How the fiscal cliff fight will end (unhappily for Republicans) … The word among some Senate Republicans is that a fiscal cliff deal is likely to be struck by Sunday, or Monday at the latest.  (And Monday, being December 31st, is in fact the latest a deal could be struck to avoid January 1 tax increases.)

Woman Accused of Hate-Crime Murder in Subway Push  —  A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train.

Claim seeks $100 million for child survivor of Connecticut school shooting  —  Reuters/Reuters - A U.S. flag hangs over stockings left as a memorial for victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, along a fence surrounding the Sandy Hook Cemetery in Newtown, Connecticut December ...more

Dick Armey Defends His $8 Million Deal to Leave FreedomWorks  —  Former House majority leader Dick Armey says he took an $8 million consulting deal in return for leaving the conservative organization FreedomWorks because the group was “dishonest” and because he “couldn't leave with empty pockets.”

When Getting Your Butt Kicked Is the Strategy  —  Buzzfeed has one of many pieces about anonymous Republicans bemoaning their party's strategic incompetence, this time about the debt ceiling deal.  They report: … Here's what Buzzfeed is missing: For Republicans, losing the political fight isn't a downside of the strategy.

French Court Says 75% Tax Rate on Rich Is Unconstitutional  —  President Francois Hollande's 75 percent millionaire-tax is unconstitutional because it fails to guarantee taxpayer equality, France's top court ruled today.  —  The tax, one of Hollande's campaign promises …

Wishful Thinking and Middle-Class Taxes  —  IN the continuing fiscal negotiations between President Obama and House Republicans, both sides have, from the very beginning, agreed on one point: Taxes on the middle class must not rise.  But maybe it's time to reconsider this premise.

Egypt to pursue relationship with Hezbollah  —  In shift from Mubarak-era policy, Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon says Brotherhood-dominated Egypt will engage terror group.  —  In a dramatic policy shift, Egypt will seek to forge “tight” relations with Hezbollah, Egyptian Ambassador …

Laws Are for Little People  —  A week ago on NBC's Meet the Press, David Gregory brandished on screen a high-capacity magazine.  To most media experts, a “high-capacity magazine” means an ad-stuffed double issue of Vanity Fair with the triple-page perfume-scented pullouts.

There's Only One Way To Fix The Deficit — And Actually It's Totally Painless  —  People who insist that the US has a gigantic “spending problem” are ignorant of what really drives the deficit and the national debt, as Henry Blodget easily demonstrated in a series of charts.