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Albert Darago had never fired a bazooka before. He was an “ack-ack” guy, a fuse-cutter on a 90mm antiaircraft gun. But on Dec. 19, 1944, the brass was looking for volunteers to go after some German tanks. And Darago said sure. He was a 19-year-old, color-blind draftee, a native of Baltimore’s Little Italy and a musician who played piano and clarinet. He was no hero, he said. But when Adolf Hitler launched the massive attack that began World War II’s bloody Battle of the Bulge, he had not reckoned on GIs like Darago.

A New York Times reporter will be subpoenaed to answer questions ahead of an upcoming trial of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information, though a Tuesday hearing indicated there is much confusion about what the journalist may be asked to reveal. Prosecutors say they will not ask James Risen if ex-CIA man Jeffrey Sterling was his anonymous source for part of the 2006 book “State Of War” that detailed a botched CIA effort to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. However, they do want to know if the two had a prior, on-the-record source relationship. Risen’s lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg,...

<p>WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush, who’s seriously considering a 2016 presidential bid, has sprinted to the front of the Republican field in a new McClatchy-Marist Poll.</p> <p>Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney remains on top, with Bush, a former Florida governor, a close second. Take away Romney, and Bush leads the field.</p>

Last week, the Obama administration announced new curbs on racial profiling by federal law enforcement. Before deciding whether this is good or bad policy, we might try to develop a description/definition of racial profiling or any other kind of profiling. A good definition of profiling in general is the use of an easily observed physical characteristic as a guess for some other, difficult-to-observe characteristic. The reason people profile is that information is costly and they seek methods to economize on information costs. One way to do that is through profiling. Imagine a chief of police in a city where there...

Britain could be hit 'at any moment' by a Sydney-style terror attack, David Cameron told MPs today. The Prime Minister said the Australian attack, in which two hostages died and Islamic extremist Man Haron Monis was killed, was a reminder of the danger Britain faces. He told MPs there had already been a series of plots by lone wolf terrorists which had been detected and stopped.

A federal appeals court has overturned a ruling ordering Massachusetts prison officials to provide taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery for an inmate convicted of murder. Michelle Kosilek, born Robert Kosilek, has waged a protracted legal battle for the surgery she says is needed to relieve the mental anguish caused by gender-identity disorder. …

A federal appeals court has ruled today that transsexual wife-killer Michelle Kosilek's push for a sex-change operation has been denied. "The district court erred and that the care provided to Kosilek by the DOC does not violate the Eighth Amendment. We therefore reverse the district court's grant of injunctive relief, and we remand with instructions to dismiss the case," the court ruled. A federal judge ruled in 2012 that Kosilek, 65, needed the surgery for gender identity disorder, but state prison officials challenged the ruling. Kosilek, who was born Robert Kosilek, is serving life in an all-male prison for killing...

Earlier this month, the self-described fact-checking outfit Politifact submitted a series of candidates for their Lie of the Year to readers for their perusal. They came up with a variety of great candidates; Barack Obama’s claim that his “position hasn’t changed” with regards to the illegality of the president implementing immigration reform via executive order, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) insisting that 10 ISIS fighters had been apprehended attempting to cross the Mexican border were among them. The most compelling and obvious candidate for Lie of the Year had to be Obama’s insistence that the Islamic State is merely...

October’s terror attack in Canada, in which a lone attacker tragically took the life of a Canadian soldier outside of the Parliament building in Ottawa, prompted a series of hand-wringing reports over the rise of “lone wolf” terrorists. This attack was preceded by a radicalized man striking two members of Canada’s military with a car, killing one. The Ottawa attack was followed by another radicalized Islamist attacking New York City Police officers with a hatchet. Yesterday, a self-styled Islamic cleric took two lives and wounded may others after taking a group in Sydney hostage. The rise of the “lone...

Listen to the gorgeous Irish singing quartet “Celtic Woman” sing the beautiful Christmas classic “O Holy Night” at Slane Castle, in Ireland, in a version that was never broadcast on television or released on DVD. Try to not get chills.

Jeb Bush, the pro-life former governor of Florida, announced today that he is forming an exploratory committee to examine a potential Republican presidential bid in 2016. Bush is known for signing pro-life legislation and a bill to try to save the life of Terri Schiavo. Bush, the brother of pro-life President George W. Bush, made the announcement on Facebook, saying he and his wife and family had long conversations over Thanksgiving about whether to run for president. “We also talked about the future of our nation. As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong...

A Missouri woman pleaded guilty this morning to fatally shooting her cousin at an Upper St. Clair home last month. "I truly am sorry for everything that happened, and I wish it wouldn't have happened," Stephanie Munizza, 28, told Judge Jeffrey A. Manning of the Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. Ms. Munizza pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor, and the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office withdrew a felony count of third-degree murder. She was in Pittsburgh visiting family when, on Nov. 1, she and her cousin, Joshua Poremski, were drinking and talking about Ms. Munizza possibly getting a concealed...

Researchers have recorded and analysed the ways cows communicate with their young, to translate the meanings behind the "moos". They identified two distinctly different call sounds that cows make to their calves, depending on whether they are nearby or separated. They also identified a call calves make to their mothers when they want to start suckling milk. The cows were studied at a farm in Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. The team from the University of Nottingham and Queen Mary University of London spent ten months digitally recording the cow sounds, then a year analysing them using computers. Dr Mónica Padilla de la...

The number of beneficiaries who receive compensation from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has topped 46,000,000 for 37 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). In September 2014, which is the latest data from the USDA, there were 46,459,998 Americans who received assistance from the SNAP program. The number of beneficiaries has exceeded 46 million since September 2011, a total of 37 months, or more than three years. [snip]Households on food stamps in September got an average of $252.69 during the month, and the program benefits cost taxpayers $5,748,809,023....

The price of oil has fallen by nearly half in just six months, a surprising and steep plunge that has analysts arguing over whether this is a good or bad thing. The price of oil has fallen by nearly half in just six months, a surprising and steep plunge that has consumers cheering, producers howling and economists wringing their hands over whether this is a good or bad thing. The price of a barrel of oil is just under $56, down from a summer high of $107, and lower than at any time since the US was still in recession...

Dozens of congressional Democrats asked federal health officials Monday to take extra steps to protect gay illegal immigrant children from abuse while they’re in custody, including ensuring that transgender children are housed with the sex they identify as. Saying reports of mistreatment “continue to emerge” from federal facilities, the lawmakers asked the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement to improve care for the tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children who streamed across the border over the last year, and who are still coming, though in smaller numbers. “We request ORR to work with providers to ensure...

College students at Florida International University were shocked recently to discover that not only is Hillary Clinton 67 years old, but she also hasn’t driven a car since 1996. Lauren Cooley, a field representative with Turning Point USA, recently asked 20 students if they knew these fun facts about the possible 2016 Democratic presidential nominee. Of those interviewed at the public research university, home to roughly 50,000 students, only six guessed Clinton is in her 60s, but of those, they still thought she was younger than 67, Cooley told The Fix. Most thought she is in her 40s or 50s,...

If not resisted, liberals would cause us all to be killed by our nation’s very real foreign enemies and the domestic perpetrators and criminals who prey on our society The news from Sydney, Australia was of another incident in which a lone Islamic fascist took civilians hostage to fulfill a demented notion of a “holy war” on non-believers. After a siege by police two of the hostages he had taken were dead along with the gunman. These attacks are becoming more frequent, referred to as “lone wolf” events, but in a larger context, they represent an effort by al Qaeda...

Three friends of the alleged University of Virginia rape victim are growing more skeptical about her account, saying they have doubts about information she gave them and why she belatedly tried to get herself deleted from the Rolling Stone article that engulfed their campus in controversy. The friends say among their concerns is the fact that the woman, named only as “Jackie” in the article, gave them a cellphone number so they could text a man she said she was seeing about three weeks before she alleged she was gang-raped at a fraternity house. Eventually, the friends ended up with...

So get ready for some worrisome money problems in the coming fiscal year for our country - that is if we still have a country after the best efforts of Obama, Reid and Boehner to destroy it Why is it that just after good news settles in and the future looks better and better, some soft-head narcissist, like the most prominent one today, our feckless POTUS of usurper fame Barack Hussein Obama, starts feeling his oats and begins acting just like a jackass? And I mean that last word both in real life and in politics. None of the euphoria...