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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A massive fire in the Angeles National Forest nearly doubled in size overnight, threatening 12,000 homes Monday in a 20-mile-long swath of flame and smoke and surging toward a mountaintop broadcasting complex and historic observatory. The fire was the largest of at least eight burning up and down California after days of triple-digit temperatures and low humidity. The Los Angeles-area blaze had burned at least 21 homes and was moving north, south and east through the rugged foothills northeast of the city. Despite a lack of wind, the fire surged without letup by running through steep...

Is Michael Steele violating a major RNC rule to help Mark Kirk? Posted: August 27, 2009 By Doug Ibendahl The Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) Michael Steele was a guest Tuesday morning on the Don Wade & Roma radio show on WLS 890 AM.  Friends told me about the interview so I listened to the Podcast. I was immediately reminded why I stopped listening to Don & Roma several years ago - after once having been a loyal listener. Tuesday's show was another pollyannaish lovefest with a mind-numbing amount of empty chatter. (Of course keep in mind WLS...

Cleveland politics has become very corrupt. Most of the county government is Democratic. Recently most of them have been prosecuted for corruption. The local Republican organization petitioned the courts to be able to see the books of the democratic county auditor. A judge has called all the petitioners into court to prove that they are residents and really did sign this petition. no kidding. This is happening as we speak. Climaco is his lawyer.Here is an excerpt: Climaco is seeking the signers' calendars and cell phone records for the past year. He is demanding their local, state and federal taxes...

"Luckily, the effect is expected to be relatively small, and shouldn’t induce any negative feedback in the planet’s climate. It just needs to be taken into account when interpreting shifts in Earth’s axis."

Only 13 days separated the passing of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics, from the death of her brother Ted last week. But amid the wall-to-wall coverage and the stream of retrospectives for the senior senator from Massachusetts, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t the only famous Kennedy sibling to enter eternity this month. ... Liberalism’s most important legislator probably merited a more extended send-off than his sister. But there’s a sense in which his life’s work and Eunice’s deserve to be remembered together — for what their legacies had in common, and for what...

It was only earlier this month that a Miami-Dade fire station was named the busiest in the nation. Now we are learning that the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Antivenom Unit is one of the most respected in the world. On Saturday, after a 3-year-old girl in Iraq was bitten by a saw-scaled viper, American military officials placed a call to Capt. Ernie Jillson, head of the antivenom unit as well as a military reservist. Jillson, who was tending to his lawn in Davie, consulted with doctors and told them that because their patient was a small girl they needed to administer...

No Senate Seat for Vicki Kennedy August 31, 2009 1:27 PM The trial balloon launched yesterday by Kennedy friends Chris Dodd and Orrin Hatch isn't going anywhere. A solid source assures me that Vicki Kennedy won't run in a special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat. She's not interested in an interim appointment if it becomes available.

Is Glenn Beck good for America?

President Obama is expected to moderate a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in late September, a discussion that could lead to the resumption of peace negotiations, Israeli President Shimon Peres told FOX News.

THOSE rumors of an imminent Chelsea Clinton wedding have picked up steam. A Post reporter yesterday spotted preparations in full gear for a very large gathering on Chappaquiddick island.

Here is video of Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform, saying today on MSNBC that a future Justice Department needs to go back and see how all the Stimulus Money was distributed, following the lead of Attorney General Eric Holder who has decided to go after CIA officials who carried out interrogations of terror suspects during the Bush years . . . . (Watch Video)

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs comments on Dick Cheney's appearance on "FOX News Sunday." Gibbs added that Cheney's predictions on foreign policy has not produced a lot of fruit over the past eight years.

Friday, August 28, 2009 BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS The insanity of the right Exclusive: David d'Escoto asks why conservatives continue to turn kids over to the left Posted: August 29, 2009 1:00 am Eastern Most likely you've heard Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Nowhere is this more obvious today than with political and religious conservatives, the so-called right. What do I mean? Next month the right will send millions of their own children to public schools that are literally controlled by the left – meaning that it is only the...

If Barack Obama thought he could ride sympathy over the death of Ted Kennedy to new support for his legislative agenda, the latest Rasmussen polling will throw cold water on that hope. Overall approval for Obama has now reached 46%, with 53% disapproving. Strong disapproval now comes within five points of overall approval, almost within the margin of error:

On a Sunday evening in August four summers ago the NBC Nightly News devoted its “In Depth” segment to how Cindy Sheehan was “single-handedly bringing the Iraq debate to Mr. Bush’s doorstep” with her protest in Crawford, Texas. But Sunday night this year, after Sheehan departed Martha's Vineyard without earning any network media coverage as President Barack Obama's wrapped up his vacation there, NBC's Ron Allen began a story: “Hours before President Obama's vacation ended, he treated his girls to ice cream and candy -- the kind of family time the President said he had in mind for the week...

The biggest spur to deal-making among banks isn't private-equity cash or foreign investors. It is the federal government. To encourage banks to pick through the wreckage of their collapsed competitors, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has agreed to assume most of the risk on $80 billion in loans and other assets. The agency expects it will eventually have to cover $14 billion in future losses on deals cut so far. The initiative amounts to a subsidy for dozens of hand-picked banks. Through more than 50 deals known as "loss shares," the FDIC has agreed to absorb losses on the detritus...

SPRING HILL, FL -- While showing off her JROTC uniform, 16-year-old Heather Lawrence told us joining the Army is her next big goal, to follow in the footsteps of her father and grandfather. "Our flag represents everything that our country is," she said. The teen says an issue over the American flag is why she was written up and handed a five-day suspension from Springstead High School this week for criticizing a Muslim student. Heather says the other girl was sitting down during the Pledge of Allegiance.

“For what my grandpa called the cause of his life, as he said that every American have decent quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege, we pray to the Lord.”

RICHMOND, Va. - Bob McDonnell's 20-year-old conservative manifesto advocating government protections for heterosexual, two-parent traditional families not available to those living "alternative lifestyles" presents his gubernatorial campaign its first crisis. McDonnell has not commented on the 1989 graduate thesis since it was first reported in Sunday's Washington Post. His research paper targets abortion, feminism, welfare, "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators" as enemies of traditional families. With no nomination challenge and no distractions, his Republican campaign has stayed on script and rolled smoothly along until now. Democrat Creigh Deeds' campaign, trailing McDonnell in the most recent statewide polling, found new life in...

Intense wildfires in Southern California are dangerously close to facilities atop Mount Wilson, threatening damage to cell phone and TV broadcast towers, as well as a famed observatory. The blaze, which started August 26, has burned approximately 20,102 acres and as of Sunday was only 5 percent contained, according to the Web site of the California governor's office. Known as the "Station Fire," as it began about one mile above the Angeles Crest Fire Station, the inferno has spread throughout the San Gabriel Mountains in Northern Los Angeles County. At an altitude of 5,715 feet, Mount Wilson houses a number...