Sarah Palin: MSNBC ‘despicable’  —  Sarah Palin says MSNBC should ashamed of a “despicable” segment in which they mocked Mitt Romney's adopted black grandson.  —  “Leftist media hounds are not expressing an opinion with this attack; they are expressing a prejudice that would never be accepted …

The Facts About Benghazi  —  An exhaustive investigation by The Times goes a long way toward resolving any nagging doubts about what precipitated the attack on the United States mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The Year Washington Fled Reality  —  ‘Message discipline’ can win elections but is not a healthy way to run a country.  —  The past year may go down not only as the least productive ever in Washington but as one of the worst for the republic.  —  In both the executive branch and Congress …

Why Obamacare Will Only Get Less Popular  —  Lisa Myers has an excellent investigative reporting piece up at NBC News documenting how one small business is dealing with Obamacare.  The quotes from the article are just brutal: … Myers does report that, “A handful of the Extreme Dodge workers came …

And The Country Posing The Greatest Threat to Peace as 2013 Ends is ...  (CNSNews.com) - The past year witnessed bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, turmoil in Egypt, anarchy in Central Africa, threats by a nuclear-armed North Korea and Chinese military posturing, but as 2013 ends a global poll finds …

Change Is Obamacare's Only Certainty  —  I said in my last post that our newly implemented health-care law “is undoubtedly going to change in the near future, in ways that will make it more or less stable than it is now.”  To see what I mean, take the individual mandate.

7M ObamaCare enrollment target a tall order despite recent surge  —  Experts say the Obama administration faces a tall order in hitting the 7 million enrollees the Congressional Budget Office projected would sign up for ObamaCare in 2014.  —  After a surge of enrollees in December …

U.S. Frees Last of Uighur Detainees From Guantánamo  —  WASHINGTON — In what the Pentagon called a “significant milestone” in the effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military announced on Tuesday that the United States had transferred three Chinese detainees to Slovakia.

The NY Times Looks In the Wrong Place for Corrupt Academics  —  Academic research of all kinds receives funding from a variety of sources.  Does the money taint the research?  That is a complicated question that sometimes deserves to be asked.  But this hit piece by David Kocieniewski …

On Christmas, Republicans Quietly Declare War on Themselves  —  The holidays are a great time in politics.  Every year it's the same: the minute the last bits of wrapping paper have been cleared away, and Grandpa has passed his last puff of holiday gas, you can always retreat to the inside pages …

The Biggest Political Winners and Losers of 2013  —  Chris Christie, Bill de Blasio, and an Arkansas House member head the list of political winners in 2013.  —  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, now seen as a formidable presidential contender, is one of the biggest political winners of 2013.

‘Stuck in our own experiment’: Leader of trapped team insists polar ice is melting  —  The leader of a scientific expedition whose ship remains stranded in Antarctic ice says the team, which set out to prove climate change, is “stuck in our own experiment.”  —  But Chris Turney …

State Dept. whistleblower has email hacked, deleted  —  WASHINGTON — The personal e-mail account of a State Department whis­tle­­blower was hacked, and four years worth of messages — some detailing alleged wrongdoing at the agency — were deleted, The Post has learned.

Overdue reforms boost Mexico — and the United States  —  Most Americans have an image of Mexico as a nation convulsed by violent drug wars and enervated by the exodus of hundreds of thousands of desperate immigrants across our southern border.  —  That image is out of date.

ACLU sues for details of U.S. surveillance under executive order  —  (Reuters) - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to force the U.S. government to disclose details of its foreign electronic surveillance program and what protections it provides to Americans whose communications are swept up.

FAA Selects Six Sites for Unmanned Aircraft Research … After a rigorous 10-month selection process involving 25 proposals from 24 states, the Federal Aviation Administration has chosen six unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) research and test site operators across the country.