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A new Fox News poll finds 50 percent of voters favor Trump’s ban, while 46 percent are opposed. However, when Trump’s name is removed from the question, support for the plan goes up five points and opposition goes down six: 55 percent favor the unnamed proposal, while 40 percent oppose it. So while voters favor the “Trump” ban by a 4-point margin -- that increases to 15 points when the same ban is not associated with Trump. There are stunning shifts in the responses among Democrats: 45 percent favor banning Muslims if Trump’s name is not mentioned, yet when the...

"If you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate." So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had just responded to a question from CNN's Wolf Blitzer as to whether he would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria. "Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it," blurted Christie: "I would talk to Vladimir Putin ... I'd say to him, 'Listen, Mr. President, there's a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.' "Yes, we would shoot down the planes of...

Man alive. You don’t see trend lines like this every day.I guess the spin for O fans is obvious. The sudden spike isn’t a “real” downturn in his counterterror approval, it’s just a reflex after the jihadi massacre in San Bernardino. Support for gun control bounced upward after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 but it came back down to earth in time. So will this, provided there isn’t another attack in the U.S. soon. Could be, but Obama’s been trending poorly on this subject for two years, ever since ISIS started creeping onto American voters’ radar. It was probably...

President Obama’s proposal raised immediate concerns that ISIS, which vowed to infiltrate refugee camps, could use forged documents to enter the U.S. White House assurances that refugees would be carefully screened met with renewed skepticism after it was revealed that terrorist Tashfeen Malik obtained a fiancée visa despite notable red flags. Malik, who together with her husband killed 14 and wounded 21 in a terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif., Dec. 2, listed a phony Pakistani address and reportedly had a history of posting jihadist messages on social media platforms. Malik’s entry into the U.S., combined with so many Syrians...

Gaping holes in the K1 fiance visa interview process. Reckless bans on scrutinizing visa applicants' social media posts. Ignored alarms over marriage fraud. New details keep seeping out about all the "red flags" Obama's immigration officials missed in the case of the San Bernardino jihadists. Color me unshocked. The American public and Capitol Hill politicians should have been more vigilant about vetting Obama's vetters in the first place. What do you expect when you put crony know-nothings, political hacks and identity politics zealots in charge of our safety? In case you'd forgotten (or never paid attention), Obama campaign finance bundler...

GOP candidates debate for first time since terror attacks.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush stood in the home of a Dallas fundraiser in mid-November and confidently declared: "Come December 15, [Donald] Trump will be in decline."Today is Dec. 15, and unless you count two recent polls that showed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) leading in Iowa, Trump still tops the GOP presidential campaign field. In fact, by several measures he's surging - there's no sign of decline.The New York businessman earned 38 percent support in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday. That's an increase for Trump from previous Post-ABC polls, his highest mark in the survey's history and more...

UPDATE: It gets worse. ABC News is reporting that Homeland Security officials have been bound by a secret US policy not to scrutinize visa applicants' social media footprint because the Obama administration feared bad press over "civil liberties." This represents an stunning, intentional dereliction of duty -- all for PR: Fearing a civil liberties backlash and "bad public relations" for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official...

Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, called on Dec. 7 for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Replace one word in this formulation and it goes from outrageous to brilliant. Reacting to massacres by Muslims in Paris and San Bernardino, Trump pointed to a Muslim hatred "beyond comprehension" for the West. Therefore, he concluded, "Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe...

The fear in both the GOP and Democratic party is visible at the surface when it comes to Trump, and it's not that he's any of what they've accused him of. No, it's really much simpler than that, and both Republican and Democrat parties, along with the mainstream media, are utterly terrified that you, the average American, is going to figure out what underlies all of these institutions in America. No, it's not that they're evil. It's worse, for evil frequently is recognized and fought back yet for decades America has not awakened to what has been going on in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Grab sound bite number two. This is April 7, 1980. April 7, 1980. I was working for the Kansas City Royals, my second of five years there. I was 29-years-old. This is ABC's World News Tonight. Sam Donaldson reporting about Jimmy Carter cutting ties with Iran. DONALDSON: After meeting with his advisors for two-and-a-half hours to review the decisions, Mr. Carter came down to the pressroom to announce them. CARTER: The militants controlling the embassy have stated they are willing to turn the hostages over to the government of Iran, but the government has refused to take...

Fox’s Eric Bolling tonight––guest-hosting The O’Reilly Factor––said that the Republicans criticizing Donald Trump are basically on the same side as Hillary Clinton and the liberal media.As far as Bolling’s concerned, Trump’s all-Muslim ban isn’t really that bad of an idea, partly because it’s not hurting him in the polls.He asked, “Is this a mistake for the other GOP contenders to line up on the same side as Hillary Clinton and the media?… You’re forcing the American public, the GOP to choose. A lot of them don’t like liberals or the media.”Simon Rosenberg still said it was a bad idea because...

One thing is clear as we watch candidates from both major political parties scramble for the presidential prize in 2016—the stakes are very high. And national security issues are finally getting the kind of attention they always warrant in this dangerous world. Many candidates for the highest office in the land—and most of those who make it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—tend to prefer talking about their "domestic vision."  Bill Clinton's mantra, "It's the economy, stupid," comes to mind. But they eventually find themselves facing issues of war and national security, whether they like it or not. It's just a guess,...

A former Department of Homeland Security agent says that an investigation he was conducting into a fundamentalist Islamic group operating in the U.S. may have helped stop San Bernardino jihadi Syed Farook had the government not shut down his probe. During an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Thursday, Philip Haney said that in 2012 as an agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center, he opened an investigation into a Sunni Islamic group called, Tablighi Jamaat, a subset of the fundamentalist Deobandi movement. But Haney said that just a year into the investigation it was shut...

With the U.S. and other countries on high alert for ISIS attacks, American authorities are warning the terror group’s followers may have infiltrated American borders with authentic-looking passports ISIS has printed itself with its own machines, according to an intelligence report obtained by ABC News. The 17-page Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Intelligence Report, issued to law enforcement last week, says ISIS likely has been able to print legitimate-looking Syrian passports since taking over the city of Deir ez-Zour last summer, home to a passport office with “boxes of blank passports” and a passport printing machine. Another passport office was located...

For decades I was convinced the degree I received in international relations at Cambridge was basically useless. After all, the Soviet Union had fallen and relations with nations such as China seemed to have stability, if nothing else, out of mutual interests in commerce and trade. I never thought that my grandchildren might have to learn a more advanced version of the civil defense training I received in elementary school. Does anyone recall the "duck and cover" drills of the 1960s? And while I'll still likely never make a dime directly from my time studying what I later thought to...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivers remarks and responds to questions at the Heritage Foundation about his national security priorities following the Paris terrorist attacks and the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Watch live.

Another Minnesota man has been charged with conspiring to help the Islamic State. Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, 20, of Eagan was charged Wednesday by criminal complaint with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Court documents allege Warsame tried to help other young men from Minnesota's Somali community travel to Syria to fight for the Islamic State. Nine others in that group have already been charged, authorities say. The documents allege Warsame and others settled on a plan of going to Syria by way of Mexico. ...

What was the reason for the bland, gluten-free flavor of the president's Oval Office address on terrorism? Barack Obama, on this theoretically important occasion, was out of his element. There were no "folks" (aka people) to attack for questioning his motives or mission, apart from "some who reject any gun-safety measures." We were almost back to business there: enacting a domestic agenda that features gun control along with tighter regulation of business and resistance to ideas put forth by Republicans. But he had to move along. This thing, the Oval Office speech, was about terror, foreign and especially domestic. But...

When a lonely Virginia teenager named Ali Amin got curious about the Islamic State last year and went online to learn more, he found a virtual community awaiting. It had its own peculiar language, stirring imagery and just the warm camaraderie, sense of adventure and devotion to a cause that were missing from his dull suburban life. From Our Advertisers At 17, the precocious son of a Yemeni immigrant family, he quickly developed online relationships with older Islamic State supporters around the globe. There was Zubair in Britain, Uthman in South Africa and Abdullah in Finland, who urged him to...