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Here is a post this evening put on an area blog by a U.S. military veteran: Just a few hours ago Chattanooga, TN was struck with tragedy as four United States Marines were shot and killed and one Law Enforcement Office was wounded in attacks on a Navy/Marine Corps recruiting office and Navy Reserve center. First and foremost my thoughts and prayers go out to the families those four Marines left behind. This incident IS an act of domestic terrorism, regardless of how Washington spins it, regardless of what nationality, color, creed, or otherwise the shooter was. This was a...

Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters is finally ready for its close-up. On Thursday, the campaign ended a three-month period during which its HQ was considered “off the record” to visitors and allowed POLITICO to tour and photograph the space. “It has great views,” said communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who on Wednesday posted online that “tweeting, photos, visits now welcome!” Her proclamation came after New York Times Magazine writer Mark Leibovich dinged the campaign for trying to keep its actual, physical workspace “off the record.” After POLITICO asked for a tour, the campaign delivered on its promise the following morning, part...

Women are the next frontier in the firearms industry. Over the past few years, women have become the fastest growing demographic of gun owners. They’re responsible for the surge in gun ownership in states like Colorado, and women are lining up across the country for their concealed carry permits. This isn’t a new phenomenon. While the liberal urban-based elite–and their allies in the media–view gun owners as a group comprised mostly of white, conservative men, Louisa Fitzgerald wrote on the feminist site Jezebel that women gun owners often “defy stereotypes.”

The symptoms of the prion disease are beginning to become so obvious that even some of our more prominent pundits are beginning to notice them. For example, even former Karl Rove life-coach Ron Fournier has noticed the severe lack of Abraham Lincolns in the current GOP presidential candidates. And noted climate-denialist and baseball drone George Effing Will has staked out the bold position that many of these candidates have gone so far around the bend that they've crossed some kind of termination barrier. It is, therefore, especially disheartening that Cruz, who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and who is...

The Supreme Court’s decision Friday that same sex marriages are constitutionally guaranteed hasn’t brought the love out from the left — it’s brought out their hate. And it’s disgusting. Jeffrey Luscombe, who describes himself as a gay, Canadian freelance writer, thought it was humorous when a black man, wearing an “Ask Me About Jesus” sweatshirt, was blown kisses by a group of men as he tried to make his way through a gay pride event.

Am I right that this is the first major poll taken since the beginning of Flagmania last week? I’m curious to see if other pollsters are seeing the same shifts that YouGov is. Because this is a lot of movement in a very short period:When was the last time any cultural hot-button issue bounced by double digits in a span of three months? Maybe after Obama finally endorsed gay marriage in 2012?The crosstabs unfortunately don’t break down the numbers by region and race. It’s useful to know what white Americans and black Americans think, and it’s useful to know...

The aftermath of the Charleston church massacre has been an interesting thing. Following the nine killed by 21-year-old ninth grade dropout and troglodyte Dylann Roof at the Mother Emanuel AME Church last week, the people of that venerable South Carolina city have given the nation one of our more inspiring spectacles — thousands gathering in prayer and demonstrating for unity and civility. Had the reaction of Charleston been the major story, the massacre — disgusting and tragic as it was — would have told us something good about the basic character of the American people. Your author will go so...

Citing unnamed "federal law enforcement officials," The New York Times reports that the Justice Department probably will file federal hate crime charges against Dylann Roof in connection with last week's massacre at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Since Roof already faces nine murder charges in state court, where he will be subject to the death penalty if convicted, an additional federal prosecution seems gratuitous. It does not even offer the prospect of a more severe punishment. To the contrary, the maximum penalty Roof would face under federal law is life in prison, while there is a distinct possibility that...

Quite a week for unity in America. First the two parties come together in opposition to the Confederate flag, now the races come together in opposition to constitutionalizing SSM. Maybe this is the key to healing the nation, finding things that everyone dislikes. Like the new “True Detective,” or that hot-dog pizza abortion from Pizza Hut.The opposition is mild, obviously, but it’s there. Interestingly, when you remove the Court from the equation, those numbers tilt the other way. Here’s what happens when you ask people if they support letting gays marry legally:Overall it’s 49/41 in favor, with whites and Latinos...

The U.S. Civil War was a war that never should have been fought. Some 620,000 men died because slavery, an inhumane and evil practice, was permitted in many portions of this country. The South gets most of the blame for that, but the north benefited from the regime as well, even though it didn’t directly practice enslavement at the time of the war. I used to think the war was a bit more complicated than I do now, having had my mind changed thanks to some relatively recent guided readings of President Abraham Lincoln. But long story short, the...

Horne v. Department of Agriculture.decision is a big win for those of us who try to make a living in Ag Any net proceeds the raisin growers receive from the sale of the reserve raisins goes to the amount of compensation they have received for that taking. It does not mean that the raisins have not been appropriated for government use, nor can the government make raisin growers relinquish their property without just compensation as a condition for selling in interstate commerce. This is a major blow to government's program of trying to boost prices by keeping crops off the...

Freddie Gray died in the custody of Baltimore police in April. Six officers have been charged in the death, which is said to have occurred due to spinal injuries he suffered while being thrown about the back of a police van during a rough ride to the station. But now Baltimore police are playing the victim card. They’ve engaged in a work slowdown that has resulted in a 43% decline in arrests citywide from April to May, and as high as 90% in some neighborhoods, according to Doug Donovan and Colin Campbell of The Baltimore Sun. Some say it’s because...

The boobs are fake, too. I’m talking about Rachel Dolezal, the recently fired Spokane NAACP president who told everybody she was black. As part of the national discussion about presenting ourselves as who we want to be, as opposed to who our DNA says we are, it’s worth noting that she dyes her hair and has had implants. And somehow we’ve got to navigate the social minefield of to what degree the world allows our physical and cultural identity to be of our own determination, and to what degree social norms can fence us in. How much is personal expression...

As expected, Bill Maher has now weighed in on the non-troversy, that erupted this week when Jerry Seinfeld bemoaned the culture of political correctness on college campuses – and Maher went a step farther. Both Maher and his guest Comedy Central roast master Jeffrey Ross, agreed with Seinfeld, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with their work. The big stunner came when Maher acknowledged that liberals have become so infected by political correctness, that they have been rendered all but incapable of finding his brand of humor amusing. As a result, Maher has had to modify the...

Just when we thought the absurdity that marks every single day of Obama's reign could not possibly be surpassed, we learned that 4 hours (3 hours and 47 minutes to be precise) after the US president vowed to sign a new law banning bulk data collection by the NSA (named, for purely grotesque reasons, the "USA Freedom Act"), the Obama administration asked the secret Fisa surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months....

Pedal Pusher: Peduto sets Pittsburgh on down cycle by Daniel Clark “It isn’t the way it was in 1970,” says Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto. “Not everyone’s dream is to have their own car and use it to get to work.” Actually, you’d have to go back a lot farther than 45 years to find a time that having a car was “everyone’s dream.” The Model T had made that a reality half a century earlier. By 1970, it was just a normal facet of life in a civilized Western nation. Well, we can’t have that, now, can we? Peduto vowed...

Big Apple Mayor Bill de Blasio is a busy guy. He’s got more than enough on his plate already, needing to deal with his city’s skyrocketing crime rate, crushing poverty in the areas that the TV cameras don’t cover and a police force which doesn’t much care for him. Still, he took time out of his busy day on Sunday to talk to John Dickerson on Face the Nation. Strangely, he wasn’t there to talk about Gotham, but rather about Hillary Clinton and her recent calls for expanded early voting around the nation. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio...

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York just confirmed that not only is Baltimore City Attorney Marilyn Mosby attempting to restrict access to Freddie Gray’s autopsy report, an uncommon practice to say the least, but she is also attempting to prevent police from accessing the report. This unusual move has raised eyebrows across the country as those following the case speculate about what the report might contain. Perhaps the most likely revelation would be proof that Gray died not from wounds received from Baltimore police officers taking him into custody, but instead from wounds self-inflicted during his ride to jail in the...

Ex CIA agent explains how to delete the elite!

A few weeks ago I had to go back to DC yet again for the Right Online conference and it involved flying in and out of Reagan, as well as Newark. As usual, I stood in the long lines – even with my previous screening check mark on my boarding passes – and went through all the rituals of unloading some of my things and passing through a detector. When I arrived at the hotel I opened my bag to find the usual TSA greeting card indicating that they had searched my checked baggage, no matter how much of...