Martin Kaste

For some of America's lowest-paid workers, the new year means a pay raise. Some states set their own minimum wages, above the federal rate of $7.25 an hour, and that rekindles an old debate over whether minimum wages make sense — especially at a time of high unemployment.

Like several other states, Washington state's minimum wage is indexed to the cost of living. This year, the formula has raised the statewide minimum from $8.67 to $9.04 an hour, making it the nation's highest statewide rate.

This fall American police were confronted with something they hadn't seen in 40 years: prolonged, simultaneous political protests across the country. In most cities, police showed restraint. But there have been exceptions — sometimes involving copious amounts of pepper spray. Those flashpoints have become a cause for concern.

Hundreds of Occupy protesters marched to Seattle's Harbor Island Monday, and briefly blocked traffic coming into the city's busy port. The Seattle protest was the culmination of a day of coordinated protests at ports up and down the West Coast.

Congress isn't doing much — with the major exception of cybersecurity. Citing rare bipartisan agreement and a common sense of purpose, members of both parties are advancing bills designed to protect American businesses and government agencies from hackers and intellectual property pirates. The proposed laws allow the government to block Americans' access to certain overseas websites, as well as make it legal for Internet service providers to share with the government information about emails and other traffic traveling their networks, in the interest of detecting and stopping cyberattacks.