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Rep. Maxine Waters, the liberal lawmaker from southern California, continued to press for Democrats and President Obama to adopt a more combative style with Republicans ahead of next year's elections. "This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned -- the Tea Party can go straight to hell," Waters told an Inglewood, California audience at a "Kitchen Table Summit" Saturday night, according to Los Angeles television station KABC.

Indianola, Iowa — About 60 people sit on folding chairs in a parking lot adjoining a mostly empty sports bar. The entire neighborhood looks tired, like it has seen better days and is hanging on to respectability by a taut thread. The candidate is already 20 minutes late to this town hall, which was slated for a quarter to noon. Then, just like that, we’re not in Kansas (or Iowa) anymore. The music shifts from marching-band-style tunes to Elvis. A few beats later, the Bachmann campaign bus becomes visible. It slowly pulls into the parking lot, parking in a position...

<p>Pakistan allowed Chinese military engineers to photograph and take samples from the top-secret stealth helicopter that US special forces left behind when they killed Osama bin Laden, the Financial Times has learnt.</p> <p>The action is the latest incident to underscore the increasingly complicated relationship and lack of trust between Islamabad and Washington following the raid.</p>

The driver of an SUV that hit and killed a man earlier this month has been arrested. Police say Alex Cruz Hernandez, 26, hit and killed Vaughn Parker, 52, as he was walking along Rt. 161 near the I-71 overpass on June 8, and kept driving. Hernandez, of Columbus, was arrested yesterday by Columbus police and charged with vehicular homicide, failure to stop after an accident and tampering with evidence.

Interesting tidbit from the story. The latter interpretation is suggested by a story that has long circulated among college coaches and was confirmed to SI by a former colleague of Tressel's from Earle Bruce's staff at Ohio State in the mid-1980s. One of Tressel's duties then was to organize and run the Buckeyes' summer camp. Most of the young players who attended it would never play college football, but a few were top prospects whom Ohio State was recruiting. At the end of camp, attendees bought tickets to a raffle with prizes such as cleats and a jersey. According to...

Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, who met with coaches and players this morning to announce his resignation, was encouraged to resign, sources told The Dispatch today. Less than three months after President E. Gordon Gee and Athletic Director Gene Smith said they fully supported their embattled coach, mounting pressure, a pending NCAA disciplinary hearing and new revelations about the culture of the program forced the university to act on their once-revered coach, sources said. University officials wouldn't confirm that Tressel was asked to resign. Gee had appointed a special committee within the past month to assess the impact of...

Manhattan real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended. Trump, who is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate. "I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm...

Gold hit a record high, while silver surged more than 5 per cent to within a whisker of its all-time peak, as the dollar continued its decline and inflation concerns drove haven flows. Driven also by government debt concerns, gold rose 1 per cent to $1,518.20 a troy ounce, the seventh-consecutive trading session in which it has hit a record high. Silver surged 5.5 per cent to $49.17 an ounce, having hit a 30-year high of $49.80, within sight of the landmark $50 level. The market considers that $50 an ounce marks a record nominal high for silver, although veteran...

Former Ohio State quarterback Art Schlichter, already known as one of the nation's most compulsive gamblers, is the target of an investigation by local and federal authorities that centers on a sports ticket scheme that has swindled dozens of people out of millions of dollars, according to sources familiar with the matter. Sources said Schlichter began soliciting people for money as part of an "investment opportunity" involving brokering and selling tickets for Ohio State football games and other prominent sporting events to various people about two years ago. The money collected by Schlichter was being used to gamble and make...

Monday night on Hannity's show, Reverend Al Sharpton for reasons that remain unclear, was enraged at Senator Rick Santorum's comments that as a black man, President Obama ought to show more concern for the unborn victims of abortion. The Reverend consumed most of the air time with his confusing street confrontation act and was unmoved by Santorum's point that abortion is legal for the same reason slavery was tolerated: both the slave and the unborn are not considered full "persons" entitled to the protection of the law. Sharpton was likewise unconcerned with the fact that if it weren't for abortion,...

An article on the front page of today's Boston Globe mentions Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and the town hall meetings as contributing to "tension," a degree of heat in political discourse," "a potential for physical danger in their anger," etc. I was wondering when someone would accuse talk radio -- the strategy used by President Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing -- and I wasn't disappointed: Former secretary of defense William S. Cohen, who represented Maine for three terms in the House and three terms in the Senate between 1973 and 1997, said the more partisan tenor of political...

NEW ORLEANS - The questions at Jim Tressel's day-before-the-Sugar-Bowl news conference offered clues to what kind of month it has been. Reporters asked whether the adversity his Ohio State football team has faced will help it or hurt it, how trouble-plagued starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor's preparation has been, whether Tressel thinks five players suspended for five games next season will keep their pledge to return, and what he thinks of Pryor's criticism of former OSU quarterback and ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit. There were so many queries about those and other related issues that there was little or no mention of...

Three times in the past three years, Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was stopped for traffic violations while driving cars that were owned by a car salesman or a Columbus used-car lot where the salesman worked, according to traffic citations obtained by The Dispatch. Ohio State is aware of two of those infractions, and an investigation determined nothing improper had occurred, said Doug Archie, associate athletic director for compliance. He was unaware of an incident that occurred in October 2008 and said yesterday that he would investigate it. In that incident, Pryor was ticketed for speeding in eastern Ohio's Guernsey...

A rush by federal agents to deport jailed illegal immigrants sets criminal suspects free and allows them to plan their return THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Jose Noe Mejia hoped he'd be deported in 2006 rather than face charges for raping a 7-year-old girl. But in his case, local and federal authorities got it right. "Jail is worse," he said. Federal immigration officials deported a man after he was caught on the North Side this past spring with almost a pound of heroin. He faced 20 years in prison but never served a day. Federal officials also deported a witness to an...

The military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gays in the military is over. The lame-duck Senate passed legislation ending the policy today by the overwhelming margin of 65-31; all that awaits is President Obama's signature, which is a certainty. The legislation couldn't have passed without Republicans, including the Tea Party insurgent Scott Brown and Ron Kirk, who won Obama's old Illinois seat in November. It fell to the doddering old war hero and loser of 2008, John McCain, to argue against the policy (and McCain's position was undermined by his wife's and his daughter's public opposition to DADT). The...

An anti-illegal immigration group said after Saturday's defeat of the DREAM Act in the Senate that "we look forward to moving aggressively to offense." "Now, the next Congress can start to put unemployed Americans back to work by eliminating the ability for illegal aliens to hold jobs and by reducing the number of unnecessary permanent foreign workers we currently bring in legally every month," Roy Beck, president and founder of NumbersUSA, said in a statement minutes after the Senate voted 55-41 to end debate on the measure, not clearing the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Beck lauded a decade of "perfect defense"...

An Ohio judge has handed down a 28-year prison sentence to a boy who was 14 when he raped, beat and robbed a 64-year-old woman after breaking into her home. Now 15, Alexis Ramirez sobbed Friday during his sentencing hearing before Butler County Common Pleas Judge Keith Spaeth in Hamilton, outside Cincinnati. The Hamilton JournalNews reports Ramirez told the judge he hates himself and that people have every right to look at him as a monster. Authorities say Ramirez had a pellet rifle when he attacked the woman in her Liberty Township home in January and forced her to drive...

When Kentucky hired John Calipari, the university’s president, Lee T. Todd Jr., was tickled at the prospect of Calipari’s adding to Kentucky’s stable of seven national titles. “We want more,” Todd said. “And we want them to stick. And he wants them to stick, probably more than anyone else.” Todd’s reference to “sticking” referred to Calipari’s history of trouble following his success at the University of Massachusetts and Memphis, in which their Final Four appearances were vacated by the N.C.A.A. A report Tuesday in The Birmingham News may put Calipari in another sticky situation. It reported a discrepancy in the...

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) introduced a bill this week that would require two weeks of furlough in 2011 for federal civilian employees. The furloughs would save taxpayers $5.5 billion, according to a release about the bill. "[Furloughs] provide slight problems but they provide large solutions to the budget trouble we face," Coffman said. Coffman's bill, H.R.6134 would make two weeks of unpaid non-consecutive furlough days mandatory, reduce appropriations for salaries and expenses for legislative branch offices, and provide a 10 percent reduction in pay for members of Congress. There are exceptions for national security or reasons related to public health...

Some critics of Glenn Beck’s 8/28 “Restoring Honor” rally (a group that includes me) have also wondered how much of the estimated $2 million cost of the event might be used to pay Sarah Palin’s speaking fee. While not the main focus of criticism of Beck’s rally, questions about funding for the event have been raised. As it turns out, Palin will not be paid a speaker’s fee, and the charity that’s partnering with Beck on the event does stand to benefit significantly from the event.