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When questioned by a reporter aboard Air Force One about the optics of President Obama vacationing in Palm Beach this weekend, White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama deserves some time off. "The president is going to enjoy the Presidents' Day weekend with some friends," Earnest said

Until late yesterday, I’d not read “Dear Abby” since the last time someone forwarded me a column with her advice on abortion. It’s been so long I can’t remember if came from the original “Dear Abby” (the late Pauline Phillips) or after her daughter, Jeanne, assumed the nom de plume (and the column) in 2002. In a column that ran Tuesday, a boyfriend wrote that he’d just found out that his girlfriend of nearly four years had an abortion when she was in high school. He explained that he’d overheard a conversation after which he inquired about the implication–that she’d...

The administration's plan would use federal money to pay for preschool for families making up to twice the federal poverty level, and would give states incentives to provide more public pre-school spots for middle-income families, and to provide full-day kindergarten.

Last week, a young woman and her child both died allegedly at the hands of notorious late-term abortionist, Leroy Carhart, in Germantown, Maryland. Texas Right to Life is saddened by these untimely, preventable deaths. We are even more determined to hold negligent abortionists accountable to the law. What happened to 29-year-old Jennifer Morbelli can happen again, right here in Texas, because of the lax standards to which abortionists and abortion centers are held. Just like Carhart, abortionists in Texas may operate out of one of many abortion facilities. When abortionists skip from town to town and do not acquire admitting...

<p>Lawyer and environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and 47 other Sierra Club members were arrested Wednesday after tying themselves to the White House gate to protest the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.</p> <p>Proving the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, RFK Jr.’s son Conor Kennedy was also cuffed. The last we heard about the 18-year-old Kennedy scion was when he was wrapping his arms around his then-girlfriend Taylor Swift last summer.</p>

The parents of a Texas teenager have been temporarily stopped from pressuring their daughter to have an abortion. The teen girl is suing her parents to stop them from making her have an abortion. Attorneys with The Center for Defense of Life have filed suit on behalf of the 16-year-old expectant mom who says her parents are trying to force her to have an abortion of a baby she wants to keep. The teenager is two months pregnant and asking a judge to stop her parents from making her have an abortion by coercing her with verbal and physical threats...

A school principal said no white children were allowed at an after-school tutoring program, and now some parents call it discrimination. The principal at Mission Viejo Elementary in Aurora sent a letter telling parents the program is only for students of color. Parents CBS4 talked with said they were shocked to see, in this day and age, what they consider to be segregation. “I was infuriated. I didn’t understand why they would include or exclude certain groups,” said parent Nicole Cox, who is white. Cox’s 10-year-old daughter needs tutoring. After receiving the notice, other parents complained to the school’s principal,...

President Obama's approach to so-called "climate change" appears to include recycling old ideas. In his State of the Union address, the president recycled the idea of spending more on education, though we are still getting unsatisfactory results. A fact he inadvertently acknowledged by saying we're not keeping up with other countries in science and math. He maintained there are tens of thousands of jobs available but companies can't fill them because public schools aren't teaching students what they need to know. We spend huge sums on education already, so money and achievement must not be related. Infrastructure? We've heard that...

President Obama went to Georgia to push his State of the Union proposal to work with the states "to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America." He cited a statistic from the National Institute for Early Education Research that "fewer than three in 10" 4-year-olds are enrolled in this vital early education program. Just how vital was summed up in three charts from the White House. One of them I showed you yesterday. At-risk children who don't go to preschool are 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, 60 percent more likely not to attend...

Our failure in chief gave us his annual blurred vision of America again Tuesday night. Based on his State of the Union message, Barack Obama’s eyesight is as ideologically impaired as ever. Despite four years of failure, he still sees only one road America can go down to regain its economic health. Not down the capitalist road of free enterprise and liberty that made us the richest country in history. He wants to continue down the socialist road to more federal government -- which means more Obama taxes, more Obama spending, more Obama debt and more Obama government programs to...

General Motors reported earnings today that appeared non-eventful on the surface. Upon further inspection there are some underlying concerns, including a glaring one-time event that stands out. That is an adjustment to earnings with a tax benefit (as opposed to paying taxes) of $35 billion for a "deferred tax valuation release." This was coupled with a goodwill impairment charge of about $27 billion, which allows GM to reduce the previously unusually high goodwill assets that were recorded on its balance sheet. GM uses non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) to calculate its calendar year operating income of $7.9 billion. The GAAP...

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama proposed “working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.” This additional preschool access would, of course, be funded through federal and state coffers. President Obama is headed to Georgia today to “formally unveil his proposal for expanding early childhood education,” reports the Washington Post. You can read the President’s proposal here. It calls for a state-federal partnership guaranteeing that all 4-year olds at families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line receive access to preschool, as well as entails a “massively expanded...

Barack Obama's 2012 Presidential campaign was described succinctly in this term: "Destroy Mitt Romney"Never mind ideas or themes. Just destroy him. Thanks to the left's intellectual deficit, it worked. Thing is, it's not over. There's always someone new in the GOP to destroy and today it's Marco Rubio, despite the pleadings of David Ignatius of the Washington Post. CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Marco Rubio has been designated as the Republican respondent, right, which is pretty smart I guess because he's the hot hand. Immigration jumps right out at that guy when you see him. He's Cuban-American, he’s talked on the issue....

ROME, February 13, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With the eyes of the world fixed on the 125 cardinal electors who will be voting in the upcoming conclave, the former Archbishop of Westminster has advised the next pope not to “condemn” anything in the realm of sexual morality, but to focus instead on the positive. “I think that the Church would be wise actually to focus on that in her teaching, rather than saying ‘we condemn this, we condemn that, or the other’. No – focus on what’s good and what’s true,” Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor told the BBC today. “I think...

An official with the Federal Aviation Administration reassured the public Wednesday that no armed drones will be permitted in U.S. airspace, but he acknowledged the agency can do little about privacy fears associated with the unmanned craft.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis and St. Stanislaus Corporation have resolved a legal dispute over the status of St. Stanislaus Church. According to a joint statement issued Jan. 13, the archdiocese will dismiss its appeal in the case, and the judgment of the trial court is now final. "St. Stanislaus has agreed that it will not hold itself out as affiliated in any way with the Archdiocese of St. Louis or the Roman Catholic Church," the statement noted. "Neither side made any payments to the other as part of this resolution. All other terms of the resolution are confidential. By...

SANTA FE – The state House has voted to close a gun show loophole that allows private vendors to sell weapons without doing background checks on buyers. The legislation has the support of GOP Gov. Susana Martinez, and eight Republicans joined all but three of the chamber’s Democrats to pass the bill 43-26. It headed to the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain. House Bill 77 would require private sellers at gun shows to have background checks done on prospective buyers before they make a sale. The bill’s backers said it would keep at least some guns out of the...

Report: Hagel Said State Department Controlled by Israel Contemporaneous account by Hagel supporter of 2007 speech Fox News Channel on Tuesday reported that secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel failed to disclose to the United States Senate speeches delivered to controversial groups such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee as well as James Zogby’s Arab American Institute. Meanwhile, a 2007 speech then-Sen. Hagel delivered at Rutgers University in New Jersey as he tested the waters for a presidential run is drawing fresh scrutiny. Hagel said the U.S. Department of State was an adjunct of the Israeli foreign minister’s office, according to...

Foreclosure activity continued to drop in January, led by dramatic changes in the state that once led the nation in foreclosures. A new law in California, the "Homeowner Bill of Rights," makes it much harder and potentially more costly for banks to foreclose; hence they are suddenly finding alternatives. "The new law imposes fines of up to $7,500 per loan for filing of multiple unverified foreclosure documents. As a result, the downward foreclosure trend in California accelerated into hyper speed in January, decisively shifting the balance of power when it comes to the nation's foreclosure activity," said RealtyTrac's Daren Blomquist....

A former member of the Westboro Baptist Church--a fringe group based in Topeka, Kansas that pickets soldiers' funerals--apologized to the mother of a 21-year-old soldier killed in Afghanistan on a talk show Wednesday. Libby Phelps Alvarez, the former Westboro member, apologized to Sherry and Randy Wyatt for picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers like their son on Anderson Live Wednesday. Alvarez is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, the group's founder, and has recently left the group. (Other members of the shrinking group have recently publicly defected as well.) "I just feel sad...and, I'm sorry," Alvarez said. "I thought I was...