Justice Sotomayor grants temporary Obamacare exemption to nuns  —  The Catholic nuns would have faced ‘draconian fines’ if they failed to provide contraceptive coverage, as the healthcare law requires.  —  Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor starts the countdown for the New Year's Eve ball drop in New York's Times Square.

Reid says jobless aid vote coming Monday  —  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told The Associated Press in an interview that the Senate will vote Monday on a three-month extension of federal unemployment benefits.  —  Calling the House a “black hole of legislation,” …

Chief Justice Warns Sequestration Cuts Already Threatening Public Safety  —  Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, in his annual Year-End Report on the State of the Federal Judiciary, blasted the 2011 Budget Control Act's automatic “sequestration” federal spending cuts and warned …

Phil Robertson slams the Chinese, says Muslims are ‘famous for murder’ in newly surfaced video  —  The controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson has now taken a step beyond his comments about homosexuality and bestiality, along with his assertion that black people in the Jim Crow South …

2014: Good Year for a Great War?  —  Precisely a hundred years ago today, the richest man in the world sent New Year's greetings to a thousand of the most influential leaders in the U.S. and Europe announcing: mission accomplished.  “International Peace,” he proclaimed …

13 hospitalized after building explosion in Mpls.  —  A check on Google Maps indicates that the main floor of the structure houses a business called the Otanga Grocery, with the upper two floors consisting of apartments.  —  CONNECT  —  MINNEAPOLIS - Authorities say at least 13 people …

Pot Shops in Denver Open Door to $578 Million in Sales  —  Toni Fox plans to open the doors of her Denver marijuana shop at 8 a.m. tomorrow to a line of customers including some who camped overnight to be the first in the U.S. to legally buy pot for recreational use.

Rescue Efforts for Trapped Antarctic Voyage Disrupt Serious Science  —  Early this morning, I received an e-mail message from one of many polar scientists whose important and costly field research in Antarctica has been seriously disrupted by the diversion of icebreakers to try to evacuate the journalists …

No, 2.1 million haven't enrolled in Obamacare plans  —  BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL OBAMACARE HEALTH CARE KATHLEEN SEBELIUS CMS HHS  —  With President Obama's health care law scheduled to begin in earnest when the new year kicks off, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius claimed …

Edward Snowden, the insufferable whistleblower  —  Time has not deflated Edward Snowden's messianic sense of self-importance.  Nor has living in an actual police state given the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower any greater appreciation of the actual freedoms that Americans enjoy.

Former first lady Barbara Bush hospitalized  —  (CNN) — Former first lady Barbara Bush has been hospitalized in Houston, Texas, for treatment of a “respiratory-related issue,” a family spokesman said Tuesday.  —  Bush, 88, was admitted Monday at Methodist Hospital, spokesman Jim McGrath said in a written statement.