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Ballpark's 100th birthday to feature special guests, throwback jerseys and more CHICAGO -- You can party with Ernie Banks, Gale Sayers, Dutchie Caray and members of the Weeghman family at Wrigley Field's 100th birthday party next week. The ballpark will celebrate its 100th birthday on April 23, when the Cubs play host to the D-backs a century after the Chicago Federals opened then Weeghman Park against the Kansas City Packers. The 100th birthday game headlines the first of 10 decade-themed homestands celebrating 100 years of Wrigley Field. Tickets for the April 23 game are still available at cubs.com/tickets. Major League...

Moscow (AFP) - The Kremlin is preparing a new culture policy for Russia focusing on its distinctive civilisation and traditional values, which observers say has political ends amid Moscow's standoff with the West. At the end of four hours of questions Thursday in his annual call-in, President Vladimir Putin waxed philosophical on what it means to be Russian.

Since the beginning of 2014 Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy have been touting a declining crime rate in the Windy City, but according to a new report by Chicago Magazine, they may be cooking the books. "City leaders manipulated crime statistics to create the appearance of a rapidly decreasing rate of crime."

You already know that the MSM long ago gave up on covering the substance of governing, preferring instead to obsess over the horse race aspect of politics, and more importantly, the personalities. Did you always sort of suspect they'd like nothing better than to have American royalty to slobber over like their British counterparts? Done deal! Check this from ABC News: Bill and Hillary Clinton are reveling in the news that they will be grandparents. Chelsea Clinton is set to give birth to America's equivalent of the royal baby sometime this fall -- and her parents couldn't be happier. Clinton, who announced the...

CLEVELAND COUNTY, NC (WBTV) - A Cleveland County middle school teacher's attorney appeared in court on Wednesday morning after she was arrested for allegedly sending videos of a sexual nature to a student. Caron Blanton, 34, turned herself in to the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office Tuesday around 3 p.m. and was charged with three counts of indecent liberties with a child and six counts of disseminating obscene material to a minor under 16. She posted a $150,000 bond and was released around 6 p.m. Blanton did not appear in court on Wednesday morning, but her attorney was there. He told...

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is getting a number of critical report cards about his foreign and domestic policies lately -- signs that America is tiring of his presidency. Here at home, Janet Yellen, in her first monetary policy address as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, said the labor markets were still weak, and that it will likely take two years or more before the U.S. fully recovers from its recession. Ouch. If Yellen's forecast proves right, this means it will have taken Obama's administration nearly eight years to lift our economy out of its long and painful lethargy....

Pope Francis inspired Catholics across the world last year when he visited a juvenile detention center in Rome to celebrate Holy Thursday, and tenderly washed the feel of a young  Muslim woman. This year, he washed the feet disabled people in a ceremony that recalls Jesus' humble service and challenging message to the apostles--the "Servant of the servants" takes the path of radical sel-sacrifice that leads to the Cross. Last night, a Rome's  Don Gnocchi facility, which provides services for the elderly and disabled, Pope Francis celebrated the Mass of the Lord's Supper, and his homily  recalled Jesus'  striking actions: He did it this way out of love....

The former chair of the House communications subcommittee wants the government to look into so-called hate speech on broadcast, cable and the Internet and offer up ways to "address" that use of telecommunications. In the wake of the Kansas shootings, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced a bill, The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 (S.2219), that would update a two-decade old report on the role of telecommunications—the Internet, radio and TV—"in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation." In 1992, Markey, then a member of the House, used the Telecommunications Authorization Act to direct...

<p>JACKSON, Miss. -- A national fraternity group has closed its University of Mississippi chapter after three members were accused of tying a noose around the neck of a statue of the first black student to enroll in the Southern college that was all-white at the time.</p>

The Left’s favorite holiday has thankfully come and gone. As Americans filed their taxes this year, many were astonished to discover certain medical expenses now qualify for tax deductions. When going through the list, one can find birth control pills and abortion listed. The IRS form reads, “You can include in medical expenses the amount you pay for a legal abortion.” Is human life so expendable it can be written off? For a movement that begrudges tax deductions, this is ironic and equally alarming. Undoubtedly, the Obama administration is favorable to the abortion lobby and eager to fund them through...

Here's why you should worry about living in a country where increasing numbers of people can live without working. Filing our tax returns last week, I deplored government having confiscated 29.7% (effective rate) of my and my wife's joint 2013 income (Federal, 21.7%; state and local, 8%). That seemed scarcely worse than medieval lords confiscating one-third of peasants' crops. Speaking of lords, both the President of the United States and the Mayor of New York (et uxores) paid 2013 income taxes at lower effective rates than mine and my wife's (20.4% for the President and a measly 8.3% for the...

To "honor the dignity and work of immigrants," Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi helps Bishop Marc Andrus wash the feet of two children Thursday at Saint John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Pelosi also used the occasion to talk about passing HR15 - bipartisan immigration legislation that her office says would "reduce the deficit by nearly $1 trillion, secure our borders, unite our families, protect our workers and provide an earned pathway to citizenship."

The important-sounding Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union has recently reiterated "its strong support for Ukraine's unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity." Poor, destabilized, post-putsch Ukraine is to be congratulated for receiving something none of the 28 countries that actually belongs to the EU ever does: support for its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. ("Unity" is a more complicated matter, given the EU's reflexive pox on separatist movements that might prefigure the breakup of the EU itself.) As the world's pre-eminent transnational entity since the breakup of the USSR, the EU is all about eradicating its members' sovereignty,...

ack in 2007, Sean “Diddy” Combs teamed with Jay Z and 50 Cent to create a song titled “I Get Money: Forbes 1-2-3 Billion Dollar Remix.” Less than a decade later, rappers are closing in on ten-figure fortunes, and he’s the nearest of the bunch.

Some common contraceptives can kill embryos, not just keep them from forming.This is not an article about the morality of contraception. This is an article about a very specific scientific question: What happens to embryos formed while the mother is using modern methods of contraception? This information is of importance to some women choosing contraception. And, unlike 20 years ago, today’s science has much to say about the conditions that embryos face when they are formed in women using contraception. All methods of contraception can fail to prevent a recognized pregnancy. Statistics on how often a method permits a recognized...

Dartmouth College has a problem. Protestors occupied the president's office at the Ivy League school a couple of weeks ago and demanded more "womyn or people of color" faculty, coverage of sex-change operations on the student health plan, and "gender-neutral bathrooms," among other things. Now Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon has responded with a call "to end the extreme behaviors that are in conflict with our mission." But Hanlon's aim seems focused almost exclusively on the campus fraternity system, and his solution -- a committee to look into "high-risk drinking, sexual assault and inclusivity" -- appears more a way to...

Everything Hillary Clinton does and says looks and sounds like she's running for president of the student body, collecting testimonials, Valentines and staying out of everything remotely controversial. The liberal consensus is that she's the inevitable president. Who's to stop her? But she was "inevitable" once before. This lady's not for burning or even for getting singed by questions about her past and the lack of solid accomplishments of her own. She gives every evidence of wanting only to glide in triumph into Bubba's old office with neither bumps nor bruises, or even a hair out of place. She seemed...

On Wednesday night’s broadcast of The Rachel Maddow Show, host Rachel Maddow discussed the recent events surrounding Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy in detail. Not only did she address the standoff between Bundy’s supporters and federal agents, she placed this incident in the context of recent history. On top of that, she reviewed all of the coverage Bundy has received from the conservative media and contended that these ‘journalists’ are ‘playing with fire.’ Below is video from the show:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Maddow began her show by contrasting the recent events surrounding Bundy and his supporters, who state that they do not recognize the...

When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Empire an "evil empire," the phrase reflected his conviction that while the East-West struggle was indeed a global geostrategic conflict, it had a deep moral dimension. If Americans did not see the Cold War as he did, a battle between good and evil, Reagan knew that they would indefinitely sacrifice neither the wealth of the nation nor the blood of its sons to sustain it. That is in the character of Americans. Jimmy Carter had sought to remove that moral dimension by declaring, "We have gotten over our inordinate fear of communism." But with...

COLCHESTER, Vt. (AP) -- A bunch of kids in a minivan are solving twin challenges in northern Vermont: refugees struggling to find the food of their homelands and farmers looking to offload unwanted livestock. The half dozen kids - that is, baby goats - that arrived last week at Pine Island Farm were the latest additions to the Vermont Goat Collaborative, a project that brings together new Americans hungry for goat meat with dairy goat farmers who have no need for young male animals. Some dairy farmers who otherwise would discard bucklings at birth or spend valuable time finding homes...

Madison — Dealing unions their latest loss in court, a federal appeals court Friday upheld Gov. Scott Walker's tight limits on collective bargaining for most public employees. The ruling by the three-judge panel upheld a September decision by U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison that the law known as Act 10 does not infringe on the rights of government workers. "Act 10 does not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment in favor of the state," the ruling reads. .

More than two-thirds of the states reported job gains in March, as hiring has improved for much of the country during what has been a sluggish but sustained 4 1/2-year recovery. The Labor Department said Friday that unemployment rates dropped in 21 states, rose in 17 and were unchanged in the remaining 12. Meanwhile, hiring increased in 34 states and fell in 16. The unemployment rate varies from as low as 2.6 percent in North Dakota to as much as 8.7 percent in Rhode Island. South Carolina has experienced the sharpest rate decline over 12 months to 5.5 percent from...

A Chinese court has jailed a blogger for three years, state media has reported – the first person to be sentenced in a government-led crackdown on so-called internet rumours. Qin Zhihui, one of hundreds of bloggers reportedly detained in an official campaign to assert greater control over China's popular social media, was found guilty of "slander" and "picking quarrels and provoking troubles", state broadcaster CCTV said on Thursday.

California's economy added 11,800 net new jobs in March, a meager showing after robust gains the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Although the Golden State gained some jobs, the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 8.1% from 8% a month earlier, according to the data.

A group of seven multiracial Washington and Lee University (W&L) students are demanding the school remove all Confederate flags from campus and "acknowledge" General Robert E. Lee's "dishonorable side." According to the Roanoke Times, "seven multiracial students, calling themselves 'The Committee,'" have also demanded the school "acknowledge and apologize for participating in chattel slavery." They want recognition of "Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the undergraduate campus" and an end to "neo-Confederates" marching across campus "to the Lee Chapel on Lee-Jackson Day." The students say they will "engage in civil disobedience" if their demands are not met by September 1st....

The Roman cross was a terrifying instrument of torture and execution. The sight of a cross must have filled all who saw it with fear. Yet for Christians, the cross has become a sign of hope.

Every year since 1983, Hustler founder Larry Flynt has sent 535 copies of his monthly magazine to Capitol Hill – one edition for each member of Congress. Only members of the executive branch are exempt from Flynt’s routine mailing list. The magazine and its array of naked women, vulgar comics and articles ranging on topics from politics to sex, arrives in the mail in a plain manila envelope. It didn’t take long for Congress members to complain about receiving the adult magazine: they first complained about the mailings in 1984, prompting the U.S. Postal Service to ask the U.S. District...

The stage was set. The night was dark. The forces of evil, visible and invisible, viciously swarmed upon One Man. Not just any man, but the One who carried the weight of the world on His back. He is the only Man who with just one word could have instantly eradicated all His foes—for He was the One Person who had the Word of God naturally flowing through Him. In fact, He was the very Word of God (John 1:1). But He opened not his mouth. Not a single sermon from the Greatest Teacher of all time who taught for...

Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson said Thursday that Americans are "being played by those people who want to divide, conquer and control." "The trend you can see in our society is if you are pro-life, then you're anti-woman," Carson said at a town hall meeting entitled "Religion in America," sponsored by local news station CBS12 in West Palm Beach, Fla. "If you're pro-traditional marriage, then you're homophobic. If you're a white person — and you say something against a progressive black person, you’re a racist. "We have gotten to this point to where we just like to label people...

A Washington woman has come under fire over claims her PTSD caused by online harassment and Twitter trolls is equal to that of military veterans. Harassed: Melody Hensley claims online bullies and Twitter trolls has causedher PTSD and that it is just as bad as that suffered by veterans of combat. Melody Hensley was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder 16 months ago following online abuse, which she says is the result of her being an outspoken feminist and atheist. She caused upset to many military veterans and their families and friends when she claimed her PTSD from Twitter trolls...

New York University’s controversial penchant under President John Sexton for doling out real-estate perks to top professors and executives also extended to his son.Jed Sexton, whose sole affiliation with NYU was his status as the president’s son, for years enjoyed a spacious faculty apartment while the university experienced a “severe” housing shortage, The Post has learned. In spring 2002, NYU ordered that a pair of one-bedroom apartments normally reserved for law school faculty be combined into a lavish, two-story spread in the heart of Greenwich Village, property records show.The Harvard-educated Sexton, who was a 33-year-old aspiring actor at the time,...

Who would deny that Hillary could use a little softening of her icy image? But when Andrew Ross Sorkin had the audacity to suggest that Clinton's impending grandma-hood would work to her advantage in that regard, the collective wrath of the Morning Joe panel descended on him. John Heilemann, as is his habit, sneered. "Republican" Nicolle Wallace actually led the Sorkin scolding, suggesting it was "stupid" to think as he did. View the video here.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the stampede of politicians distancing themselves from their once best-friend - Hotel magnate Sant Singh Chatwal - as AP reports, he plead guilty Thursday to charges he secretly funneled more than $180,000 in illegal campaign contributions to three unnamed candidates and coached someone to lie about it. Without the contributions "nobody will even talk to you," Chatwal said. "That's the only way to buy them, get into the system." Welcome to the ugly truth of American politik.  The FT details that Sant Singh Chatwal, chairman of Hampshire Hotels Management, pleaded guilty on Thursday...

In 2009, within the first few weeks of taking office President Obama, moved control of the Census Bureau from the office of the Commerce Secretary to the White House ahead of the 2010 Census. Republicans were irate, thinking it was an effort to politicize the 2010 headcount itself. Unfortunately, Republicans were thinking small. As the New York Times reveals, the Census Bureau “is changing its annual survey so thoroughly that it will be difficult to measure the effects of President Obama’s health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said.”Not difficult. Virtually impossible: “The changes are...

....“The technological problems with airships that have stopped them ruling the skies have been gradually ticked off,” says Mr. Durham, technical director of Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), which makes the Airlander.” Advances in materials, avionics and aerodynamic design mean that we have overcome the lion’s share of these obstacles. This craft is part airship, part aircraft and part hovercraft. We have taken the best aspects of each machine and combined them in one hyper-efficient vehicle. Let me tell you, this isn’t the Hindenburg.”... A future design called Airlander 50 will lift 50 tons of cargo, five times more than a...

The conservative lawyer who defended California’s ban on gay marriage at the Supreme Court is at work on another project: planning his daughter’s upcoming same-sex wedding ceremony. Charles J. Cooper, a former top official in the Reagan Justice Department and onetime “Republican lawyer of the year,” learned of his daughter’s sexual orientation during the legal battle over California’s Proposition 8, according to journalist Jo Becker’s soon-to-be-released book chronicling the movement to legalize same-sex marriage. Ashley Lininger became engaged to a woman identified in the book only as Casey just after the Supreme Court accepted the Proposition 8 case in December...

One for the hypocrisy hall of fame: Media Matters for America is apparently resisting an effort by Service Employees International Union Local 500 to unionize its staff.Last week, the union filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board, indicating that the nonprofit media watchdog organization rejected an effort by the union to organize MMFA’s staff through a Card Check election.A filing with the NLRB does not necessarily mean that the union and management are in direct confrontation. For example, although Volkswagen tacitly backed the United Auto Workers’ recent effort to organize its Chattanooga, Tenn., plant, the company still...

Governor Cuomo has signed off on the National Popular Vote Compact, giving New York's 29 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. SILive: Count New York in. The Empire State has joined the National Popular Vote compact with legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. States that have signed on to the interstate agreement will award electoral votes for president to the candidate who receives the majority of the national popular vote. "With the passage of this legislation, New York is taking a bold step to fundamentally increase the strength and fairness of our nation's presidential elections,"...

As the labor movement tells the story, two months ago, the silly, ungrateful Volkswagen factory workers in Tennessee foolishly rejected the generous invitation of the company and the United Auto Workers to welcome the Detroit-killing union with open arms. In an election supervised by the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the workers in VW's Chattanooga plant rejected UAW representation by a vote of 712 to 626. Amazingly, the UAW and the automaker both refuse to take the workers' "no" for an answer. The two sides are acting in unison to overturn the democratically expressed will of the workers. Nullifying...

Regardless of how people feel about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over his cattle’s grazing rights, a lot of Americans were surprised to see TV images of an armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary wing of the BLM deployed around Bundy’s ranch. They shouldn’t have been. Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions. It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office...

<p>The debate over campaign contributions is never-ending for a simple reason: Both sides of the argument have merit.</p> <p>On the one hand, of course money is speech. For most citizens, contributing to politicians or causes is the most effective way to augment and amplify speech with which they agree. The most disdainful dismissers of this argument are editorialists and incumbent politicians who — surprise! — already enjoy access to vast audiences and don’t particularly like their monopoly being invaded by the unwashed masses or the self-made plutocrat.</p>

There is a young person held captive in Massachusetts today who is not allowed to participate in religious ceremonies, or visit family without government agents watching. No, it’s not accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It’s 15-year-old mitochondrial disease patient and nonterrorist Justina Pelletier. U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole Jr. ruled Wednesday that the now-20-year-old charged with four deaths and injuring more than 260 people should be able to see his sisters without an FBI agent present. The feds can appeal, but he says their case would have to be “pretty convincing.” “Can you believe it?” That was Jennifer...

The Republican Party is roiling with internal conflicts, say the analysts. The tea party is confronting the establishment. The noninterventionists are at war (forgive the expression) with the interventionists. The libertarians would like the party to endorse same-sex marriage. Fair enough. These conflicts will play out during the primaries in 2016, and we'll discover whether they are serious fault lines or merely squabbles. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, supposedly the firm fortress of the middle class, minorities and women, is actually showing some internal stresses as well. Little fissures are snaking through the crust, perhaps reflecting tectonic movement beneath. The...

Well I can say this much for Janet Yellen, she sure learned how to jawbone the market, a skill that was notably lacking in her predecessor Ben Bernancke. On Wednesday the market gapped open, only to follow a recent pattern of the gap gains eroding. But then Janet stepped in. In a speech to the Economic club of New York, Yellen acknowledged that while the economy has made some strides towards recovery the jobs market is at least, if not more than, two years away from healing. That means that stock market types, whatever else may be happening on...

The left's tyrannical suppression of opposing views would be less farcical if leftists weren't such pseudo-champions of tolerance and freedom of expression. In our leftist-dominated culture, the permitted categories of speech are becoming ever more restrictive. If, for example, you are a conservative radio talk show host, you must always remain vigilant because the left wants to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine to suppress the opposing viewpoint and re-establish its major-media monopoly. If you own a small catering company and same-sex marriage violates your religious beliefs, the left wants to force you to provide food for same-sex marriage ceremonies. If you...

President Obama is right. He told Major Garrett of CBS this week that "Mr. Putin's decisions aren't just bad for Ukraine. Over the long term, they're going to be bad for Russia." I believe that Putin's adventures in Russia's "near abroad" are a mistake. Indeed, they are part of a whole tapestry of wrongheadedness. It's also bad for the Kremlin to crush dissent, censor the news and hobble the economy by handing it over to oligarchs and a kleptocratic bureaucracy. Putin's scapegoating and demonizing of gays isn't only morally wrong, it's not in Russia's long-term interests either. That Putin prefers...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tim Graham. For its second season, the creators of the FX series "The Americans" have chosen a new source for insight into the Cold War during the Reagan years -- one Lt. Col. Oliver North. It's a dramatic reversal from the first season, and it has infuriated some hard leftists. The show began with the shocking promise from creator Joel Weisberg that the series' heroes would be KGB agents: "We're making them the sympathetic characters. I'd go so far as to say they're the heroes." It quickly became apparent that these characters could...

Critics of the SAT and other standardized testing are disregarding the data. The College Board—the standardized testing behemoth that develops and administers the SAT and other tests—has redesigned its flagship product again. Beginning in spring 2016, the writing section will be optional, the reading section will no longer test “obscure” vocabulary words, and the math section will put more emphasis on solving problems with real-world relevance. Overall, as the College Board explains on its website, “The redesigned SAT will more closely reflect the real work of college and career, where a flexible command of evidence—whether found in text or graphic...

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee accepted a position as president of what was then called Washington College. By all accounts, he served the school well and had a nice end of life. After his death, Washington College was renamed Washington & Lee. Today, many black people attend the university that bears Marse Robert’s surname, so I guess we won. But a group of black law students at Washington & Lee Law School is getting really sick of the university’s consistent, stars-and-bars waving support of Lee’s legacy and the whitewashing (no pun intended) of what that legacy represents. They’ve...

It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students you’d see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In matching navy blazers, they’d recite academic arguments for and against various government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring. No more. These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years. But this...