Current Affairs

Indianapolis attorney Richard Kammen has defended a lot of people facing the death penalty in his 40-year career, but now he has probably the most despicable client of all, Abd al-Rahim Mohammed Al-Nashiri, the accused terrorist charged in the 2000 USS Cole attack that killed 17 sailors and wounded several dozen others:

For two years, volunteer Frank Coyles has played Santa for chemotherapy patients at the Hollings Cancer Center in Charleston, S.C. This year, the center told him to stay away:

"Because of our state affiliation, we decided not to have a Santa presence this year," Hollings spokeswoman Vicky Agnew said. Hollings is a part of the Medical University of South Carolina.

Let us not let this milesone pass without note:

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the federal debt has climbed to a record $15 trillion — a staggering figure that caps a precipitous decade-long rise.

What a crappy little nothing institution UNO must be to even consider such a decrepit, useless old empty shell for a leadership position:

NEW ORLEANS (WANE) - IPFW Chancellor Michael Wartell is among five semi-finalist for the presidency at the University of New Orleans.

According to the Associated Press, Wartell was picked from 12 applicants by a search committee Tuesday.

Not much comment needed here except that TOP seems to be a great organization with a noble mission and with no hand out for government funding:

Rick Perry has thrown quite the bomb, calling for a greater diminishment of federal power than I've heard from anybody else. Give him credit for being so provocative that it should make even the staunchest libertarians among us question our beliefs:

Good idea:

C-SPAN is asking the Supreme Court to drop its ban on cameras in the courtroom when it hears arguments over President Obama's healthcare reform law.

Not exactly a brilliant campaign strategy:

AP)  PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Jon Huntsman is betting his entire presidential campaign on New Hampshire. And he's not trying to hide it.

It's conventional wisdom among many that the GOP took a drubbing in 2006 and 2008 because it had failed to be "sufficiently Republican," a sentiment summed up by Mike Pences's much quoted observation that "we did not just lose our majority, we lost our wasy. In recent years, our majority voted to expand the federal government's role in education by nearly 100 percent, created the largest new entitlement in 40 years, and pursued spending policies that created record deficits, national debt and rampant earmark spending.”

We can run but we can't hide. Are you naughty or nice? Don't have to wait for Santa to pass judgment:

People with a certain gene trait are known to be more kind and caring than people without it, and strangers can quickly tell the difference, according to US research published on Monday.