It’s official: 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency’s U.S. Climate Extremes Index, which evaluates extremes in temperature, precipitation, and storm activity, also indicated that 2012 was the nation’s second-most-extreme year on record for destructive...
Philly Inquirer's Robert Moran writes, "Richard Ben Cramer, 62, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The Inquirer who became a best-selling author, died Monday ... Mr. Cramer wrote 'What It Takes: The Way to the White House' about the 1988 presidential campaign. ... Journalists aspiring to be great writers still...
On Thursday, the 1st day of Congress, “Family members roam the hallways, everybody is lost, and nobody is really sick of being here yet.” A lot like the first day of college. (Thanks Ben Terris @National Journal) The late-night shows welcomed the 113th Congress with a new round of jokes....
Jonathan Allen at Politico writes on the never-ending Congress that finally evaporated into history last week. “The 112th Congress came in with a bang, but it is crawling out with the soft whimper of failure. … They racked up more processes than policies: a blue-ribbon White House commission, Vice President...
"While serving as the 3rd president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson discovered a piece of technology that he could simply not live without. It was the Polygraph: a machine that made direct copies of handwritten letters. In 1809, he wrote that "the use of the polygraph has spoiled me...
What better way to spend a restful holiday break than playing chicken on a fiscal cliff? The last week showed that DC isn't about to break out in a round of kumbaya, but that cooler heads can prevail. After weeks of tense negotiations between the White House and congressional Republicans,...