A man has been arrested in the mailing of letters laced with toxin to President Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker,

The man was identified as Kenneth Curtis of Tupelo, Mississippi, but not much more is known about him at this point, though both letters were signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.” Each also contained the message, “to see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.”

The letters were flagged at mail-sorting facilities before reaching their intended targets. Initial tests turned up positive for the poison ricin, but NBC News reports that it’s still not clear just how potent the letters were. Further tests are under way.

The Secret Service intercepted a letter addressed to President Obama after a “suspicious substance” was detected on it.

The substance turned out to be ricin, the same substance found on a letter to Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker yesterday, the Dow Jones news wire is reporting.

Authorities already have a suspect in the case of the letter sent to Wicker

And before we start getting paranoid, Gawker notes that there’s a history of ricin false positives that have been used to justify hasty security action… so chill.

History channel has been broadcasting a very successful miniseries based on the bible… so it’s no wonder viewers took to the internet after noticing that Satan looks a little too much like President Obama.

Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni plays the role of the fallen angel. A number of Twitter users noticed the similarity between Ouazanni and Obama on Sunday. Among them was Glenn Beck, who first tweeted that the series was “one of the most important shows in decades,” then posted a screenshot of Ouazanni and asked if others thought he looked like “That Guy,” Beck’s preferred term for Obama.

President Barack Obama has nominated Walmart Foundation chief Sylvia Burwell as budget director.

Sources say that Obama will name the 47-year-old veteran of Bill Clinton’s White House tomorrow.

Burwell directed philanthropic efforts from Wal-Mart’s Arkansas headquarters and she will bring an outsider’s view to the White House, and she’s female—unlike most of Obama’s other choices for top jobs.

Washington is pretty much ready for tomorrow’s inauguration party… even if Obama is sworn in today.

Yes, President Obama will quietly be sworn in for a second term today, due to a Constitutional quirk that mandates that the commander in chief be sworn in at noon on January 20. Because that fell on a Sunday, when inaugurations aren’t held, Obama will take the oath at the White House today and tomorrow’s ceremony is essentially a re-enactment, reports the AP.

Chief Justice John Roberts—who famously flubbed the oath four years ago—will swear the president in both times. Joe Biden was also sworn in this morning in a small ceremony at the Naval Observatory, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor administering the oath.

Today President Obama and Joe Biden laid out their gun control plan, calling for an ambitious $500 million program.

Biden started by boasting that his team had consulted 229 groups, from law enforcement to gun advocacy organizations before making its recommendations. “The world has changed, and it’s demanding action,” he said.

Obama followed, calling for universal background checks—which, he said, 70% of NRA members supported—and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which he noted that Ronald Reagan, too, had called for.

Obama also pointed out that they would still be hard to pass, that some people would soon be “publicly warning of a tyrannical all-out assault on liberty.” He urged people, even in traditionally gun-friendly areas, to push legislators for change. “Ask them what’s more important: Getting an A-grade from the gun lobby … or giving parents some peace of mind when they drop their child off for first grade.” He finished by signing what he said were 23 executive orders intended to immediately address the issue.

Obama chose Jacob Lew to replace Tim Geithner as treasury secretary… and he apparently didn’t mind our future bills looking like they have pubic hair.

The seemingly unimportant issue has actually become a ‘thing’ online. Some reactions:

- “Obviously, that would turn American currency into the best money ever,” writes Ezra Klein at the Washington Post.
- It’s “a series of looped scribbles that resembles the markings left on a notepad when you can’t seem to get your pen working,” writes Oliver Cox at MSNBC.
- “It’s logical. It flows. And its organic symmetry is reminiscent, vaguely, of the Guilloché patterns that decorate banknotes all over the world,” writes JK Trotter at Atlantic Wire.
- “Lew’s signature can best be described as a series of loops and squiggles that bear no resemblance to the actual characters in his name,” writes Emily Jane Fox at CNNMoney.

Obama is now a two-time winner of Time’s Person of the Year (the honor also went to George W. Bush in both the year of his election and re-election). In a lengthy look at Barack Obama’s re-election win, Time declares that we now “know the difference between the wish and the thing, the hype and the man in the office.” And while he has managed impressive electoral feats—he’s the first Dem since FDR to snag a majority of the popular vote twice—his win makes him something more than someone who managed to hang onto office, notes Time: He’s “both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” one “in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes.”

“For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is Time’s 2012 Person of the Year.”

Who were behind our commander-in-chief?

- Malala Yousafzai: The Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education rights
- Tim Cook: “The Apple CEO’s record hasn’t been flawless, but he has presided in a masterly way.”
- Mohamed Morsi: “For all his troubles at home, Morsi remains the Middle East’s most influential figure.”
- Fabiola Gianotti: One of the lead Higgs Boson researchers