Today’s Top 10

Today’s Must Reads

Here’s ten items, including some under-the radar-stories, that you should not miss:

• Federal Court Rules Bulk Collection Of Phone Records By NSA Likely Violates Constitution: Founding Fathers ‘Would Be Aghast’: A federal judge has ruled that the “wholesale collection of the phone record metadata” of all U.S. citizens — a program exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — likely violates the 4th Amendment and is unconstitutional.

• The Four Questions ’60 Minutes’ Forgot To Ask The NSA: Reporter John Miller gets slammed by social media for not asking NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander these kinds of tough questions.

• U.S. Transfers Two Detainees In Step Towards An Empty Guantanamo: Two more transfers drop the total number being held at the facility to 160.

• Church Leaders Shame Catholic University For Accepting Koch Dollars: “The Koch brothers are billionaire industrialists who fund organizations that advance public policies that directly contradict Catholic teaching on a range of moral issues from economic justice to environmental stewardship,” the group writes.

• Pennsylvania School Tries To Kick Out Two Students After Their Families Became Homeless: After two students and their family lost their house to foreclosure and were forced to live at a campground on the edge of town, the school district no longer considers them to be residents of the school district.

• How The Sports World Remembered Newtown: Multiple athletes marked the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting this weekend.

• The ThinkProgress Year In Culture: The Best — And Worst — Books Of 2013: The biggest lightning rods, most revealing non-fiction, smartest young adult novel, and worst book of 2013.

• What Megyn Kelly Did — And Didn’t — Learn From The Reaction To Her White Santa Segment: At least now she knows that Jesus isn’t white. But Megyn Kelly’s defensive response to her critics suggests a profound and ongoing racial insecurity.

• Is The GOP Becoming Gentler And Kinder Ahead Of The 2014 Elections?: Their rhetoric may be less incendiary, but the policy is just as extreme.

• Alps Warming At Double The Average Global Rate, New Study Confirms: Glaciologists have found a 2,600-year-old leaf that offers further evidence of the rapid climactic changes taking place in areas of high elevation that have been frozen for millennia.