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I think we can all guess where this is heading. I mentioned this week that the Democrats are definitively drawing up plans for their latest iteration of the (intellectually cheap, politically undemanding, and counterproductively harmful) push for a minimum-wage increase; no doubt ObamaCare’s many troubles really lit a fire under the strategy, as they’ll need something to talk about on the campaign trail that isn’t health-care related. In his State of the Union address at the start of the year, O brought up the idea of jacking up the minimum wage to $9/hour, but the Democrats are hankering for an...

Labor leaders and businesses are closely watching a Supreme Court case to be argued this Wednesday that involves a popular strategy used by unions to successfully organize hundreds of thousands of workers. That strategy — widely deployed by the Service Employees International Union and the Unite Here hotel workers union — involves pressuring an employer into signing a so-called neutrality agreement in which the employer promises not to oppose a unionization drive. By some estimates, more than half of the recent successful unionization campaigns involve such agreements, which sometimes allow union organizers onto company property to talk with workers. Benjamin...

From the day that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act went into effect to the morning that the federal healthcare exchange went live, 1288 days passed. 3 years, 6 months, and 8 days. In all that time, our federal government could not construct a website that actually worked, and we are still waiting for a final product. Here are 4 things the United States government accomplished in less time than it has taken to build a working website: (Number 2 is pretty amazing) http://www.camharris.us/2013/11/4-things-the-us-government-accomplished-in-less-time-than-it-took-to-build-a-working-obamacare-website/

"I am pro-life,"  [Wendy Davis] said, borrowing from the label anti-abortion activists assign themselves. "I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children's future and their ability to provide for that future. I care about life and I have a record of fighting for people above all else." A journalist at the Brownsville Herald in Texas wrote...

It’s an interesting dynamic. And apparently it goes both ways. It’s not news that black politicians, particularly of the older sort, hate Obama. The Congressional Black Caucus nearly went all in for Hillary. Jesse Jackson talked about cutting off Obama’s nuts. No doubt much worse was said in private. Some of this may be a personality clash between the old corrupt generation of black pols, the Charlie Rangel era, and the younger savvier Cory Bookers, like the one that played out in Newark. The Charlie Rangels think the Obamas and Bookers are too slick and too phony, that they don’t...

"Yes we have banned Malala's book because it carries the content which is against our country's ideology and Islamic values," Kashif Mirza, chief of All Pakistan Private Schools Federation, told the Agence France-Presse news agency. And Mirza told the Associated Press that Malala, who has received significant global media attention, had betrayed Pakistan. She "was a role model for children, but this book has made her controversial," he said, according to the AP. "Through this book, she became a tool in the hands of the Western powers." He added that the book did not show sufficient respect for Islam because...

CAMBRIDGE — As the lights rose, Ted Cruz held center stage, dressed in black and kneeling at a bedside. The first-year student at Harvard Law School delivered his lines with the emotions of a man gripped by anger, fear, and worry for his reputation. “Do you understand that I have many enemies?” he thundered. “There is a faction that is sworn to drive me from my pulpit. Do you understand that?” Cruz, then a devoted amateur thespian, was playing the role of the Rev. Samuel Parris in “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s allegorical play about McCarthyism. The lines — and the...

**SNIP** State Republicans say Hagan misled the public when she tried to sell the healthcare overhaul to North Carolinians in a 2009 speech on the Senate floor. "People who like their insurance and their doctors keep them," said Hagan then. The North Carolina GOP says Hagan should be held accountable for promises she made about the Affordable Care Act. "When you come out in very absolute terms, 'You can keep your doctor,' period. 'You can keep you plan,' period," said N.C. GOP Chairman Claude Pope. "That's a pretty absolute statement, and for them to make those statements knowing that they...

Friends, it's Sunday night again and time to relax. Warm up the tubes for another 4 hours of classic radio Americana. Listen LiveInfo*tonight's show will be available at the "Info" link starting tomorrow.

A dating website for married people who want to cheat on their spouses is being sued by a former employee who says she damaged her wrists typing up hundreds of fake profiles of sexy women. Doriana Silva is seeking $20 million from Ashley Madison for what she calls the company’s “unjust enrichment” at her expense, plus another $1 million in punitive and general damages. In her statement of claim, Silva — a Brazilian immigrant living in Toronto — says she was hired to help launch a Portuguese-language version of the site and promised a starting salary of $34,000 plus benefits....

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Mary Landrieu needs some good news from the federal health care law — and soon — or an issue that's already tricky for the Democratic U.S. senator's 2014 re-election bid threatens to become a tough hurdle for her campaign. **SNIP** In a state where President Barack Obama and his health care reform poll as highly unpopular, Landrieu needs something positive to show for the law if she's going to be able to explain her vote that helped pass it and her continuing, strong defense of it.

I. Recently, the California governor signed a law whereby children could legally have not just two, but three parents at the same time. This is the fifth state, plus the District of Columbia, to have such legislation. The law is proposed, naturally, under the rubric of “helping the child,” of keeping him out of a foster home. Whether giving a child two “parents” of the same sex is good for the child in the first place is likewise not brought up. The bill was not clear about who will have authority when there is a conflict among the three...

Red states and blue states? Flyover country and the coasts? How simplistic. Colin Woodard, a reporter at the Portland Press Herald and author of several books, says North America can be broken neatly into 11 separate nation-states, where dominant cultures explain our voting behaviors and attitudes toward everything from social issues to the role of government. “The borders of my eleven American nations are reflected in many different types of maps — including maps showing the distribution of linguistic dialects, the spread of cultural artifacts, the prevalence of different religious denominations, and the county-by-county breakdown of voting in virtually every...

That terrible storm which hit the Philippines must have affected a lot of expats as well as the natives. Some of those expats are Freepers. Has anyone got an update so we know if they are all safe? We even had at least one Prepper living there, hope he bugged out safely. Prayers go out to all of them.

The annual [Passion for Freedom] exhibition is as close as London gets to underground art. That claim may surprise you. If you listen to artists, writers, academics and journalists, you would think that thousands of them operate in a radical underground. They say the right things. They ‘speak truth to power’, ‘transgress boundaries’, and all the rest of it. But you will have noticed that they are careful only to challenge religions that won’t hurt them (Christianity) and governments that won’t arrest them (democracies). The London-based Polish intellectuals who organise this artistic protest against abuses of human rights are braver....

Poor Barack Obama. Ending his fifth year as the world’s most powerful man, he is running out of scapegoats and fairy tales. Blaming George W. Bush has lost its punch, and the ObamaCare debacle is shredding the myths he is competent and honest. Still, before he rides off into that sunset of self-pity and low poll ratings, he ought to invite his remaining friends over for a heart-to-heart. That way he can tell The New York Times that its fanatical support does him no favors. Instead, it feeds his arrogance and reinforces his belief that he can solve any problem...

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho (AP) - A man injured when a driver suspected of being drunk barreled into his northern Idaho house got some good news Saturday: His dog, missing since the Thursday crash, was found. The Coeur d'Alene Press reported that Jeffrey Groat was reunited with his teacup Great Dane named Burke while recovering in the hospital. The small pooch had been found Thursday near the hospital's emergency room, leading Groat's friends to speculate it had followed emergency vehicles that carried him and the other victims to the hospital.

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan authorities on Saturday released a Miami Herald reporter they had detained two days earlier while he reported on the South American country's economic crisis. The Miami Herald reported on its website that Jim Wyss was released from a detention facility in Caracas and handed over to U.S. Embassy officials. Herald executive editor Aminda Marques Gonzalez said on the website that "Jim is safe and soon will be reunited with his loved ones."

Here is a great point for our reflection on our obligation to revitalize our liturgical worship of God.Unless we revitalize our liturgical worship, no other aspect of a New Evangelization will have any lasting effect.Dan Burke wrote at the National Catholic Register: The Devil’s War On Silence in MassA consistent thread in the resulting dialogue from my post “The Devil’s War On Silence” was on the common problem of the disturbing absence of silence in Mass. This is clearly a challenge that is very familiar to the majority of faithful Catholics. Frequently, the noise assaults us right when we enter...

The Navy has christened its newest aircraft carrier, which will join the fleet in 2016. The USS Gerald R. Ford is the lead ship in the Navy’s next class of aircraft carriers. It was christened Saturday at the Newport News shipyard where it was built.