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Young Republicans of Galveston County, Texas are apologizing for an event they held over the weekend. They admit that throwing darts at pictures of Democrats went too far. Politics have become divisive, ugly, and many would agree downright nasty over recent years. But some say what happened in League City at a polling place this weekend crossed a line. League City voter Edward Cantu was at the North Galveston County Annex Building Saturday when he noticed a dart throwing contest in the parking lot. The Young Republicans of Galveston County were letting people throw darts at pictures of President Obama,...

Things must be going even worse for the Democrats than the polls suggest. The campaign of incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., for example, has hit rock bottom. How else to explain her lame attempt to blame her electoral peril on racism and sexism? Modern illiberals are incapable of thinking their record or their ideas could lead to misfortune.

CHICAGO – A Chicagoan made a video – and a statement – when he donned a Hazmat suit and an Obama mask, and took to the streets in the president’s hometown to highlight Obama’s handling of the Ebola threat.

Theft: As "calibration errors" switch votes in Illinois and Maryland, an election watchdog group sues the latter over massive voting by noncitizens in one county after discovering voters registered in multiple states. The fact that many people will do anything to get out of jury duty has exposed massive fraudulent voting in Frederick County, Md., that may have been going on for years. Illegal aliens who stated they were noncitizens on jury duty forms were found to have cast votes in elections. The Virginia Voters Alliance (VVA) cross-checked jury duty forms with individual voting records and found that hundreds of...

Emblematic of Obama’s entire second term, really. After the Sandy Hook shootings in December 2012, he made gun control his top policy priority to start his second term. Public support for action spiked in the emotional aftermath of the murders; the White House, mindful of Rahm Emanuel’s advice to never let a crisis go to waste, demanded that Congress act quickly to address gun violence, knowing that public opinion would soon revert to the pre-Newtown status quo as that emotion faded. Republicans stood firm for Second Amendment rights, though, arguing — correctly — that nothing proposed by Democrats would reduce...

The spate of campaign fliers that use images of lynchings, Jim Crow laws and the recent racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, to urge blacks to vote in next week’s election somehow failed to grab the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.The NAACP headquarters in Washington wasn’t prepared to answer questions about the fliers and mailers circulated in black communities in Georgia, Maryland and North Carolina, despite widespread news coverage of it for the past week.“Can you send the photos of the literature and tell me the exact states they have been distributed in so that...

Neither Ted Cruz nor Jeb Bush have declared 2016 Republican presidential bids, but that won't stop the two from firing shots across the bow. The Texas Senator took a jab at the former Florida governor on Thursday, saying during an appearance on CNBC that he is too moderate to run and win votes. Cruz was asked about Bush and other candidates stemming from the Republican Party’s establishment wing — Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, for example — and their consistent failure to win presidencies. “Jeb has not declared his candidacy. I like Jeb. I’m a...

EPA Director Gina McCarthy has praised environmental lawyers for their work, telling them “enforcement really is democracy in action.” “When I think about how effective we’ve been I keep coming back to the same reason for that effectiveness, it’s because our laws have teeth, it’s because EPA is empowered to enforce them,” McCarthy told attendees at the American Bar Association Fall Conference.

Headline only from DrudgeReport: SOURCES: According to latest early voting data from AP, Republican have 10% lead in ballots cast...

If you live in an area with a competitive race, be it for Senate, governor or any other office, parties and activist organizations want to get you to the polls. In addition to phone calls, knocking on doors and offering rides, activists are now using a different tactic — vote-shaming. Residents from Alaska to North Carolina to New York are reporting receiving letters with their voting history in them and a not-so-subtle message — vote this time or we’ll tell your neighbors you didn’t. The letters don’t say which candidate a person voted for, that is impossible to know, but...

AUSTIN - With the formalities of a lightly contested election almost out of the way, the stage is all but set for the arrival of the most anticipated political newcomer in recent Texas history. The George P. Bush era appears ready to begin. About a quarter-century after first speaking at the Republican National Convention, and two years after filing paperwork to run for a then-unspecified state position, the 38-year-old grandson and nephew of presidents is expected to easily be elected land commissioner Tuesday. And while he has maintained a relatively low profile this year, holding few public events and focusing...

We are nearing a point where our smartphones will be able to recognize a face or voice, in real life or on-screen. And identification is only the most basic of the possibilities. Many app-makers are experimenting with software that can also analyze – able to determine someone’s emotions or honesty just by a few facial cues.

Veteran Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) had some harsh words for the Republican Party during a Thursday campaign rally for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). As he has done repeatedly before, Rangel compared some members of the GOP to confederates from the Civil War era. But at the Thursday evening event, he added that they "believe that slavery isn't over." "We have to win. We have to be able to send a national message with Andrew Cuomo. And the thing is: Everything we believe in — everything we believe in — they hate. They don't disagree — they hate! They...

Appearing on “Hannity,” Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said that he believed Republicans were on the cusp of an “historic election.” You know, what I’m seeing on the ground is a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm. I think we are on the verge of an historic election night next Tuesday. I think Republicans are going to retake the U.S. Senate. I think we’re going to retire Harry Reid as Majority Leader. And I tell you Sean, at this point it all comes down to if conservatives show up and vote, and if we get our friends and family...

An inquiry into the swap is complete, but no news until after TuesdayThe Army has apparently completed its investigation of the circumstances surrounding the suspected desertion of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, but no one expects to see the results before Tuesday’s elections. The last thing the Obama administration wants now is a round of attention to the sordid details of another public-relations disaster. Sgt. Bergdahl, at the time a private, walked away from his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and spent nearly five years in Taliban captivity. His captors released him in May in exchange for five high-ranking Taliban terrorist...

It isn’t just Maureen Lipman. This morning the actress and comedienne has announced she will not be voting Labour at the next election. “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse” she writes in Standpoint magazine, “just when the anti-Semitism in France, Denmark, Norway, Hungary is mounting savagely, just when our cemeteries and synagogues and shops are once again under threat. Just when the virulence against a country defending itself, against 4,000 rockets and 32 tunnels inside its borders, as it has every right to do under the Geneva Convention, had been swept aside by the real pestilence of...

Retired Encinitas teacher admits cursive writing on mail ballots similar to hers. The November 2012 mail ballot cast in the name of Dara Welty carries a signature that looks nothing like hers. That’s no surprise. Welty — nature lover, world traveler, opera singer — died in Bolivia in 1998 at age 22. Her home was in Encinitas, where she remains registered to vote to this day. Since her death, 14 votes have been cast in her name. U-T Watchdog found the suspicious pattern and reported on it in July. The District Attorney’s Office this week determined there was “insufficient evidence”...

If you don't know what the Dodd-Frank Act is, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told an audience last weekend, "it's Obamacare for banks." Ryan, outgoing chairman of the House Budget Committee, was echoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who's been using that expression since at least April (and he used it again Wednesday night). Expect to hear the expression more, particularly once a new, probably-Republican-led Senate takes over on Capitol Hill in January. Dodd-Frank, a set of financial regulations passed in the wake of the financial crisis, has been cited by financial reporters, liberal publications, and (most importantly) Republican senators...

FiveThirtyEight’s election forecasting model combines hundreds of opinion polls with historical and demographic information to calculate odds for each Senate race. We estimate the probability that each party will win control of the Senate by running those odds through thousands of simulations. The forecast is updated regularly.

For people who live in nursing or long-term care facilities the process of casting a ballot is not always simple and can be controversial. Election teams sometimes go into the group homes to help residents cast ballots. One woman, who didn’t want to be identified, recorded a conversation with her father about his voting experience. The man, in his 90s, claimed he was confused and perhaps influenced. ... There are individual but unlocked mailboxes for each resident. That’s why they are personally given their ballot.