep it safe from North Korea.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tries to do what House Democrats couldn’t by silencing an abortion debate before it overtakes the negotiations over his health care bill.

As promised, Reid didn’t include the controversial Stupak amendment, which prohibits coverage of elective abortions under the public plan and prevents insurers from offering it to anyone who receives federal subsidies through the new insurance exchange.

Listening to President Obama and his Chinese counterpart this week, it was hard to tell who was Hu.

One is the leader of a great democracy. The other is the head of a repressive regime. But as the two men faced reporters in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Obama deferred to the wishes of President Hu Jintao: They would not take questions. In lieu of this rite of freedom, the two leaders exchanged platitudes.

I have been around enough campaigns to know that you can usually identify the front-runner as the candidate who gets attacked first. If that rule of thumb applies in Nevada, then Majority Leader Harry Reid must figure he’d really have his hands full with former Republican state senator Sue Lowden.

Although it had long been rumored she would run, Lowden announced her candidacy on Oct. 1. The subsequent public opinion poll taken for the Las Vegas Review-Journal showed her narrowly leading former University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball star Danny Tarkanian in the Republican primary — and beating Reid in a mock general election pairing by double digits. (The latest surveys show both Lowden and Tarkanian beating Reid by at least five points.) Tarkanian has lost two previous races, one for state senate and one for secretary of state.

President Obama on Wednesday called it “dangerous” that Israel plans to add 900 new apartments to an existing Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem — an area Palestinians hope to claim as their capital absent a peace agreement with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that building permits were permitted for construction in Gilo for what would be upscale dwellings in the lower-middle class neighborhood.