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Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Louisiana Governor and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal is continuing to voice his growing outrage over the Common Core state education standards, which the federal government played an influential role in encouraging most states to adopt. Speaking at a Thursday luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. hosted by the American Principles Project, a conservative organization rallying opposition to Common Core, Jindal argued that the Common Core standards stand against American values and causes local communities to lose...

Two students were shot this evening outside Frederick High School near the gymnasium, police said. Officers were called shortly after 8 p.m. The assailants, described as four black males dressed in black, are at large, said Officer First Class M. Cox. A SWAT team was searching the area. Two students were wounded, and all other students and staff in the building are safe, according to an email alert from Frederick County Public Schools. Lt. Bruce DeGrange said the students’ injuries were not considered life-threatening. Police did not release the victims’ names because they are under 18. A junior varsity boys...

In November the frustrations of Maryland’s voters with their state’s failed Democrat leadership finally boiled over and provided Larry Hogan an upset victory over the Democrat’s chosen candidate Lt. Governor Anthony Brown. It would be easy to dismiss this victory as the revenge of Maryland’s far rural parts if places like Howard County, a bedroom community of both Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD, hadn’t also elected new Republican leadership. It’s obvious this election had deeper meaning: voters clearly repudiated the Democrats and their cronies’ failed leadership and commitment to business as usual. Yet, some in Maryland think they can continue...

A few weeks ago, Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla made a surprise announcement that soon he would submit legislation that would give undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens the right to vote in island-wide elections. The move has been commended by immigrants’ rights groups, but is viewed by many on the island as a cheap move by an unpopular governor to try and fix the next election. It’s also left many people on the island asking: can the governor legally do it? The answer, it turns out, seems to be “yes.” Federal law doesn’t stop states or cities from allowing...

When they moved into the house in November 2005, Kofi was earning $82,740 as an IT consultant for a government contractor, and Comfort, then 43, was making $30,000 as an administrative assistant. But in the overheated mortgage market of the time, they said everyone told them that they could buy a $600,000 house. They made a $60,000 down payment and all their mortgage payments for more than 2½ years — through September 2008. But the house was financed with subprime loans, which reset to higher rates after short time periods, creating what are known as “shock payments.” The Boatengs said...

WASHINGTON — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress in March, it is unclear whether everybody invited will actually show up. Democrats have criticized House Speaker John Boehner for circumventing the administration when he invited Netanyahu to speak, and the White House has already said Obama will not meet with him when he’s here. BuzzFeed News asked several Senate Democrats whether they planned on skipping the speech or not. Most said they either hadn’t thought about it or they hadn’t decided. But there were no hard answers in the negative. Only one senator definitively said...

Menendez: Obama Admin Statements on Iran 'Sound like Talking Points Straight out of Tehran'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A heated exchanged between President Barack Obama and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) broke out Thursday over whether the U.S. should reimpose sanctions on Iran amid ongoing negotiations over the country's nuclear program, according to two senators who were in the room. Menendez, the leading Democrat pushing for additional sanctions against Iran, forcefully pressed Obama on the need for additional sanctions during a meeting in which Obama urged Menendez and other senators to drop their efforts to pass sanctions legislation. Additional sanctions, Obama argued, could torpedo ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. The unusually sharp exchange, between...

Everyone involved seems to be trying to put the best face on it, but Barack Obama went so far as to suggest senior Democrats like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who take a hard line on Iran, are doing so purely to appease their donors. Obama said that as a former senator himself, he understood how outside forces — like special interests and donors — can influence senators to act, one of the senators recounted.

U.N. gives mixed signals on Tehran cooperation as nuclear talks intensifySenate Democrats on Tuesday backed away from a bipartisan push for immediate new sanctions on Iran, bowing to President Obama’s call not to undercut international talks to get Tehran to curb its nuclear programs in the coming weeks. The shift, announced Tuesday by Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat and one of the party’s outspoken hawks on Iran, came amid a series of mixed signals from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency over the question of whether Tehran was honoring promises to put its suspect nuclear programs on hold as...

Ten Senate Democrats warned the White House in a letter Tuesday that they will support legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran if a framework to roll back the country’s nuclear program isn’t reached within two months. "In acknowledgement of your concern regarding congressional action on legislation at this moment, we will not vote for this legislation on the Senate floor before March 24," said the letter, led by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is the co-author of Iran sanctions legislation. "After March 24, we will only vote for this legislation on the Senate floor if Iran fails to reach agreement...

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has hired a Democratic staffer in Iowa, as he considers a potential 2016 presidential bid. O'Malley's political action committee hired Jake Oeth as a consultant, beginning in mid-December, the PAC confirmed Tuesday. Oeth was the political director for Bruce Braley's Senate campaign last year. Politico first reported his hiring. O'Malley's PAC also said it has brought on Brad Elkins, who will be based in Washington, D.C. Both have Iowa experience. Elkins was sent by the O'Malley camp to Iowa last year to work for Jack Hatch's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. O'Malley, who left office after last...

Unless there is any doubt, the vast majority of Democrats value partisan support for a failed president over support for our own national security and for that of Israel. Hence, they want to delay once again a vote on the Menendez-Kirk bill imposing sanctions on Iran unless it agrees to an acceptable final deal. The bill was introduced more than a year ago. The timing just isn’t right, you see. Will it ever be? A letter by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) signed onto by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.),...

The fall of communism and socialism have “robbed” the “post-Sovietized world,” Noemi Marin of Florida Atlantic University suggested at this year’s Modern Language Association (MLA) conference in Vancouver, Canada. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has ignored the “traumatic coloniality” and the resulting “trauma had been going on for forty-five years before now,” Marin alleges. The new focus of the debate should be “between communist studies and postcolonial studies” and create “subjective constructivist ideas about identity,” she avers. Herta Mueller, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize for literature and grew up in Romania under communist rule, offers...

At his inauguration as Maryland’s 62nd governor, Republican Larry Hogan promised to usher in an era of bipartisanship and cooperation in a state capital dominated by Democrats, even as he outlined an unabashedly conservative pro-business agenda. “We must get the state government off our backs and out of our pockets so that we can grow the private sector, put people back to work and turn our economy around,” Mr. Hogan said in a speech delivered on the steps of the State House. As he began his speech amid a flurry of snowfall that dusted the crowd, Mr. Hogan with a...

An executive at ScienceLogic, a company used to monitor the online networks of the FBI and the Department of Defense, among others, were missing Monday after a four-alarm fire destroyed his 16,000-square-foot Annapolis home. Don Pyle, the chief operating officer at the Reston-based technology provider, and his wife Sandy, couldn’t be located, authorities said Monday. It took 85 firefighters nearly three-and-a-half hours to get the blaze under control and firefighters had yet to set foot inside the building, uncertain about its integrity, Monday afternoon. Neighbors told The Washington Times the Pyles’ grandchildren may have been staying with them for the...

Not what it appears to be: the Archaic Mark LONDON. A clever bit of detective work by US scholars and scientists has proven that one of the jewels of the University of Chicago’s manuscript collection is, in fact, a skilled late 19th- or early 20th-century forgery. Although speculation as to the authenticity of the Archaic Mark codex has been rife for more than 60 years, prior to this definitive research many believed it was an early record (possibly as early as the 14th century) of the Gospel of Mark and the closest of any extant manuscript to the world’s oldest...

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — About 50 military veteransand their supporters protested an appearance by Jane Fonda in western Maryland. The 77-year-old was at the Weinberg Center for the Arts in Frederick for a speaking engagement Friday. The Frederick News-Post reports that many of the protesters served in Vietnam and carried signs that read: “Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never.” Fonda told the audience that she made a “huge mistake” that led many to think she was against soldiers fighting in Vietnam, and that it’s something that she’ll take to her grave. She says she understands their anger and that it makes her...

A Montgomery County couple says they’re being investigated for neglect for allowing their two children to walk home from a park by themselves. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say the county’s Child Protective Services began investigating them after police stopped their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter about half-way through a mile-walk home on Dec. 20 in Silver Spring. Police say they stopped the children and drove them home after someone reported seeing them. …