OWLS HEAD, Maine — If the fiscal cliff deal — same road, same can, another kick — was not an overwhelming victory for President Obama, it sure fortified his backbone and inspired him to a more aggressive stance against his die-hard Republican opposition.

Looking down the road two months to the upcoming need to raise the debt ceiling, Obama warned: "If Congress in any way suggests they're going to tie up negotiations over debt-ceiling votes and take us to the brink of default once again as part of a budget negotiation, I will not play that game."

NEW YORK — Earlier this week, Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt and United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson raised eyebrows with a private visit to Pyongyang, North Korea.

The United States State Department called the trip “unhelpful.” Schmidt’s visit to Kim il-Song University, during which a student demonstrated how he uses Google to conduct internet searches, seemed like a theatric production in the Potemkin style.

As the dominant religion in Europe, North and South America, Christianity is viewed as force for traditional values and stability. In the beginning, however, Christianity was seen as a revolutionary and destabilizing force — a threat to the Empire of Rome.

In China, as in ancient Rome, Christianity is still seen as a potentially disruptive and dangerous force, unresponsive to the control of the state. The Chinese government, for security reasons, prefers to pick its own priests and pastors, rather than leaving this duty to the Vatican and other denominations. Over the centuries, Christianity was a wedge that facilitated Western powers in dismembering China.

But the home-grown versions of the faith have caused plenty of trouble, too.

An unwanted item on President Obama’s second term agenda was contributed by voters in Colorado and Washington State who, by impressive margins on November 6, passed ballot measures making it legal to smoke pot recreationally, without any prescription or medical justification.