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Bob Costas said he made a “mistake,” violating his own rule of not trying to compress a nuanced topic into small bit of air time, with his controversial halftime commentary Sunday night on the murder-suicide committed by Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs the day before. “My mistake is I left it open for too much miscommunication,” Costas said in a lengthy interview on “The Dan Patrick Show.” The 90-second weekly spot, he said, doesn’t offer enough time in which to adequately discuss the issue of “the football culture, the gun culture, domestic violence.”

This vaguely creepy children's' movie, boasting a cast of Toni Braxton, Christopher Lloyd, and Jaime Pressly, proved to be the biggest bomb of all time. Though the movie cost around $60 million, including marketing and advertising, it took in barely $1 million at the end of the day. While it might not be a movie disappointment on par with "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," it certainly wasn't good news for the poor sots who invested in this flick.

his summer, coach Mark Gottfried consulted with Adidas in hopes of creating a special jersey for N.C. State's appearance in the Jimmy V Classic. When the Wolfpack faces Connecticut tonight at Madison Square Garden, it will pay tribute to Jim Valvano and the 1983 national championship. N.C. State has played in the Jimmy V Classic one previous time, losing 69-60 against Connecticut in 2002.

Second of three articlesThe shrinking size of the fleet is just one variable in considering its adequacy: the ability to perform assigned missions, especially after withstanding whatever threats may exist, is a far better measure than mere numbers. As described by the Congressional Research Service, a core mission is to influence “events ashore by countering both land- and sea-based military forces of potential regional threats…including improved Chinese military forces and non-state terrorist organizations.” This is similar to the mission described by former defense secretary Robert Gates: “to enhance…overall posture and capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region” with “numbers, speed, and agility...

When celebrities and media personalities attempt to plumb the depths of our social consciousness, the result is rarely pretty. Such was the case Sunday night when NBC sportscaster Bob Costas shamelessly tried to capitalize on the recent and tragic murder-suicide involving the NFLÂ’s Jovan Belcher to score personal political points against law-abiding gun owners.For anyone who missed it, in his halftime segment during Sunday nightÂ’s NFL game between the Dallas Cowboy and the Philadelphia Eagles, Costas hit his captive audience of football fans over the head with this absurd rant: You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a...

Thinking about buying a house? Or a municipal bond? Be careful where you put your capital. Don’t put it in a state at high risk of a fiscal tailspin. Eleven states make our list of danger spots for investors. They can look forward to a rising tax burden, deteriorating state finances and an exodus of employers. The list includes California, New York, Illinois and Ohio, along with some smaller states like New Mexico and Hawaii. If your career takes you to Los Angeles or Chicago, don’t buy a house. Rent. If you have money in municipal bonds, clean up the...

A major defense-spending bill hit an unexpected bump on its journey through the U.S. Senate over an amendment on veterans’ gun rights, which devolved into a heated floor debate and foreshadows a potential battle over Democrats’ vows to tweak the filibuster rules in the clubby, traditionally collegial body. Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, wants veterans who have been deemed “mentally incompetent” to have their cases adjudicated by a judge — rather than the Department of Veterans Affairs, as happens currently — and argued that veterans who simply cannot support themselves financially are needlessly given the label and, as such, cannot...

When I was a teenager I thought that my ancestors were idiots, useless imbeciles for having accepted this miserable religion 15 centuries ago. I was ashamed of my people of origin. I forgot that they had simply been beaten in war and submitted to their conquerors who hurried to rewrite their history. That twisted history that I learned myself at school and had to unlearn on my own, through effort and perseverance. Looking at France, Belgium, Germany, England, Spain and lots of other countries too, I realise that even people who have been warned can be islamised by stealth, by...

Gun Control: If the girlfriend of the football linebacker killed in a murder-suicide had a gun to defend herself, she might be alive today to explain how guns save lives and more of them means less crime. Let us start with the proposition that Jovan Belcher, the 6-foot-2-inch, 228-pound Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, did not need his legally obtained and registered gun to kill his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins. He could have used his bare hands to dispatch his partner, or even, say, a knife, as was used in another murder case involving a famous football player that NBC Sports announcer...

Meridian Magazine, a Mormon magazine, (its website is http://ldsmag.com) has published an excellent article by Warren Aston, titled “The Other Half of Heaven: Debunking Myths About Heavenly Mother.” (Read) It’s refreshing to see this piece published in Meridian, which is often a vanilla-plain LDS-themed publication. (Hat tip for learning about the article goes to LDS writer Joanna Brooks, via her Facebook page).For a divine individual who is presumably equal to her spouse, Heavenly Father, Mormons are hesitant to discuss Heavenly Mother. As Aston points out, the most condescending reason sometimes offered for the silence on Heavenly Mother is that to...

Arizona Sens. John McCain (R) and Jon Kyl (R) said Tuesday they have no idea where Gov. Jan Brewer (R-Ariz.) is. “No, everybody keeps asking me that,” Kyl told The Hill. “I didn’t know she was missing.” McCain answered similarly. “Since I wasn’t home last weekend I didn’t know about this,” McCain told The Hill. “Jon [Kyl] just told me that there was some issue that she’s not around.” On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Brewer was taking a week-long out-of-state work trip that’s shrouded in mystery. Her office has refused to disclose her location or the nature of...

The New York Post is facing criticism over its decision to publish a front-page photo of a man, pushed onto the subway tracks in Midtown on Monday, trying to climb to safety before being fatally struck by an oncoming train. Ki Suk Han, a 58-year-old from Queens, N.Y., was hurled from the 49th Street station platform onto the tracks by "a deranged man" around 12:30 p.m., according to the paper. Han was attempting to calm the man, apparently a panhandler, when a scuffle broke out, police say. The man then pushed him onto the tracks. Witnesses told police the man...

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went beyond the talking points she was given on the terrorist attack in Libya when she appeared on Sunday talk shows shortly after the Sept. 11 attack. Ayotte, along with five other senators, met with Rice on the Hill this week to discuss her reaction to the attack, which left four Americans dead. Ayotte said she was “very troubled” by what she heard, noting specifically that Rice had read the classified intelligence briefings saying that al-Qaida was behind the attack and did not mention that in her television appearances. Ayotte also...

This election season brought out some of the more bizarre behavior we’ve seen from corporations across the country. Having unlimited access to candidates through unlimited campaign contributions wasn’t enough. Some CEO types got on bully pulpits to blast the president and his health care plan before the election. Some of that rhetoric was over the top. Some of it could have been illegal. Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter warned that he would raise his pizza prices from 15 cents to 20 cents per order to pay for Obamacare, which could bring the third largest pizza delivery operation in the U.S....

The post-election soul searching going on inside the Republican Party is taking place inside Fox News as well. Fox News chief Roger Ailes, a canny marketer and protector of his network’s brand, has been taking steps since November to reposition Fox in the post-election media environment, freshening story lines — and in some cases, changing the characters. According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned...

(Reuters) - A Tunisian man suspected of being involved with the September 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya has refused to be interviewed by FBI investigators, his lawyer said on Monday. Ali Ani al-Harzi, jailed and under investigation in Tunisia over the attack having been deported from Turkey, said he would not see the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents alone, Anouar Aouled told Reuters. Harzi was one of two Tunisians named in October by the Daily Beast website as having been detained in Turkey over the attacks in Benghazi in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to...

A new animated video released by the California Federation of Teachers shows the rich “1 percent” urinating on and stealing money from the less fortunate and middle class. The purpose of the video is to explain “economic inequality” and the need for wealthy people to pay their “fair share of taxes.”

Closing the book after reading, "Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet," the new biography by George Mason University religious studies professor John G. Turner, published by Belknap Press of Harvard University, causes some swirling emotions for this Latter-day Saint reader. From reading Turner’s fantastic — and it is by far the best that has been written of Young’s life — biography, it’s easy for a faithful Mormon to agree that God called Young to the task of moving 20,000-plus Mormons across the plains to Utah territory and over a generation-plus, to set up hundreds of Mormon settlements. No man in U.S. history...

MK Aryeh Eldad warned Israelis on Monday that voting for Likud because of Moshe Feiglin's presence in the list would be a mistake. Feiglin will most likely be dismissed from the Knesset in the course of the Knesset's next term, he predicted. "Feiglin has to face a real moral dilemma," he explained. "If he betrays his real values and supports the Netanyahu government in ideological votes of no confidence, he will lose all the credit he has now." However, he added, if Feiglin supports a no confidence motion submitted by Eldad, his future in Likud will be short; "Once he...