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President Obama's plan to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ran into a buzz saw of opposition on Tuesday, underscoring how difficult it will be for him to fulfill a major campaign promise inhis final year in office. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) best summed up the attitudes of his colleagues: He crumpled up the proposal and tossed it in the trash.

Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, began his 2016 campaign rationally enough, with a painstakingly collated operational blueprint his team called, with NFL swagger, “The Playbook.” On page after page kept safe in a binder, the playbook laid out a strategy for a race his advisors were certain would be played on Bush’s terms – an updated, if familiar version of previous Bush family campaigns where cash, organization and a Republican electorate ultimately committed to an electable center-right candidate would prevail. Story Continued Below The playbook, hatched by Sally Bradshaw, Mike Murphy and a handful of other Bush...

"[I]t's been noted often by pundits that the tone of our politics hasn't gotten better since I was inaugurated, in fact it's gotten worse; that there's still this yawning gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics. Which is why, in my final State of the Union address, and in the one before that, I had to acknowledge that one of my few regrets is my inability to reduce the polarization and meanness in our politics. I was able to be part of that here (in the Illinois Senate) and yet couldn't translate it...

In open defiance of recent US sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan on late Tuesday told local media that Tehran will soon be rolling out an upgrade of its nuclear-capable medium-range Emad missiles. The "next generation of Emad with improved precision" will be unveiled in the next Iranian year which starts on March 20, Dehghan said as cited by the semi-official Fars News Agency. Emad is said to have a 1,700 kilometer range, putting Israel and much of eastern Europe squarely in its sights. [...] In light of an Iranian Emad test on October 10,...

Last week, President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address. In the lead-up to the speech, there was a lot of discussion about the nature of the president's legacy. Less discussed, however, was that most of the president's so-called legacy may not outlast his presidency, since most of his supposed achievements have never been enacted into law.Early on in his presidency, it became clear that the president didn't have much interest in working with Congress in a bipartisan manner, and after losing large majorities in the House and Senate, he made it clear that he did not want...

Commuters driving Pittsburgh's old Lincoln Highway alignment last week caught the last glimpse of the pillars of steam from the Shenango coke plant on Neville Island. Nearly 60 years after the furnace started producing coke for the once-booming steel industry that personified America's strength and work ethic, it is closing - affecting 173 union and non-union employees - as yet another business that made things ends its run. Days later, Pittsburgh-based Koppers, which converts steel-production waste into carbon-based chemicals for aluminum, vinyl and wood preservatives, announced that 52 employees would lose their jobs when it shuts its Clairton plant this...

Three truths fuel Donald Trump. One, Barack Obama is the Dr. Frankenstein of the supposed Trump monster. If a charismatic, Ivy League-educated, landmark president who entered office with unprecedented goodwill and both houses of Congress on his side could manage to wreck the Democratic Party while turning off 52 percent of the country, then many voters feel that a billionaire New York dealmaker could hardly do worse.

There was a time in my life when I was a campaign communications consultant, responsible for helping political campaigns come up with new and intriguing ways to engage voters using digital media. There is a reason I don't do it anymore, and that reason is, because no matter how many times I or any of my colleages explained that most Republican consultants had the pop culture knowledge of 80 year old men and couldn't find a connection to Millennials if they were accosted by an entire room of Urban Outfitters employees, they still produced things like this. Though, in fairness,...

Last week The New York Times caused controversy after deleting an entire section out of a story revealing President Obama wasn't aware of the growing terrorism concern in America because he wasn't watching enough cable television. "In his meeting with the columnists, Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and made clear that he plans to step up his public arguments." Obama needs more cable news in his media diet? Revealing comment in a private meeting with newspaper columnists... pic.twitter.com/iUHz6Ey38g— Brian Stelter...

The Huffington Post is out with a new article, which chronicles the "11 blackest moments" of the Obama Presidency. The article is aptly titled, "The 11 Blackest Moments In The Obama Presidency," with a subhead of "Thanks, Obama!" The article is not written ironically. According to the article's author, Zeba Blay, "Obama has always been in a precarious position where his blackness has been at various times a political hindrance." There there have been numerous times when "his blackness shines through." Among the "blackest" moments of President Obama's time in office, according to Blay: When President Obama made this face!...

The Syrian Civil War is entering a third and potentially very dangerous phase in its continuing evolution. It began as a purely domestic crisis, became steadily internationalized as other countries intervened, and it now risks becoming a full blown Russian-American cold war proxy conflict. This is a conflict that could turn hot very quickly given the proximity of American and Russian military forces in the same theater of operations. The civil war started as an Arab Spring sparked revolt by elements in the Syrian military, under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, against the Assad government. There has been...

Senator Tom Cotton is blasting Senate Democrats from failing to block the Iran nuclear deal. “I am deeply disappointed by Senate Democrats' decision to block a vote on the Iran nuclear deal. I proposed an amendment to Corker-Cardin that would have guaranteed a vote, but it was rejected by Democrats because their goal all along was to deny Congress any vote or say on this deal. That's one reason why I ultimately voted against Corker-Cardin," reads Cotton's statement to the press. “Political fealty to President Obama’s hoped-for legacy in foreign affairs means this dangerous deal will likely move forward, despite...

VIENNA (AP) — Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

From his backyard in Durango, Colorado, Tom Bartles can see the Animas River, which was stained an unnatural orange. The Environmental Protection Agency accidentally released millions of gallons of pollutants into the water last week, turning the typically blue water to the color of mustard. "Everybody in town knew it was coming. It was hard to wake up in the morning and see an orange river," Bartles, 52, told CNN. "Many of the locals in this region are probably going to experience a certain level of mourning." [Snip] Officials said they believe the spill carried metals, mainly iron, zinc and...

Late-breaking news this afternoon from the tip of the smart-power spear: CNN JUST IN: Remaining U.S. trained rebels in Syria are unaccounted for. May have fled, or been killed; whereabouts unknown.

Sheriff Clarke: Everything Obama Touches ‘Tends to Turn to Crap" by Trent Baker18 Jul 2015147 Speaking on Saturday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine” regarding the shooting in Chattanooga, TN, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke (D) said that the United States needs a national strategy to “deal with the home-grown terrorist threat.” He also brought up that President Obama actually “gutted” the Department of Defense 1033 Program, which would have given the local law enforcement the military supplies to aid during a terrorist attack. Clarke used Obama’s mistake of “gutting of the 1033 Program as an...

Editor's Note: Tony Perkins, President Of The Family Research Council, co-athored this column.Like two speeding trains heading toward the same collapsed bridge, the dangers and failures of Barack Obama’s foreign, economic, and social policies are heading rapidly toward implosion. Our vital security interests, our economic well-being, our religious liberties, and the very fabric of American family life are all at grave risk of becoming casualties of the extreme ideological agenda and simple incompetence of the current Administration. First, with respect to foreign policy: Watching the spread of ISIS throughout the Middle East is like watching the growth of a cancer....

In a lengthy interview with his NBC colleague Matt Lauer, disgraced (and former) NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams blamed his ego for a litany of lies told over many years to NBC News viewers and others. “I was not trying to mislead people,” he said. (snip) Williams made two big mistakes here — in what was probably his last chance at a second chance. First, he refused to admit that he lied and lied and lied and lied. His claim that he didn’t try to deliberately mislead people is simply preposterous. His real-time whoppers from Katrina (witnessing suicides that...

A major new report from the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness investigates how criminalizing homelessness in San Francisco has only exacerbated the crisis. Much like America’s War on Drugs, the city’s crackdown on homelessness has been a costly failure, leaving in its wake people who feel victimized by the very system that’s supposed to help them. The report’s title, “Punishing the Poorest,” neatly sums up city policy. “Since 1981, San Francisco has passed more local measures to criminalize sleeping, sitting, or panhandling in public spaces than any other city in California,” the report states. In fact, San Francisco has 23 state...

Four years ago, my reporting on Obamacare brought me to the city of Terre Haute, Ind. Located near the Illinois’ border, about an hour’s drive from Indianapolis, the city of 60,000 residents reminded me of the area where I grew up near Utica, N.Y. It was a brisk March morning, nearly a year after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, and I had trekked to the Midwest with a camera crew to meet Scott Womack, owner of about a dozen IHOP restaurants in Indiana and Ohio. Womack’s testimony before Congress earlier in 2011 caught my attention and I wanted...