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‘Twas the night before Selection Day, and all through the country, not a creature was stirring, well, depending on the house.

On the eve of the College Football Playoff committee’s final batch of playoff rankings, some will curl up all snug in their beds with visions of playoff spots dancing in their heads. Others, however, will be haunted by the ghosts of seasons past, present and future.

For all the hype and excitement that surround the weekly playoff rankings, it’ll likely be more of a day of rest than a Sunday Funday for three of the teams vying for those four spots. With blowout wins in three of the four Power 5 championships on Saturday, most schools in the running for the playoff are stress-free.

Two other coaches who will sleep like a rock are Texas AM’s (man, that’s weird) Jimbo Fisher and Oregon’s Willie Taggart.

Look, Fisher’s exit from Tallahassee wasn’t a great look, and he probably won’t get many Christmas cards from people there, but the man is about to get P-A-I-D. With his 10-year, $75 million, fully guaranteed contract, Fisher will earn the richest deal in college football history in terms of total value. He’ll be second to only Alabama’s Nick Saban in average yearly salary. Fisher will also be at a place that is undoubtedly committed to resources, as AM recently spent more than $500 million on facility upgrades for football. Anyone can fall asleep on a mattress made of that sort of money.

Taggart is one of the top names on Florida State’s list of potential replacements for Fisher, and whether he stays at Oregon or goes to Tallahassee, he, too, will be getting paid. Oregon offered Taggart a new contract worth more than $20 million, before incentives, over the next five years. However, he has yet to sign that deal.

One coach not sleeping well tonight is Scott Frost. He was named Nebraska’s new coach before Trey Neal’s double-overtime interception could clinch No. 14 UCF’s 62-55 American Conference championship win over No. 20 Memphis.

This was not an easy decision for Frost, and it’s no secret that he had strong emotional ties to both UCF and Nebraska and that this decision has weighed on him. Frost might be going home, but he is also leaving a pretty good one behind.

Expect the most tossing and turning in Tuscaloosa and Columbus tonight.

With No. 8 Ohio State’s ugly 27-21 win over No. 4 Wisconsin, the Badgers are out of the playoff running, but the Buckeyes are firmly on the bubble, along with No. 5 Alabama. This is where things get complicated and the sweat bullets start to accumulate.

Alabama needed a close Ohio State win, and it got it. But was it close or sloppy enough of an Ohio State performance for Alabama’s end-of-season eye test to score higher than the Buckeyes’? Fate has been totally taken out of these teams’ hands and given to the committee. There’s little those teams can say and absolutely nothing they can do to enhances their cases between now and the College Football Playoff Selection Show (Sunday, noon ET on ESPN and ESPN App).

Coaches and players will be second-guessing plays that should and shouldn’t have been in losses that put them in this nerve-racking situation.

Will the committee excuse Ohio State’s embarrassing 55-24 loss to five-loss Iowa because of a Big Ten championship win over unbeaten Wisconsin?

NEW YORK — Police are searching for a driver who hit and killed one person and injured three others outside a nightclub in Queens, New York, early Sunday morning, CBS New York reports. 

Two of the three who are injured are in serious condition, according to the station. Two other people were stabbed in a dispute before the crash.

A New York Police Department detective said terrorism is not suspected, The Associated Press reports.

Witnesses say the group of people left a bar around 4:30 a.m. They saw one man beating another man on a sidewalk. A group of five to seven people were yelling at the man to stop, which is when a car barreled down the sidewalk and into them and kept going, according to CBS New York. 

Police have not provided an official description of vehicle. Witnesses said it was a white car.  

Police said the suspect has a ponytail.   

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Speaking tonight to a mostly black audience at a Montgomery Baptist church, Alabama Senate candidate Doug Jones invoked the memory of Rosa Parks on the 67th anniversary of her arrest, saying the state could be at another turning point.

“The world started to change because of one heroic seamstress who was tired and didn’t want to give up her seat on the bus,” Jones said. Parks’ arrest on Dec. 1, 1955 launched the Montgomery bus boycott, a landmark success early in the civil rights movement.

Jones said the state is at a crossroads and should turn away from what he described as the divisive leadership style of Republican nominee Roy Moore. The election is Dec. 12.

“We’ve got to decide what kind of Alabama we want to have,” Jones said. “Do we want to have an Alabama in which everyone is treated with dignity and respect and equally and we try to get good jobs and we keep our healthcare? Or do we want to have an Alabama that tells the country that we’re still a divisive people, that we only care about a certain segment of our population?”

Jones was interrupted by applause several times at Maggie Street Baptist and got a standing ovation when he mentioned the prosecution of two Klansmen who bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963, killing four young girls. Jones was a U.S. attorney when he brought that case.

Jones would be the first Alabama Democrat to win a statewide race since 2008. Jones urged the crowd to help end that drought by showing up for the special election and making sure like-minded voters don’t sit it out.

“To make that needle move to the right side of history I need your help,” Jones said.

“You’ve got to call them on the 12^th and say, ‘Hey did you cast that vote yet?’ You’ve got to call all your friends and neighbors. Get ’em out there. Make sure. Call and say, ‘Do you need a ride?’ “

Polls have shown Moore leading in the race. That’s despite allegations that surfaced three weeks ago that Moore sought sexual encounters with teenagers when he was in his early 30s, about 40 years ago. Moore has adamantly denied the claims, saying they are lies intended to undermine his campaign.

Click here for all coverage of Roy Moore.

Doug Jones speaks at Maggie Street Baptist Church in Montgomery on Dec. 1, 2017. Mike Cason/mcason@al.com 

Arthur Griffin of Montgomery, 45, was in the audience at Maggie Street Baptist tonight and said Jones has the right message and has a chance to win.

“It’s really a team effort,” Griffin said. “He needs the citizens to call one another and push his message to them, because a lot of times, we just give up on these races and we don’t go vote because we just assume the Democrat is going to lose. But this time we actually have a chance. We’ve got to stick together. We’ve got to help this guy.”

Montgomery County Probate Judge Steven Reed, a Democrat, attended tonight’s event and said it was fitting that Jones appear at the Montgomery church on the anniversary of Parks’ arrest. Reed was asked how important it is for Jones to energize black voters.

“I think it’s important that Doug energize all voters,” Reed said. “The black vote by itself is not going to win this election. He’s going to need to energize not only Democrats but also Republicans as well who are willing to look at the man vs. the party.

“As it relates to the Democratic base, they’ve definitely picked up a lot of momentum. I think he’s touching all corners of the state. And I think he’s talking about the issues that are really relevant to Alabamians and really relevant to what we need in a United States senator.”

Jones said if voters send him to the Senate he would seek solutions through compromise on important issues like healthcare.

“We’ve got to be able to reach across the aisle and talk to people,” Jones said. “We’ve got to have the kind of dialogue that it takes to move this state and this country forward. We don’t need to be talking at people. We need to be talking to them. And we need to be listening to them.”

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DEL RIO, Texas — An amended federal arrest warrant has been released for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a Mexican man acquitted Thursday in the killing of a woman on a San Francisco pier, a case that’s sparked national debate over immigration.

The warrant says Zarate violated his supervised release on a federal sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. by possessing the gun that killed Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015. The warrant was originally issued July 14 of that year but an amended warrant was unsealed Friday following the verdict.

The warrant issued by the U.S. District Court for the western district of Texas says Zarate was sentenced in Texas on May 12, 2011 to 46 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for illegally re-entering the U.S.

The warrant says the terms of the supervised release, which began March 26, 2015, barred Zarate from committing another crime and from possessing a firearm. He was still bound to the terms of that release when Steinle was shot and killed. Though he was acquitted of murder Thursday, he was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

President Trump called the acquittal a “complete travesty of justice,” and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanded cities like San Francisco scrap immigration policies barring cooperation with federal deportation efforts.

Thousands of Twitter users turned to the hashtag #BoycottSanFrancisco. Conservative politicians and celebrities such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and actor James Woods lambasted the city.

City officials pushed back and vowed to stand behind their so-called sanctuary city policy. It’s what led Garcia Zarate to be released from San Francisco’s jail despite a federal request to detain him for deportation several weeks before Kate Steinle was fatally shot in the back. He had been deported five times before.

Hundreds of cities have similar policies, which Trump, Sessions, and others blame for Steinle’s death. San Francisco has consistently been an early adopter of some of the most immigrant-friendly policies nationwide, expanding protections to residents living in the country without documentation.

“San Francisco is and always will be a sanctuary city,” said Ellen Canale, a spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Lee.

The warrant says that Zarate was released from the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement after completing his prison sentence for illegal re-entry on March 26, 2015. He was then transferred to the custody of the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department to face a then-pending charge for selling marijuana from 1995. That charge was dismissed the following day and he was released by local officials, despite a request from federal officials to detain him for deportation.

Prosecutors had charged Garcia Zarate with murder, assault and being felon in possession of a firearm in Steinle’s death. He called the shooting an accident. He said he found a gun under a chair on the pier and it fired when he picked it up.

San Francisco Deputy District Attorney Diana Garcia urged jurors to convict him of first-degree murder. Jurors also considered and rejected second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

They did convict him of the firearm charge, which carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would “ultimately remove” Garcia Zarate from the country.

“San Francisco’s decision to protect criminal aliens led to the preventable and heartbreaking death of Kate Steinle,” Sessions said in a statement Thursday night. “I urge the leaders of the nation’s communities to reflect on the outcome of this case and consider carefully the harm they are doing to their citizens by refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement officers.”

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Kim Jong-Nam is seen at New Tokyo International Airport on May 4, 2001.

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The Asahi Shimbun/Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images

In this combination of file photos, Indonesian suspect Siti Aisyah, left, and Vietnamese suspect Doan Thi Huong, both charged with the killing of Kim Jong Nam, are escorted out of court by police officers in Sepang, Malaysia, in March.

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Daniel Chan/AP

In this combination of file photos, Indonesian suspect Siti Aisyah, left, and Vietnamese suspect Doan Thi Huong, both charged with the killing of Kim Jong Nam, are escorted out of court by police officers in Sepang, Malaysia, in March.

Daniel Chan/AP

Kim Jong Nam, the murdered half-brother of North Korea’s leader, was carrying an antidote to the nerve agent that killed him when he was attacked in February in Kuala Lumpur’s international airport.

Two women, Siti Aisyah, an Indonesian national, and Doan Thi Huong, a Vietnamese national, have been charged with conspiracy to murder Kim. They are alleged to have worked with four North Korean agents to smear the banned chemical VX on his face as he was transiting the airport in the Malaysian capital on Feb 13.

Just prior to an extended adjournment, the courtroom in Kuala Lumpur heard testimony Friday from toxicologist Dr. K. Sharmilah that in Kim’s sling bag, he was carrying 12 vials of atropine, a general-purpose antidote for nerve agents that is often issued to soldiers in case of a chemical attack.

Kim — once considered the heir apparent to lead North Korea before falling out of favor with his father, the late Kim Jong Il – was living with his family in exile in Macau at the time of the attack. From afar, he had been critical of North Korea’s dynastic rule. Kim Jong Un, who inherited the leadership in 2011, was believed to have issued a standing order for his brother’s execution.

Airport surveillance video shows two women approaching Kim in one of the terminals. One covers his face with a cloth. Minutes later, Kim is seen gesturing for help before he goes into a seizure. He later died on the way to the hospital.

As NPR’s Colin Dwyer reported in February, just two weeks after the attack: “Since Kim Jong Nam’s death … speculation has swirled that the eldest Kim brother, who was exiled more than a decade ago, was assassinated by the North Korean government — a charge North Korea has denied. Suspicions were only stoked further with [the] revelation by Malaysian police that the poison used to kill him was VX nerve agent, which is classified as a weapon of mass destruction and banned by the international Chemical Weapons Convention.”

The women charged in connection with the apparent assassination claim they were duped. And, The Associated Press notes of the trial: “Prosecutors have focused on proving the women’s guilt but shied away from scrutinizing any political motive behind the killing. Defense lawyers, who say their clients were duped into carrying out the attack, will look to shift that focus when the trial resumes Jan. 22.”

The libertarian bent of so much evangelical thought, then, owes a lot to the pervasiveness of Reconstruction, even as the word itself has fallen out of fashion. But the curriculum that ThinkProgress dug up, Ingersoll noted, is “run by the Vision Forum, which is about as close to pure Rushdoony-style Christian Reconstructionism as you get.”  The Witherspoon program, she added, even included Rushdoony’s best-known book, “The Biblical Philosophy of History,” in its reading list.

Republican Roy Moore continued on Wednesday to deny any knowledge of the accusers who have claimed in recent weeks that the former judge behaved inappropriately and molested teenage girls decades ago.

Speaking inside a nearly 150-year-old church in south Mobile County, Moore also accused one of the nine women who have come forward of having an agenda to stop his political career.

“The attacks have been false, numerous and vicious,” Moore said during a 22-minute speech interrupted twice by protestors, one who was anti-Moore and another who was a Moore supporter. The speech occurred less than two weeks before the Dec. 12 Senate special election pitting Moore against Democrat Doug Jones.

“I do not know any of these women,” Moore said. “I did not engage in sexual misconduct. It’s simply dirty politics. It’s a sign of our times.”

Moore referenced a report from the conservative One America News Network which criticized one of the accusers of having alleged family ties to drug dealers, and called the scandal that has threatened his political career as a “conspiracy.”

Moore’s continued denial of knowledge about any of the accusers also came one day after Leigh Corfman — the accuser who claims Moore touched her sexually when she was 14 and he was 32 — hand-delivered a letter to AL.com insisting that he stop calling her a liar.

“It may seem odd that having served the public in the state of Alabama for 40 years and counting my service in the Army, 50 years going back to West Point, never once has anyone stated anything that has (been alleged),” Moore said.

Clash of “protesters”

Moore’s speech was interrupted twice, once by a man who questioned why the former judge and his supporters did not believe any of the allegations raised in media reports. “The entire time, all the girls are lying?” the man shouted.

A bizarre back-and-forth ensued as the police escorted the man out of the Magnolia Springs Baptist Church.

A pro-Moore supporter then shouted that the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice is a “man’s man. Does that look like the face of a molester?”

It was later identified that the pro-Moore supporter is the comedian Tony Barbieri, who is famous for his appearances as the character Jake Byrd on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Before the speech, Barbieri repeatedly interrupted individual interviews a TV crew was conducting with Moore supporters as they walked into the church.

Barbieri was later asked to leave after he stood up and shouted, “Does that look like someone who hits on teenage girls?”

Turns out tonight’s Roy Moore superfan is a comedian named Tony Barbieri, part of Jimmy Kimmel’s gang. pic.twitter.com/ykeGKVDdkS

— Ben H. Raines (@BenHRaines) November 30, 2017

Later, outside the church, a confrontation occurred between Theodore resident David Connolly, who attended the speech and accused the church of hosting a political rally while billing it as a religious service.

“I believe in giving everyone a chance to speak,” Connolly said while he was interviewed by a large throng of television media. “I heard what the man had to say and he uses Bible verses to twist in any way he can. This is embarrassing to Alabama and embarrassing to me.”

Moore supporters, who stood by and listened to Connolly, yelled back at him and accused him of being a plant for the Jones campaign. “How much are you getting paid?” one Moore supporter yelled.

Connolly replied, “Is that a serious question? Would you like to follow me home, sir? I don’t know of anyone who would pay for me to talk tonight.”

Protests aside, Moore’s supporters embraced the former judge’s opportunity to speak at the church. To them, Moore is the victim of a dirty politics, and they also question why the allegations made against him have surfaced weeks before the general election.

“Politics has just gotten ugly,” said Michael Griffon. “It’s always been ugly, but when it hits you this hard in the face, it’s just really seems very ugly to me.”

Lou Campomenosi, who heads up the Baldwin County Common Sense Campaign, said the tea party supporters with his group believe “this is part and parcel to the politics of personal destruction.”

“We are not going to say we believe these allegations, and they are allegations,” said Campomenosi. “It’s very unfair to drop these kind of things a very short time before an election. It’s not fair to Judge Moore. It’s not fair to the electorate. I think this is just a very real conspiracy to destroy a man … these people don’t like. Not just the liberal Democrats, but Mitch McConnell and the RINO swamp.”

Focus on issues

Moore, much like his appearance Monday in DeKalb County, outlined the sharp contrasts on issues between himself and Jones. He said he supports a complete overturn of the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court legalizing abortions, opposes transgender troops serving in the military and defunding Planned Parenthood.

“I would first overturn Roe v. Wade,” Moore said. “It’s an unconstitutional decision. There is no such thing as established precedent.”

In addition, he said federal judges “who put themselves above the Constitution should be impeached.”

Moore’s visit to Mobile County comes as his campaign has rebounded since the Nov. 9 Washington Post article was first published detailing the initial allegations against him.

He has pulled ahead of Jones in recent polling. A RealClearPolitics average of six recent polls in the Senate race shows Moore with a two-point advantage over Jones, after Jones had taken a brief lead last week.

Moore supporters inside the Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Theodore, said they felt confident in the ex-judge’s campaign, and felt he would win the Senate election.

“I think he’s going to make it,” said Clyde Clark, a resident of rural Irvington.

Bannon coming

The Moore campaign also announced that former White House chief strategist and current Brietbart News executive chairman Stephen Bannon will join the former judge during a Dec. 5 rally in Fairhope. The two will appear on the same stage they shared during a pre-runoff rally in September days before Moore defeated Senator Luther Strange.

Dean Young, a campaign strategist for Moore, encouraged supporters to attend next week’s rally at Oak Hollow Farm – about an hour’s drive from the Theodore church – to “show the world” that “we stand for Judge Moore.”

Richard Fording, a political science professor at the University of Alabama, said the Bannon appearance is meant to keep the conservative GOP base “mobilized for the future” with the 2018 midterm elections coming up.

Bannon, since he left the White House in August, has signaled he plans to campaign to unseat establishment candidates and have them replaced with insurgents who are loyal to President Donald Trump’s nationalist agenda.

“For (Bannon), it’s all about the policy and short of a conviction in court, he’s going to be supporting candidates who are board with him,” Fording said. “If Roy Moore wins, there is a good chance he will be greatly indebted to Steve Bannon. There is a lot of upside for Bannon.”

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