The richest Americans might find lumps of coal in their stockings on Christmas morning and, if not that, then they can definitely anticipate big hangovers on New Year’s Day.

The metaphorical coal lumps and hangovers will be thanks to President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner, who are either going to strike a deal in the next few days to allow taxes to go up for the wealthy or let it happen automatically when the George W. Bush-era tax cuts expire Jan. 1. But one need not feel too sorry for these people because some of them actually own coal mines, others own distilleries and many, many more have wine cellars under their palatial homes. They also own yachts and ski chalets and beach homes and, as in the case of a certain failed presidential candidate, elevators for their luxury cars. 

A few of them are the very people who deserve blame for the financial disaster of 2008 that hit the rest of Americans so hard, with the exception of all those other rich folk who skated...

Hillary Rodham Clinton has won consistent praise during her four years as secretary of State, but it looks as if she’ll be leaving her post with one big failure on her record. If she seeks the presidency in 2016, you can bet we will all be hearing the word “Benghazi” in every attack ad Republicans run against her.

A report has just been released by the independent review board looking into the September terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, which cost the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The report charges the State Department with a systemic failure in which "senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability."

Four of those officials resigned Tuesday. The independent panel stated that blame rose only to the assistant secretary level, but Clinton will still be sporting a political black eye when she steps down from her job...

While most Americans spent the weekend in shock and mourning following the shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., at least a few of our fellow citizens were thinking that killing school kids is a cool idea.

On Sunday, Los Angeles police arrested 24-year-old Kyle Bangayan at his parents’ house in East Hollywood. Bangayan had posted a Facebook message in which he threatened to shoot children at several elementary schools. Police found nine guns in the home.

Also Sunday, far from the tough streets of L.A. in the rural town of Sedro-Wooley, Wash., police arrested 19-year-old Korry Martinson. After praising the Newtown shooter and blaming the government for incidents of mass slaughter, Martinson wrote on his Facebook page, “If this causes our gun laws to be taken away, to the point as to where I cannot own a gun, I will personally get my sawed off double barreled shotgun and my AK-47 and go shoot up every...

I choked up repeatedly while watching and reading the stories about the slaughter of the innocents in Newtown, Conn., and, throughout the mournful weekend, I pondered the question raised by everyone from stricken parents to mayors and senators on the news talk shows: What will be done to prevent similar sick-minded gun rampages in the future?

My early conclusion: Nothing.

Narrow political interests and the perplexing nature of the crime make inaction nearly certain. This has proved true after the 15 other multiple-shooting rampages of 2012, and it has been the case with all the other terrible incidents in past years. Yes, this time the tender age of most of the victims makes it especially horrific, but, though many hearts have been broken, the cold hearts at the headquarters of the National Rifle Assn. remain in deep freeze. 

Even as the children of Newtown are laid to rest, the leaders of the NRA will not soften their absolutist stance for unfettered access to all types of firearms...

This week’s Newsweek magazine features a couple of essays -- one about Jesus and one about climate change -- that demonstrate the difference between simple faith in the unknowable and blind faith that denies scientific fact.

An article by Bart D. Ehrman, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, discusses things that people believe about the birth of Christ that are actually not in the Bible.

For instance, despite what the Christmas carols say, nowhere in the holy book does it mention an ox and ass beside the manger or the exact number of wise men following the star (a star that seems to be operating contrary to the laws of physics, by the way).

More unsettling for those who want to take the Gospel accounts literally, the genealogies of Joseph cited in Matthew and Luke that link him to King David are at odds with each other. And the census of "the whole world" declared by Caesar Augustus that allegedly sent Mary and Joseph on a journey to...

This being the Christmas season, I’m going to give the nation’s political leaders a little gift, an excuse for bringing America to the edge of a so-called fiscal cliff: They’re only human. 

It’s easy to look back at other moments in our history when members of Congress should have been able to see the right path that is so obvious to us now. Back in 1865, when the House of Representatives was debating the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, how could any congressman not understand that owning another human being as property was utterly wrong? In the 1940s, how did so many leaders fail to recognize that confiscating the property of American citizens of Japanese descent and packing them off to internment camps was an injustice? 

And today, on an issue that is far less weighty but not inconsequential, why can’t the people in charge in Washington get their act together and come up with a budget compromise before the deadline arrives for automatic, drastic...

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban. On Sunday, gay and lesbian couples lined up to get married as Washington state’s new law approving same-sex unions went into effect. And today, many religious conservatives are asking whether the USA is going the way of ancient Rome.

The Supreme Court will be deciding whether to uphold the appeals court ruling that struck down Proposition 8. In addition, the justices will be deliberating on the constitutionality of provisions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that deny legal benefits to same-sex couples who are married. A range of outcomes is possible including a broad decision that opens the way to same-sex marriage in every state or a narrow ruling that says Proposition 8 supporters lack legal standing. Many legal experts say the odds favor elimination of Proposition 8 and reinstitution of the California Supreme Court’s ruling that gays and lesbians have a...

Before he gets to the fiscal cliff, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) will have to traverse the conservative chasm.

On one side of the growing rift stand pragmatic conservatives such as Ann Coulter and Bill Kristol who say Republicans should give ground and let President Obama raise taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans. On the other side stand hard-line conservatives such as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a gaggle of right-wing pundits and tea party diehards who shout, “Never give in!” Straddling this divide is Boehner, trying to hold his caucus together while offering a middle path that would raise revenue from the rich while holding down tax rates.

Boehner’s scheme to come up with $800 billion by closing tax loopholes for the wealthy has broad, if tenuous, support in the GOP caucus, but it is not a plan that has much chance of survival. It brings in only half the revenue that would come in if Bush-era tax cuts are allowed to expire as they are set to do on...

Two new movies, “Lincoln” and “Hyde Park on the Hudson,” are intimate portraits of the two most consequential presidents of the United States. They are timely reminders that politics has never been pretty and our leaders have never been perfect human beings, but that, without Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our country might have been lost to the disintegrating influence of lesser men. 

“Lincoln” is such a stunningly good movie that I have already seen it twice. Daniel Day-Lewis completely inhabits the person of the 16^thpresident; the actor disappears and we are confronted with as close an approximation of the real man as we are ever likely to see. His Lincoln is not a white marble demigod. He is a loving but imperfect father, a husband at the end of his patience, a country lawyer with a sharp analytical mind and a wily politician who will do just about anything to round up votes in a good cause. We have seen Lincoln’s tortured...

There may be secessionists in all 50 states, but Texas can boast of the biggest cohort of independent-minded (unhinged?) folks who want to cast off the "tyranny" of the federal government and go it alone.

Well over 100,000 Texans have signed a petition to the president of the United States requesting that he let the Lone Star State depart from the Union peacefully and amicably. The last time Texas and 10 other states tried this, of course, a rather nasty fight ensued –- the 150th anniversary of which the nation is observing right now. 

Abraham Lincoln was not keen on letting the slave states go. He sent armies south to bring them back into the fold and that should have settled the issue. But one secessionist website insists otherwise: "The South's rejoining the Union at the point of a bayonet in the late 1860s didn't prove secession is ‘not an option’ or unlawful. It only affirmed that violent coercion can be used, even by governments (if unrestrained), to rob men of...