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Others in party decry email sent to news site calling candidate 'love child of DNC' A Republican Party official from a rural county in the 13th Congressional District apologized Wednesday for racist remarks he wrote about GOP congressional candidate Erika Harold of Urbana. "The words in the commentary I wrote were completely wrong," said Jim Allen, the Republican Party chairman in Montgomery County. "I apologize to Erika Harold, her staff and her supporters." With that, Allen hung up.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska publicly backed gay marriage on Wednesday, becoming the third Republican senator to do so as she spoke out ahead of potentially landmark rulings from the Supreme Court on the issue. Murkowski, 56, wrote in an essay posted on her Senate website that her decision was swayed, in part, by meeting a lesbian couple from Anchorage, one of whom was in the National Guard, who had adopted four children. "This first-class Alaskan family still lives a second-class existence," Murkowski said in her essay. Her announcement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule...

<p>REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WIS.): Not now, but in the future we're going to have labor shortages. We have 10,000 people retiring each and everyday in America when the Baby Boomers retire.</p>

MICHELLE Obama dazzled Dublin with her grace and charm, and almost outshone her husband in Belfast with her eloquence, sounding every inch the professional politician. And that is exactly what could be on the cards for her. The talk in Washington is that she is a politician-in-waiting with her eyes on a particular seat. "She (Michelle) is only waiting for the right time," a Washington political insider told me. And 2016 would fit that bill. By then, her husband will be ending his second term and she would have no campaigning constraints. And 2016 also happens to be the year...

The Obama administration is reportedly asking the NBA and other sports leagues to help it sell Obamacare to the public. According to a report in Politico, "Massachusetts officials who have been in contact with the administration" said Obama's team "plans to push the new coverage options" by potentially partnering with the NBA. The NBA declined to comment on the potential deal that could put superstars like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James in advertisement campaigns. Further, such a deal could enable the Obama administration to use the NBA logo on Obamacare advertisements. As Politico notes, the NBA is appealing to the...

Right rips Rubio as Republican immigration votes slip away By Alexander Bolton - 06/19/13 08:05 PM ET Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is feeling the heat as potential GOP allies are now turning against his immigration reform bill. Republican colleagues who were previously viewed as possible “yes” votes are keeping their distance from the 1,075-page measure. On Wednesday, conservative activists ripped Rubio and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — both sponsors of the bipartisan immigration measure — at a Capitol Hill rally. The crowd, which was protesting the bill’s effort to put millions of illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship, booed...

Joan Walsh needs a significant other in her life, or maybe a dog. Whatever she needs, she needs it soon. Her continued, perpetual outrage over former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is producing enough hot air to cause real climate change. Walsh writes for Salon. That sounds like a magazine about hair and manicures, but the name may be a nod to the oh-so-sophisticated gatherings of the 19th century’s idle elites to pose and discuss the deep issues of the day for their own amusement. “Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Bonapartes. But I...

Video of Beck today 6/19/2013 at the Capital for the Tea Party IRS Protest

President Obama insists his policies are driven by a "common sense" approach. He also speaks in terms of "we the people" and "the government is us." Such declarations are reminiscent of old Soviet posters displayed for all to see: "ALL POWER BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE" and "PEOPLE AND COMMUNIST PARTY ARE ONE." But the real power in the USSR was in the hands of Communist Party leaders. They, in the name of the people, defined foes of centralized government as "enemies of the people." Similarly, Obama's Department of Homeland Security has defined right-wing extremists as "those that are mainly anti-government,...

President Obama's honeymoon with the world is over. What was it, exactly, about Obama's controversy-marred trip to Germany and the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland that fell so flat? Ummm, how about … everything? There were the snarky words from Vladimir Putin, who expressed an almost Soviet-esque distance from Washington in his views about Syria. "Of course our opinions do not coincide," the Russian leader said bluntly. There was the coded warning from Chancellor Angela Merkel about spying on friends, and her and Obama's continuing frostiness over the issue of economic stimulus versus austerity. Above all, there was Obama's vague...

You know the deal. Every amendment that adds significant border security to the Gang of Eight bill threatens to scare Democratic votes away, and Rubio, McCain, Graham, and Flake have decided that they’d rather have the bad bill they wrote pass than no bill at all. Four votes against the fence, just as Conn Carroll predicted this morning: Senators on Tuesday rejected building the 700 miles of double-tier border fencing Congress authorized just seven years ago, with a majority of the Senate saying they didn’t want to delay granting illegal immigrants legal status while the fence was being built. The...

Mexican Latinos make up more than two thirds of all Latinos in the United States, according to a new Pew Hispanic report. Of the 51.9 million Latinos living in the United States in 2011, more than 33.5 million trace their family back to Mexico. The report also found Mexican-Americans to be of the lowest average age (25), while Cuban Americans were the oldest, at 40. Argentineans had the highest average household income in 2011, at $55,000 and Hondurans the lowest at $31,000 also giving Hondurans the highest poverty rate among U.S. Hispanics, at 33 percent. Mexicans averaged $38,000, with a...

A Facebook page has been recently created by fanatical Obama supporters to attack Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Posse lead investigator Lt. Mike Zullo. Lt. Mike Zullo and members of the Cold Case Posse have done diligent investigative work over the past 21 months and it has paid off. Mike Zullo has proven that Barack Obama on August 27, 2011 displayed a 100% fraudulent birth certificate in PDF form to the United States public. Mike Zullo had his evidence backed by a Hawaiian professional court certified document expert who specializes in computer generated handwriting. With Reed Hayes aboard and...

<p>Small business owners' fear of the effect of the new health-care reform law on their bottom line is prompting many to hold off on hiring and even to shed jobs in some cases, a recent poll found.</p> <p>"We were startled because we know that employers were concerned about the Affordable Care Act and the effects it would have on their business, but we didn't realize the extent they were concerned, or that the businesses were being proactive to make sure the effects of the ACA actually were minimized," said attorney Steven Friedman of Littler Mendelson. His firm, which specializes in employment law, commissioned the Gallup poll.</p>

On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh revisited his earlier remark about the Republican Party being embarrassed of its base. In an argument pegged off the immigration reform debate, Limbaugh said the GOP is “hanging by a thread,” willing to sacrifice a few more elections due to losing its base. “People have said the country is hanging by a thread,” Limbaugh noted. “Well so is the party. The Republican Party is hanging by a thread.” Some do realize it, he added, pointing to the idea that “they’re embarrassed of their base and wouldn’t mind at all if the base left the Republican Party,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is planning a major push using executive powers to tackle the pollution blamed for global warming in an effort to make good on promises he made at the start of his second term. "We know we have to do more — and we will do more," Obama said Wednesday in Berlin. Obama's senior energy and climate adviser, Heather Zichal, said the plan would boost energy efficiency of appliances and buildings, expand renewable energy and use the Environmental Protection Agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate heat-trapping pollution from coal-fired power plants. Zichal,...

President Barack Obama's job approval rating slipped slightly to 49 percent in June despite controversies over NSA surveillance and the IRS targeting of conservative groups, according to a new poll from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Oh, and fewer Americans are using the word "socialist" now than in early 2009 as a one-word description for Obama, Pew found. Pew has kept track of one-word descriptions for the president. In April 2009, the top five were, in descending order: "Intelligent," "good," "socialist," "liberal," "great." In September 2012, they were "good/good man," "trying/tried/tries," "president," "failed/failure" and "incompetent," with "socialist" in the 11th...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win Florida against both Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election, a new poll finds. If the election were held today, Clinton would top Bush 50 percent to 43 percent, and she would best Rubio 53 percent to 41 percent, according to Wednesday’s survey from Quinnipiac. Vice President Joe Biden would trail both of Florida’s Republican favorites. If he were the Democratic candidate, Bush would win 47 percent to 43 percent, and Rubio would narrowly defeat Biden 45 percent to 43 percent. (PHOTOS: Who’s talking about Hillary...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supporters of far-reaching immigration legislation rejected a challenge Wednesday from Senate conservatives demanding evidence that the nation's borders are secure before millions living in the United States unlawfully can gain legal status. The vote came as lawmakers on both sides of the issue digested a startling Congressional Budget Office forecast that the bill would fail to prevent a steady increase in illegal residents in the future, even though it would grant legal status to millions already in the country without the necessary papers. "Illegality will not be stopped, but it will only be reduced by 25 percent,"...

Several thousand protesters poured onto the West Lawn of the Capitol Wednesday afternoon to join a tea party rally called “Audit the IRS". Many of the protesters came from a press conference on immigration on the other side of the Capitol, carrying signs that railed against immigration reform on one side and against the IRS on the other. Among the slogans were “1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual,” “IRS is our KGB,” and “Waterboard the IRS.” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) told protesters that “a majority of people are saying, ‘We don’t trust the government now,’” and...

Subbing for Biggirl & Fudd Fan...

DENVER– Senate President John Morse issued a national plea for help to out-of-state supporters from Boston to San Francisco as Colorado Democrats went on the offensive Tuesday to save him from a recall vote. A spokeswoman for A Whole Lot of People for John Morse announced Tuesday that a protest had been filed to nullify the recall petitions within hours after the Colorado Secretary of State’s office declared that the petitions were sufficient to force a recall election. Meanwhile, Morse urged out-of-state supporters to help him keep his Colorado Springs legislative seat by donating their money and time. “[A]ny help...

Democrats fell far short of winning the House in 2012, an otherwise banner year for the party, and many are privately glum about taking back the chamber in 2014. But that grim immediate outlook raises a far more troubling longer-term prospect for Democrats: that the newly drawn congressional lines have tilted the electoral playing field so decisively in the GOP’s favor that the party could control the House through 2020.

President Barack Obama gives his weekly address, May 5, 2012. Credit: White House. Washington D.C., Jun 18, 2013 / 05:22 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite passing the U.S. House of Representatives, a bill to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy faces an uncertain future as President Obama's administration has suggested that he will veto it. “(S)cience is on our side,� Representative Marsha Blackburn, (R- Tenn.) told MSNBC in an interview. Blackburn joined other pro-life representatives, including Michelle Bachmann (R- Minn.) and Virginia Foxx (R- N.C.) in defending the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions 20 weeks...

More than a dozen FBI agents are assigned to a criminal probe into Internal Revenue Service scrutiny of conservative political groups, FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Wednesday. Mueller spoke as Tea Party conservatives rallied outside the U.S. Capitol in the sixth week of a controversy that prompted President Barack Obama to fire acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller. At least 1,000 protesters gathered at an "Audit the IRS" event organized by the Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella group of the anti-Washington movement whose members favor lower taxes and less government spending.

A budget shortfall has forced a Pentagon security unit to sharply cut back on regular investigations used to update security clearances for defense contractor employees. In a little-noticed announcement posted on its website on June 7, the Defense Security Service said that "due to a funding shortfall," it has been obliged to suspend "most" routine re-investigations of defense contractor employers cleared at the "Top Secret" level, at least through the end of September.

'Women for Weiner' hosts event By: Maggie Haberman June 19, 2013 03:53 PM EDT Meet the Women for Weiner. The former congressman, who apologized for the lewd picture scandal that ended his House career before launching a bid last month for New York City mayor, is holding a fundraiser hosted by “Women for Anthony” next week at the Manhattan home of an education activist and philanthropist. The host committee is led by his wife, Huma Abedin, and includes her sister, Heba; Rory Tahari, wife of designer Elie Tahari; and Cheryl Saban, the wife of California-based mega-donor Haim Saban, who funded...

June 19, 2013 MarkeyÂ’s State of Residence Questioned by Lachlan Markay A conservative group is challenging Democrat Ed MarkeyÂ’s Massachusetts residency less than a week before he faces a special election for a U.S. Senate seat in that state.Markey, currently a member of the House of Representatives, should legally be considered a resident of Maryland, America Rising PAC stated in a Tuesday complaint filed with the Maryland state comptroller.The group also claims Markey violated Maryland law by failing to file Maryland tax returns despite living primarily in that state.Markey has vehemently denied that he is officially a Maryland resident. He...

Tea party protesters jeer Marco Rubio, CBO By: Jose DelReal June 19, 2013 01:03 PM EDT A large gathering of tea party supporters met outside of Capitol on Wednesday to express their frustrations over immigration legislation moving forward in Congress — including boos for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other lawmakers working on the bill. “Marco Rubio has not read his own bill!” said Robert Rector, a senior researcher for the Heritage Foundation. “This bill is at its core amnesty,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who organized the event, told the sympathetic crowd. “We’re here to today… to take this debate...

Irish parliamentarians spar over 'war criminal' Obama's summit visit By Julian Pecquet - 06/19/13 12:43 PM ET President Obama's visit to the Group of Eight summit has created a political row in Ireland after an outspoken liberal lawmaker on Wednesday denounced the U.S. president as a “war criminal” for his drone use and his decision to arm the Syrian rebels. Parliamentarian Clare Daly said her country's government had showcased the country “as a nation of pimps, prostituting ourselves in return for a pat on the head,” The Irish Times reports. The “unprecedented slobbering” during Obama's two-day visit to Northern Ireland,...

Despite ridiculous hype about a recent CNN poll that showed an exaggerated 8-point drop in Obama’s approval rating, there’s no doubt that his approval rating is about 4 points lower than it was in January 2013. There’s lots of speculation as to why—see, e.g., Nate Silver. But I want to say why it matters. Justin Wolfers, for one, is dubious. And a journalist also emailed me on this subject today. [Update: That journalist was John Dickerson. See his piece here.] The decline matters for three reasons. First, it matters for the 2014 election. A simple model of House election outcomes...

“You don’t need to be buddies with someone to establish an effective relationship,” said Mr. Burns, who now teaches at Harvard. “Not everyone can be Roosevelt and Churchill forming a personal bond to end the Second World War.” Even with friends, however, there is tension. President François Hollande of France was initially thrilled with Mr. Obama because he saw him as an ally against Ms. Merkel on economic issues.

At a June 18 gun control rally in New Hampshire sponsored by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, the name of Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was read aloud as a recent victim of gun violence. Throughout the rally, organizers read a list of names of people who had been killed with guns since the Dec. 14 shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. When they read Tsarnaev's name, pro-gun supporters who were at the rally to counter Bloomberg's group began shouting, "He's a terrorist," according to a report by Tim Buckland of the...

Tocqueville saw a nation of individuals who were defiant of authority. Today? Welcome to Planet Government.In "Democracy in America," published in 1833, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the way Americans preferred voluntary association to government regulation. "The inhabitant of the United States," he wrote, "has only a defiant and restive regard for social authority and he appeals to it . . . only when he cannot do without it." Unlike Frenchmen, he continued, who instinctively looked to the state to provide economic and social order, Americans relied on their own efforts. "In the United States, they associate for the goals...

A Republican congressman is reviving the birther conspiracy and calling on Congress to revisit key issues that he says test “the president’s validity.” When pressed by conservative radio host Rick Wiles last week, South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan played along with a conspiracy dubbed by Wiles as “the original scandal”: President Obama’s “phony identification papers.” Duncan, who chairs the House Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee, went on to suggest that investigations into President Obama’s place of birth was an issue deserving of the Supreme Court’s attention. WILES: But if we know they’re lying about all these other things, why not go...

At Wednesday's hearing, Feinstein said the NSA collects "not the names, but the data. Not the content, but the data." A drone wouldn't collect the content of your conversation, either. It would only show exactly where you are and when. Which is what your phone call metadata says, too. Nevertheless, Dianne Feinstein is anti-NSA paranoia but pro-drone paranoia.

Outlets like Politico are overselling this, but for understandable reasons. The thought of a nationally known tea-party hero bloodying the nose of the great GOP hope in 2016 over amnesty is irresistible to political media. It’s momentarily irresistible to tea partiers too, I bet: Grassroots conservatives complain endlessly about Rubio these days due to his Gang of Eight fiasco but he’s gotten off with a wrist slap among prominent conservatives and most right-wing big media, apart from the occasional perfunctory expression of “disappointment.” How many border hawks out there wouldn’t want to see West, a guy respected by the grassroots...

Congress is trying to fool you.Here’s how they do business. A piece of legislation is going to cost trillions of dollars, but Members of Congress don’t want the public to see that. Instead, they have the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) look at the bill for just the first 10 years—and they move any costly items off into the future on purpose.They did it with Obamacare—saved the budget bombshells for later. Now they’re trying to do it with immigration.Yesterday, the CBO released its score of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill. Heritage experts are still analyzing the full report, but a...

The Clintons are getting the old band back together again for one last geriatric tour. Hillary 2016. Because 22 years of Clintons dominating the Beltway isn’t enough. Her campaign slogan: “Vote for me. I am a woman. What difference does it make?” The Draft Hillary movement is really taking off. There hasn’t been this much excitement behind a Draft Hillary movement since, well, the last time there was a Draft Hillary movement. Remember that? Back in 2008? When she was the “inevitable nominee”? She was the “most electable” Democrat running? She was the only one who could beat the Republicans?...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win Florida against both Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election, a new poll finds. If the election were held today, Clinton would top Bush 50 percent to 43 percent, and she would best Rubio 53 percent to 41 percent, according to Wednesday’s survey from Quinnipiac.

Former Congressman Allen West left open the possibility of challenging U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl, in a Republican primary come 2016 on Wednesday. "We'll see what happens down the pike," West said about taking on Rubio in 2016. "God will set my feet on the right path." Appearing a guest co-host on WMAL’s “Mornings on the Mall” in Washington, D.C., West acknowledged that defeating Rubio would be a tall order and could benefit Democrats. "That's a pretty heavy lift, because you're talking about running against a sitting senator, and then, of course, that creates that schism that the other side...

Former Rep. Allen West open to Senate primary challenge against Rubio By Justin Sink - 06/19/13 08:34 AM ET Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said Wednesday that he may mount a primary challenge to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in their state's 2016 U.S. Senate primary. West told station WMAL that he could run for Senate "if I see people that are not taking our country down the right path, if I see people that are not standing up for the right type of principles, and putting their own party politics before what is best for the United States of America."...

Why does the Obama administration treat our military veterans like human garbage? Every year on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Barack Obama and our other politicians make very nice speeches, but the truth about how they feel about our veterans can be seen in how they are treated every single day. In the United States today, there are well over half a million veterans that have been waiting for at least 125 days to have their benefit claims processed. Many of them will ultimately have their claims sent back or denied just so a government employee somewhere can get a...

Who was Morning Joe protecting: the sensitive ears of its viewers, or Hillary Clinton? During a discussion of the death of the feisty and fearless reporter Michael Hastings, Morning Joe bleeped out Joe Scarborough's reading from an email from Hastings to Philippe Reines, Hillary's personal spokesman during her Secretary of State tenure. Hastings had accused Reines of "b---s---" answers on the State Department's handling of Benghazi. The extended bleeping wasn't simply of the offending word, but of Hastings' entire sentence, so listeners never learned the thrust of his accusation. View the video here.

Dennis Michael Lynch, the founder and CEO of TV360 Media and the driving force behind the movie “They Come to America” sat down with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas to discuss his new movie “They Come to America 2″ Having covered the immigration debate from the frontline he had some harsh words for Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and his involvement in the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill. ‘I am so against what he is doing. … He’s got it in his mind that he wants to be the President of the United States and somebody sold him on...

J. Bruce Maffeo came out of Federal District Court at 40 Centre Street on Feb. 9 after arguing the appeal of his client, investigative reporter James Sanders, and looked around to see how many journalists had shown up. Just three: me, Allan Wolper of Editor & Publisher and Mr. Wolper’s student at Rutgers, Tina Bui. Mr. Maffeo got a disgusted look. “The press marginalized Jim as a kook,” he said. “And now they walk by him like he’s a dog run over by a semi.” Back in 1997, Mr. Sanders got two swatches of seat material from a disgruntled source...

Has the U.S. government deprived you of your rights? If so, please do not think that you are helpless or at the mercy of the political justice system anymore. You have legal remedies to pursue. It’s RICO time.... The bottom line is this. You can’t get justice within the political justice system in America anymore because the politicians own it. It is up to you now. What stopped the mob? The Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). What will hold the Obama administration and politicians on both sides of the aisle accountable? RICO. Based on the response and questions...

Listen to the Quinn & Rose Morning Show from 6:00 to 9:00 Eastern on: www.wpgb.com (104.7 Pittsburgh, Pa) http://wysl1040.com/ (Rochester, NY) http://www.talkradio560.com/ (Frostburg, MD) http://wicofm.com/ (Salisbury/Ocean City, MD) http://www.wobx.net/ WOBX - Outer banks NC WVTT 96.7 - Olean, NY http://www.wncoam.com/main.html (Ashland, OH) And now on 244 XM http://tunein.com/radio/The-War-Room-p34761/

Forget Islam: Exercises focuses on fictional 'Free America Citizens' group While two brothers reportedly motivated by Islamic fundamentalism were carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing, the city was hard at work planning a mass casualty terrorism-training exercise in which the perpetrators were American militiamen whose logo includes Uncle Sam hats. The Boston Globe revealed the plot of “Operation Urban Shield,” a simulation by the Department of Homeland Security costing $200,000. The program was slated to take place last weekend to train local Boston law-enforcement agencies to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The Boston newspaper reported officials from a...

Daniel Musso of Brentwood was one of a group of people protesting the Mayors Against Illegal Guns rally. An anti-gun violence rally at the Statehouse plaza on Tuesday turned ugly when gun rights supporters turned out to protest the event and one pro-gun advocate had to be Tasered by Concord Police after resisting their efforts to detain him. Daniel Musso, 52, of Brentwood attempted to interject commentary while John Cantin of Manchester was speaking about his efforts to influence U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, on the background check issue. Musso, who was wearing a pro-Native American rights T-shirt, asked Cantin...