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 …

Ted Cruz Calls for Oregon Armed Protesters to ‘Stand Down’  —  Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Monday called for armed protesters who occupied a federal building in Oregon to “stand down peaceably.”  —  “Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds,” Cruz told reporters in Iowa.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

Saudi Arabia stews in policy hell: Spengler  —  Last week's mass executions in Saudi Arabia suggest panic at the highest level of the monarchy.  The action is without precedent, even by the grim standards of Saudi repression.  In 1980 Riyadh killed 63 jihadists who had attacked the Grand Mosque of Mecca …

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 …

Obama rolls out gun control strategy  —  President Barack Obama launches an aggressive rollout strategy this week meant to contain the political fallout from upcoming executive actions on gun control and to cast himself as the voice of common sense in a raging culture war.

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.

Rubio: Obama has ‘deliberately weakened America’  —  Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is accusing President Obama of intentionally weakening America at home and abroad.  —  “It's now abundantly clear: Barack Obama has deliberately weakened America,” Rubio said early Monday during a speech …

Why I'm Fighting My Teachers Union  —  I don't want to be forced to pay for a political agenda I don't support.  Now the Supreme Court will rule.  —  I am one of 10 California teachers suing to end compulsory union dues in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which will be heard by the Supreme Court Jan. 11.

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 …