Once a novelty, dream-home raffles are becoming a popular but risky way for nonprofit organizations to raise money.

The concept marries two of America's favorite obsessions -- gambling and real estate -- with that good feeling you get from supporting a worthy cause.

The official American attitude toward the king of England, and by extension royalty generally, is in the Declaration of Independence, the less-read part after the famous first two paragraphs. The signers were opposed to any kind of obeisance to an autocrat.

Wayne Gretzky played for Canada during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano and then managed the men's hockey team for each of the next two Olympics -- Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006.

BREMERTON, Wash. - An old gill net covers the seafloor like a blanket. Small forage fish swim through its holes untouched -- but a baby seal is not so lucky. When Jim Norberg and Jake Johnston dive down from the Twila Dawn to recover the lost net, they find the seal, dead.

A quick three and out as we mark the days until the Alabama-Florida SEC Championship Game showdown:

Nobody is quite sure yet whether to continue to press Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh on his future or to start thumping the tub for Saturday's Big Game with Cal, so let's go to Plan C -- the Emerald Bowl.

Jerry Brown's first governorship of California was marked by what one might term -- charitably -- a high degree of flexibility.

Although he generally hewed to a liberal line after his 1974 election, Brown was often willing to bend ideology for political advantage, a tendency that some called "flakiness."