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RUSH: We're gonna start here, as I told the broadcast engineer, with F. Chuck Todd on the Today show today with Savannah Guthrie. They were speaking about Ted Cruz's campaign, telling voters about Carson's leaving the race because of a report on CNN. Now, let's review this. Let's review what we know, just before we get to the sound bite. Somebody at CNN -- I forget the name -- tweeted that Carson was leaving the race and going home to Florida and then to the National Prayer Breakfast. That was a CNN tweet. And the CNN reporter had to get...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: "Ben Jealous, the former head of the NAACP, will endorse Bernie Sanders... The endorsement is a potential boost to [Crazy Bernie] who has struggled to gain traction among African-American voters, though he has made small gains on" Hillary Clinton. He's way ahead in New Hampshire, but after that he's nowhere, right? Crazy Bernie owns New Hampshire, at least right now. It looks like it. But you get out of New Hampshire, move on down the campaign trail, and Bernie Sanders is with the chuck wagon. Sayonara. Not there. Well, yeah, for now. I know. Well, I tell...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites. As you know, on yesterday's program, it was either a caller here or something I was reading in the news, something that happened on the program, I just reacted in a semi-visceral way to the idea that all of a sudden Marco Rubio has become this establishment candidate, which to me means that he's a RINO, a moderate Republican tending toward even maybe a liberal Republican and all that. And that's just not who Marco Rubio is, to me. I think I made the point analyzing the results in Iowa...

Many of the president's ideas about 'tolerance' are antithetical to the American experience, not something to celebrate.For eight years now, the president has reprimanded the American people for their attitudes about Islam. And Barack Obama's big speech to the Islamic Society of Baltimore -- granted, filled with many harmless platitudes -- was no different, leaving little room for any honest dialogue about ideology or faith. Many of the president's ideas about "tolerance," in fact, are antithetical to the American experience, not something to celebrate. Acceptance of outsiders is an American virtue, yes. Do we have to embrace all ideas, as...

Sometimes a calamity is averted "by the skin of our teeth," and one just was. Last December, Congress returned to the American citizen a degree of long term security that, by some inexplicable twist, it had taken away in 2014. No, this is not about the awful Iran nuclear deal, which plainly opens up new vulnerabilities, or the stop-and-start mess surrounding Syria, Iraq and the Islamic State, so-called. This was a simpler, yet more immediate error - corrected, in the nick of time. In 2014, for reasons that remain enshrouded in mystery, possibly tied to longstanding personal antagonisms or personal...

In the many decades I have had the pleasure of covering the Clintons, I have developed several themes about them that have, over the years, been validated by fact. One theme is that there is a Clinton curse. It afflicts many who come into contact with the fabulous couple. In the early days, the curse brought down the McDougals, Webb Hubbell, Vince Foster and former Governor Jim Guy Tucker, all of whom by now are figures known only to history. More recently it was Jeffrey Epstein, sex offender and Bill Clinton's pal and fellow epicure. Now, quite possibly, Josh Earnest,...

On the night of the Iowa caucus events, I was getting pinged from all sides about what was happening. Unfortunately, some of us still work for a living (joke). I was on the road for an assignment and did not have access to a reliable computer or wireless. I was not "hiding" form critics, and I wasn't ignoring those of a like mind. Finally I can address what has happened, and I don't think anyone will be happy. The obvious: *The polls were horribly wrong. Only the Emerson Poll got it right, but I think that was a total accident....

Just last week, I suggested that South Carolina would be the ultimate battleground where the Republican establishment would either stop Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, or see its domination of the GOP come to an end. The Opinion Savvy poll of Iowa (which, in full disclosure, is my son's company) was one of only two national polls to show Cruz and Trump in a tight race there, with Marco Rubio not far behind. The results proved my son right, and I stand by my assessment concerning South Carolina and the GOP, based on the polling information he continues to...

In Monday's Iowa caucus, Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the man most hated by the Republican establishment, came from behind to nab front-runner Donald Trump. Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the supposed establishment favorite, came in just a point behind Trump. According to conventional wisdom, this should set up a battle royal among anti-establishment Cruz, anti-establishment Trump and establishment Rubio. If Rubio emerges victorious, the pundits explain, the establishment will have lived to fight another day, and put those rowdy conservative grass-roots anti-establishment types in their place. This is nonsense. Cruz is the most conservative person in the Republican race. Trump, up...

This week's much anticipated Iowa Caucus marked the start of the presidential nomination process for both the Democratic and Republican parties. It was quite an event. The turnout on the Republican side was 50 percent higher than usual, and the Democrats turned out 50 percent more than in 2012, but 30 percent less than their record breaking year in 2008. Hillary Clinton narrowly beat Bernie Sanders. She received 700.59 state delegate equivalents, while Bernie Sanders received 696.82, according to the Iowa Democratic Party website. (The Iowa Democratic Party does not release votes, just delegate equivalents). Both Clinton and Sanders declared...

Among the many reasons to oppose administrative law are that it can be changed just by the president’s diktats (through rules promulgated by his bureaucrats) and that this can be done merely to help political allies and hurt political opponents. That’s not how our government was designed. Under the Constitution, laws are supposed to be made and changed by the legislature, not by the president and his unelected minions. The phenomenon of administrative law takes us back to the days of Crown Government. (I recommend Frank Buckley’s book The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America.)...

Just as radar warns of approaching storms, so does the flood of migrants entering Europe warn us of a deluge yet to come, not only for Europeans, if they continue to allow unrestricted immigration, but for the United States. Reports that women in Cologne, Germany, have been groped and robbed by men described by authorities as having "a North African or Arabic" appearance should be warning enough, but there are other and more ominous warnings that suggest worse lies ahead, unless the problem receives immediate attention and action. And it's not just Cologne. The Gatestone Institute, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit international...

Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee and now Rand Paul.  All were considered to be serious candidates for the Republican nomination for president and all have dropped out.Carly Fiorina began the campaign with far less name recognition, far less money, and yet her national profile has grown and when she speaks people hang on every word.  She has far outlasted the so-called heavyweights, do not count her out.While I have yet to endorse  in the GOP presidential race, what has so impressed me about Carly is the drive, persistence and consistency she has shown throughout the entire process.  She...

It’s impossible to escape the media’s obsession with the presidential race, the escalating trash-talking and whether or not Hillary cheated in Iowa (just kidding about the last part – of course the media isn’t focusing on Hillary cheating). However, if there’s anything that proves how absolutely crucial this election is and whom we elect to protect our nation, it’s this story. The former and now deceased president of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, once stated that Islam will overtake Europe without firing a shot. Acclaimed writer and author Mark Steyn wrote of the phenomenon of Islamic migration and the resulting demographic shift...

This has not been a good week for Hillary Clinton. She prevailed over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses by less than four tenths of one percent of all votes cast, after having led him in polls in Iowa at one time by 40 percentage points. In her statement to supporters, standing in front of her gaunt and listless looking husband, she was not able to mouth the word "victory" or any of its standard variants. She could barely hide her contempt for the Iowa Democrats who deserted her. Sanders isn't even a Democrat. According to official...

Hillary Clinton's asterisk-heavy victory in Iowa might have been the narrowest of wins for her, but it was arguably the worst of all possible outcomes for the Democratic Party. As of this writing, the result was a statistical tie, 49.9 percent for Clinton and 49.6 percent for Bernie Sanders. The margin of victory in the delegate count was decided by six coin tosses that "flip truthers" will forever remember as mysteriously biased toward Clinton. Clinton raced to the podium to declare victory, but the news media will continue to describe it as a tie, probably forever. Sanders' supporters won't even...

One of Donald Trump's talking points and biggest applause lines is how "they" -- Japan, China and Mexico -- are "beating us in trade" and are "taking our jobs." He proposes tariffs, for example, on Chinese goods in retaliation for that country's alleged "cheating." To someone who is out of work in an industry where foreign workers do what he or she once did, Trump-like protectionism sounds appealing. But Trump actually proposes punishing the American consumer. As economist Milton Friedman says, protectionism discriminates against low prices. It is certainly true that many countries prop up or subsidize companies or even...

The results are in, and Iowa has spoken. Well, Iowa has spoken on the Republican side. A coin has spoken on the Democratic side. Whatever the case, we now can go back to not hearing about Iowa for four years. Thank goodness. While the results are in, the postmortem continues. And therein lie the crazies. Reports had Hillary Clinton quite upset she didn't decisively win, so much so she canceled a scheduled rope line photo-op and speeches by her husband and daughter after her non-victory speech. Can't really blame her. This was supposed to be her year. It's like a...

Hard-wired into the Supreme Court’s DNA is the notion that the court doesn’t reach out to decide a constitutional issue if it can resolve a case by interpreting a statute. “The court will not anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it,” is how Justice Louis D. Brandeis expressed this principle of judicial restraint 80 years ago in a concurring opinion to which the court often makes reference. Wow. The “guidance” is the memo that established the deferred-action program, issued in November 2014 by Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security. The Take Care...

<p>What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes and censorship have to do with higher learning?</p> <p>American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else.</p>