Chiefs Player In
Murder-Suicide

NY TIMES
With his coach and colleagues looking on, a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker shot and killed himself outside the team’s practice facility Saturday morning, less than an hour after he killed his girlfriend, according to the police. The player was identified as Jovan Belcher, 25, said Darin Snapp, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, and his girlfriend was identified as Kasandra Perkins, 22.
     The harrowing morning began at a house on Crysler Avenue in Kansas City that Belcher shared with Perkins. About 7 a.m., with his mother and infant daughter in another room, Belcher shot Perkins multiple times, Snapp said.
     When the police arrived after the shooting, Belcher’s mother, Cheryl E. Shepherd, told them that her son had shot Perkins, Snapp said. Shepherd told the police that Perkins was like her own daughter, and that it was not immediately clear what had triggered the violence. Perkins was taken to a hospital, where she died a short time later, the police said.
     After shooting Perkins, the police said, Belcher made the 15-minute drive to the team’s practice facility at Arrowhead Stadium.
     Snapp said that they had been talking about four or five minutes — the time it took for the police to arrive. As the officers pulled up, Belcher walked away from Crennel and Pioli and shot himself, Snapp said.
     In their preliminary interview with the police, Pioli and Crennel said that they were never threatened by Belcher and never in fear. Belcher thanked them for everything they had done for him since he had been with the Chiefs, Snapp said.
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Fiscal “Cliff”
Might Not Be The End

NYTIMES
If Washington fails to reach a tax and spending deal by Jan. 1, paychecks will shrink as rates rise. But defense contractors will keep working. Parks and monuments will remain open. Financial markets will either slump or not. Democrats are betting that if Washington wakes up without a tax and spending deal on New Year’s Day, the country will heap blame on Congressional Republicans. In recent polls, more people said that it would be the fault of Republicans if a deal could not be reached.
     Democrats in the House will seek to make that point again this week by trying to force Republicans to vote on a bill to extend tax cuts for the middle class but not the wealthy.
     “Tax cuts for the rich, which do not create jobs, just increase the deficit, heaping mountains of debt onto future generations,” Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, told reporters on Friday. She added that the economy would benefit greatly if “we do not go over the cliff.”
     But many Democrats also believe that failing to reach a deal for a brief period early next year would provide new leverage for Mr. Obama and a quick capitulation from Speaker John A. Boehner and his Republican colleagues on a package of tax cuts for the middle class and increased rates for the nation’s wealthiest citizens.
     Mr. Obama pressed his case confidently on Friday at a toy manufacturer in Pennsylvania. He warned that the Republicans’ refusal to reach an acceptable deal by the end of the year would be “sort of like the lump of coal you get for Christmas.”  READ FULL ARTICLE