Phil Everly, Half of Pioneer Rock Duo With His Older Brother, Dies at 74  —  Phil Everly, whose hits with his older brother, Don, as the Everly Brothers carried the close fraternal harmonies of country tradition into pioneering rock ‘n’ roll, died on Friday in Burbank, Calif. He was 74.

Strategists to GOP: Restrain yourselves on debt ceiling  —  GOP strategists are urging restraint in the upcoming debt-ceiling fight.  —  They are excited by the prospect of reclaiming the Senate in November's midterms elections but anxious about the party's capacity to snatch defeat …

Teens in Muslim garb try, fail to rob gun shop  —  MOST TEENAGERS do dumb things.  But not trying-to-rob-Joe-Galiano dumb.  —  Galiano is the owner of Suburban Armory, the gun shop on MacDade Boulevard in Collingdale, Delaware County.  There is a giant gun-shaped sign on the roof.

Degrees of Value: Making College Pay Off  —  For Too Many Americans, College Today Isn't Worth It … In the field of higher education, reality is outrunning parody.  A recent feature on the satire website the Onion proclaimed, “30-Year-Old Has Earned $11 More Than He Would Have Without College Education.”

Is the NSA Spying on Congress?  —  U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today asked the National Security Agency director whether the agency has monitored the phone calls, emails and Internet traffic of members of Congress and other elected officials.  —  “Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying …

Why Snowden Won't (and Shouldn't) Get Clemency  —  He went too far to be considered just a whistleblower.  —  I regard Daniel Ellsberg as an American patriot.  I was one of the first columnists to write that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be fired for lying to Congress.

Political palliatives won't cure ObamaCare's ills.  —  While we were away, the Department of Health and Human Services offered what might be termed a concession to reality.  In a Dec. 19 letter, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius informed Virginia's Mark Warner and five other members …

Cold U.S. Temperatures Expected To Break Records As ‘Polar Vortex’ Blasts Midwest  —  SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The weather warnings are dire: Life threatening wind chills.  Historic cold outbreak.  Bitter cold temperatures.  —  Winter is normally cold, but starting Sunday tundra …

I, Like David Brooks, Have Smoked Marijuana  —  In order to comment on the marijuana legalization debate, it is apparently necessary to confess to your own history of pot-smoking first, so here goes: While in college, I experimented with marijuana.  To be precise, I conducted 132 experiments with marijuana.

GOP's “Duck Dynasty” problem: Why Phil Robertson was a hugely important political story  —  Phil Robertson explains more about our country's political culture than almost anything else that happened in 2013  —  I was on vacation for the last two weeks of December, and off the grid for most of that time.

IMF Says: By the Way, There's a Debt Crisis  —  Two summers ago, we ran the Power Line Prize contest to try to focus attention on the exploding national debt.  The contest was successful, in that it incentivized the production of many high-quality videos, songs, pictures …

Tulsa man arrested on religion-based hate-crime complaint  —  A Tulsa man was arrested Thursday on a complaint alleging that he committed a hate crime against a woman he assumed to be a Muslim.  —  Stuart D. Manning, 43, is accused of hitting the woman in the forehead and sticking a knife …

Al-Qaeda force captures Fallujah amid rise in violence in Iraq  —  BEIRUT — A rejuvenated al-Qaeda force asserted control over the western Iraqi town of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas …

The Social-Minded Pope Francis Is a Very Different Kind of Pontiff  —  Pope Francis, the first Pope from a developing nation, sees the world through the eyes of the poor and dispossessed.  —  Add my name to the long list of souls who have leapt aboard the Pope Francis bandwagon.

Rude and Crude: Why MSNBC keeps getting into trouble  —  Is there something in the water over at 30 Rock?  —  Whether you love or detest MSNBC, the network has had a rough few months, and I'm wondering whether a series of embarrassing episodes is more than a coincidence.