Rick Santorum focuses on gay marriage  —  He suggests to a New Hampshire audience that an imprisoned father is preferable to a same-sex parent.  —  Mitt Romney leaves a campaign event outside an old peanut warehouse in Conway, S.C. (David Goldman, AP / January 6, 2012)

Michelle Obama and the Evolution of a First Lady  —  Michelle Obama was privately fuming, not only at the president's team, but also at her husband.  —  In the days after the Democrats lost Edward Kennedy's Senate seat in January 2010, Barack Obama was even-keeled as usual in meetings …

SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES UNITE FOR SANTORUM  —  On Tuesday night in Iowa, he stood before the cheering throngs like a Republican Rocky, or better yet, a latter-day Rudy suddenly lifted above his Notre Dame teammates in a fantastic storybook finish.  —  On Tuesday night, for the first time, Rick Santorum was a contender.

All We Are Saying . . .  The establishment usually wins.  That, after all, is what it means to be an establishment.  But not always.  Three of the last six presidents—Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Barack Obama in 2008—ran against their own party's powerbrokers …

Government: The redistributionist behemoth  —  Liberals have a rendezvous with regret.  Their largest achievement is today's redistributionist government.  But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Hilarious!  McCain mistakenly refers to Romney as Obama  —  Oh man, this is classic.  McCain totally referred to Romney as “President Obama” and went on for a few seconds before Gov. Haley corrected him.  Hilarious!  You know what they say about drunk people being more truthful, right?

Climate change castaways consider move to Australia  —  Ben Doherty in Male, Maldives  —  Threat ... much of the Maldives could be lost to climate change.  —  THE President of what could be the first country in the world lost to climate change has urged Australia to prepare for a mass wave …

Why Is an Anti-American Islamist Obama's Favorite Middle East Leader?  —  This article was published in a very different form in the Jerusalem Post.  I own the rights and ask you to read and link to this version.  —  For the first time in forty years,Israel is not the American president's favorite Middle Eastern ally.

U.S. Navy rescues Iranian sailors  —  From Larry Shaughnessy, CNN Pentagon Producer  —  (CNN) — U.S. sailors from a carrier strike group whose recent presence in the Persian Gulf drew the ire of Iranian military officials have rescued 13 of the Middle Eastern country's sailors from a hijacked fishing boat …

Kristy McNichol Wants to ‘Be Open About Who I Am’  —  Kristy McNichol has been out of the public eye for 20 years.  Now she's chosen to come out - to try to help kids who are being bullied.  —  McNichol, 49, who has lived with her partner Martie Allen, also 49, for the past two decades …

December employment report: 200K new jobs, 8.5% unemployment  —  2011 ended on a high note for jobs.  The December jobs report showed that 200,000 new jobs were created in the month, and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5, the lowest rate since February 2009.

Bain, Barack and Jobs  —  America's recovery from recession has been so slow that it mostly doesn't seem like a recovery at all, especially on the jobs front.  So, in a better world, President Obama would face a challenger offering a serious critique of his job-creation policies, and proposing a serious alternative.