Donald Trump's provocative first TV ad raises the temperature of GOP race  —  NEW YORK — Donald Trump's ad begins with a shot of President Obama and Hillary Clinton.  Then comes a U.S. battleship launching a cruise-missile strike.  From there it moves swiftly through an explosive montage …

Heckler disrupts Hillary Clinton town hall over Bill Clinton's sexual history  —  DERRY, N.H. — One day before former president Bill Clinton arrives in New Hampshire to campaign for his wife, Hillary Clinton, she was confronted with questions about allegations involving his sexual history at a town hall meeting in the state on Sunday.

Indianapolis bar's response to customer's complaint about ‘ruined’ New Year's Eve goes viral  —  Missing Attachment Missing Attachment  —  INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Jan. 4, 2015) - A woman suffered a heart attack during a New Year's Eve celebration at a downtown Indianapolis bar …

Militia Occupying Federal Land: ‘We Are Not Hurting Anybody’  —  Protesters in Burns, Oregon march toward the home of Dwight Hammond, a local rancher convicted of arson on federal land.  The Jan. 2 protest was peaceful, but ended with a group of militiamen occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

When He Was 16, This Man Threw One Punch—and Went to Jail for Life  —  Tony Clayton was 30 years old, and just two years out from passing the Louisiana bar, when he walked into court in February of 1994, prepared to try his first murder case.  He was, in his words, a “braggadocious kind of little young jit …

Elections Have Consequences  —  You have to be seriously geeky to get excited when the Internal Revenue Service releases a new batch of statistics.  Well, I'm a big geek; like quite a few other people who work on policy issues, I was eagerly awaiting the I.R.S.'s tax tables for 2013, which were released last week.

U.S. fears Saudi tensions with Iran could affect fight against ISIS  —  Obama administration officials expressed deep concern Sunday that the abrupt escalation of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran could have repercussions extending to the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq …

LA Renters Rat Out Airbnb Users, Get Evicted Instead  —  Via Mike Hewlett's Twitter feed comes this tale of overregulation of rental spaces in the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles.  —  The LA Times reports: … This doesn't quite rise to the level of seriousness evinced by, say …

Woman shot to death in apartment while mother and children were inside  —  Newport News, Virginia - A 25 year-old woman was shot to death in her Heritage Trace apartment just after 1:30am, on Heritage Way off Warwick Boulevard.  —  The victim's name has not been released by police …

Every year, I take on a personal challenge to learn new things and grow outside my work at Facebook.  My challenges in recent years have been to read two books every month, learn Mandarin and meet a new person every day.  —  My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work.

Blowhards Beware: Megyn Kelly Will Slay You Now  —  The brightest star at Fox News, Megyn Kelly is a newly minted role model for women who sees her gender as irrelevant, and a conservative champion who transcends politics with her skillful skewering of windbags of both parties, most notably Donald Trump.

Here's the bottom line of the Hillary e-mail dump  —  The content of the Hillary Clinton e-mails released New Year's Eve doesn't matter nearly so much as what the State Department held back: It found 275 of the messages to contain classified info — in two cases, “Secret” information.

GOP contenders cry foul over Obama's gun measures  —  President Barack Obama's plan to issue executive orders on new gun controls has riled up the GOP field, with the presidential contenders blasting Obama's forthcoming actions as lawless, subversive and petulant.

2015 was the year Congress started working again  —  Hating Congress is an American national pastime, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.  But look back on the just-finished year in legislating, and one thing becomes clear — a lot of legislating happened in 2015.

G.O.P. Presidential Hopefuls Gird for a Month of Mud-Flinging  —  Some Christmas trees may still remain up, but the already contentious Republican presidential campaign is on the verge of entering a new phase, decidedly lacking in the holiday spirit.  —  The series of skirmishes that flared …