The end of the Federal Trade Commission's 19-month investigation into Google was a win for the search giant, but only a partial victory for those who want clear limits on the commission's role in policing competition.

The only binding action that resulted from the broad and lengthy probe was a consent order barring Google from abusing the "standard essential" mobile-phone patents it acquired from Motorola. That order was consistent with the commission's recent declaration that the holders of such patents shouldn't seek injunctions against would-be licensees when they can't agree to terms.

Notably, the commission took no action on allegations that Google manipulated its search results to favor its own services. Google acknowledges that its search algorithm isn't exactly an honest broker, but it says other search sites play favorites in their results too. And if consumers don't like that the results they get from a Google search, they can use a different site.

That's certainly true,...

Now that your New Year’s celebrating is over and you’re into the first week of embarking upon -- or pretending to embark upon -- all the resolutions designed to extend your life and make it more fabulous (exercise, diet, meditation, etc.) , here’s something at the other end of the spectrum you should resolve to take care of: planning for the end of your life.

Of course, it’s difficult to ruminate on your own death,  particularly if you’re a member of the baby boomer generation — the youngest of that group turns 49 this year and the oldest turned 65 two years ago — which is devoted to aggressively caring for themselves physically.   Officials at AARP, the nonprofit, nonpartisan group that represents the interests of people 50 and older, say that people don’t begin to think about their own mortality until they suffer a serious illness or see parents or close friends struggle with sickness or death. 

But there are plenty of reasons why...

Congress avoided the fiscal cliff last week, but Republican lawmakers in the House still blew another crucial deadline.

For the first time since the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, was passed in 1994, Congress failed to renew the law that is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives. VAWA provides important protections for victims of abuse and crime, including special visas for undocumented immigrant women who are often discouraged from reporting abuse because they fear deportation. The measure also sets aside millions to help fund battered-women's shelters, law enforcement and abuse prevention programs.

While both parties are at fault, the bulk of the blame belongs to House Republicans, who have made VAWA a partisan issue even though previous Congresses have twice renewed the law without a fight.

But not this time. In April, the Senate passed its own version of VAWA that preserved programs and extended protections to victims who are lesbian, gay, transgender or who live...

I won’t be able to watch “Zero Dark Thirty” until next weekend. Bizarrely, a movie that is become a cause celebre in Washington, D.C., isn’t available yet to residents of the nation’s capital. But you don’t have to have seen the movie to question the PR offensive Sen. Dianne Feinstein and some of her colleagues have launched against it.

Last month Feinstein, joined by Sens. Carl Levin  and John McCain,  sent a letter to Sony Pictures head Michael Lynton complaining that the film was “grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location of Osama bin Laden.” Not only did the senators give the film three thumbs down; they demanded  that  Lynton “state that the role of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden is not based on the facts, but rather part of the film’s fictional narrative.”  

But do Americans really need to be told that “it’s only a movie&...

The Bird: 1; The Man: 0.

In what must restore at least a bit of one’s faith in the U.S. justice system, a judge in the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a police officer has no right to stop you solely for giving them the finger.

The ruling stems from a case that goes back to a May 2006 day when John Swartz, 62, was riding shotgun in his wife’s car as they headed to her son’s house in the sleepy New York town of St. Johnsville.

As they drove through the village, a radar detector the couple had inside the car started to warn them; somewhere up ahead their vehicle was being tracked by a radar gun.

As anyone apt to feel needlessly targeted by the law might do, Swartz felt like flipping the bird.

Except, where most of us only feel like doing it, Swartz went with it. According to the court documents, he stuck his hand out the passenger window and gave that officer the one-fingered salute.

Not surprisingly, it came back to bite him. The pair arrived at their...

The December jobs report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the economy remained in low gear, with private employers continuing to add jobs just slightly faster than the number of new workers seeking them. That's about the same as it has been since the summer of 2012. In fact, the total number of jobs created last year -- 1.84 million -- was the same as in 2011.

At this rate, it will take seven years for the U.S. economy to get back to the robust employment rates seen before the 2008-2009 recession. President Christie will have already started campaigning for re-election by then.

There were nuggets of encouraging data within the jobs report, such as the gains in manufacturing and construction, the growth in wages and hours worked, and the growth in the labor force. Some pundits also said they were impressed that job growth, while slow, held up in spite of the threat posed by the possibility of across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts on Jan. 1.

In fact,...

I hate the season of New Year’s resolutions. Even if you don’t make any pledges, or proclaim that you’re above this annual practice, you can’t avoid resolution-mania. Every media outlet is saturated with reminders to get in shape -- physical, financial or otherwise. And every social media feed has everyone you know and their mom and your mom echoing the same yearly promises.

I’m at optimist at heart. I should love the idea of a fresh start and renewed intentions. But instead, I cringe through this time of year when we collectively punish ourselves during a month of shame and self-loathing.  

I especially loathe all of the pressure to lose weight. I didn’t gain any weight over the holiday season, or in the last year for that matter -- yet, here I am feeling bad about my body, which I was perfectly content with in October.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

On Tuesday, the Journal of the American Medical Assn. published a study that should have all caused...

The scenario starts out horrifyingly enough.

A man enters the darkened bedroom of a woman after seeing her boyfriend leave late at night. He pretends to be her boyfriend. Before she’s aware of what’s happening, he’s having sex with her.

Was she raped? The equally horrifying answer: no.

In a conviction reversal that might inspire some California lawmaker to take up this mantle and change the state’s penal code, a Los Angeles man’s rape conviction was overturned this week on that simple fact; the man pretended to be the woman’s boyfriend, not her husband. If she had been married, his conviction would have been upheld.

The decision exposes a flaw in California’s rape laws that somehow has gone unaddressed. According to the court’s opinion, the 18-year-old woman fell asleep with her boyfriend in her bedroom, and after she fell asleep he went home because he had things to do the next morning.

The attacker was in the living room – he was...

After a school massacre in Connecticut, the National Rifle Assn. suggested that public schools should each post one armed sentry to provide security. Now politicians in California are debating the proposal. One risk nobody has thought of yet: What if the guards are embarrassed by the students' superior knowledge and possession of firearms?

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Here’s a new trend I wasn’t expecting in 2013: ultrasound parties. Yes, you read that right. Pregnant women can now invite their friends and family over for ultrasound viewing parties in the comfort of their own homes. That goes way beyond the traditional baby shower and the more recent (and indulgent) practice of gender-reveal fetes. “Welcome to the new frontier in pregnancy oversharing,” writes Lela Davidson, who details the trend on "Today."

“Will we ever reach the point of saturation when it comes to celebrating a person's pregnancy?” asks the amusing Tracie Egan Morrissey, who refers to these events on Jezebel as “the latest rage for self-important pregnant women.”

Personally, if I were pregnant, I wouldn’t dream of inviting people over to look at my uncovered belly, much less inside of it. Some things are far too intimate. Still, I’m not rolling my eyes at the women who are embracing ultrasound parties. In fact, I rather...