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In a news conference in Ethiopia, President Barack Obama responded at length to Mike Huckabee’s comment that the Iran deal is marching Israelis to “the door of the oven” — saying it was part of a pattern of attacks that “would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so sad.”Without naming names, Obama said a senator who is a presidential candidate — an apparent reference to Texas Republican Ted Cruz — had said the president was a leading state sponsor of terrorism and another had referred to Secretary of State John Kerry as Pontius Pilate, a reference to remarks by Sen. Tom...

Real estate magnate Donald Trump moved to the top of the 2016 Republican presidential field in a CNN poll released on Sunday, edging out rival Jeb Bush... Trump was backed by 18% of Republicans in the CNN poll, which was conducted entirely after his July 18 criticism of Republican Senator John McCain's war record. His lead over Bush, a former Florida governor who was at 15%, was within the poll's margin of error. ...

This was not supposed to happen.After pledging, investing and otherwise guaranteeing the Chinese stock market to the tune of 10% of GDP, and intervening on at least 40 different occasions in the past month ever since China's stock bubble burst in late June, with the subsequent crash nearly taking the Shanghai Composite red for the year, overnight China officially lost control for the second time, when after a weak start to the Monday trading session, things turned very ugly in the last hour, when the Shanghai Composite plunged by 8.48%, closing nearly at the lows, and tumbling some 345 points...

Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rand Paul are in. Donald Trump is out.A total of 14 candidates will participate in the Voters First Republican Presidential Forum on Monday, Aug. 3, at St. Anselm College. The two-hour forum,intended to highlight the importance of the first-in-the-nation primary,along with the Iowa caucuses and South Carolina’s early primary.“I am in the North Country today,” Bush said Thursday,“meeting with voters about my message of reforming the culture in Washington. I’m looking forward to participating in the August 3rd forum. It’s clear it is a great opportunity to engage with Granite Staters about the important issues...

The Queen, apparently impatient to get to church, veered onto a grass verge to avoid a family strolling through Windsor Great Park. The monarch took to the wheel of a Jaguar X-type estate as she drove herself down the Long Walk on the Windsor estate on Sunday. But when she found her path blocked by the young family, she clearly felt she did not have time to wait for them to get out of the way. Despite diverting around them, the Queen, who is said to be furious over the leaking of a home movie of herself as a child...

Washington (AFP) - Higher costs for needed generic drugs. Longer copyright protections than the global standard. Foreign investors empowered to overrule governments. A more tightly-regulated Internet. Those are just some of the potential pitfalls from any deal that could emerge from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-country free-trade and investment pact shrouded in secrecy as negotiations head into the final stage in Hawaii next week. A handful of draft chapters of the TPP, leaked via Wikileaks, have highlighted the proposed treaty's heavy emphasis on expanding protections for corporate rights and assets like intellectual property -- patents, copyrights and databases -- that...

Disappointing, but not surprising. The depressing reality though that is that most of the Republican field has endorsed amnesty in one form or another. So this isn't much of a surprise. Trump is using his own vocabulary, but he's echoing the same amnesty talking points you could hear from Marco Rubio... or Barack Obama. During Friday's interview, Trump said the U.S. should take a two-step approach to the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the country. "Well, the first thing we do is take the bad ones — of which there are, unfortunately, quite a few," said Trump,...

These Bulldogs are on a mission looking for new monthly donors. Freeper, Longfellow, has generously donated 50 of these Marine Bulldogs to be used in this quarter's fundraiser. He (the Bulldog, not Longfellow)is about 6 1/2 inches tall with suction cups on all four feet. A Marine Bulldog is available to the first 50 new monthly donors of $10 or more or a $10 increase to an existing monthly.To claim your gift, please Freepmail me your address and pledge number. Semper Fi

Sen. Cruz: Today’s Events Show the McConnell-Reid Leadership Team Operates for One Party: The Washington Party American people elected a Republican majority believing it would somehow be different from a Democratic oneVideo of Sen. Cruz’s floor speech todayWASHINGTON, D.C. – After speaking on the Senate floor today, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) issued the following statement:“We’ve just seen something extraordinary on the Senate floor. The American people elected a Republican majority believing that a Republican majority would be somehow different from a Democratic majority in the United States Senate. Unfortunately, the way the current Senate operates, there is one party, the...

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) was rebuked by his Senate colleagues on Sunday as he tried to force a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood. Lee had tried to attach an amendment eliminating all federal funds for Planned Parenthood to the vote on Congress’s must-pass highway legislation. The amendment was rejected by the chair of the Senate, who called it out of order because it was not germane to the highway bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decided last week that he would only allow two amendments to the bill – a repeal of ObamaCare and a reauthorization of the Export-Import...

(CNN) —The Republican National Committee has a message for candidates like Donald Trump: No more name-calling. That's what the party's chief strategist and communications director Sean Spicer said on CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday. "I understand it's going to be the nature of any primary for folks to discuss the differences between themselves on policy issues, and I think that's fine," Spicer said. "The name calling, however, needs to stop." Spicer added: "We have got to remember what Ronald Reagan taught us, his 11th commandment, 'Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican.'" Spicer didn't point his comments directly at...

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The government has once again violated a federal court’s injunction prohibiting the implementation of President Obama’s executive amnesty plan. The action comes right before high-ranking federal government officials, including the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have been ordered to appear in an August hearing to show why they should not be held in contempt for prior failures to comply with the injunction.

(CNN)In the first national telephone poll since Donald Trump earned rebukes from Republican leaders over his comments about Senator John McCain's military service, the real estate mogul has increased his support among GOP voters and now stands atop the race for the party's nomination. The new CNN/ORC Poll finds Trump at 18% support among Republicans, with former Florida governor Jeb Bush just behind at 15%, within the poll's margin of error. They are joined at the top of the pack by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with 10% support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are registered to vote. Trump's backing...

Donald Trump is running strong in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to two new NBC News-Marist polls. Trump leads the Republican presidential field in New Hampshire, getting support from 21 percent of potential GOP primary voters. He's followed by Jeb Bush at 14 percent, Scott Walker at 12 percent and John Kasich at 7 percent. Chris Christie and Ben Carson are tied at 6 percent in the Granite State, and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are at 5 percent each. In Iowa, Walker and Trump are in the Top 2 - with Walker at 19...

FERGUSON • Tiahesia Palmer was checking out some of the free services, but her son wanted a haircut. So the Ferguson resident signed up Isiah, 7, to get his head shaved at the haircut tent at Saturday’s “Day of Hope.” He took off his ballcap and sat silently while a woman with the Elaine Steven Beauty College cleaned up around his ears. Palmer smiled. Wearing an “I-heart-FERG” T-shirt, she was happy that her community had attracted the event. Hundreds attended the festivities at Forestwood Park in Ferguson to receive free goods and services. The city and about 40 local churches,...

NAIROBI, Kenya – President Barack Obama and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta sparred over support for gay rights here Saturday, with Obama urging fast changes and Kenyatta saying it was not something Kenyan culture or society would “accept.” Linking LGBT discrimination in Africa to the history of Jim Crow laws in America, Obama said ensuring gay rights must be a priority on a continent — and in a country — where bias against gays is accepted, and violence against gays is common. Standing by Obama’s side at a joint press conference here in front of the Kenyan state house, Kenyatta repeated...

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Saturday seized on new reports that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is under criminal investigation for her private email server, warning that “bad things have to happen.” “I don’t know how a person with that cloud over their head can actually be running for president,” Trump told a rally in Iowa. “If the prosecutors are honorable, if they’re fair, they’re just, sadly, bad things have to happen because what she did is very serious and very criminal,” he said.

SUBOTICA, Serbia. — They call it “the jungle,” but it’s really just a tangle of dirt paths through stunted trees near an abandoned brick factory. Between 150 and 200 people — mostly men, with a smattering of young families — cluster in discrete groups in scattered campsites, most resting on dusty blankets, the earth blackened here and there by the remains of the previous night’s fires. “We have people from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Morocco,” said Mohamd, 42, a former truck driver for a factory near Aleppo, Syria, who hopes to reach the Netherlands. “Am I forgetting anyone?”...

President Obama’s top counterterrorism advisor said today the White House is about to launch a new effort to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, citing escalating costs that is forcing the U.S. government to spend $3 million a year to house and care each of the 116 remaining detainees. Speaking at the Aspen Security Conference, deputy national security advisor Lisa Monaco said the White House is drafting a plan to close the prison that it will present shortly to Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Among its details: stepping up transfers of 52 detainees who...