Summary: Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 Christmas message … “Urbi et Orbi” … “To the City and to the World” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 Christmas message and posted the Immelman family’s 2009 Christmas greeting. In a rare second post for the date, Immelman reported separately that the terror alert level was raised when a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to light an explosive powder aboard a commercial jetliner before it landed in Detroit.

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Summary: Official NORAD Santa Tracker … Tracking Santa Claus on his journey around the world on Christmas Eve. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 24, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured NORAD’s Santa Tracker.

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Summary: In a landmark for gay rights, the U.S. Senate voted 65-31 to let homosexuals serve openly in the military, giving President Barack Obama the chance to fulfill a campaign promise and repeal the 17-year policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 18, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iranian troops crossed into Iraq and seized an oil well in a disputed area along the two countries’ southern border. Iraqi security forces were in the area, but there were no reports of any fighting or shots fired and Iranian forces later withdrew from the disputed site.

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Summary: Scores from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment show that American students continue to trail behind higher performing nations, with the U.S. ranking 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that for President Barack Obama, the economic cost of his Afghanistan surge plan proved troubling, after he received a private budget memo estimating that an expanded U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan would cost $1 trillion over 10 years, roughly the same as his health care reform plan.

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Summary: The U.S. Department of Defense has released the report of its comprehensive review of issues associated with the prospective repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, instituted during the Clinton administration. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided links, graphics, and video to supplement a report by Michael White of the British newspaper The Guardian, who — pointing to Rep. Michele Bachmann — said what troubled him about the U.S. today is that “public reaction to the Obama presidency is irrational, emotional, and ignorant.”

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Summary: Tea Party-backed candidates helped and hindered Republicans in the 2010 midterm election, injecting enthusiasm into campaigns but losing Senate seats held by Democrats in Delaware, Colorado, and Nevada that the GOP once had big hopes of capturing. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured the latest news and information about the disappearance of missing Maple Lake, Minn., student Joshua Guimond.

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Summary: NBC News’ Political Unit and MSNBC.com have created the Voter Confidence Index (VCI) as a measure of the current political climate and what it may signal about the November 2010 elections. The index uses a combination of three questions commonly asked in national polls: the president’s job approval rating, the direction of the country (right track / wrong track), and the generic congressional ballot. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 24, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), delivered the Third Annual Eugene J. McCarthy Lecture at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.

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Summary: Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has overturned California’s gay marriage ban in a strongly worded ruling that could eventually force the U.S. Supreme Court to confront the question of whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 5, 2009 Aubrey Immelman described the difficult challenges of mobilizing a cross-partisan majority in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District to defeat U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (who does not have majority support in her district), in the 2010 Minnesota state primary election.

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Summary: The incendiary rhetoric of demagogues like Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann is powerful because it slips through the cracks in our acculturated human rationality, with its biological substrates in the fontal cortex, to hit a lower nerve in the subcortical brain regions of the limbic system, the seat of emotion. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 15, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq had significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program.

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Summary: Complete Super Bowl coverage … Tim Tebow — the Heisman Trophy winner who almost wasn’t … New York Times editorial: Super Bowl censorship … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, said that the Army, to battle a growing suicide rate, may have to start teaching soldiers how to handle stress from the first day they take their service oath.

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