One independent liberal group posted a widely seen Internet video of a man pushing a white-haired woman in a wheelchair to the edge of a scenic cliff and dumping her over it. It ends by asking, “Is America Beautiful without Medicare?” That bogus claim was found by our sister site, “FlackCheck.org,” to be among the “Worst of the Worst” of 2011.

This year, under sunny if chilly blue December skies, I probably will be alone. At first I was ecstatic, feeling I’d conquered the longing to slip into a Currier & Ives Christmas scene. Then I ate too many See’s candies and slid backward into “Why will I be alone?”

Thousands of women massed in Tahrir Square here on Tuesday afternoon and marched to a journalists’ syndicate and back in a demonstration that grew by the minute into an extraordinary expression of anger at the treatment of women by the military police

"Gingrich's vagueness was always a problem. But the books show something more: a near-total lack of interest in the political implementation of his grand ideas — a lack of interest, finally, in politics at its most mundane and consequential level."

I live in a part of the country that has a large Moravian population. Moravians celebrate the season of Advent, putting up large, beautiful lighted white stars, and making wreaths which sit on a table or hang horizontally, with four candles on them to represent the four Sundays before Christmas. It’s a gentle introduction to the holiday season

This month the Arkansas Supreme Court overturned a guilty verdict in a capital murder case because a juror was tweeting about it while the case was being heard. A few days earlier, a California juror was dismissed after the court discovered she had posted extensively about the case and about the other jurors on her Facebook page.

The most treasured present for any occasion in our family is a book. Immediately, the recipient opens it and usually has difficulty going to another gift, so captured by the world that is appearing in their hands. Here are some of our choices for this holiday in books and DVDs

"Women were out front as a survival tactic. Men could not function in high-visibility, high-profile roles where we come from, because they would be plucked off ... The white folks didn’t see the women as that much of a threat ... They didn’t know the power of women, especially black women"