According to CNN there is a deal to resolve the impass on the payroll tax cut. Details are sketchy but the House GOP has a conference call scheduled for 5pm EST/2pm PST. Since the Senate is out of town the deal would presumably be for the House to pass the 2 month cut for now and then work on a full extension later.

Bahrain, the close American ally with one of the worst recent records of violence against pro-democracy protestors, received a formal a warning on Wednesday from the UN Human Rights chief. A team from the High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Bahrain from 13 to 17 December and concluded that the repression was unacceptable. It insisted the government should immediately and unconditionally release protestors...

Breaking news that North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il has died at the age of 69. Early word is that he died of a heart attack aboard one of his luxury trains while on a ‘tour’. South Korean forces and US forces in South Korea are on high alert. Given that in the past North Korea has dealt with crisis situations by launching missiles and staging attacks on South Korean territory that is not unreasonable. At...

The Iraq War is over. Or, so we are informed. The BBC: Obama speech at Fort Bragg marks end of Iraq war US President Barack Obama has marked the end of the Iraq war with a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, telling troops, “welcome home!” His address paid tribute to the soldiers who served in the conflict – both those who died and veterans who returned home after long tours of duty. More...

Via Twitter: @fox5atlanta: BREAKING: Sources tell FOX 5 News that Herman Cain will endorse Newt Gingrich Monday for the GOP Presidential Nominee. Updated: 9.30 pm Pacific: News from Politico supports FOX5 Gingrich’s camp put a late add of a press conference at 1:45 p.m. on his schedule. And Gingrich just added a media availability to his schedule in New York on Monday, suggesting the likelihood the endorsement...

Addressing supporters at an event that was supposed to open his new campaign headquarters in Atlanta, Herman Cain announced that he will suspend his campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination. He was very critical of the news media for “spinning stories that are unproven” and discussed the pain and anguish the stories have caused for him and his family. He also took responsibility for any mistakes...

No confirmation yet (and no link on CNN.com) but the talking heads on CNN are reporting that he is “reassessing” his run for President. Given the less than organized nature of the Cain campaign this could be a false report, but it could be that he and his wife have had a “chat” about things. The Hill is also echoing this report. More details as they come in.

NECN: Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts fourth Congressional District has said he will not seek re-election for 2012. Frank, a ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, planned to hold a press conference in Newton, Mass. on Monday afternoon, to formally announce and answer questions on the decision. CNN confirms. The Caucus: His Fourth District falls mostly in southern Massachusetts...

Hey, we always knew it was a matter of time before pepper spraying really caught on among the general public. I mean, if a policeman can just ‘casually walk down a line of students sitting down and not doing anything violent and pepper spray them — basically spraying them because he didn’t like them – why can’t citizens do the same? How long is it before citizens pepper spray...

by WALTER BRASCH The Penn State Board of Trustees may have several times violated state law for its failure to publicly announce meetings and how it handled the firing of Coach Joe Paterno. However, these violations may be the least of the Board’s worries, as it scrambles to reduce fall-out from the scandal that began with revelations that an assistant football coach may be a serial child molester, and that...

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber has just concluded a press conference* announcing that he was putting the execution of  double-murderer Gary Haugen on hold, and a moratorium on all executions through the remainder of his term. [* radio story .mp3 is here. Press conference link as soon as I get it. Got it: Video link is here.] Kitzhaber (the most neutral photo I could find. He’s either being shot as...

by WALTER BRASCH The Penn State Board of Trustees may have several times violated state law for its failure to publicly announce meetings and how it handled the firing of Coach Joe Paterno. However, these violations may be the least of the Board’s worries, as it scrambles to reduce fall-out from the scandal that began with revelations that an assistant football coach may be a serial child molester, and that...

Iran today successfully stared down a new move by the US, France, Britain and Germany to push it to the wall despite a strongly worded United Nations watchdog agency report that it might still be trying to build nuclear weapons. Few qualified observers doubt that Iran is covertly conducting a nuclear weapons program and controversy continues over whether it is a year or a decade away from success. But Teheran...

by WALTER BRASCH There is nothing the media love more than a good celebrity sex scandal. Since the story of Scarlett Johansson’s purloined nude pictures had run its course, and the media squeezed every drop of ink it could from the Kim Kardashian/Kris Humphries engagement/wedding/ marriage/divorce, they had to find something else to feed the beast with the insatiable appetite. Something else was Penn State....

The Arab league today gave a three-day extension to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his own people or face expulsion from it, despite being a founding member. This is big. The Arab League, notorious in the Arab world for decades of mealy-mouthed equivocation, is suddenly roaring led by Qatar, a sliver of gas-rich sand with less than 300,000 citizens. Syria, where civilization is traced back to 10,000...

Foreign policy and international affairs will ostensibly be the focus of tonight’s CBS News/National Journal Republican Presidential Debate in Spartanburg, South Carolina. In realilty much of the focus will be on whether former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney can both maintain his lead and begin to expand it out of its seeming ceiling, whether Texas Governor Rick Perry can recover from what most observers say...

Several news sources are reporting a huge blast occurring inside an Iranian military base near the capital, Tehran. BBC News: There has been at least one explosion inside a military base west of Iran’s capital, Tehran, officials say. Windows in buildings in the nearby village of Bidganeh have been shattered. Some deaths have been reported, according to the semi-official Fars news agency, but this has not...

The flap in Happy Valley, Home of Penn State University, reminds us again that we receive our “news” from an entertainment driven media. What is news is squeezed out by deciding who should get star billing. Multiple children, likely more than a dozen, were raped, their bodies, souls and psyches violated. They will live their entire lives with the emotional fallout of having been betrayed and assaulted...

by WALTER BRASCH “O.K., class, we have a few minutes at the end of today’s lecture about how the godless Communists created evolution to try to destroy the decent loyal patriotic capitalist society of America. Any questions? Yes, Billy Bob.” “Mr. Jim Bob, I heard about this thing called a person. What is that?” “Good question. With all the distortions by the lyin’ liberal left-wing, it can get...

AP: Penn State fires coach Joe Paterno, president Graham Spanier Penn State trustees fired football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier amid the growing furor over how the school handled sex abuse allegations against an assistant coach. The massive shakeup Wednesday night came hours after Paterno announced that he planned to retire at the end of his 46th season. But the outcry following...

In news that is likely to have an impact on the world economic situation, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has announced he will resign as PM once key economic votes are cast later this month. The votes will be on austerity packages demanded by other European nations. In the short term the news has seemed to have a positive impact on US markets (the news came after European markets closed). Berlusconi has been...

The New York Times: Joe Paterno’s tenure as coach of the Penn State football team will soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks, in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to two people briefed on conversations among the university’s top officials. The board of trustees has yet to determine the precise timing of Paterno’s exit, but it is clear that the man...

For those who care he has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and will face up to four years in prison. Based on what I’ve seen the verdict was proper, even if Jackson did give himself some of the drugs it was entirely improper to administer the drug outside of a hospital setting.

With the remaining 33,000 US troops in Iraq preparing to leave, bomb blasts and a gasoline blaze in a market on this Muslim festival Sunday killed another 10 innocent persons and injured many others. The troop withdrawal was always known to be fraught with menace but things seems to be going from bad to worse. Bombings and killings occur daily as Sunni insurgents probably linked to al Qaeda and Shi’ite...

Andy Rooney, a former war correspondent, CBS’s longtime icon, a favorite of viewers, and a role model to those who aspired to broadcast and/or print commentary — someone who could write his copy as well as read it and communicate to viewers — is dead at 92. He had just retired last month: (CBS News) Andy Rooney, the “60 Minutes” commentator known to generations for his wry, humorous...