Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada. Some things I don't understand: What happened to that absolu...

This week, in his fifth State of the Union address, Obama showed every sign of no longer believing in his words. He was Hamlet, unable to make up his mind, over-trained and over-rehearsed. This Obama speech was so flat, so monotonous, so uninteresting. But Florida Senator Marco Rubio had been carefully chosen by the Republican Party bigwigs to offer the party's answer to Obama. The Republicans must be insane.

I planned to write about Christmas today. Specifically, what I want for Christmas. But it doesn't seem right when that's not at all what caught my attention this week. What's in my head and my heart, on my Facebook feed and Twitter stream, in my inbox and in so many conversations I have had is the horrors and devastation from the Newtown, Connecticut shootings of last Friday.

We should probably be happy that the candidate who at least acknowledged the seriousness of climate change won the U.S. election. But climate change is already costing the U.S., and the rest of the world -- in money, human health and lives. Many of us -- not just Americans -- hope the president will show stronger leadership this time around.

So what do 300 Canadian journalists bitch about when they get together for their annual conference? Speaker after speaker had the same complaint: Canadian authorities are preventing Canadian journalists practicing journalism in this participatory democracy.

The ugly truth is this: The President has done a horribly responsible thing. He has forced his daughter to spend her spring break somewhere both safe and culturally significant. She's in significant danger of learning something. No wonder Obama's critics are annoyed.

ASSOCIATED PRESS -- U.S. President Barack Obama told the United Nations on Wednesday that the Palestinians deserved a state of their own, but that thi...

It is Canada's failure to look at the full impacts of new tar sands projects -- global warming pollution, toxic waste, impacts on communities living downstream -- and failure to put limits on those impacts that, in part, drives the controversy in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.