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A cult of personality, while a great song, is a dangerous thing. They can lead normally smart people to do and say some things that don’t seem so smart.Everyone jumped on board with Dr. Ben Carson when he had the audacity to criticize the president and his Affordable Care Act with the president right there in the room. Not bad, guy. Immediately, the conservative movement jumped on Carson as someone to watch out for. He had a great story – made his way from Detroit to Yale and, in the 80s, was a rock star with some big surgical procedures (included separating...

"A President should not only not be selfish, but he ought to avoid the appearance of selfishness. The people would not have confidence in a man that appeared to be grasping for office. It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”

One couple knows all too well the pain suffered by the parents of James Foley, the American photojournalist executed on camera last month by the Islamic State. Billy and Karen Vaughn also lost their son Aaron Carson Vaughn in 2011, when the SEAL Team Six soldier's Chinook helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan. Now the couple are calling on President Barack Obama to step down, citing his reaction to the Foley video and 'lack of leadership' in confronting ISIS.

Ever since Ben Carson famously criticized President Barack Obama's health care policies during a speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, many conservatives have rallied behind the retired neurosurgeon's conservative, anti-big government rhetorics and urged him to run for president in 2016. But despite passionate support among his fans, how will he overcome the fact that he has no political experience? Carson has not officially announced his candidacy and plans to wait and see how November's midterm Congressional elections pan out, but he has already won a straw poll in Iowa and his book sales have beaten that of Hillary...

In his Tuesday evening interview on the Hugh Hewitt show, Mitt Romney said it over and over again: "I will not run in 2016." Though a determined Hewitt kept finding different ways to ask the same question, in the end the 2012 candidate stood by his claim, saying, "I had the chance of running. I didn’t win. Someone else has a better chance than I do." After Hewitt's relentless questioning, Romney did offer the host his "one in a million" chance of running: if all the other candidates got together and said, "Hey, we’ve decided we can’t do it, you...

British diplomats in the US have been forced to apologise after revealing they were hosting a party to celebrate the anniversary of the burning of the White House. The British Embassy in Washington held a ‘White House barbeque’ yesterday to mark the two hundredth anniversary of Britain capturing the US capital and setting fire to the President’s iconic address. The Embassy even sent a message on Twitter from its official account with a photograph of a White House cake, flanked by British and American flags and surrounded by sparkler fireworks.

Editor's note: this column is an excerpt from "Nixon's Secrets"No American President had a more tortured relationship with television than Richard Nixon. As a Vice Presidential candidate Nixon salvaged his career with the televised “Checkers” speech to defend himself from charges of corruption. His poor appearance in the first 1960 debate with John Kennedy is credited with losing him that close election.Key to his political comeback in 1968, Nixon found more innovative ways to utilize the medium of television and soften his image. It was twenty-eight-year-old Roger Ailes who transformed this image through the remarkable use of television. Ailes knew television....

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan said Thursday he would love to see Mitt Romney run again for president and teased the GOP's former nominee at one point that the "third time's the charm." Appearing with Ryan at a public event for the first time since their ticket lost two years ago, Romney offered his own good-humored praise by saying that Ryan "wouldn't be a bad president" himself.

Mitt Romney said Tuesday that the problems inflicted by President Obama’s policies are even worse than he predicted during the 2012 presidential campaign. “It’s been a good deal worse than even I expected,” Mr. Romney told reporters after headlining a rally here for Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. “I was not a big fan of the president’s policies, as you know, either domestically or internationally,” he said. “But the results of his mistakes and errors, in my opinion, have been more severe than even I would have predicted.”

short but explosive video of former CIA Director James Woolsey in 2006 has been introduced into evidence at the trial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his officers. In that video, Woolsey advocates the removal of Middle Eastern dictators, even mentioning Mubarak by name while strongly implying that after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the U.S. would seek similar regime changes in Libya, Syria and elsewhere to make the Saudis and Mubarak 'nervous.' If you've ever beaten your head against the wall trying to figure out the post-9/11 strategy of the U.S. and why we went into...

Talk to any of Mitt Romney’s closest political advisers, and the answer is the same: He won’t run for president in 2016. “I take Mitt at his absolute word. He’s not running,” says Ron Kaufman, Republican national committeeman for Massachusetts and a senior adviser to Mr. Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. ........................................................ But in Chicago last week, when asked about his draft effort, Utah GOP chairman James Evans was happy to talk. “We are mindful of Romney insiders’ concerns, but we’re not going away,” says Mr. Evans.

Back when Al Gore was running for president in 2000 he had a line about “fighting for the people against the powerful.” It's the standard line of the activist. No doubt it's what the marginalized and dependent classes are looking for in a president. But if you are a responsible individual like me you find that sort of thing insulting. People of the Responsible Self don't want some community organizer drilling them in a street protest; we just want a government that defends us from enemies foreign and domestic. Defending against enemies foreign and domestic is what governments are actually...

In Herman Melville's classic story "Billy Budd," the narrator ponders what could be the matter with the master-at-arms "who has an animus toward the young seaman known as Billy Budd." Therein ensues a discussion about "natural depravity: a depravity according to nature." Thus, "one who has this natural depravity can be described as having an …even temper and discreet bearing [which] would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason [other] than to...

On the occasion of this week's 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency, The Washington Post sponsored a reunion featuring Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporters who "brought down" the 37th president. In fact, Nixon committed political suicide. He thought he could get away with what other politicians had done, but forgot the rules are different for Republicans. The Post event resembled a celebration with much laughter and stories about how Publisher Katharine Graham and Executive Editor Ben Bradlee had told the newsroom "no gloating" when it became apparent Nixon would resign. But gloat they did...

The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority Forty years ago, on August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the office of President; the first and only President to do so. I was just into my thirties in 1968, the year Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States. What I recall most of that year was the way the Chicago police, after enduring an onslaught of name-calling and insults from anti-war protesters aggressively drove them away from their effort to disrupt the Democratic Party convention that would nominate Hubert Humphrey. His...

"President Barack Obama drew the diplomatic line somewhere at the first ever U.S-Africa summit at the White House this week by not inviting Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator Robert Mugabe. But the guest list still included several other African leaders with only slightly better human rights records. The White House promoted the summit as the largest-ever gathering of African leaders in the United States, with more than 50 countries represented. The red carpet was rolled out for Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who shot or jailed virtually all his political opponents, Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, who threatened to ‘cut off the head’...

(CNSNews.com) – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a Marxist and long-time friend of Communist Cuba and who Ronald Reagan once described as a “little dictator,” criticized Israel’s actions against Hamas terrorists as genocidal and said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “appears to be possessed by the Devil” and “needs Pope Francis to exorcise it.” "Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be possessed by the Devil, he needs Pope Francis to exorcise it, to become appeased,” Ortega was quoted as saying on Aug. 1 in Globovision. Ortega also said that Israel is “committing genocide” in Gaza, a crime so “terrible that it is...

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You’ve heard of Ready for Hillary, but now there’s Ready for Warren. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has said over and over that she will not run for president in 2016, but that isn’t stopping her fans from encouraging her to run. A group of activists has launched the Ready for Warren campaign, asking people to sign a petition urging the Massachusetts Democrat to pursue a presidential bid. “We are Ready for Elizabeth Warren to run for President in 2016,” a statement on the website reads. “Warren is the backbone that the Democratic Party too often forgets it needs. Warren has...

A forensic profiler whose career has included work on the double-murder case against O.J. Simpson and the Natalie Holloway disappearance says Barack Obama is confessing he’s under enormous pressure and is “slipping mentally.” “Not madness such as total loss of control mentally, but more and more drastic behavior seen in disturbed traumatized leaders,” said Andrew G. Hodges, M.D., who wrote “The Obama Confession: Secret Fear, Secret Fury.” Hodges, an expert who previously suggested Obama was revealing alarming ideas about martial law and described how the president wants “total gun control,” provided to WND an analysis of some of Obama’s recent...