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Just two days before this year’s election, when it was clear there would be a Republican wave, the New York Times ran an op-ed that called for the abolition of midterm elections. Written by a college professor and one of his students, the piece was couched as being in favor of democracy because midterms have notoriously low voter turnout. But the real reason the pair opposed midterms is because Republicans had done well in 2010 and were poised to do better in 2014. It was typical progressive pap, pre-electoral sour grapes, not a serious proposal. But I have a proposal...

Somebody has to be the good guy. So says Peggy Noonan this week in the wake of the torture report, a 14 million page accounting of mostly standard, typical, usual, unremarkable methods of forcibly extracting information from an enemy. And isn’t that a word we seem to have forgotten: enemy. The concept of an enemy is one of the most basic, primitive understandings possible. It is obvious, and should require no explanation. And yet here we are. Because we don’t have them, anymore. There is no evil empire. The modern sensibility, informed heavily by pseudo-leftist pop culture and leftover hippie...

The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents. After The Washington Post reported in April that the Treasury Department had confiscated $75 million in tax refunds due to about 400,000 Americans whose ancestors owed money to Social Security, the agency’s acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said efforts to collect on those old debts would cease immediately. But although some people whose refunds were seized were reimbursed in...

Washington (AFP) - The US Congress unanimously approved fresh economic sanctions against Russia and lethal weapons for Kiev, defying President Barack Obama and hardening American lawmakers' response to a Kremlin-backed insurgency in Ukraine. Identical texts of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act passed both the Senate and House of Representatives on Thursday, but because of a technical issue it returned to the Senate where it passed by unanimous consent moments before the chamber adjourned late Saturday night. It is now up to Obama to either sign or veto the measure. The White House said Thursday it was "looking at it."

The first time she witnessed a student's major tantrum — a 2-year-old hurling a toy stove filled with plastic pots and pans—Shanikia Johnson had just started as a teacher at Little Flowers Child Development Center in West Baltimore.She knew toddlers acted out. But the rage-filled reaction, triggered when Johnson wouldn't allow the boy to play with a toy, stunned the 22-year-old teacher. Then, time and time again, she saw other children throwing classroom furniture. Bookcases, chairs, tables—all were flung around the room.Some students bit classmates, leaving teeth marks on hands and cheeks; a few threatened to hurt staff members. Other...

Ready for Warren? Run Liz Run? Run Warren Run? Draft Warren? Progressive activists haven’t agreed on what to call the movement urging Elizabeth Warren to run for president, but they largely concur on this: with every recent anti-establishment move the Massachusetts senator grows more attractive as a 2016 candidate, both in her own right and as a progressive foil for Hillary Clinton. Such sentiments were on vivid display this week at RootsCamp, a gathering of some 2,000 progressive activists held in Washington, D.C. The event was held as Warren and others on the left have been denouncing the “cromnibus” spending...

Bill Whittle delivers again. This time the target is the Progressive Agenda and its use of crisis as seen in Ferguson.

Kevin McCarthy of Thousand Oaks, California, was surprised last spring, when he learned his family doctor of 14 years could not accept the Blue Shield insurance he'd purchased under Obamacare. He said he was "outraged" because when he was shopping for his policy, Blue Shield confirmed his doctor was covered. "We were duped," McCarthy said. "Hoodwinked is another good term." Here's what happened. Insurance companies -- to save money -- are quietly selling what are called "narrow networks." They sharply restrict the number of doctors and hospitals people can see. In some cases, people may be limited to 30 percent...

Companies linked to Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko, both close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, were given contracts worth 309 billion roubles (£3.6 billion, $8.1 billion) since western sanctions were imposed on the men in March, according to a Bloomberg report. The deals included a 228-billion- rouble project to build a bridge to Crimea from the Russian mainland as well as a large chunk of the 770-billion-rouble Power of Siberia gas pipeline.

Karen Dawisha's new book Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia shows how Russian president Vladimir Putin has enabled his cronies to become enormously wealthy under his kleptocratic rule. Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. ARUN RATH, HOST: Karen Dawisha, professor of political science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, spent the last five years investigating how Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, came to control so much of that country's wealth. Her new book is "Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?" Karen Dawisha, welcome to the program. KAREN DAWISHA: Thanks for...

American in North Korea denounces U.S., seeks Venezuela asylum: media Reuters 2:54 a.m. EST, December 14, 2014 A U.S. citizen who illegally entered North Korea delivered a lengthy denunciation of U.S. domestic and foreign policy on Sunday and said he was seeking political asylum in Venezuela, the North's official media said. The man identified himself as Arturo Pierre Martinez, 29, from El Paso, Texas, in video footage of a press conference released by the North's KCNA news agency and said he had taken "a risky journey to reach the (North) so that I could pass along some very valuable and...

The level of butt hurt among pro-amnesty Republicans is staggering. They are savaging Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)94% and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)96% in ways the left refrained from savaging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)6% for her own opposition to the CROmnibus. Of note, Warren was fighting against corporate cronyism and Cruz and Lee are fighting to stop the President’s Amnesty. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Jeff Flake62%Senate Republican Average64%See Full Scorecard62% will be one of the unnamed Senators calling Cruz and Lee’s efforts “unproductive.” Several sources overheard him spinning reporters against Cruz and Lee. Other Republicans, including McConnell, joined in on...

What do Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia rape article and Senate CIA report have in common? Neither report talked to the accused. However, both also suffer from the same paralyzing component. Both reports' conclusions were determined before the facts were collected. Although each report touches on vastly different topics, they both expose a lack of unbiased critical thinking necessary for the honest, intellectual presentation of the facts. Both reports are a product of an “end justifies the means” philosophy, where the authors start with a desired conclusion and build the “facts” to support that end. Both reports are a demonstration...

OMAHA, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- The Nebraska Humane Society has located the owner of the mysterious sheep found "wandering the streets of Omaha" wearing a Christmas sweater. -snip-Owner Margaret Vazquez reunited with her woolly friend, a ram named Gage, on Tuesday night, after he had already made international headlines for his holiday spirit. "I was so happy that we got him," Vazquez, who said her friend had spotted him online, told the Omaha World-Herald. "I was worried that someone would eat him or something bad would happen."

I have had what seems like the flu or 2 or 3 weeks. It is a killer sore throat, moderate cough. But it is the sore throat that is killing me. Anyway, I just dragged myself out to Trader Joe's to buy something tempting and thought I would check out their tiny medicine section. I saw and bought Oscillococcinum which was hiding on the bottoms half. I know nothing about it except what I just learned in Wikipedia. Does anyone have experience with this stuff. The Amazon page with photos http://www.amazon.com/Boiron-Oscillococcinum-Flu-like-Symptoms-Pellets/dp/B0078W0QOI

Protesters Block Hollywood Intersection, Burn Flag; Four Arrested Hollywood Protests By VICTORIA KIM Protesters demontrating against police killings in Missouri, New York block Hollywood intersection, burn flag Protesters blocked a tourist-filled Hollywood intersection Saturday afternoon and burned an American flag as part of nationwide marches protesting recent police killings of unarmed black men. Four activists who were part of the crowd, three female and one male, were arrested for failing to disperse, said Sgt. Chuck Slater of the Los Angeles Police Department. Officers declared the crowd an unlawful assembly about 4:15 p.m. and ordered demonstrators to disperse.

Thousands of demonstrators marched in Washington, New York and Boston on Saturday to protest killings of unarmed black men by police officers. Organizers said the marches were among the largest in the recent wave of protests against the killings of black males by police in Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Cleveland and elsewhere. The protests were mainly peaceful, although police in Boston said they arrested 23 people who tried to block a highway. One person was arrested in New York after two officers were assaulted by protesters, prompting a condemnation from Mayor Bill de Blasio who said the alleged assault marked...

The approval comes one year after Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill into law allowing certain undocumented immigrants to pay in-state college tuition rates. In 2013, Christie and Democratic leaders reached a compromise to remove a clause in the bill that also would have offered the same undocumented immigrants state aid to help pay for their higher education.“We have the opportunity to allow all children in this state now to go to college and to go to college in an affordable manner. It provides opportunity and it makes New Jersey the kind of place that all of us want to...

Three cardboard cutouts of black people were reportedly found hanged in effigy from nooses on the UC Berkeley campus on Saturday morning. The incident follows a week of protests on the streets of Berkeley, California, to denounce the grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men in St. Louis and New York. Local pastor Michael McBride was the first to share the image on Twitter. One of the hanged figures, which appears to be a cardboard cutout of a lynched woman identified as Laura Nelson from 1911. The cutout includes the...