Obamacare Website Sign-Ups Said to Reach 100,000 in Month  —  About 100,000 people signed up for health insurance through the online federal exchange last month, a roughly four-fold increase from October even as a team of U.S. government and contractor programmers was fixing …

Insurers Claim Health Website Is Still Flawed  —  Weeks of frantic technical work appear to have made the government's health care website easier for consumers to use.  But that does not mean everyone who signs up for insurance can enroll in a health plan.  —  The problem is that so-called …

Democrats admit reboot needs stronger White House team  —  Former administration officials and Democratic operatives say President Obama is ill-served by his current White House staff and must reboot his second term team following the disastrous ObamaCare rollout.

Dems now party of women  —  As the 2014 midterm election season begins, the Democratic Party is in full bloom as the political home of the modern American woman.  —  For the last half-century, women were swing voters between the parties.  A gender gap emerged in the 1980s …

Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future  —  Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, serving 225M customers.  What's next for the company that prides itself on disrupting tradition?  —  STUMBLE  —  TWITTER

Better Pay Now  —  'Tis the season to be jolly — or, at any rate, to spend a lot of time in shopping malls.  It is also, traditionally, a time to reflect on the plight of those less fortunate than oneself — for example, the person on the other side of that cash register.

The Pope and the Right  —  “NOW it's your turn to be part of the loyal opposition,” a fellow Catholic journalist said to me earlier this year, as Pope Francis's agenda was beginning to take shape.  —  The friend was a political liberal and lifelong Democrat, accustomed to being on the wrong side …

GOP targets blue states in battle for Senate  —  In 2012, Democrats snagged Senate seats from Republicans in states where the GOP should have prevailed with relative ease.  —  In 2014, Republicans want to show they can play that game, too.  —  The GOP could conceivably capture the Senate …

GOP's massive 2013 mistake: How the party ignored its terminal illness  —  Celebrating Obamacare's troubles, Republicans finish the year ignoring lessons it was supposed to learn from 2012  —  We did a whole “Hardball” hour Friday on how the GOP ratcheted up the crazy this year.

Putting Military Pay on the Table  —  Big-ticket weapons like aircraft carriers and the F-35 fighter jet have to be part of any conversation about cutting Pentagon spending to satisfy the mandatory budget reductions known as the sequester.  But compensation for military personnel has to be on the table …

Wage Strikes Planned at Fast-Food Outlets  —  Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities.

113th Congress, going down in history for its inaction, has a critical December to-do list  —  The good news for Congress as it heads into the final workdays of the year is that, for the first time in five years, there are no edge-of-the-cliff December crises threatening to bring the country to its knees.

4 dead, 68 injured after NYC-bound Metro-North passenger train derails in Bronx  —  Five cars tore off the tracks Sunday near the Hudson River while headed toward Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal.  Two people were thrown from the rail cars.  Gov. Andrew Cuomo is on the scene.