Cornyn: Congress will not allow default  —  Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Republican whip, said in Houston Thursday that Congress will not allow an impasse over raising the debt ceiling to result in the federal government defaulting on its spending obligations.  —  “We will raise the debt ceiling.

Stephen Colbert's sister will run for Congress  —  Stephen Colbert may have “run for president,” but his sister is actually going to run for Congress.  —  Elizabeth Colbert-Busch's soon-to-be-official campaign has informed South Carolina Democratic Party executive director Amanda Loveday …

Ray Nagin indictment: First New Orleans mayor to face corruption charges  —  A federal grand jury on Friday indicted former Mayor Ray Nagin with 21 counts of corruption, alleging that while in office, Nagin took cash bribes and gifts from two city contractors and used his power as mayor …

New Study Highlights Threat From Far Right-Wing Groups In U.S.  —  A new study from a think tank connected to the West Point Military Academy highlights the threat of violent far-right movements in the United States, leading to the conclusion that, while diverse in in their causes …

Up next for Obama: A looming Democratic divide  —  As President Barack Obama approaches his second inaugural on Monday, he presides over a party that has largely papered over its divisions for the past four years thanks to the president's commanding popularity.

Naked-Image Scanners to Be Removed From U.S. Airports  —  The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn't write software to make passenger images less revealing.

Obama unveils ‘Organizing for Action’  —  President Barack Obama on Friday announced the relaunch of his remaining campaign apparatus as a new tax-exempt group called Organizing for Action that will “play an active role” in “mobilizing around and speaking out in support of important legislation” during his second term.

Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theories Edge Toward The Mainstream  —  “By far the hottest topic of the moment.”  Ignore it and it won't go away.  —  There are two kinds of conspiracy theories: The ones about the Illuminati and about mysterious “chemtrails,” which lurk forever in the online twilight zone …

Whoops: PolitiFact's ‘Lie of the Year’ Turns Out to Be True  —  Last month, PolitiFact selected its “Lie of the Year.”  Given PolitiFact's dubious record of singling out Republicans for lying far more often than Democrats, you probably could have guessed the winner of this particular sweepstakes was a Mitt Romney campaign ad:

Is Lance Armstrong the world's biggest liar?  —  “[This was] one big lie that I repeated a lot of times.”  —  It is fair to say that in more than three decades of reporting, The Fact Checker has never written a sports story.  But The Fact Checker has written a lot about people who stretch the truth …

The Next Four Years  —  President Obama's second inaugural comes at an interesting moment, what you might call the end of the era of the Grand Bargain.  Throughout his first term, Democrats and Republicans didn't achieve a Grand Bargain on spending and taxes, but there was a sense that history was moving in that direction.

Americans Call for Term Limits, End to Electoral College  —  Virtually no partisan disagreement on these long-discussed constitutional reforms  —  PRINCETON, NJ — Even after the 2012 election in which Americans re-elected most of the sitting members of the U.S. House and Senate …

The Education of Ezra Klein (and Barack Obama) continues: In 2007, Young Ezra Klein was full of enthusiasm about the cost-saving potential of electronic record keeping in the health industry.  The failure to rapidly adopt this new technology was nothing less than an indictment of the American way of Medicine:

FishbowlDC sued for libel  —  Washington, D.C.-based publicist Wendy Gordon is suing FishbowlDC, the local media gossip site, for waging “an unprovoked, online smear campaign” against her.  —  Gordon filed a libel lawsuit on Thursday, the Legal Times reported, and it names FishbowlDC editor Betsy Rothstein …