Conservatives rage against the machine  —  Opponents of Obama's immigration action hoped the GOP would use budget to push back harder on issue  —  Conservatives began the lame-duck session enraged over President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration and hell-bent on unraveling …

Tortured tantrums: Feinstein's fake fury  —  Angus King raises an excellent point about torture.  It's just not the point he probably intended.  —  This week on CNN, Maine's Independent senator was asked about the Senate Democrats' release of a scathing report saying the CIA interrogation program …

Torture Is Who We Are  —  A country, like a person, is what it does.  —  Torture, declared President Obama this week, in response to the newly released Senate report on CIA interrogation, is “contrary to who we are.”  Maine Senator Angus King added that, “This is not America.  This is not who we are.”

Open Carry Activist Charged With Shooting Ex-Husband And Stepdaughter Dead  —  A woman charged with shooting and killing her ex-husband and stepdaughter has strong connections to groups advocating for expanding open carry gun laws in Texas.  —  Local news outlets on Wednesday reported …

Ed Rendell trash-talks ‘pathetic’ Chris Christie's Cowboys loyalty  —  (CNN) — Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said Gov. Chris Christie's unapologetic love for the Dallas Cowboys is “pathetic,” adding that it's rooted in a “basic inferiority complex.”  —  “If you are a Jerseyite …

Backers: Romney more open to 2016 run  —  He has sounded unimpressed with the emerging GOP field, associates say.  —  For most of the past year, Mitt Romney supporters have publicly said he should consider running again.  And for most of the past year, Romney has seemed uninterested.  —  Until recently.

Veteran Fox News correspondent Dominic Di-Natale dead at 43  —  Dominic Di-Natale, a globetrotting journalist whose work at Fox News Channel and other news organizations took him to Usama bin Laden's compound, demonstrations in Egypt's Tahrir Square and, more recently, to the scene of racially charged riots in Ferguson, Mo., has died.

Bill Cosby Drugged Me.  This Is My Story.  —  Like most Americans, I spent the 60s, 70s, and part of the 80s in awe of Bill Cosby and his total domination of popular culture.  He was the first African American to star in a dramatic television series, I Spy, a show my family in Buffalo, New York, always watched.

Few See Quick Cure for Nation's Political Divisions  —  Large Majority Expects No Progress on Top Problems Facing U.S.  —  As 2014 draws to a close, the public is deeply pessimistic about the prospects for healing the nation's deep political divisions.  And most Americans …

Scott Rudin Apologizes After Leak Of Sony's Hacked Racially Insensitive E-Mails On Barack Obama  —  EXCLUSIVE: Producer Scott Rudin has issued a public apology for the racially insensitive comments that surfaced last night in an exchange of hacked private e-mails between him and Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Amy Pascal.

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ character names revealed (in coolest way possible) — exclusive  —  We finally got to meet some new characters in the teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but now we're getting to put some names with the faces.  —  J.J. Abrams, the film's co-writer …

ISIS issues guidelines for sex slavery  —  Shares -  —  Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have kidnapped thousands of women and girls in their raids on non-Sunni Muslim towns and villages across northern Syria and western Iraq.  —  Many of the captives are believed to be sold …