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| TOP STORIES |
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| Huckabee’s challenge in 2016: Growing a national campaign from the grass roots |
| If Mike Huckabee is going to make a serious run for the Republican presidential nomination, he will have to do something he was unable to do in 2008: raise millions of dollars and build a sprawling national campaign to complement the well of support he has among evangelicals and grass-roots activists in early primary states. Read full article » |
| Archaeologists find possible site of Jesus’s trial in Jerusalem |
| JERUSALEM — It started 15 years ago with plans to expand the Tower of David Museum. But the story took a strange turn when archaeologists started peeling away layers under the floor in an old abandoned building adjacent to the museum in Jerusalem’s Old City. Read full article » |
| New Senate majority leader’s main goal for GOP: Don’t be scary |
| Mitch McConnell has an unusual admonition for the new Republican majority as it takes over the Senate this week: Don’t be “scary.”The incoming Senate majority leader has set a political goal for the next two years of overseeing a functioning, reasonable majority on Capitol Hill that scores some measured conservative wins, particularly against environmental regulations, but probably not big victories such as a full repeal of the health-care law. McConnell’s priority is to set the stage for a potential GOP presidential victory in 2016. Read full article » |
| Could a pregnant woman change the way we think about Ebola? |
| PORT LOKO, Sierra Leone — When Fatmata Kabia walked into the Ebola isolation center, her chances of survival were almost zero. Not because her symptoms were particularly bad — though they were. Not because the disease had already killed most of her family — though it had. Kabia, 21, appeared doomed for another reason: She was pregnant. Read full article » |
| NFC playoffs: Cowboys rally past Lions 24-20, after flag for pass interference penalty is picked up |
| ARLINGTON, Tex. — The yellow flag floated to the turf, and the weight of two decades started to lift Sunday afternoon on the Detroit Lions’ sideline. Their fourth-quarter drive would continue deep inside Dallas Cowboys territory. They could salt away the clock, likely add to their lead and stem Dallas’s charge. The Lions would earn their woebegone franchise’s first playoff victory since 1991, no longer a sad sack to be bullied. Read full article » |
| ‘Downton Abbey’ recap: Change is in the air (and Mary is going upstairs to take off her hat) |
| Finally, “Downton” is back. Time to put the kettle on, open a huge tin of Quality Street chocolates and start looking up words in a handy English-to-American dictionary. Firstly, why must they pronounce ‘schedule’ that way? Read full article » |
| ESPN’s Stuart Scott dies of cancer at 49 (updated) |
| Stuart Scott, the anchor who energized ESPN’s sportscasts with a fresh hip-hop vibe filled with pop culture references and catchphrases, died of the cancer he had fought three times over the past seven years. Read full article » |
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| POLITICS |
| Why Mike Huckabee matters — a lot |
| Almost nobody is giving Mike Huckabee a chance in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.But the former Arkansas governor, who stepped down from his Fox News hosting gig on Saturday as he weighs another run, still matters. A lot. Read full article » |
| Notable name changes for federal agencies throughout U.S. history |
| The Government Printing Office changed its name to the Government Publishing Office last month, retaining its original initials while updating its 153-year-old moniker to better reflect the agency’s newer digital offerings. Read full article » |
| Father, widow offer tearful tributes to slain NYPD officer Wenjian Liu |
| NEW YORK — A grieving Wei Tang Liu sobbed and leaned on those at his side as he made his way to the lectern to say a few words about his son, Wenjian Liu, a photograph of him in his navy-blue police uniform and hat near sprays of flowers. Read full article » |
| OPINIONS |
| Oil’s swoon creates the opening for a carbon tax |
| The case for carbon taxes has long been compelling. With the recent steep fall in oil prices and associated declines in other energy prices, it has become overwhelming. There is room for debate about the size of the tax and about how the proceeds should be deployed. But there should be no doubt that, given the current zero tax rate on carbon, increased taxation would be desirable. Read full article » |
| E.J. Dionne: The conscience of Mario Cuomo |
| NEW YORKThere will never be another politician like Mario Cuomo, a man shaped by a different age. Yet he taught lessons about racial reconciliation, the role of religion in politics, the purposes of politics itself and — oddly for a politician — humility that will always be fresh. Read full article » |
| Robert Samuelson: Is the economic slog really over? |
| Hello, 2015.We now are in the sixth year of economic recovery since the end of the “Great Recession” in mid-2009, says the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academic economists that dates business cycles. But, if upbeat economic forecasts come true, this could be the first year that feels like a recovery. There would be huge implications. It would soothe Americans’ bruised sense of self-worth and alter popular psychology for the 2016 elections. Read full article » |
| Jackson Diehl: Obama is overlooking deep trouble in Venezuela |
| An enduring characteristic of Barack Obama’s presidency has been his determination to implement the ideological agenda with which he arrived in office without regard for conditions in the real world. He imposed timetables for “ending the wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq unlinked to military progress. He insisted on pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, even though the leaders of both sides were manifestly unwilling. He began his second term by seeking a new nuclear arms deal with Vladimir Putin, despite abundant evidence that Putin was preparing for confrontation with the West. Read full article » |
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| LOCAL |
| A swimmable Anacostia River? Something to look forward to, in a decade or more. |
| Dev Murali and Doug Siglin each have a vision of the Anacostia River.Murali’s is of a fish caught by one of the anglers who rely on the D.C. waterway for sustenance. Its mouth is red and grotesquely misshapen, inflamed by the tumors that afflict many of the fish in the river’s carcinogen-thick waters. Read full article » |
| D.C. area forecast: Winter seizes control — very cold this week with snow likely Tuesday morning |
| WEATHER GANG | Cold air pours into the region today setting the stage for snow on Tuesday. Read full article » |
| Home-invasion robbery reported near U-Md. |
| An armed home-invasion robbery was reported Sunday night in a residential area near the University of Maryland campus.The robbery was reported in the 8500 block of Potomac Avenue, in the Berwyn Heights area, south of Greenbelt Road and east of Route 1. Read full article » |
| Trouble grading teachers with test scores |
| Forget about the Common Core State Standards, last year’s hottest educational topic. A potentially more disruptive movement is sweeping the country and needs more attention in this new year. More than 20 states are adjusting to new legislative requirements that student test scores be part of the teacher evaluation process. Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations championed this approach, as have many governors. Teacher unions continue to raise objections, but it is difficult to argue that teachers should not be measured, at least in part, on how well their students are doing. Read full article » |
| SPORTS |
| Roy Hibbert’s night includes near-fight with Carlos Boozer and not-so-near attempt at game-winning shot |
| Pacers center Roy Hibbert put up a double-double Sunday night against the Lakers, but a pair of fourth-quarter events involving him provided the headlines. First Hibbert got flung to the ground, nearly setting off a fight, and then he flung a last-second shot that came nowhere close to the basket in an 88-87 loss. Read full article » |
| Tony Romo comes up clutch for Cowboys in rare playoff win |
| Tony Romo knew he would be sore Sunday night. The Detroit Lions’ menacing defensive line had thrashed him all afternoon, but all of the hits he absorbed — 10 of them total, six for sacks — had resulted in another week for the Dallas Cowboys. “To win playoff games,” Romo said, “you’ve got to get hit a few times.” Read full article » |
| Panthers’ playoff win put an extra $48,000 in Greg Hardy’s pocket |
| The thing about the NFL’s “commissioner’s exempt list” is that it could also be called the “out of sight, out of mind” list, which works well, right up until it appears that the league itself is out of its mind. Case in point: Sunday, when ESPN noted that the Panthers’ playoff win over the Cardinals gave Greg Hardy a nice little post-Christmas bonus. Read full article » |
| FEDERAL GOVERNMENT |
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| Courts ‘choose’ to lag behind on tech, says Chief Justice Roberts |
| There are few institutions in modern America as untouched by technology as the U.S. Supreme Court. And that's why it was so striking to see, as our Robert Barnes details, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts devote the bulk of this year's progress report on the state of the federal judiciary to musings on what role technology plays in the life of the court. Read full article » |
| Available: The $183,300 ‘Yoda’ job at the Pentagon |
| How is the Pentagon going to replace its very own Yoda? We’re about to find out.The Defense Department just advertised that is searching for a new director for its Office of Net Assessment. The position was held for decades by Andrew W. Marshall, 93, who founded the Pentagon’s internal think tank in 1973 and was the only leader it ever had. Marshall, who decided to retire this past fall, was widely known by the nickname Yoda, after the wise alien character in the “Star Wars” franchise. Read full article » |
| Why the U.S. Border Patrol is making a big push to hire women |
| Tens of thousands of migrant women cross the Southwest border each year, and human rights organizations say a high percentage of them experience sexual trauma along the way. Yet only 5 percent of the U.S. Border Patrol agents are female. That’s a problem, according to Border Patrol Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, who discussed his agency’s recent push to recruit more women in a recent Federal News Radio interview. Read full article » |
| NATIONAL |
| How brick-and-mortar stores can survive the Internet shopping craze |
| Department stores and other brick-and-mortar retailers registered another lackluster holiday shopping season, while online sales have remained upbeat since Cyber Monday. As more consumers spend a larger share of their dollars online, does this signal the days of shopping at department stores and shopping malls are numbered? Read full article » |
| Let’s shatter the ‘broken windows’ theory of American foreign policy right now |
| A few months ago the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens wrote an essay arguing for a “broken windows” theory of American foreign policy — or, rather, for applying the “broken windows” theory of policing to world politics: Read full article » |
| A cop in Ukraine said he was detaining me because I was black. I appreciated it. |
| I was already homeless — unknowingly a victim of housing discrimination — when my plane touched down in Kiev, Ukraine in the summer of 2009. I was traveling on a Fulbright grant to research the lives of biracial Ukrainians, and was eager to explore how the Slavic country could produce native people who looked like me, a young black man from Detroit. A local real estate agent had promised several months earlier to secure an apartment for me before my arrival. I took a taxi from the airport to meet him. Wearing a warm, wide smile, Sergei extended his hand and welcomed me. Then he explained why his apartment search had failed: “Your skin color has been causing us a lot of problems.” Read full article » |
| WORLD |
| Meth seizures at U.S.-Mexico border soar in 2014 |
| SAN DIEGO — Seizures of methamphetamine soared at the U.S.-Mexico border during fiscal 2014, accelerating a trend that began several years ago as new laws that limited access to the drug’s chemical ingredients made it harder to manufacture it in the United States. Read full article » |
| How inequality made these Western countries poorer |
| Rising inequality holds back economic growth -- according to a recent report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).The organization, which is primarily composed of high-income countries, analyzed economic growth from 1990 to 2010 and found that almost all 21 examined countries missed out on economic growth due to rising inequalities. (We take a closer look at the countries that were hardest hit in the second half of this post.) Read full article » |
| Juror search begins in trial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect |
| BOSTON — His accusers brandish a confession scribbled inside a boat during an intensive manhunt and a video they say shows him placing a backpack with a bomb a few feet from a little boy who died when it exploded seconds later. Read full article » |
| Indians invented planes 7,000 years ago — and other startling claims at the Science Congress |
| NEW DELHI — The Wright Brothers thought they were inventing the airplane, but an ancient Hindu sage beat them to it, about 7,000 years ago. Oh, and his planes could move in any direction, and travel from planet to planet. Read full article » |
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| BUSINESS |
| At CES in Las Vegas, local start-ups try on the market for wearable technology |
| At the International CES expo in Las Vegas kicking off this week, wearable devices — smartwatches, fitness trackers and other gadgets with embedded sensors — will be competing for more floor space at the annual consumer technology exhibit. Read full article » |
| How Timberland used customer data to reboot its brand |
| STRATHAM, N.H. — There are few shoes more recognizable than the Timberland yellow boot. You know the one: The high-top styling, the sturdy-looking nubuck leather, the rubber lug sole to protect feet from sheets of rain or piles of snow. Read full article » |
| A new year brings a new ‘21-Day Financial Fast’ |
| You’ve made the commitment to do better with your finances, but now you may be wondering how to keep this New Year’s resolution.I know some of the questions you may have. What’s the best way to pay down my debt? Where in the world will I find the money in my budget to start an emergency fund or build up the tiny one I started but raid all the time? Read full article » |
| TECHNOLOGY |
| The man who invented Priceline.com wants to shake up America’s approach to patents |
| In 1997, Jay Walker founded Priceline.com — the Web site many people use to get cheaper airfare by "naming your own price." Patenting the solution, and allowing others to use the patents for a fee, helped drive Walker's success. But, Walker argues in an interview, many patents remain underused. Now, the man who smoothed transactions for buyers and sellers of airplane tickets wants to do something similar for a key part of the nation's information economy. Walker is developing something called the United States Patent Utility. Here’s what that means. Read full article » |
| The most anticipated innovations coming in 2015 |
| In the age of venture capital and crowdfunding, it’s not at all unusual that by the time a technology or breakthrough reaches the marketplace, the narrative that carried it to this point has been unfolding for some time. Read full article » |
| Affected by the PlayStation outage? Sony has some gifts for you. |
| Were you left out in the cold by the PlayStation network's Christmas outage? Sony would like to make that up to you.Hackers from a group called "Lizard Squad" claimed credit for attacking the company's PlayStation Network last week, chilling the joy of the season for anyone planning to spend some of those holiday vacation days in front of a new video game. To make amends to upset customers, Sony announced Thursday that it will tack on five extra days of membership to any of its PlayStation Plus subscribers who were unable to sign in to the network over the holidays. PlayStation Plus is a paid, premium services that gives PlayStation Network users access to online multiplayer, a library of games, and the ability to save games online. Read full article » |
| 7 admirable start-ups that are driving social change |
| A standing joke in Silicon Valley is that the smartest people go into online advertising, virtual currency, or dumb online games. And you surely have to wonder what has gone wrong when the industry’s heavy hitters and venture capitalists provide $1.5 million to seed a useless app such as Yo. Read full article » |
| LIFESTYLE |
| Ken Cuccinelli’s post-politics endeavor: oyster farming |
| TANGIER ISLAND, Va. — Ken Cuccinelli is holding a raw oyster. It is a small, round oyster with an unusually smooth shell and a distinctive black stripe. He stands on the deck of a crabbing boat that rocks gently on the Chesapeake Bay. The former Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee tilts his head back and eats his first sample from the oyster farm that he co-founded with a small group of friends. Read full article » |
| ‘Mozart in the Jungle’ and entertainment’s classical-music problem |
| Last month, Amazon posted the entire first season — 10 episodes — of a new series about classical music, “Mozart in the Jungle.” The series, which stars such luminaries as Bernadette Peters, Malcolm McDowell and Gael García Bernal, is nominally based on the book with the same title by Blair Tindall, an oboist, that rocked the easily scandalized classical-music world when it came out in 2005. All the book actually revealed was that classical musicians, in the 1980s, had sex and did drugs, much like people in other fields, but classical music is supposed to exist in some higher realm, at least to those who love it. (How soon they forget Franz Liszt.) Read full article » |
| New Year’s resolution wear: Workout clothes for the sweat-averse |
| The Gisele Bundchen advertisement for Under Armour was not the turning point but it was a contributing factor in Devon Mish’s decision, three months ago, to launch her own brand of activewear. In the commercial, which has gotten some 2.5 million views on Youtube, the model is shown wearing Under Armour leggings along with a sports bra while sweating her way through a kickboxing workout. As she wallops the heavy bag with serious vigor, real comments from viewers — some positive, many negative — flash on the walls around her. And she ignores them. Read full article » |
| Carolyn Hax: Can adult sons who ignore Mom’s birthday be made to change? |
| Adapted from a recent online discussion. Dear Carolyn:We’ve been married 30 years and have raised two boys to adulthood in a supportive environment complete with a stay-at-home mom, involved parents, and fully paid college. Read full article » |
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