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SACRAMENTO - When Michelle Rhee wants to make a point about what she sees as the coddling of American children, she refers to her daughters' abundant soccer trophies. "My daughters suck at soccer," she says to crowds that roar with knowing laughter. The former District of Columbia schools chancellor is pitch perfect in the role of outraged parent and education reformer, distilling complex policy debates into bare-knuckled banter. In Rhee's world, as she recently told crowds in Los Angeles and Sacramento, teacher seniority protections are "whack," principals can be "nutty" and charter schools can be "crappy.

VATICAN CITY -- He's a charmer. Pope Francis on Saturday went before several thousand journalists, thanked them for their work, told a joke or two and even blessed (or at least patted) someone's guide dog. In a custom that dates at least to John Paul II, one of the pope's first public appearances was a meeting in the modern Paul VI Hall with an estimated 5,000 reporters who are based in Rome or had flown in to cover the week's historic events. Francis sat on the stage in a large but relatively simple chair and read a speech that thanked the press for its work during this “intense period” which had focused the world's eyes on the Roman Catholic Church.

The NHL's rookie of the year race generally follows a familiar pattern: Top candidates are usually high draft choices (such as Edmonton's Nail Yakupov, chosen first overall in the 2012 draft); college players (such as Justin Schultz, the former Ducks' pick, who signed as a free agent with Edmonton), or a hotshot European (young Russian star Vladimir Tarasenko, an early-season sensation for the St. Louis Blues.) Rarely does a player such as Kings defenseman Jake Muzzin get mentioned in the conversation.

The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on text message spam, announcing Thursday it has filed eight complaints against 29 defendants in courts around the U.S. The agency said the defendants bombarded consumers with more than 180 million text messages that often promised "free" $1,000 gift cards to popular retailers but then required consumers to pay for a subscription to a service, apply for credit or enter sensitive personal information before...

Seth MacFarlane has taken a lot of heat for his performance hosting the Oscars on Sunday night, with critics blasting his jokes (e.g. “Zero Dark Thirty” is a “celebration of every woman's innate ability to never, ever let anything go”) as sexist, racist, anti-Semitic and, worst of all, stale. MacFarlane can perhaps breathe a sigh of relief this morning knowing that Joan Rivers has nearly matched him in terms of cruel and retrograde humor. On the “Late Show With David Letterman” Tuesday night, the (alleged)

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court justices sounded closely split Tuesday on what one of them called the most important criminal procedure case in decades, a challenge to whether police may routinely take DNA samples from suspects and put the results in a national database. “Why isn't this the fingerprinting of the 21st century?” asked Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.  DNA is even more accurate than fingerprinting and has a great potential to solve horrible crimes, he said. But his fellow conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, took up the other side, arguing that the court has not allowed police to freely search people or homes in hopes of finding evidence of other possible crimes.

On March 1, 1957, a 7-month-old girl named Jeaneen Marie Klokow died at home. Sheboygan, Wisc., investigators ruled that she'd fallen off her mother's couch by accident. For decades, that was that. Except she'd been killed. And decades would separate the medical advances and nagging consciences that resulted in her mother's guilty plea to second-degree murder in Sheboygan on Monday morning. “It's really an incredible thing,” Sheboygan County District Atty. Joe DeCecco said by phone on Monday, and he would know: Prosecuting someone nearly 56 years after the fact required improvisation.

It was nearing midnight when Terie Evans called police in Irvine with a hunch: An ex-Los Angeles police officer named Christopher Dorner might have killed a young Irvine woman and her fiance a few days earlier. Evans, an LAPD sergeant who had trained Dorner, conceded that her theory was a long shot. But Dorner's name had suddenly surfaced the day before in a strange phone call. And she knew he had a connection to the woman who had been killed. It seemed too much to dismiss as a coincidence.

The U.S. and Switzerland have signed a pact to crack down on tax evaders by making Swiss banks reveal more information about offshore accounts held by Americans, the Treasury Department said Thursday. The agreement is part of an effort by the U.S. to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, enacted by Congress in 2010, which mandates that foreign banks inform the U.S. Internal Revenue Service about American offshore accounts holding more than $50,000. Acting Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin lauded the pact as a “significant step forward in our efforts to work collaboratively to combat offshore tax evasion.” “We are pleased that Switzerland has signed a bilateral agreement with us,” he said in a statement.

Oh Canada, oh Canada! So pretty you are, with your hypothermia-inducing lakes and open fields, where one can be pelted with ice and snow. Our Bach, Sean, kicked off the second night of this week's two! night! extravaganza by taking in the sights and walking over what appeared to be a beaver dam by Lake Louise. Sean isn't “feeling so great” due to his tough time in Montana, where there was a lot of Tierra dramz. Is his wife still out there, somewhere amid this upstanding crop of lady folk?