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More than half of some 770,000 soldiers are pessimistic about their future in the military and nearly as many are unhappy in their jobs, despite a six-year, $287 million campaign to make troops more optimistic and resilient, findings obtained by USA TODAY show. Twelve months of data through early 2015 show that 403,564 soldiers, or 52 percent, scored badly in the area of optimism, agreeing with statements such as "I rarely count on good things happening to me." Forty-eight percent have little satisfaction in or commitment to their jobs. The results stem from resiliency assessments that soldiers are required to...

Ted Cruz was on the Adam Carolla Show yesterday where they talked about everything from the IRS and tax reform to big government and career politicians. Give it a listen:audio in link

Miami Five days before he would take the biggest step of his young political career, Marco Rubio called Bernie Navarro, a Miami real estate investor, to ask for a favor. Rubio wanted to have a small, low-key gathering to thank friends and family before his official announcement the next day, and he needed someone to host it. Navarro, like Rubio the son of Cuban exiles, asked permission from his wife. Although she had denied his repeated requests to host a Super Bowl party, there was no hesitation in approving this one. At dusk on a steamy Sunday evening, Rubio, wearing...

Former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio are both from Florida and could make for an effective GOP ticket. But the Constitution makes things tricky. When political handicappers blue-sky about the 2016 GOP presidential ticket, they generally rule out an all-Florida ticket – former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. There are constitutional reasons that make it complicated but not impossible. And in some ways, a Bush-Rubio ticket may make sense. Let’s start with the positives: In a competitive presidential race, the Republicans cannot win without winning Florida. It’s the third most populous state in the country, with...

An Invasion of RefugeesPosted By Daniel Greenfield On April 17, 2015 @ 12:56 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments “This is a place of inspiring memories. Here less than a thousand men, inspired by the urge of freedom, defeated a superior force intrenched in this strategic position,” President Herbert Hoover said.“This small band of patriots turned back a dangerous invasion.”But no matter how often dangerous invasions are defeated, they come again.The thousand men that Hoover spoke of gained their victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain. The Spartan Regiment that fought there when, as Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “All the...

Gov. Rick Scott’s lawsuit against federal healthcare agency over hospital funding would be a “frivolous” would represent the “tea party gone wild,” House Democratic Leader Mark Pafford said Thursday...

A moat around the White House was actually under consideration but was quickly ruled out. You may recall in November 2014, a few months after a man jumped the White House fence, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) suggested to then-acting Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy that one solution to secure the grounds was a barricade of water. But when a federal agency voted unanimously Wednesday morning on a temporary fence plan, a moat wasn’t an option. The agency approved adding steel spikes to the existing fence to fend off jumpers.

rresponsibility: A new report finds that 27.3% of student loans are delinquent. Why does this matter? Because thanks to President Obama, about $1 trillion dollars of student loan debt is owed to the federal government. Obama keeps trying to portray the student loan crisis as a problem suffered by students burdened by a mountain of debt when they graduate, and who are unable to make enough money to pay it back. But that's not the real crisis. First, average student loan debt is only a little over $20,000. A student who gave up his $5-a-day Starbucks habit could pay off...

Raleigh, N.C. — A highway contractor pleaded guilty Thursday in a scheme to supply defective components to bridges in North Carolina, authorities said. Joel De La Torre, 33, of Chicago, pleaded guilty to federal charges of making false statements concerning highway projects and aggravated identity theft. He will be sentenced in July, when he faces up to seven years in prison and $500,000 in fines. Defects were found in October 2011 in elastomeric bridge bearings – slabs of rubber reinforced with multiple layers of steel and placed underneath bridges to absorb shock – that had been shipped to 25 highway...

One of the world’s foremost experts on counter-threat intelligence within the cybersecurity industry, who blew the whistle on vulnerabilities in airplane technology systems in a series of recent Fox News reports, has become the target of an FBI investigation himself. Chris Roberts of the Colorado-based One World Labs, a security intelligence firm that identifies risks before they're exploited, said two FBI agents and two uniformed police officers pulled him off a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 commercial flight Wednesday night just after it landed in Syracuse, and spent the next four hours questioning him about cyberhacking of planes. The FBI interrogation...

A middle school teacher in Hempstead, New York, is recovering from a beating after a student's mother attacked her inside the classroom. Police say she put the teacher in a chokehold, then her 14-year-old niece punched the teacher in the face.

The horrific story of the unarmed Walter Scott’s death at the hands of Officer Michael Slager continues to reverberate. Aside from the incontrovertible evidence on the tape that the accused officer shot him in the back as if he were doing target practice, there has since emerged more tape of the traffic stop itself and audio of the officer speaking with his superiors on the phone raising even more questions about his state of mind at the time of the shooting. But as journalists have gone back and studied the officer’s record and found that he was previously investigated for...

A community group aligned with Democrats is spearheading a rally near Gov. Scott Walker's home in Wauwatosa Monday afternoon to protest the goveror's proposed cuts to education budgets. The rally is planned for 4:30 p.m. at the Juneau Park Play Field, 6500 W. Mount Vernon Ave., with a "possible march to Governor Walker's Wauwatosa home," according to a news release from Wisconsin Jobs Now, which is part of the Schools & Communities United coalition.

.......As Brendan Nyhan at the New York Times explained in February, this sort of thing is called “issue-trespassing,” where one party attempts to co-opt an advantage of the other by pretending to care about something nobody thinks they care about. In this case, the GOP seemed to be admitting that their reputation as the party of the 1 percent wasn’t helpful to their cause, so they decided to try to shift the blame to President Obama. Nyhan points out that data suggests this rarely ever works, because people rely on party stereotypes no matter how hard those parties try to...

One congressman is spearheading an effort to help undocumented immigrants avoid deportation with what some are calling a “get out of deportation” free card. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) and other House Democrats have created the Family Defender Toolkit, an informational pamphlet that includes an “emergency card” that lists the reasons why a person should not be deported. “By using this card after you’ve been arrested or detained, you can explain that under the policy in place today, you should be released because you are not a priority for deportation,” said Rep. Gutiérrez in an introductory video. …

When it comes to foreign policy, the 2016 Republican presidential race is often presented as a contrast between Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and everybody else. As the narrative goes, Paul has a record of advocating for less intervention in foreign affairs, while the rest of the field has endorsed a more muscular posture. But this is an oversimplification. Though the differences Paul has with the rest of the party deserve attention, a far more interesting — and important — debate is the one likely to emerge between Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. On the surface,...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has joined Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in calling for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to abandon his pre-election promise to fight President Obama’s executive amnesty by holding a vote to confirm U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch as Attorney General. “I think that presidents have the right to pick their team,” Bush said in New Hampshire at an event with about 95 voters and “a horde of media,” according to Time Magazine’s Zeke Miller. “The longer it takes to confirm her, the longer Eric Holder stays as Attorney General,” Bush said, echoing a talking point that...

Why A Convention Of States Is Safe: Debunking The Myth Of A Runaway Convention Our Founders wisely created the option of the Convention of States in the Constitution as a tool in case the federal government came to disregard the will of the people. Now some pundits are using scare tactics to misrepresent the Convention and what it could do to the U.S. Constitution.(Sarah Palin Channel) "I’ve happily been advocating that America call a Convention Of States to propose amendments to rein in the Federal government.""This is an option that our founders gave us in Article V of our constitution.""They...

The Minnesota Senate will keep its rule forbidding members from looking at one another during floor debate and will continue to ban everyone from having drinks on the Senate floor.The issues arose Monday during the passage of the rules to govern the Senate. On a 15-44 vote, the Senate decided to keep its current requirement that all speakers must gaze at the Senate president.

On Thursday, the campaign released a memo from Chris Wilson, Cruz’s Director of Research and Analytics and the CEO of WPA Opinion Research, which details the results from polls conducted over the past few weeks. “The latest round of national and early state polls show Senator Cruz firmly in the top tier of candidates only three weeks after announcing his candidacy and with several more announced candidates in the race,” wrote Wilson.