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High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6a09af64-18a7-11e4-a51a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz397k1epX7 The growing threat to France’s mainstream political leaders posed by Marine Le Pen, head of France’s far-right National Front, has been underscored by an opinion poll putting her in the lead for the first time in the race for the next presidential election. The charismatic Ms Le Pen has overtaken former centre-right president Nicolas Sarkozy in voting intentions if the first...

Nobody has ever rooted for that scrappy Romney kid to overcome the odds. Until, maybe, now. Perhaps it says something about us that our most interesting presidential candidates swear they won't run for president. This is true of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and it's increasingly true of Mitt Romney. As regular readers of this column know, I've never been much of a Romney booster. I've also expressed skepticism about the notion he would run again. But let's not let "a foolish consistency" cloud our judgment. There is reason to believe that a third try wouldn't be an absurd venture. First, in...

Boko Haram Mass Abduction: Fears Chibok Girls Being Used as Suicide Bombers Fears are growing that Boko Haram terror group is using the 220 girls it abducted in Chibok last April as suicide bombers. Speculations come as two students were killed and eight were injured in a suicide bombing at a university in Kano, northwest Nigeria. Information Nigeria reported the suicide bomber was a girl. Thirteen people were later killed as two women blew themselves up in two mosques in the town of Potiskum, Yobe State. The same day, Nigerian authorities arrested two suspected Boko Haram members travelling with a...

by Jason DeWitt | Top Right NewsA gaffe? Or Freudian slip? Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL and DNC Chairwoman) made a stunning comment on Obama's pet network, MSNBC, accidentally revealing the truth about her boss: (House Republicans) will be voting for the first time in American history to sue the President of the United States for doing his job.And doing his job actually less often, and a rate that is lower than any President since Grover Cleveland. Um...sure. Who are we to disagree? WATCH:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congress must do something to alleviate the ongoing crisis at the border, and President Obama’s plan to take more unilateral action on immigration reform will make the crisis worse, House Speaker John Boehner argued Thursday. “The crisis on the border is one of the president’s own making, but he still hasn’t learned his lesson,” Boehner told reporters at his weekly press conference. “Now he has threatened to rewrite the law and take more unilateral action on immigration in the coming months. Let me just be clear, such action would create an even greater incentive for more illegal...

Madison — The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Gov. Scott Walker's signature labor legislation Thursday,delivering an election-year affirmation to the governor in one of the three major rulings issued by the justices on union bargaining, election law and same-sex couples. In addition to ruling Walker's labor law constitutional, the state's highest court also upheld the state's voter ID law and a 2009 law providing limited benefits to gay and lesbian couples, leaving liberals with one consolation to soften the sting of the two larger conservative victories. "Our courts have continued to give deference to our Legislature and in all three of...

Robert Kennedy, speaking of John Kennedy, using words they would both probably use to praise John Kerry, said that JFK’s favorite quote was this: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” This quote from Dante, derived from his Inferno, describes the way Kerry performs his role as secretary of State. Kerry clearly envisioned and passionately warned that the people of Israel and Palestine must choose between two alternative futures. The first future is the negotiated creation of a two-state solution that would leave Israel and a new state of...

Slaves to gut emotion, and averse to rigorous academic research, liberals do not bother to figure out who is right or wrong in any conflict. It's official: the Democratic Party has abandoned Israel to its fate. This development has nothing to do with that most ancient of hatreds, anti-Semitism. Rather, in an age when a compelling narrative increasingly trumps a cold, hard history lesson, Israel's version of the events leading up to Operation Protective Edge, while factually sound, is a snoozer. The results of a recent Pew Research Center poll revealed the largest partisan gap in forty years on the...

Everyone from liberal journalists to a member of the English cricket team is gunning for Israel at the moment. The Independent describes it as ‘rogue state’. The Guardian considers the Israeli 'occupation' of Gaza as a 'shameful injustice'. Meanwhile, cricketer Moeen Ali has pledged his support for the Palestinians by sporting 'Free Gaza' wristbands. Respectable opinion knows which side wears the black hats in this conflict. What is it about Israel that arouses so much anger? Is it because it's a theocratic state, committed to destroying its neighbour, which uses civilians as human shields, tortures and kills its political opponents,...

A bill to fund border security blew up in House Speaker John Boehner's face on Thursday, leaving Republicans in disarray and struggling to reconcile Tea Party demands with the need to deal with a humanitarian crisis on the southwestern border with Mexico. Tea Party-backed Senator Ted Cruz of Texas had his fingerprints all over Thursday's debacle for Boehner. Cruz, a potential 2016 presidential contender, had lobbied his House Republican colleagues to reject the legislation on the grounds that it was too timid. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski tried to contrast her party's approach to that of Republicans when, during...

House Speaker John A. Boehner was always expected to have trouble passing emergency funds for the crisis at the Southwestern border -- but Republican Sen. Ted Cruz made his job impossible. Cruz, the hard-line Texas Republican, has been working behind the scenes to stir up conservative opposition to a House GOP plan to approve $659 million to secure the border and handle the flow of unaccompanied immigrant youths. And it worked. Amid disarray, House GOP leaders canceled Thursday's vote after it was clear they did not have the votes. House GOP leaders bristled at the senator's interference on their turf....

BAY CITY, MI — Wellspring Lutheran Services has secured a federal contract to provide short-term shelter at its Bay City facility for unauthorized immigrant children and teens from Central America. Wellspring CEO David Gehm said Thursday, July 31, that the nonprofit is partnering with Lutheran Social Services of Michigan to provide care and services for the undocumented youths. According to Gehm, 24 boys and girls, ages 6-13, will be housed at Wellspring's Bay City facility at 304 N. Tuscola Road. That facility currently serves as a foster home for teens who are transitioning into independent living. Those youths will be...

A study released by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) on Thursday said the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new ozone standards could cause Arkansas to lose more than 10,000 jobs, pay more than $240 million in environmental compliance costs, and shut down most of the state’s coal-fired electric generation. “Manufacturing in the United States is making a comeback, and we’re reducing emissions at the same time, but tightening the current ozone standard to near unachievable levels would serve as a self-inflicted wound to the U.S. economy at the worst possible time,” NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons said. “This rule...

Louisiana businesses and consumers could face one of the most expensive federal regulations in history, according to a new study released Thursday (July 31) by the National Association of Manufacturers, an industry advocacy group. The study, conducted for the association by NERA Economic Consulting, estimates it will cost Louisiana companies $189 billion over two decades to comply with new limits on ozone emissions the Environmental Protection Agency is slated to propose later this year. The report says the Louisiana economy stands to lose as much as $53 billion in gross state product and nearly 117,000 jobs per year if the...

"Right this way, Ma'am...can I take you bags? Suite 103..." by Brian Hayes | Top Right NewsThousands of veterans are suffering in outdated facilities, many dying from neglect, or even just waiting for an appointment. Millions of Americans remain out of work or are homeless, children are hungry or go without basic supplies in dilapidated schools.But the Federal government seems unwilling or unable to fix these problems. But there seems to be no limit to the blank check Obama will write for his most-favored amongst us: illegal invaders.And now he has spent millions to renovate facilities in Texas to house...

PITTSBURGH —Union miners and others opposed to stricter pollution rules for coal-burning power plants proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency clashed inside and outside the city's federal building on the first of two days of public hearings on the new regulations. About 5,000 union members, led by the United Mine Workers of America, on Thursday marched to the William S. Moorhead Federal Building chanting, "Hey, hey, EPA! Don't take our jobs away!" A few members of a Pittsburgh-based union, Boilermakers Local 154, traded shouts and insults with some 300 environmental activists who stood on a nearby street corner as the...

Gov. Jerry Brown was about to leave Mexico’s capital after four days of talks pressing on the environment, and he wasn’t sure, broadly speaking, how his diplomacy might add up. Meetings held out of public view – dinner with business magnate Carlos Slim and talks with the poet Homero Aridjis and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, a founder of Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution, among others – were “more critical” on any number of issues, Brown said, than was on display at his official functions. “Some of the more private guys,” Brown said, were “not that optimistic” that people are interested...

CIA Director John Brennan has apologized to the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the CIA’s Inspector General determined that agency officials inappropriately searched the stand-alone computer network used by committee staffers in preparing their report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program. Earlier this year, Brennan denied the C.I.A. had illegally monitored the committee’s computers calling the suggestions as ”just beyond the scope of reason.” To follow up on the Inspector General’s determination Brennan has ordered the formation of an accountability board to review the incident and make recommendations that could potentially lead to disciplinary action.

The Foreign Affairs minister Charlie Flanagan has said he has no plans to expel Israel's ambassadorto Ireland. Minister Flanagan said Ireland's foreign policy had always been based on dialogue, which could not happen if ambassadors were not present. He was facing calls in the Seanad for Ireland to expel Israeli ambassador Boaz Modai over Israel's actions against Palestinians in Gaza. Minister Flanagan said expelling the ambassador would only mean more difficulties for Ireland. "The corollary of course would be the recall or expulsion of our own ambassador in Israel and the crippling of our own embassy in Tel Aviv," he...

Rally the base. Raise cash.You'd think the last thing any president would do is to constantly bring up his own name in connection with the idea of impeachment. It's not exactly a positive association. But why would that matter to President Persecution Complex? We're way past the point where anyone believed he could govern the nation effectively, so his only political play at this point is to make you feel sorry for him, and the way to do that is make the case that those mean old Republicans want to persecute him. How? By impeaching him! Obama is trying to...