An op-ed in today's USA Today lays out New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ideas for gun control reform, just as President Obama announces his own plan to put together a task force to send proposals to Congress in January.

Robert Bork has died. Bork is best known in public memory for his failed Supreme Court nomination, which thankfully foundered on the rank extremism of his beliefs. And those beliefs were vile—not because of the stark principles that purportedly undergirded them, but because of the bigotry and contempt for modernity they masked. But more vile than his reactionary agenda was his hatred for democracy and his fealty to incipient tyranny, as expressed in his willingness to follow anti-Semitic madman Richard Nixon down the rabbit hole of criminality.

In its first outlining of "meaningful action" geared toward preventing future mass shootings, the White House this afternoon said President Obama "strongly" supported the renewal of the assault weapons ban, and would also seek to improve gun control by "reexamining gun laws."

After the Sandy Hook Shootings, the NRA—America's most influential force for putting guns in the hands of everyone—went conspicuously silent. Now, after what has doubtless been a staggering amount of fretting by PR types, the NRA has released its first statement on the incident:

Here now, a new study chronicled in the scientific journal The Daily Mail, which lays bare womankind's deepest, darkest, shiniest, most volumizing secret: some women are far more concerned about their hair than about their physique. Ladies. Ladies. You have it backwards.

Six weeks after the election, nine news outlets are questioning the financial propriety of the Romney campaign after receiving several exorbitant bills. The news organizations, which include the New York Times, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed and the Los Angeles Times, wrote a letter to the campaign, asking for detailed price breakdowns of any event that cost them $200 or more. While it's normal for campaigns to bill media outlets for various expenses, including food and travel costs, the Romney campaign's charges seem excessive by almost any standard.

Christopher Chaney, a 35-year-old Florida resident who hacked into email accounts belonging to Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera and others, was sentenced to 10 years in prison today. Earlier this year, Chaney pled guilty to nine felonies, including charges of theft and wiretapping.

Hawaiian Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Democrat, has died of respiratory complications, according to his office. Sen. Inouye was 88 years old and a veteran of World War II. He had held his Senate seat since 1963; before that, he served in the House of Representatives, meaning he had represented Hawaii in Congress since it became a state in 1959.

Do you ever find yourself perturbed by the dearth of big booty hos on popular morning news-and-healthy-snack-recipe programs? So does Matt Lauer, apparently.

The Tea Party Nation — organizers of the National Tea Party Convention and the only Tea Party-affiliated group presently labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — sent an email to members yesterday with its official response to last week's shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

A pastor who provided grief counseling to the mother of a Sandy Hook victim revealed yesterday how the woman's six-year-old daughter managed to survive the massacre that claimed the lives of her entire first grade class.

After prominent Westboro Baptist Church member/professional troll/mother of illegitimate son Shirley Phelps-Roper announced her group's intention to picket Sandy Hook Elementary School "to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment," the wrath came quickly.

Wall Street Journal social media director Liz Heron notes that the life cycle of viral content is composed of two phases: "Uncritical mass sharing" followed by "semi-informed backlash."

Impossible as it might seem in the aftermath of Friday's horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, the tragedy could've been worse. According to new reports, shooter Adam Lanza didn't shoot himself until after first responders arrived on the scene. Police found "hundreds of rounds" of ammo on Lanza's body, enough to have inflicted even more damage.

The Times has sent critic Dwight Garner on a literary tour of New York in order to answer novelist Gary Shteyngart's immortal question, Can New Yorkers still throw a good party with only a bottle of shampoo? The answer appears to be "maybe," if you are in Brooklyn and allowed to smoke and are also in a coffee shop.

Joining his Obama-fearing, crappy-pizza making brethren at Papa John's, Domino's Pizza's founder is suing the federal government over Obamacare's contraception coverage. Tom Monaghan, who is a devout Catholic, filed the lawsuit Friday, claiming that contraception isn't related to health because it's a "gravely immoral" act. In addition to himself, Monaghan named Domino's Farms, an office park he owns, as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Only a few hours before suspected shooter Adam Lanza began his attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, a 36-year-old man went on a similar rampage in China's Henan province. Using a kitchen knife, a farmer that police have identified as Min Yingjun stabbed 22 children and one adult just before 8:00 in the morning yesterday.

Probably the most widely viewed Twitter trending topic in the United States right now is "#prayfornewton." The ad hoc hashtag is indicative of both the public's desire to show support for the victims in today's Connecticut school shooting—most of whom were children— but also our ignorance of what exactly happened at Sandy Hook Elementary: the shooting was in Newtown, not "Newton."

Facts are murky, to say the least, surrounding today's mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Here, a rundown of the basic facts we know now:

Global warming (or "climate change"), the well-documented rise in our planet's temperatures due to the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide, is a completely accepted phenomenon among people who—due to their fundamental rationality and common sense—are not idiots. But among our nation's idiots, it has always been a controversial idea. No longer.