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Matt Drudge took to Twitter to deliver an ongoing tirade against Republicans’ eagerness to deliver a fast-track trade bill to President Obama’s desk. The bill’s details have not been made public — which hasn’t stopped Republicans from surrendering Congress’s power to make amendments to a president’s future trade deals. Should a Republican presidential candidate lose the 2016 general election, the Trade Promotion Authority bill could be to blame. Keeping the bill’s details from voters was “clearly treason,” Drudge tweeted...

It is with great pleasure that I rise in praise of Karl Rove, who now largely agrees with me that Republicans should place into the dustbin their bogus proposal to repeal ObamaCare. In my recent column in The Hill, "The 'Clinton Cash' con," I suggested that the new book by Peter Schweizer proves absolutely nothing on the matter of whether Hillary Clinton committed any wrongdoing, and it is a con to suggest or imply otherwise. I add today a discussion of another con game by Republicans, the suggestion that they will repeal ObamaCare, which they know they will not do,...

"Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces, Reims: Nazi General Jodl, representing Admiral Doenitz, strides into the 'war room' where Allied Generals await him and his party. After the surrender terms are understood, Jodl fills a third of a page with his scrawly signature, this his associates sign. U.S. General W. B. Smith the Allied Chief of Staff signs as do the remainder of the Allied Generals. In an adjoining room, General Eisenhower, wreathed in smiles, forms the signature pens into a V for Victory sign. Unconditional surrender is an accomplished fact." scenes of peace signed at red scholhouse in Reims, France,...

In a rebuke to the hawks of his party, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) indicated on Tuesday that he will move forward with a Senate bill on the Iran nuclear agreement by limiting votes on amendments that demand more conditions from the Iranians. Though no definitive schedule was announced, Republicans left their weekly luncheon suggesting that no further tinkering would be done to the bill. Speaking to reporters after that luncheon concluded, McConnell would not utter the word "cloture," saying only that he was trying to "move quickly" while considering other, less controversial amendments. In addition to the diminishing...

~snip~ "What I call the Benedict Option is this: a limited, strategic withdrawal of Christians from the mainstream of American popular culture, for the sake of shoring up our understanding of what the church is, and what we must do to be the church. We must do this because the strongly anti-Christian nature of contemporary popular culture occludes the meaning of the Gospel, and hides from us the kinds of habits and practices we need to engage in to be truly faithful to what we have been given."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) on Thursday said Senate Republicans should allow a vote on Loretta Lynch, President Obama's nominee for attorney general. “I hope that they get to a point – I think that presidents have a right to pick their team in general,” said Bush, a potential 2016 GOP contender, at a town hall event in Concord, N.H. “Someone who is supportive of the president’s policies, whether you agree with them or not, there should be some deference to the executive. This should not always be partisan.” Bush swiped at the current attorney general, Eric Holder, saying...

In “honor” of his meeting with China Ambassador Cui Tiankai, Washington Governor Jay Inslee has posted the Chinese flag between the American flag and the state flag at the capitol building in Olympia. Hat Tip State Rep. Elizabeth Scott On Saturday - A small group of people arrived at the capitol in the morning and removed the Communist flag. They were assisted by an officer from the Washington State Police. Video, courtesy of activist Maria Bosworth.

How’s that for a confidence builder, eh? While Barack Obama tried to put a sunny spin on the interim agreement with Iran in his Rose Garden speech, the Wall Street Journal found out that the final act of the negotiations mainly rested on American retreat at the bargaining table. In fact, the concessions began almost immediately in September 2013 and never stopped: The White House decided a less ambitious agreement would be pursued. “As soon as we got into the real negotiations with them, we understood that any final deal was going to involve some domestic enrichment capability,” a...

The emerging reports indicate the U.S. team, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, gradually backed down over the course of the talks as Iran's delegation dug in. The Wall Street Journal, citing current and former U.S. representatives at the discussions, claimed the White House had initially hoped to persuade Iran to dismantle much of the country's nuclear infrastructure when talks started in late 2013, only to be told categorically that Iran would not do so.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's victory in the Israeli election will not hamper US efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, the State Department said Wednesday. The Israeli leader opposes any accommodation with Tehran and came to Washington during the campaign to address US lawmakers and denounce the agreement under negotiation as a "bad deal." "We've been long familiar with the views of the prime minister on Iran. We don't think that his win has impacted the Iran negotiations, or will," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Lausanne for talks this week...

Politics and Policy Senator Reid Scores Early Victory as Opposition Leader But minority leader warns fellow Democrats against taking victory laps after homeland security win By Siobhan Hughes and Michael R. Crittenden WASHINGTON—Senate Democrats think they have had a good couple of weeks, including a win in a battle over immigration and homeland security funding, but their leader is warning members of his caucus against taking any victory laps. “We cannot be gloating,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said he told his caucus at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday. “We have a lot of things we have to...

“We were never going to win in Congress.” That is the epitaph spoken by Speaker Boehner ally Representative Tom Cole on the collapse of House Leadership’s resolve to legislatively fight Executive Amnesty. It may also be the final nail in the coffin for the notion of co-equal branches of government, as President Obama has already announced that he is considering using unilateral executive actions to ban ammunition and raise corporate taxes, on top of his massive Internet regulation announced last week.

ouse Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday agreed to Democrats' demands to hold a vote on legislation funding the Homeland Security Department through the end of the budget year, without any immigration measures attached. The move is a victory for the Obama administration and sets up a presumably swift resolution to the weeks-long standoff on Capitol Hill. Republicans had tried to use the DHS funding bill as the vehicle to reverse President Obama's controversial immigration executive actions. But Democrats repeatedly blocked the move, insisting they pass the spending bill with no riders attached. "I am as outraged and frustrated as you...

Senior rebel commander Eduard Basurin said on Tuesday pro-Russian separatists had gained control of more than 80 percent of the east Ukrainian transport hub of Debaltseve, which has been gripped by fighting despite a ceasefire deal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Marines handed over their remaining weapons to Yemenis at the airport in the capital, Sanaa, on Wednesday before boarding commercial aircraft to leave the country following the closure of the U.S. embassy, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon said the Marines destroyed heavy weapons in their embassy arsenal, including machine guns, before leaving for the airport but remained armed with smaller weapons until the end to ensure a safe exit from the country. "The movement from the embassy to the aircraft required armed Marines," Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a briefing. The U.S....

Back in September, our fearless commander in chief, Barack Obama told us all with utmost confidence that he was totally on top of the war against ISIS and had a plan to win it. This came as a surprise to many who could see nothing but duplicity and ass-covering in the administration’s actions and thought that its strategy was best captured by that ancient military maxim: “when in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” This is what he said: This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out [the Islamic State] wherever...

The new border bills drafted by Republican leaders require the actual removal of at least 66 miles of weak border fencing between laborers in Mexico and employers in the United States. The border bills also only require for the construction of 27 miles of effective double-layer fencing along the 2,000-mile border. “It is a remarkable that the direction of our progress is going backwards, from a goal of building 700 miles of double-layer border fencing [in 2006] to only 27 miles [in 2015],” said a Hill staffer who opposes the leaders’ bills. “Where the double-layer fence has been put in,...

A backdrop to the massacre in Paris on Wednesday by self-professed al Qaeda terrorists is that city officials have increasingly ceded control of heavily Muslim neighborhoods to Islamists, block by block. France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah law.

"We, at no point in time, have imposed our will against the Taliban. We have not vanquished the enemy from the battlefield," former U.S. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) told Fox News Monday night. West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was deployed to Afghanistan, spoke to Fox News Monday night, one day after the 13-year war in Afghanistan came to a formal end. The war may be over, but the fighting hasn't stopped. Four Afghan soliders were killed while repelling a Taliban attack on an army checkpoint in southern Helmand Province late Sunday, the Associated Press reported. Afghan government forces...

In July of 1870, King Wilhelm sent Foreign Minister Bismarck an account of his meeting with a French envoy who had demanded that the king renounce any Hohenzollern claim to the Spanish throne. Bismarck edited the report to make it appear the Frenchman had insulted the king, and that Wilhelm rudely dismissed him. The Ems Telegram precipitated the Franco-Prussian war Bismarck wanted. Words matter. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much greater impact can a motion picture have? We are finding out. Egypt has banned "Exodus: Gods and Kings," the $140 million 20th Century Fox biblical...