“ISAF troops conducting live ordinance test unaware they are on a natural gas field and that a Taliban attack had just occurred. On road from Khoja Gogardak, Sheberghan city, Jowzan Province, Afghanistan.”

C-SPAN reports: “Pres. Obama is expected to announce at 1:30pm (ET) that he will nominate Jack Lew to be the next treasury secretary. Lew is the current White House chief of staff and would replace Timothy Geithner in the position.”

AP reports: “America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012. … Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.”

Politico reports: “In the weeks since Election Day — as Mitt Romney faded into obscurity, John Boehner lost control of the House GOP and tea partiers turned on one another — Bill Kristol has been busy charting the future of the Republican Party. …

Reuters reports: “President Barack Obama on Monday will announce the nominations of Republican Chuck Hagel as his next defense secretary and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan as the new CIA director, a senior administration official said.”

Some reports in the western media have been pointing fingers at Indian culture, values and attitudes and its animalistic male population. That violence against women is a global phenomenon — including in the West — of epic proportions is obscured in these reports.

AllGov.com reports: “The U.S. government will continue to spy on Americans’ private communications without a warrant for another five years — and without oversight provisions that were shot down in the U.S. Senate.

Unfortunately, the fiscal cliff deal negotiated by the White House and passed by Congress, with significant help from Democrats, emboldens those who will demand reductions to these programs as a way to offset the cost of the tax cuts. They will make these demands even though Social Security has not contributed a penny to the…

“It is impossible to assess precisely the totality of money’s influence on the 2012 elections, but notions that it did not matter can be immediately dismissed. The evidence we have reviewed suggests exactly the opposite. … [A] virtual straight line relationship existed between Democratic candidates’ shares of total political money and their showing against their…

Kerry’s reported nomination continues a pattern: Barack Obama, who originally got the Democratic nomination in 2008 based largely on his having given a speech critical of the Iraq invasion before it took place (though he didn’t have to vote on it) has without fail appointed individuals to top foreign policy positions who voted for or…