EXCLUSIVE: Fear of being committed may have caused Connecticut gunman to snap  —  NEWTOWN, CONN. - The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility …

Pelosi Backed Boehner's Tax Cut Proposal  —  A new tax on millionaires, if talks fail.  —  Image by Jason Reed / Reuters  —  WASHINGTON — Speaker of the House John Boehner's “Plan B” to avert the fiscal cliff would cut taxes for incomes under $1 million — a higher threshold than the White House demands …

Senate Republicans May Oppose Hagel SecDef Nomination  —  Senate Republicans signaled Tuesday afternoon that they may put up a fight if Barack Obama nominates former Nebraska Republican senator Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense.  —  Asked about Hagel's 2008 statement that the …

NRA Promises “Meaningful” Contributions  —  The gun group breaks its silence.  “We were shocked, saddened, and heartbroken.”  —  National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam emails the first statement from the organization since Friday's massacre in Newtown.

Snyder's popularity plummets  —  Just last month when we took a first look at the 2014 landscape we talked about how much Rick Snyder had improved his popularity during his second year in office and how he led a generic Democrat for reelection by 6 points, even as Barack Obama won the state comfortably.

Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos  —  In its first big policy shift since Facebook bought the photo-sharing site, Instagram claims the right to sell users' photos without payment or notification.  Oh, and there's no way to opt out.  —  Instagram said today …

Gun Debate Must Avoid Crazy 2nd Amendment Claims  —  The rise of the Second Amendment as a serious obstacle to U.S. gun control legislation is astonishingly recent.  —  Its rise is a tribute less to the vision of the Founding Fathers than to the skill, money and power of the contemporary gun-rights movement …

Rhode Island prof demands NRA chief's “head on a stick” (Update - deletes Twitter account)  —  Erik Loomis is an assistant professor of American history at the University of Rhode Island.  He also blogs at “Lawyers Guns and Money” blog.  —  In reaction to the murders in Connecticut …

Gun sales surge after Connecticut massacre  —  The prospect of a renewed assault weapons ban in the wake of the Connecticut school massacre has set of a round of buying, as thousands of Americans head to their local gun store to secure the popular AR-15 — the model used by the school gunman …

Nate Silver: Person of the Year  —  His forecasts for the 2012 election became the talk of the chattering classes.  Now that he's vanquished his critics, what's next for the brainiac?  —  Photography by Mike McGregor  —  Nate Silver wants to know if I've seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi …

Hillary Clinton's head fake  —  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was set to face a grilling from Congress this week over the terrorist attacks in Benghazi when she started channeling the late poet Shel Silverstein.  —  “I have the measles and the mumps / A gash, a rash and purple bumps …

South Carolina Lawmakers Propose 5-Year Jail Sentence for ‘Obamacare’ Implementation  —  Federal officials could face fines and jail terms under proposed legislation  —  Nullification is yet again picking up steam in Dixie.  —  Pursuing an archaic legal theory that punctuated pre-Civil War disputes between …

Tennessee Considers Training And Arming Schoolteachers To Protect Against Shootings  —  Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting.  —  A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during …

A Bipartisan Nation of Beneficiaries  —  OVERVIEW  —  As President Barack Obama negotiates with Republicans in Congress over federal entitlement spending, a new national survey by the Pew Research Center finds that a majority of Americans (55%) have received government benefits from at least …