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PINEVILLE, La. — Somewhere among the thousands beneath a grassy hill here lies the body of Amédé Ardoin. He was singular in life: one of the greatest accordion players ever to come out of south Louisiana. A Creole prodigy who traveled the countryside playing his bluesy two-steps and waltzes, he changed Cajun music and laid down the roots for zydeco. At his death at the age of 44 in 1942, he was Case No.13387 in the state psychiatric hospital, destined for an anonymous burial. Years of attempts to recover the body of Amédé, as he is widely known, have come...

Dozens of congressional Democrats are joining Republicans to back legislation blocking the Obama administration’s new rule to redefine its jurisdiction over the nation’s waterways. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers made the regulation final Wednesday in an attempt to clarify that small streams, wetlands, headwaters and tributaries are covered by the Clean Water Act and the rules that go along with it. Opponents labeled the rule as a massive “power grab” by the Obama administration that could give federal officials authority over every creek and puddle. Three moderate Democrats in the Senate and 24 in...

Marco Rubio skidded. Jeb Bush slid. Ben Carson zoomed. Mike Huckabee bounced. Scott Walker stayed steady. And that’s how you end up with a five-way tie for first place in the latest Quinnipiac University national poll on the GOP Sixteeners. Put another way: With five candidates evenly dividing half of the vote, there is no first place. While Rubio lost a third of his support and Bush continued to droop, losing three points for the second month in a row, all five can say with confidence that they will meet the polling criterion for the first GOP debate, hosted by...

Columnist and author of “Adios, America” Ann Coulter argued current immigration policy is “100%” about trying to change the US ” into a direction that is more favorably disposed to vote for the Democrats” on Wednesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel. Coulter began by praising Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos for debating her on his show and doing a “fantastic job” with the interview, something that she said no one else will do. ... Coulter also stated that she thinks current immigration policy is “100%” about importing voters and said of Republicans who oppose closing the border, “They are looking...

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Russia's army is massing troops and hundreds of pieces of weaponry including mobile rocket launchers, tanks and artillery at a makeshift base near the border with Ukraine, a Reuters reporter saw this week. Many of the vehicles have number plates and identifying marks removed while many of the servicemen had taken insignia off their fatigues. As such, they match the appearance of some of the forces spotted in eastern Ukraine, which Kiev and its Western allies allege are covert Russian detachments.

Clinton Foundation took at least $1,250,000 from Qatar and World Cup committee embroiled in soccer bribery scandal - and up to $100,000 from FIFA itself The fast-moving FIFA bribery scandal now has a Clinton connection, after news that the nation of Qatar and its 2022 World Cup organizing committee - and even FIFA itself - donated between $1.3 million and $5.55 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The scandal-hit football world authority is listed by the foundation as having handed over at least $50,001 and as much as $100,000 to the Clinton's controversial organization in a direct...

Politico reported Wednesday on a controversial statement made by Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in a piece entitled “Scott Walker on mandatory ultrasounds: ‘It’s just a cool thing out there.'” The only problem? Walker never said that. In an interview with radio host Dana Loesch, Walker defended a law he signed that required an ultrasound be performed before an abortion. But the context makes clear that ultrasounds were a “cool thing,” not mandatory ultrasounds before an abortions. In particular, he made his statement during a discussion of people who keep ultrasounds of their own children:

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have been hit with a racketeering lawsuit in Florida court. The lawsuit, filed by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, includes a legal request to have the Florida judge seize the private server on which Hillary Clinton and her aides hosted their emails while she served as secretary of state. Klayman has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons and other prominent politicians. The racketeering, influenced and corrupt organizations, or RICO, case alleges the former first couple and their family philanthropy traded political favors for donations or generous speaking fees for Bill Clinton...

Greta:Off the Record By the end of June, the US Supreme Court could make a ruling that impacts 8 million people on ObamaCare - and the Obama administration has no contingency plan

“Today” correspondent Jenna Bush Hager is in the running for a new NBCUniversal daytime talk show in development that could eventually replace “The Meredith Vieira Show,” sources told Page Six. The Bush daughter is one of several people testing for a panel-style chat program to replace “Vieira,” which has seen soft ratings since its launch last season. Hager, 33, was spotted out in Los Angeles last week testing for the potential pilot, which we hear would include both male and female hosts.

The Islamist group Hamas used its 2014 Gaza war with Israel to "settle scores" with rival Palestinians, executing at least 23 in possible war crimes, Amnesty International said Wednesday. A report by the London-based rights group detailed the "brutal campaign of abductions, torture and unlawful killings against Palestinians accused of 'collaborating' with Israel" by Hamas, de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip enclave. The report details the "extrajudicial execution of at least 23 Palestinians and the arrest and torture of dozens of others".

The National Park Service says tours on the USS Arizona Memorial are suspended after a vessel struck and damaged the memorial's dock. Spokeswoman Abby Wines said Wednesday that boats are taking visitors to a spot near the memorial where they may view it from a distance, but visitors are not being taken on it. Wines says the ramp and handrails connecting the dock to the memorial are mangled. Park service and Navy divers are expected to assess the damage from underwater Wednesday. The incident occurred when the hospital ship USNS Mercy and a civilian tugboat contracted by the Navy were...

A lawyer seeking to free two chimpanzees from a state university told a judge Wednesday that their confinement for research purposes is akin to slavery, the involuntary detention of mentally ill people and imprisonment. Steven Wise, an attorney with the Nonhuman Rights Project, told Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Barbara Jaffe in a nearly two-hour hearing that Hercules and Leo are "autonomous and self-determining beings" who should be granted a writ of habeas corpus and be moved from Stony Brook University on Long Island to a sanctuary in Florida. "They're essentially in solitary confinement," Wise told the judge before a crowd...

Lethal wounds identified on a human skull in the Sima de los Huesos, Spain, may indicate one of the first cases of murder in human history, some 430,000 years ago, according to a study published May 27 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Nohemi Sala from Centro Mixto UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos, Spain, and colleagues. The archeological site, Sima de los Huesos in northern Spain, is located deep within an underground cave system and contains the skeletal remains of at least 28 individuals that date to around 430,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene. The only...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ ABRAMS FIRING U.S. soldiers inside an Abrams M1A1 tank fire the main battle gun during Exercise Combined Resolve II at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, June 16, 2014. The soldiers are assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division's Company D, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Squadron, 1st Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Capt. John Farmer Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. AIR CUSHION A landing craft...

In a village 20 km south east of Mosul in northern Iraq, Islamic State (IS) militants have burned an Iraqi Christian woman to death. Sa’ed Mamuzini, representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) office in Mosul, told BasNews on Tuesday that the militants burned the 80-year-old Iraqi Christian woman, who was from Kremlis in the Nimrud area of the Hamdaneya sub district, east of Mosul. Mamuzini said that villagers told him that the woman was killed for failing to comply with the strict laws of the Islamic State. This is the first instance of IS militants burning a person since...

“The priest was kidnapped by three masked people in the early afternoon at his Mar Elian Monastery in the town of Qaryatayn, while he was preparing to welcome an expected influx of refugees from Palmyra.” Father Jacques Mourad had “succeeded the Italian Jesuit Priest Paolo Dall`Oglio as the head of the Mar Moussa Monastery, which is linked to Mar Elian, after Dall`Oglio was kidnapped in 2013 from the northern Aleppo province.” Mourad “worked to foster inter-religious dialogue…”His kidnapping vividly illustrates what a hollow and self-defeating exercise that “dialogue” is, and how mistaken the Church is to place so much hope...

Officials in the Pakistani child rape gang scandal town of Rotherham are moving to ban protests against their own incompetence. They have appealed to the home secretary for emergency special powers under the Public Order Act 1986.The council first came to national prominence when its social services worked together with elements of the police to spectacularly fail to detect the systematic grooming, rape and prostitution of over 1,400 vulnerable children. The victims were often in the care of the council children’s services and “as young as 12″, and “barely pubescent”. Council commissioners claim the protests against them are becoming prohibitively...