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Dear Dave, Yesterday evening you suggested I watch The Prince of Egypt, in your opinion the best movie inspired by the book of Exodus. Although I didn’t have time then, I got to it this morning. It impressed me mightily. The top 5 reasons why I loved it – and why everybody who reads this article should watch it if they haven’t already – are: 1. Moses never doubts God, only himself. This is a vital lesson for believers of all kinds; you can doubt your own abilities, but never doubt the most high God, who created everything, and without...

The right to gun ownership in America is not just about hunting, or protecting property and person, but “the ultimate check against government tyranny,” argues a fund appeal from Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.The Cruz fundraising letter echoes arguments made by militia groups, and a far-right demonstration last winter that followed voter passage of an initiative requiring criminal background checks for gun purchasers.“The Second Amendment to the Constitution isn’t just for protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice,” said Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general.“It is a Constitutional right to protect...

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) - Nearly 20 Republican White House prospects will court presidential primary voters in New Hampshire this weekend at a state GOP meeting in Nashua. It's the first gathering of its kind in the first-in-the-nation primary state this year and offers no shortage of intriguing storylines as Republican contenders across the political spectrum deliver speeches, answer questions and work to stand out in the crowd. Five things we'll be watching for: [SNIP] Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, will be in New Hampshire as well to make sure Republicans don't get a free pass. [SNIP]

Nigel Farage has been accused of "insulting" the audience of the final election debate by saying they had failed to understand the issues and were too left wing. During heated debate over the shortage of affordable housing in the UK, the UKIP leader said that "even by the standards of the BBC", the audience was too far left. He said: "There is a total lack of comprehension amongst this panel and the audience, which is a remarkable audience even by the left-wing standards of the BBC." The UKIP leader was jeered as he was told by Ed Miliband that it...

The horrific story of the unarmed Walter Scott’s death at the hands of Officer Michael Slager continues to reverberate. Aside from the incontrovertible evidence on the tape that the accused officer shot him in the back as if he were doing target practice, there has since emerged more tape of the traffic stop itself and audio of the officer speaking with his superiors on the phone raising even more questions about his state of mind at the time of the shooting. But as journalists have gone back and studied the officer’s record and found that he was previously investigated for...

A community group aligned with Democrats is spearheading a rally near Gov. Scott Walker's home in Wauwatosa Monday afternoon to protest the goveror's proposed cuts to education budgets. The rally is planned for 4:30 p.m. at the Juneau Park Play Field, 6500 W. Mount Vernon Ave., with a "possible march to Governor Walker's Wauwatosa home," according to a news release from Wisconsin Jobs Now, which is part of the Schools & Communities United coalition.

Former President George W. Bush is about to have another grandchild to boss him around. Jenna Bush Hager is expecting her second daughter with husband Henry Hager, she announced Monday on the “Today” show. The baby girl, due in August, will join almost 2-year-old sister, Mila. Bush Hager, 33, revealed that her father already takes orders from his first granddaughter, saying of the 43rd president, “He goes by ‘Jefe,’ which means ‘boss’ in Spanish.” “But really what happens is that Mila just bosses Jefe around. I mean, she’s bossy. She’s like, ‘Jefe, sit down. Jefe, tea. Jefe, coffee.’ ” Asked...

MATTHEW BOYLE15 Apr 2015Washington, DC254 What Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus calls former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s “fake and phony” populism apparently knows no bounds. In Iowa this week — in her first event as a presidential candidate — Clinton hammered CEOs. “There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker. There’s something wrong when American workers keep getting more productive, as they have, and as I just saw a few minutes ago is very possible because of education and skills training, but that productivity is not matched in...

Real life Big Buck Hunter "Hero" Rebecca Francis thought she had snagged yet another trophy animal when she shot and killed a giraffe in Africa in 2010. The 41-year-old mother of eight, who's hunted and killed everything from bears, moose and bighorn rams to zebras, lynx and antelopes, downed the beast with a bow and took a picture laying next to its carcass. That, it seemed, was that. But she never considered what Ricky would think. Five years later, the comedian Ricky Gervais found the picture and tweeted it to his followers, asking, "What must've happened to you in your...

Five years ago, Louis C.K. posted some pretty harsh things to Sarah Palin on Twitter. And now, it looks like the comedian and the politician will be besties. For the first-time ever, Louis has said sorry for one of his jokes. Those Tweets won’t be repeated here, but you can click this link to see Louis C.K.’s vulgar 5-year-old rant about Palin (warning: content may not be appropriate for all readers) that he is now sorry he ever posted. The jokes were evidently the result of alcohol consumption and a misunderstanding of how Twitter worked, he explained. The apology took...

.......As Brendan Nyhan at the New York Times explained in February, this sort of thing is called “issue-trespassing,” where one party attempts to co-opt an advantage of the other by pretending to care about something nobody thinks they care about. In this case, the GOP seemed to be admitting that their reputation as the party of the 1 percent wasn’t helpful to their cause, so they decided to try to shift the blame to President Obama. Nyhan points out that data suggests this rarely ever works, because people rely on party stereotypes no matter how hard those parties try to...

One congressman is spearheading an effort to help undocumented immigrants avoid deportation with what some are calling a “get out of deportation” free card. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) and other House Democrats have created the Family Defender Toolkit, an informational pamphlet that includes an “emergency card” that lists the reasons why a person should not be deported. “By using this card after you’ve been arrested or detained, you can explain that under the policy in place today, you should be released because you are not a priority for deportation,” said Rep. Gutiérrez in an introductory video. …

A 45-year-old dental office manager has been arrested for allegedly performing procedures on unsuspecting, uninsured patients for a cash discount while the dentist was away, and purposely scheduling procedures for them when she knew the doctor would be out of the office. Authorities said Valbona Yzeiraj, of White Plains, was arrested Thursday following a grand jury indictment earlier this month. The Albanian-born woman pleaded not guilty to charges of assault, unauthorized practice of a profession and reckless endangerment at her arraignment later in the day. Prosecutors allege the woman acted as a dentist at Ultimate Dental Care of Riverdale in...

What has already been a particularly lethal week for migrants trying to make their way across the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe took an even more grisly turn on Thursday, when a religious dispute broke out on a boat traveling from Libya to Italy and ended with a group of Muslim passengers throwing 12 Christian migrants overboard to their deaths.

The worst drought to hit California since the Middle Ages is already making indoor plumbing irrelevant in several Central Valley towns that exhausted their entire water supplies. Others are running low and rationing the precious resource. Despite the brown lawns and dire climate predictions, there’s always a silver lining to the non-existent rain cloud. Here’s why the glass is literally half-full:

When it comes to foreign policy, the 2016 Republican presidential race is often presented as a contrast between Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and everybody else. As the narrative goes, Paul has a record of advocating for less intervention in foreign affairs, while the rest of the field has endorsed a more muscular posture. But this is an oversimplification. Though the differences Paul has with the rest of the party deserve attention, a far more interesting — and important — debate is the one likely to emerge between Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. On the surface,...

Two suspects are wanted in a string of air pump machine thefts at Brooklyn and Queens gas stations that have netted the thieves thousands of dollars in stolen money and machinery, police say. At least 17 air pump machines were stolen in the two boroughs from December 2014 to April 2015, according to police. So far the thieves have walked off with more than $49,000 between the stolen pumps and the change inside them, police said. One Citgo gas station's air pump machine alone contained $800 in change. And one of the air pump machines that was stolen from a...

Moscow (AFP) - Armed police on Thursday raided the office of a Russian rights group led by exiled Vladimir Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, during the president's marathon annual phone-in session. A group of police and special forces searched the Moscow office of Open Russia, a rights network led by Khodorkovsky, for protest flyers, Khodorkovsky's spokeswoman Kulle Pispanen wrote on her Facebook page. "As we're preparing for the phone-in, masked men came to the office," Pispanen wrote. "They are looking for posters and flyers for a protest on April 19 that we were not planning to participate in and which has...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) on Thursday said Senate Republicans should allow a vote on Loretta Lynch, President Obama's nominee for attorney general. “I hope that they get to a point – I think that presidents have a right to pick their team in general,” said Bush, a potential 2016 GOP contender, at a town hall event in Concord, N.H. “Someone who is supportive of the president’s policies, whether you agree with them or not, there should be some deference to the executive. This should not always be partisan.” Bush swiped at the current attorney general, Eric Holder, saying...

It began with anxiety and depression. A few months later, hallucinations appeared. Then the Texas man, in his 40s, couldn't feel or move the left side of his face. He thought the symptoms were because of a recent car accident. But the psychiatric problems got worse. And some doctors thought the man might have bipolar disorder. Cattle feeding practices have been changed in an effort to halt the spread of mad cow disease. THE SALT Mad Cow Disease: What You Need To Know Now Eventually, he couldn't walk or speak. He was hospitalized. And about 18 months after symptoms began,...