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“Boy, do I get hate mail,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman told "Off The Cuff." “There’s a lot of people who really, really hate what I say. I get a lot of stuff calling me a communist, a liar,and actually, various misspellings.” And that’s just the family-friendly version. Krugman is a professor ofEconomicsand International Affairs at Princeton University. He’s the author or co-author of seven books, but it’s his work as an op-ed columnist for the New York Times that draws the ire of his correspondents. He’s been criticized Left, and Right. To some, he’s a liberal polemicist and East...

According to police, Pettway, Hayes and Williams punched and kicked a student shortly after midnight Monday until he was unconscious, CNN affiliate WVTM reported. The student's backpack with an Apple Macbook Pro was stolen, police said. About an hour later, Williams allegedly beat up another student until he, too, lost consciousness and took his wallet, WTVM said. Hayes and Pettway waited in a vehicle, police said. Later that morning, Williams and Calloway used the second victim's debit card to buy snacks from a vending machine, police said. The football program suspended all four players indefinitely.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- The world got its first glimpse of Hugo Chavez since he underwent a fourth cancer-related surgery in Cuba more than two months ago, with photos released Friday showing the Venezuelan leader alongside his daughters in Havana. Along with Valentine's Day images of puffy-faced Chavez came a possible explanation for why no one has heard from Venezuela's longtime president since his surgery: He is breathing through a tracheal tube that makes speech difficult. The government described Chavez's condition as "delicate" and said he continues to undergo "vigorous treatment for his fundamental illness."

Burn Penn State to the ground. Salt the earth. Dig up Joe and burn HIM. This is the weekend where you can say anything about Penn State and it won't bother me. But do me two favors. Watch the documentary (or at least the promo) linked, and donate to Thon - OR YOUR local pediatric cancer charity. Since 1977, THON has donated over $89 Million to it's sole beneficiary - the Four Diamonds Fund/Hershey Medical Center. Over 96% of the take actually goes For The Kids. It is the largest student run philanthropy in the world. Why We Dance -...

Last week, former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner went on a murderous rampage throughout Southern California, shooting seven people, including five members of law enforcement, killing three. Before he went on his spree, Dorner wrote a manifesto praising liberal policies on gun control, media personages including Piers Morgan and Chris Matthews and politicians including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the bulk of Dorner's manifesto centered on his hatred for the police department from which he had been fired in 2009. He claimed in the manifesto that the LAPD "has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has...

You are not sure of your "self" at times but this is why I come and speak to your heart for you to surrender your "self" completely that I may "arise" in you in fullness and truth for "I AM" and this is what you must desire to become " ME IN YOU " For I created you for My glory and my will is all you need to complete each day! So stop competing with your "self" for I AM your will "alive" in you even now and unto forever. I AM all that matters! So lay your life...

Richard Collins, a screenwriter during the McCarthy era who was blacklisted for several years before he cooperated with the Communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee, died Thursday in Ventura. The onetime Communist Party member was 98 and the last of the group of left-leaning writers and directors known as the Hollywood 19, 10 of whom went to prison for refusing to name names before the committee.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, a number of Maghreb young people have decided to continue their struggle by taking up arms and joining jihadists in Syria. The young Maghreb militants have linked up with Syrian opposition groups seeking to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb fighters are reportedly among the latest arrivals to the Syria battle. "Young people from different Maghreb countries are fighting alongside these organised groups in Syria," confirmed Lies Boukraa, who heads the Algiers-based African Centre for Studies and Research on Terrorism (CAERT). "Those young...

"President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday. “During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who had held up Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee to force the information to be released. Mr. Graham said that if Mr. Obama had picked up the phone, at least two of the Americans killed in the...

“Since 1989, the world has witnessed a progressive weakening of the state and rise of alternative, non-state primary loyalties, for which a growing number of men are willing to fight.” This is what military affairs expert William S. Lind calls the heart of his theory of the Fourth Generation of Modern Warfare (4GW). And there can be no better example of a “primary loyalty” than the right to keep and bear arms. (1) The days of the massive, invulnerable armies of the nation-state winning contests with lesser opponents at the drop of a hat are over. Consider the fact that...

Image via SodaheadUpon the demise of Osama Bin Laden, Barack Obama was positively ubiquitous. He basked endlessly in the afterglow. NY Times: Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that American military and C.I.A. operatives had finally cornered Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, who had eluded them for nearly a decade. American officials said Bin Laden resisted and was shot in the head. He was later buried at sea. SlateBarack Obama Killed Osama Bin Laden. Period....

Miss France 2012 at the Miss Universe competition was the lovely Marie Payet. Born August 17, 1992, she grew up on the small Island of La Réunion, just off the west coast of France. This one's the sporty, adventurous type -her latest thing is surfing- and has displayed some serious musical talent as well, already recording a duet single with a more established French artist.  Marie Payet seems to have made some sort of impression in Vegas last December too, as she was a Top-10 Finalist in the Miss Universe competition- not hard to see why: More at Reaganite...

A nurse is researching whether an old family remedy using sugar to heal wounds does actually work. Moses Murandu, from Zimbabwe, grew up watching his father use granulated sugar to treat wounds. Sugar is thought to draw water away from wounds and prevent bacteria from multiplying. Early results from a trial on 35 hospital patients in Birmingham are encouraging, but more research is needed. One of the patients who received sugar treatment on a wound was 62-year-old Alan Bayliss from Birmingham. He had undergone an above-the knee amputation on his right leg at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and, as...

In a previous blog entry I discussed reasons not to go to law school, namely, the high debt and low employment ratio. It seems that medical students are facing a similar situation, as reported by the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff. “But there’s also a downside to heading to medical school these days: Students’ odds of getting in a residency program are rapidly shrinking — and medical students have begun to live in fear of this very scary chart,” writes Kliff. The chart contrasts medical residency applications rising steeply, with a gradually increasing line of open 1st year residency positions. As...

When Claire Ives was seven months pregnant with her third child, she used a handheld device to listen to her unborn son's heartbeat. As she turned the machine on, she thought something had malfunctioned. "I thought I wasn't listening right or something," Ives, a nurse in London, told ABCNews.com. "I didn't believe his [heart] rate could be that fast." Ives' son had a heart rate of about 300 beats per minute, nearly double the normal 160. After doctors were alerted to the baby's elevated heart rate, Ives delivered her son, Edward Ives, five weeks early via emergency cesarean at the...

The cradle of the Arab Spring is increasingly looking like the birthplace of jihadists. Long before Tunisia ousted its dictator and inspired the North African pro-democracy movement, the small, relatively prosperous country had the more dubious distinction of exporting Islamic militants. Now, as the country wrestles with the creation of a new government after the killing of a liberal opposition leader, experts say the flow of fighters is getting worse. The repressive measures of the old secular dictatorship fueled the anger that produced jihadi movements, but its ruthless security apparatus also kept them largely in check. The much more relaxed...

The Obama administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it should be a federal crime to refuse to hire ex-convicts — and threatens to sue businesses that don’t employ criminals. In April, the EEOC unveiled its “Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records,” which declares that “criminal record exclusions have a disparate impact based on race and national origin.” The impetus for this “guidance” is that black men are nearly seven times more likely than white men to serve time in prison, and therefore refusals to hire convicts disproportionally impact blacks, according to a Wall Street Journal opinion...

(Newser) – There's no way this one could have ended well: An East Texas school's search for the mystery pooper who had five times left feces in the gymnasium led the principal to ask the school nurse to inspect the fourth-graders' underwear. "My kid came home and he said ... his butt had been inspected," complained one parent of a West Sabine Elementary student. That class had been the ones using the gym when the feces appeared, and didn't respond when the principal continually asked who did the deed. She defended the move to KAIT8 News. She says the nurse...

Manufacturing got off to a weak start this year as motor vehicle production tumbled, but a rebound in factory activity in New York state this month suggested the decline would be temporary. Consumers were a bit more upbeat early this month even as they paid more for gasoline and saw higher taxes reduce their paychecks, other data on Friday showed. Households drew comfort from steady job gains, which together with rising house and share prices should help to underpin consumer spending. Manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent in January after rising 1.1 percent in December, the Federal Reserve said. That followed...