A very merry Christmas to all!

This is an open thread, all topics welcome -- from your family holiday traditions to cooking to politics.

Enjoy the day and your time with your families. Regardless of your religion, Christmas is a special holiday!

One the things I associate with Christmas is the feeling of joy. Watching Bruce and Jon Bon Jovi sing this song together is double joy -- their joy in singing with each other, and our joy at watching them. A great way to start the day.

If you have any suggestions for more joyous or fun Christmas songs for me to showcase in open threads through Christmas, please let me know. You can never have too much joy in your life.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

It wouldn't feel like Christmas without watching Darlene Love on Letterman.

The New York Post got punked on Ryan Lanza. Reporter Candice Giove chatted with an imposter on Facebook and thought he was really Ryan Lanza. Lots of other media sites from HuffPo to MediaIte to international papers ran with the story, before his family pointed out the obvious: it wasn't the real Ryan Lanza. Some giveaways: the photo of Adam, which as I pointed out here, is of Ryan and the poor spelling. Ryan's page was taken down by Dec. 15. If you log onto Facebook, you can see that His uncle's page and grandmother's page are still up but they haven't posted since the shootings. His cousin has posted a photo of himself with Nancy Lanza at a Red Sox game. (You can't see the pages without logging on to FB.)

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

2 college bowl game picks - Boise (-6) over Washington and LA-Lafayette (-6) over East Carolina (4 units.)

Also too, Detroit Lions (+4) over Atlanta Falcons.

Open Thread.

Your turn.

President Obama just gave a press conference on the fiscal cliff. He says we need to find some common ground. He's met Republicans half-way.

"This is something within our capacity to solve....Call me a hopeless optimist, but I still think we can get this done."

He wishes everyone Merry Christmas and because Congress didn't get this done, he'll see us next week.

The first question from the media was about the NRA. (Then the video cut off.)

Jennifer Huettner was Adam Lanza's teacher for the 9th and 10th and 11th grades. He left without graduating to take college classes. He got his GED from the college.

She says he was home-schooled for the 7th and 8th grades. In the 9th grade, he returned to school and was in a portable classroom by himself. He had Asperger's.

“He didn’t want to be around people,” Jennifer explains. “Our goal was to get him back in the building.”

Adam’s mother Nancy would drop him off, then sit in the next room while Jennifer worked with him.“He was very OCD. He’d clean the desk with Purell,” Jennifer remembers.

He displayed no signs of violence. He never had a tantrum. He was not bullied. In the 10th grade he was in the main building. [More...]

President Obama has announced that John Kerry will be his next Secretary of State.

He is expected to take office in January. Hillary is recovering from a concussion and the flu.

The NRA held a press conference today calling for armed guards in schools.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

The NRA says our existing gun laws are sufficient.

Mr. LaPierre said Friday that thousands of gun laws already are on the books. He suggested, though, that the prescription was not more legislation, but more security in schools.

Former Congressman (and DEA Director) Asa Hutchinson will lead their effort to get Congress to adopt their ideas. [More...]

Nancy Lanza's family in New Hampshire held a private funeral service for her today,at the home of her brother, police officer James Champion. About 25 family members attended. (She was cremated.) Here is a picture of the house, posted on James' Facebook page. It was built in 1740 by his mother's ancestor Israel Huse, Sr. He says it is where he grew up and he bought it from his mother in 1995. Nancy and her ex-husband Peter Lanza used to live next door with their sons Ryan and Adam Lanza, until 1998 when they moved to CT. (Some details of the NH family here and here.)

Gun sales are soaring in New Hampshire since the Newtown killings.

Bernard Madoff's brother Peter was sentenced today to ten years in prison. [More....]

Zero Dark Thirty - Because Kathryn Bigelow makes films like they're bombs about to detonate in her lap. Haunting, unflinching, never less than absorbing, with aspirations toward not just art but the "truth," even as the film never stops questioning the very notion of such a thing. - Zach Baron

It's funny because it is inadvertently true -- in Zero Dark Thirty there is no such a thing as "truth."

Also too, in college football tonight, 5 units on San Diego State (+3) over the LDSers in the Poinsetta Bowl in San Diego.

Open Thread.

NYTImes:

In an unusual Congressional critique of Hollywood moviemaking, three United States senators on Wednesday lambasted “Zero Dark Thirty,” the new fictionalized film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, calling it “grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location” of the terrorist leader. In a letter to Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the senators — Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California; Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan; and John McCain, Republican of Arizona — weighed in on a public debate over how the film portrays the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of brutal interrogations against Qaeda suspects.

[... A] highly critical 6,000-page study of the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program [..]showed that information derived from waterboarding and other brutal techniques did not play a significant role in locating Bin Laden, who was killed in a raid by Navy SEALs in May 2011.

[...]The senators [...]say the movie is “factually inaccurate” and “has the potential to shape American public opinion in a disturbing and misleading manner.” Their letter asks Sony Pictures to “consider correcting the impression that the C.I.A.’s use of coercive interrogation techniques led to the operation” against Bin Laden[.]