On Wednesday the Obama administration denied a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project. TransCanada, the company behind the proposal, hopes to build a 1,700 mile pipeline that will carry oil from the tar sands of Canada to the refineries lining the Gulf Coast along Texas. Although it will cost $ 7 billion to build, TransCanada claims the project will create ten of thousands of jobs. Environmentalist are most concerned about the water supply in ecologically sensitive in Nebraska's Sand Hills region, which TransCanada claims it has addressed by creating a new proposal that circumvents the Sand Hills.

Arab League monitors have been in Syria for more than a week, yet violence continues throughout the country. Activists claim about 400 people have been killed in clashes between protestors in the military in the past week alone. On Tuesday, an advisory body to the League said the observers should be withdrawn because they are providing cover to the Syrian government as it continues to treat its citizens inhumanely. But Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi said Syria's release of political prisoners and its withdrawal of military artillery from residential areas demonstrates that progress is being made.

Some years just seem to have less impact than others. But 2011 held the Arab Spring, the death of Osama bin Laden, Occupy Wall Street, protests against austerity measures and the ousting of Berlusconi, as well as the end of the Iraq War. Which events of the past year will make it to the history textbooks, and which will be esoteric stories we confuse our grandkids with?

After nearly nine years, a trillion dollars, and thousands of lives lost, the Iraq war came to a quiet end earlier this month. Since the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Iraq has been besieged by internal conflict and fears of civil war. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, exacerbated sectarian tensions by issuing an arrest warrant for the country's Sunni vice president. A series of deadly bombings in Baghdad last week only made the situation worse. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, former U.S. envoy to Iraq L. Paul Bremer critized President Obama for pulling troops out of Iraq. 

Although some GOP hopefuls have been informally campaigning since this time last year and Barack Obama announced his campaign for reelection back in April, the January 3rd caucus will be the true beginning for the 2012 presidential race. This year, $5.9 million has been spent on TV advertising alone in Iowa. With no heavily favored Republican candidate, the strategy for turning fundraising dollars into actual votes has yet to reveal itself.

A woman has never been elected to Congress or held the governorship in Iowa. The only other state to hold this dubious distinction is Mississippi. Several studies point to cultural factors, such as the state's older population and evangelical lobbying groups. But nearly a century after women's suffrage and three years after Iowa legalized gay marriage, the Hawkeye State's problem seems to lie deeper.

Egyptian security forces attempted to clear protesters from Cairo's Tahrir Square in a predawn raid on Tuesday — the second in as many days — as clashes between demonstrators and police entered their fifth day. Thirteen people have been killed in the protests since the second round of parliamentary elections began on Friday. On Sunday, the United Nations and the U.S. State Department condemned the violence. Gen. Adel Emara of Egypt's ruling military council denied using violence against the protesters on Monday.

Just a day after an extension of the payroll tax cut passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin, Speaker John Boehner announced that he would not bring the bill to the House floor for a vote immediately. Instead, Boehner says Congress should pass a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut rather than the two-month extension agreed upon by the Senate. The House GOP is expected to vote the bill down Tuesday.

Republican presidential candidates held their final debate last night in Sioux City just weeks before the Iowa caucus takes place on January 3. In the Fox News debate candidates attempted to draw distinctions from one another and defend their record to conservative voters. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows Newt Gingrich gaining ground on consistent front runner Mitt Romney. But some voters are still undecided.

This week on The Takeaway, we've been talking about the representations of different religions in the media: the controversy surrounding Lowe's pulling their ads from the TLC reality show "All-American Muslim," and America’s fixation with the Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. While extremism isn't exclusive to any group, those who practice outside of the "mainstream" — be they Mormon or Muslim — are frequently labeled as such. Does it simply take a version of "The Cosby Show" to break down these stereotypes, or is there something more?

With another stunning come from behind victory against the Bears last Sunday, the Tim Tebow train keeps rolling. The Denver Broncos’ quarterback has become a cultural phenomenon. But his on-field exploits only make up one part of the Tebow mystique. Tebow’s public displays of faith play a major role in the star athlete’s public persona and the narrative surrounding him.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was in Austin, Texas Tuesday night where he promised the Justice Department's civil rights division will aggressively review new voter ID laws that civil rights advocates say will have a discriminatory impact. This puts the Justice Department smack in the middle of a growing partisan debate over civil rights and minorities' access to the ballot. Several states, including Texas, have passed new requirements requiring voters to present photo ID before casting their vote. 

In 1973, Art Spiegelman published a three-page comic strip in a small underground publication called "Funny Animals." It was the first installment of what he called "Maus," the biography of Spiegelman's father, Vladek — a Holocaust survivor — with anthropomorphic mice standing in for Spiegelman, Vladek, and his fellow Jews. The complete graphic narrative was eventually published in two volumes. In 1992, nearly twenty years after he began work on the project, "Maus" was given a special award from the Pulitzer Prize Committee — to date, the only graphic novel honored by the Committee.

Baseball's most feared slugger has a new home. Star first baseman Albert Pujols has signed a monster 10-year, $250 million deal with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The deal has taken the sports world by surprise. Perhaps no one was caught quite so off guard as Pujols' old team, the world champion St. Louis Cardinals, where the three-time MVP spent more than a decade.

President Obama called for a shoring up of the country's middle class and criticized the concentration of wealth in the U.S. during a speech Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kansas. The town was the site of Theodore Roosevelt's famous "New Nationalism" speech, which, a century earlier touched upon many of the same themes as President Obama's address. But Obama's speech comes on the heels of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the GOP Primary, and the inception of his 2012 presidential campaign.

Standard and Poor's announced on Monday that it is considering a credit rating downgrade for both Germany and France, the euro zone's two biggest economies. The move takes place as euro zone countries meet in Brussels in an attempt to stop the ongoing crisis. The two countries currently have a top-notch AAA rating from the agency. Standard and Poor's said that 13 additional euro zone countries are also vulnerable to downgrade as a result of the continent’s economic crisis. 

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the discovery of a planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. A NASA researcher says the Earth-like planet would have a surface temperature around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it a so-called "Goldilocks planet" — not too hot, not too cold, just right to support life. Researchers have also measured the largest black holes yet. A team of UC Berkeley scientists have confirmed the discovery of the two biggest black holes yet to be documented. Each black hole is 10 billion times larger than our sun.

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama promised to improve the relationship between Washington and American Indian tribes. This year's meeting between the President and tribal leaders is the third such meeting, and comes with many Native Americans approving of the President's outreach effort to their community.

Despite high gas prices, the U.S. is set to become a net fuel exporter for the first time in 62 years. While the U.S. is still importing 8 to 9 million barrels of crude oil a day, it is exporting a greater amount of refined fuel and petroleum products. The spike in exports is primarily driven by an increased demand for fuel worldwide combined with declining consumption here at home. But is the nation's newfound role as fuel exporter a blip on the map or a sustainable trend?

Texas is in the middle of the worst drought on record in the state's history. Farm crops have been hit hard, and valuable grazing land has dried out, leading to heavy losses in the state’s valuable cattle industry. In total, Texas has suffered more than $5 billion in agricultural losses since the drought began.