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Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? And let's face it, Kwanzaa's gotten way too commercialized. A few years ago, I suspended my annual Kwanzaa column because my triumph over this fake holiday seemed complete. The only people still celebrating Kwanzaa were presidential-statement writers and white female public school teachers. But it seems to be creeping back. A few weeks ago, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., complained about having to stick around Washington for fiscal cliff negotiations by accusing Republicans of not caring about "families" coming together to bond during...

HAPPY NEW YEAR! BYE, BYE, 2012... What happened? HELLO, 2013... What’s new? Our rear view mirror is crystal clear, and by looking through it we can clearly see what went wrong last year... This time of the year is a great time to take inventory and decide what we want to bring with us, and what we should be grateful to leave behind... It’s up to us to decide if we want this to be a better year, if last year wasn’t all that great... The New Year is the last chance to make the changes that can offer us...

Former Detroit Lions offensive lineman Lomas Brown has apologized for recent comments he made about Scott Mitchell, claiming he regrets intentionally missing a block decades ago that resulted in the quarterback suffering an injury. Brown, currently an NFL analyst for ESPN, admitted during a radio interview this past Friday that he allowed a defender to hit Mitchell because he was frustrated with the struggling quarterback when the two were Lions teammates in 1994.

At 12:54 a.m., on Saturday December 22, President Barack Obama and his family arrived at Kailua, a Hawaiian town on the island of Oahu. Almost five days later, Obama, leaving his wife and kids behind, departed the island to return to Washington, D.C. Obama’s vacation lasted a brief 118 hours, according to pool reports. -snip- On Christmas Eve, December 24, Obama departed his vacation home at 9:33 a.m., according to the pool report. He remained on the golf course until 3:15, p.m., spending about 5 and a half hours on the golf course. He again golfed that day with Bobby...

<p>South African President says pet ownership is part of 'white culture'</p> <p>JOHANNESBURG — South Africa's president says a dog should not be man's best friend.</p> <p>President Jacob Zuma made critical remarks about pet care that touch on sensitive race relations in South Africa, which was dominated by whites until apartheid was dismantled almost two decades ago, The Star newspaper reported Thursday.</p>

First lady Michelle Obama says she has learned patience by watching her husband and has done "pretty well" at keeping her opinions private. "I have learned from my husband, watching him, that it does require a great deal of patience to really feel the full impact of the work that you do on the ground," she told Barabara Walters in an interview broadcast Wednesday. "It doesn't happen right away." "She has a bigger difficulty biting her tongue," President Obama chimed in. "I think I've done pretty well at that," his wife shot back. "Not bad," he said.

A professor in Austria accused the Catholic Pope of “premeditated mass murder” in a blog post this year, writing he deserves to be executed for his adherence to the Church’s stance on contraception. Richard Parncutt, who is a professor of systematic musicology at the University of Graz, also suggested in the October post that most of Vatican’s high level advisors ought also to face the death penalty. “[T]he Pope and perhaps some of his closest advisers should be sentenced to death,” he wrote.

In retaliation against the New York newspaper — the Journal News — that published the addresses of those pistol permit holders in two of the state’s counties, a blogger has created a map pinpointing the addresses of the newspaper’s employees. Mimicking the title of the Journal News’ original article, Robert Cox with “Talk of the Sound” headlined his post: Map: Where are the Journal News employees in your neighborhood?

Chinese authorities are tightening controls in an ethnic Tibetan region where at least 10 people have set themselves on fire last month to protest Chinese rule. … China has blamed the Dalai Lama for the spate of self-immolations. …

Reacting to President Barack Obama’s recent nomination of John Kerry as the next US secretary of state, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius praised his future counterpart’s “personal commitment to Franco-American friendship”. The comment was a reference to a poorly-kept “secret” that dogged the former Democratic presidential candidate during his bid to unseat then-incumbent George W. Bush in 2004: Kerry has a French connection. … But the politician’s “Frenchness” has not always been an advantage. While running for president in 2004, Kerry was ridiculed by Republicans for his closeness to the country seen as having spurned the US by refusing to...

Since it appears that gun owners are now being ID'd why don't we ID people, along with their addresses, who do not have guns? We could issue them stickers for their home and car windows and doors stating that the occupants do not have any firearms on the premises or on their persons. Perhaps a button displaying a gun with a line across it should be worn by these individuals as well. And...all Liberal politicians & celebrities and all registered Democrats who support new gun control laws will immediately be required to forego their armed security details and remove their...

"SPOILER ALERT" - Matthew Crowley, Lady Mary's on-off love interest, is killed behind the wheel of his own car. The shock, according to British papers, has cast a thick pall over Boxing Day.

"And then there's a lot of laughter," Michelle Obama added. The president said that everyone thinks his wife is the funny one, but, he said, "I'm funnier than people think." "I am," he insisted.

The intelligence agency GCHQ has dismissed claims that a coded message from the Second World War found tied to the remains of a pigeon in a chimney has been cracked. A team of Canadian researchers claimed earlier this month that the code contained details of German tank movements which had been sent by a British soldier. However, Michael Smith, a trustee of Bletchley Park, said the claims were "nonsense". He said the Canadian academics had used a World War 1 code from the First World War as the basis of their research. He said: "The idea that a World War...

'A Christmas Story' It wouldn't be Christmas without 'A Christmas Story,' the 1983 movie that became an instant holiday classic thanks to its winning cast and quotable scenes. The film is as time-honored a tradition as getting your tongue stuck to a pole in freezing weather. Here's a then-and-now look at the gang from fictional Hohman, Indiana, who brought the 'original, traditional, one-hundred-percent, red-blooded, two-fisted, all-American Christmas' tale to life ...

AK-47 found in paroled felon's car after high speed chase Authorities found a loaded AK-47 rifle in the trunk of a car driven by a paroled felon after a high speed pursuit that concluded with a crash and short foot chase. West Covina police attempted to stop a gray Toyota Camry for traffic violations at the Sunset Avenue exit off the 10 Freeway shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday. The driver led police on a chase that reached speeds in excess of 90 mph on city streets, West Covina police spokesman Rudy Lopez said. The suspect vehicle entered the westbound 10...

, the brain trust in Chicago was also obsessed with superstitions, particularly after the president’s disastrous performance in Denver at the first debate. As Thrush and Martin report, the unlikely ringleader of the “superstitious obsessive-compulsive disorder” was the uber-rational David Plouffe. Here are some fun tidbits they dug up about the guidelines the Obama camp followed before the second debate: No Thai food, because that’s what the team ate before the Denver debate. No one can wear the same clothes they wore before Denver. No one can follow the same exercise routine. (“If you had gone for a jog thirteen...

An Iranian semi-official news agency says there has been another cyberattack by the sophisticated computer worm Stuxnet, this time on the industries in the country’s south. … (Provisional civil defense chief Ali Akbar) Akhavan says Iranian computer experts were able to “successfully stop” the worm. …

Demands for stricter restrictions on gun sales are all the rage right now in light of the Connecticut elementary school massacre. However, a law student at the University of Texas says new technology will soon change the regulatory landscape dramatically, and possibly make such regulation futile. The student, Cody Wilson, is among the leaders of Defense Distributed, home of the wiki weapon project. The goal of the collaborative, nonprofit project is simple: to create freely available plans that you can download from the Internet and produce a gun using a 3-D printer. YouTube video at printablegun.com shows Wilson’s group test...

Washington Metropolitan Police Department is investigating whether NBC’s David Gregory violated D.C. gun laws when he displayed what he described as a 30 round magazine as part of an interview during Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” “So here’s a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now isn’t it possible that if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets, isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?” show moderator Gregory asked Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice...