It took 15 votes, but Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was elected by the incoming 118th Congress as the next Speaker of the House of Representatives.

In Russia, the current best seller is George Orwell’s 1984 dystopian novel. Canada’s best-selling books run the gamut from Five Little Indians to Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix. Journalist Andrew Lawton’s book, Freedom Convoy has become a best seller through Amazon as the country’s largest book retailer Indigo refused to stock the book because it did not approve of its subject matter. 

Part One, posted on December 27, wound up on a Twitter screenshot and brought a number of responses. So did the original post, a response to COVID Vaccine Hesitancy and Risk of a Traffic Crash, a recent study published in the American Journal of Medicine (AJM). 

The MyGovCost calculator is back! After taking a hiatus during the craziness that was the coronavirus pandemic, MyGovCost has been updated with the latest spending projections going into 2023. Now, you can plug in your age, income, and education level in 2023 to determine your share of government spending and taxes could be for the rest of your life!

Law enforcement “function creep,” the gradual expansion or alteration of the powers, authority, or technological capabilities of a police force or other law enforcement agency, can have serious negative implications for civil liberties and privacy. As law enforcement agencies are given new tools or interpret existing tools in new ways, they may begin to use the powers or technologies in ways that were not originally intended or anticipated. This can result in the erosion of civil liberties and an increase in surveillance and control over the general population.

On January 1, the CBS show “60 Minutes” featured Paul Ehrlich, who warned viewers about the threat of “mass extinction,” which was “high now and getting higher all the time.” This was not a new theme for the insect biologist, 90. 

It’s easy to miss stories about government spending. It’s even easier when the management of the current U.S. Congress deliberately times its votes on the biggest spending bill of 2022 to take place around the Christmas holiday season. It means they’re trying to minimize the amount of attention on what they’re doing.

Some movies simply should not be made, regardless of their artistic potential. Blonde, now streaming on Netflix, is one of them. A distasteful, shockingly incomplete, and highly fictionalized cinematic meditation on Marilyn Monroe, Blonde clocks in at three and a half hours. And it’s a slog.

Michael A. Peterson is the CEO of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank dedicated to addressing America’s long-term fiscal challenges. He’s alarmed at the rate at which the cost of servicing the U.S. national debt is increasing as 2022 comes to an end.

A recent National Review article, on education reforms implemented by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, praised original research by the Independent Institute. Independent’s report titled “Better than Common Core: Florida’s New K-12 Standards Raise the Bar” demonstrated that the state’s new English language arts and math standards are now the strongest in the country and suggested they could serve as a model for the rest of the nation.