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Police in Texas raided the home of Rep. Blake Farenthold’s sister, a local television station reported Monday. KRIS TV reported that a SWAT team searched her Corpus Christi home, looking for drugs and weapons. The police department did not immediately comment because officers were still in the field, an officer told POLITICO. “I am saddened to learn the terrible news of the situation unfolding around my sister,” Farenthold said in a statement, released by his Congressional office. “Tragedy has occurred in my family in the past, and I am saddened it has happened again. I trust that law enforcement officials...

Solar Cookers A Critique of Solar Cookers from the June 2007 issue of Cook’s Ilustrated Magazine Cooks Banner Solar cookers use just the sun's rays to work—they don't require fuel or emit smoky fumes, and they use minimal water. They're environmentally friendly, but are they really useful? Before we started to test solar cookers, we were skeptical—could anything simply left in a pot or box to cook in the sun actually taste good? But we were proved wrong—at least partially. We also didn't anticipate just how much fun solar cookers would be. Whenever we had a sunny day, we wanted...

LARGO | Surrounded by teenage friends on the back porch of his house, Thorin Montgomery was first up in a contest of Russian roulette. Right away, the .38-caliber revolver fired its round. Badly wounded, the 17-year old was rushed to the hospital Friday night. Keeping vigil, friends wrote wishes online that he might summon some sort of inner strength and pull through. But he died around 3 a.m. Sunday at Bayfront Medical Center. And friends who now dedicated Web posts to his memory struggled to reconcile how the teen with a bright smile and happy demeanor could be dead. "Truly...

IN FOCUS: China awaits fighter export breakthrough The atmosphere in the Dubai air show briefing room in November 2011 was electric. Journalists occupied every seat and photographers squeezed into the back of the room. Also present were a dozen senior Pakistan air force officials, who were forced to stand along one wall, as well as several Chinese executives in business suits. The occasion was a briefing about the Chengdu/Pakistan Aeronautical Complex JF-17 Thunder fighter. Sharpshot gallery on AirSpace The Pakistani air force is the first customer for the JF-17 Yang Wei, the designer of the JF-17, Chengdu J-10 and China's...

Memphis may join the growing list of cash-strapped cities that ask nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations to make payments in lieu of tax. The City Council will vote Tuesday on a resolution to form a committee to explore the idea. "We want to see if this is feasible, and if it is feasible, how much revenue it could generate," said council member Janis Fullilove, who sponsored the resolution. Fullilove said the committee, if approved, would focus on tax-exempt and nonprofit entities that gross $15 million or more annually. As municipal budgets have felt the crunch of the economic slowdown, cities across...

Two Brazilian air force pilots could be collared by the long arm of the law after making a low-altitude supersonic fly pass which shattered every window of Brazil's Supreme Court. If they know what's good for them, it might be a good idea to keep flying and put as much distance between them and the angry lawyers inside the blown-out building Swooping low over the structure housing the Supremo Tribunal Federal in Brasilia, the two French-made Mirage 2000 jets generated a massive shockwave - destroying the building's glass facade. The war planes had been taking part in the ceremony of...

President Obama addressed the Trayvon Martin shooting today in the Rose Garden. “Obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. When I think about this boy I think about my own kids and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened. I’m glad that not only the Justice Department is looking into it, I understand now that the governor of the...

MURRIETA: Grandma’s pot cookies land toddler in hospital A 3-year-old Murrieta boy ended up in the hospital over the weekend after he got into his grandma’s special chocolate chip cookies while no one was looking. Little did he know, the cookies were not for kids. They were laced with medical marijuana concentrate, police said. The grandmother, who has been diagnosed with cancer, had a doctor’s recommendation for marijuana to treat her pain and to help her sleep, Sgt. Phil Gomez said. Days before, she had baked THC oil into a batch of cookies and tucked them away in a garage...

Simple enough question. We need to start using this option. He clearly brought the country closer to tyranny, and that in my view is an impeachable offense. Outside of "my view", his job is to uphold the constitution. He failed to do his job. He failed to protect the people. He failed to protect COTUS. He should be fired.

Hezbollah has upgraded its network of tunnels in southern Lebanon to secure itself against airstrikes in a future war with Israel, according to a report by a Lebanese newspaper on Monday. Al-Joumhouria said its source was a diplomatic report issued by an unspecified European embassy, which it said contained information from “a number of Western security agencies.”

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized lawmakers Monday for voting to hold him in contempt of Congress last week, saying Republicans have made him a “proxy” to attack President Obama in an election year. In his first interview since Thursday’s vote, Holder said lawmakers have used an investigation of a botched gun-tracking operation as a way to seek retribution against the Justice Department for its policies on a host of issues, including immigration, voting rights and gay marriage. He said the chairman of the committee leading the inquiry, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), is engaging in political theater as...

July 3, 2012   Feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle   Reading 1 Eph 2:19-22 Brothers and sisters:You are no longer strangers and sojourners,but you are fellow citizens with the holy onesand members of the household of God,built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.Through him the whole structure is held togetherand grows into a temple sacred in the Lord;in him you also are being built togetherinto a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Responsorial Psalm Ps 117:1bc, 2 R. (Mark 16:15) Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.Praise the...

The Israel Air Force bombed an intelligence- gathering device in southern Lebanon on Monday, according to Lebanese media reports. One of the reports claimed that the attack was carried out by an air-to-surface missile which struck a “device” between the southern towns of Zrariyeh and Tayr Filsay. Al Manar TV said that the attack targeted a device that had been installed on a Hezbollah telecommunications cable.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A top adviser says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney doesn't see the health care mandate as a tax but as a penalty or a fee or even a fine. That's a different view from Republicans who are condemning the individual mandate in President Barack Obama's health care law as a tax instead of a penalty, as Obama prefers to call it.

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — It’s on his to-do list, but U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says the odds are against repealing the health care law championed by President Barack Obama. The Kentucky Republican said Monday it’s hard to unravel something of the magnitude of the 2,700-page health care law, WHAS-TV (http://bit.ly/LSUtqX ) reports. “If you thought it was a good idea for the federal government to go in this direction, I’d say the odds are still on your side,” McConnell said. “Because it’s a lot harder to undo something than it is to stop it in the first place.”

After ignoring its own 2009 clip of Obama denying his health-care law was a tax increase, ABC finally played the snippet of the President on Sunday's This Week -- but bizarrely, they failed to mention that it was theirs. Host George Stephanopoulos highlighted an ad from Americans for Prosperity that included the clip, but omitted that he conducted the interview where the President made this denial. Later in the program, Rep. Paul Ryan exposed what the ABC News host omitted, that "the President, on your show, said this is not a tax." [audio available here; video below the jump] Paul...

The Navy is steaming ahead with an initiative to power ships with biofuel, despite criticism the so-called “green fuel” costs nearly seven times more than conventional fuel. This month marks the first time the Navy is using biofuel in an operational setting -- sending five ships to a multi-nation exercise off the coast of Hawaii. A Navy official told FoxNews.com on Monday that sailing the so-called “Great Green Fleet” this month on the 50-50 blend of alternative and conventional fuel is part of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ plan to have half the Navy fleet on alternative fuel by 2020. The...

An Australian Special Forces soldier has been killed as a result of a small arms engagement in the Chorah Valley, Afghanistan, yesterday afternoon (2 July 2012). The soldier was shot in the chest during an engagement with insurgents while on a partnered mission with the Afghan National Security Forces to target a known insurgent commander. The Chief of the Defence Force, General David Hurley extended his sympathy to the soldier's family and friends. "Words cannot ease the overwhelming grief they feel today but I hope they can find comfort in the knowledge that this soldier served his country with pride...

Colorado Springs residents, many of whom have been away from their homes for several days, were allowed to return to what remained of their houses on Sunday. The wildfires, which are being called the most destructive of its kind in Colorado history, forced thousands of people to evacuate the city as it blazed a 17,659 acre trail across the state. At last count, 346 homes and communities were laid to waste as a result. Sadly, sifting through the rubble might be the least of their concerns at the moment. Bears and other wildlife have been spotted in these deserted neighborhoods...

The European Central Bank is widely expected to make an interest rate cut this week to try to invigorate the eurozone’s ailing economy after unemployment in the region climbed to a record high and a key survey of manufacturing showed the sector to be at its weakest in three years.