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In a Gravis Marketing poll released today Jeb Bush leads fellow GOP rivals among Republican Party Iowa voters while Senator Marco Rubio and former brain surgeon Ben Carson have increased their popularity while Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has taken the largest fall. In a telephone survey conducted April 13, former Governor Bush (R-FL) led with 16 percent of voters surveyed with Walker coming in at 13 percent, followed closely by fellow Floridian Rubio at 12 percent. The poll was conducted the same day as Rubio's announcement of his 2016 Presidential bid. The biggest gainers were Marco Rubio, who improved five points from his...

More than other 2016 presidential entrants Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) seems to have positively affected, even excited, Republicans. Ross Douthat writes, “Rubio more than most candidates fits the way most Republicans want to think about their party and ideology and cause.” There is much to that, and certainly Republicans want to get away from the dig that they are “grumpy,” “angry” or downright “mean.” So how does Rubio do it? Arthur Brooks, head of the American Enterprise Institute and arguably the godfather of reform conservatism, likes to say: “My movement shouldn’t be fighting against things. My movement should be fighting...

[This is from the International Edition of SCMP] China has won the bid to co-produce a multibillion ($3Billion) long-range air and missile defence system in Turkey, in what is its largest and most advanced arms sales to a NATO country. The Turkish defence minister announced the decision to approve the US$3 billion bid by China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp, rejecting rival offers from Russian, US and European firms. The winning Chinese FD-2000 system beat the Patriot, the Russian S-400 and the French-Italian Eurosam Samp-T, it was announced on Thursday. [snip]

The National Retail Federation is warning that a possible change to overtime rules could negatively impact retailers. “This summer, the Department of Labor is expected to propose changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that would strip retail and restaurant managers of their salaried positions in favor of hourly pay and enact a limit on how managers are able to spend their time on the job,” the NRF noted in a press release.

As a first year, I came into the University knowing I was passionate about social justice, but I did not necessarily have the vocabulary and resources to articulate my beliefs. I knew that there were practices in place that exploit marginalized people economically, but I did not know that the driving force behind this was called unregulated capitalism. I knew that there was a difference between the way half of my family lived versus the other half, but I did not know the driving force behind these differences was due to institutionalized racism. I knew that there were more than...

Earth Day was first observed on April 22, 1970 as the brainchild of former Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-WI). One of the leading proponents of environmentalism and conservation at the time, Sen. Nelson envisioned Earth Day as an “environmental teach-in” that would generate popular support for an environmental agenda. Modeled on the anti-war teach-ins of the gloomy Vietnam era, over 20 million people participated in the inaugural Earth Day. Ever since, Earth Day has been a largely somber event sounding the alarm on impending environmental doom. Instead of merely generating awareness of the environmental problems we face, Earth Day should be...

It is actually good to have germs in small amounts.  They help inoculate us from bigger sicknesses.  But having too many germs is bad for us. That philosophy applies equally well to lawyers.  Some lawyers are useful, even necessary, such as lawyers who draft wills or contracts between companies or stock offerings (my former profession), federal prosecutors, and those who represent plaintiffs and defendants in legitimate civil lawsuits. But a lot of lawyers do things that are not so good.  In my opinion, the government has too many lawyers.  The lawyers at the EPA and the so-called "civil rights"...

This short graphic video explains why phonics is what matters, and almost everything else they add in the public schools is a waste of time. When possible, the Education Establishment will banish phonics on the grounds that it is irrelevant and doesn't work. But even when they admit some phonics into the schools, these malevolent ideologues will try to encumber the whole learning process to such a degree that children learn at half-speed, if they learn at all. All the phonics experts say they can teach almost all children to read in the first grade. That should be the gold...

The flat tax is back. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have both floated an across-the-board tax rate as they've launched their 2016 presidential bids. Neither Cruz nor Paul has spelled out the exact details of their plan, but both senators clearly see the flat tax as a way to appeal to both free-market conservatives that advocate for broad-based tax cuts, and the Tea Party sympathizers concerned with government intrusion. “Moving to a simple flat tax and just padlocking the IRS — I think that is a powerful populist issue,” Cruz said Friday on “The Adam Carolla Show.”...

The Senate on Wednesday passed legislation aimed at curbing human trafficking, ending a monthlong fight over abortion that bitterly divided the parties and held up attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch. The legislation, which was approved 99-0, would create a special fund to help victims of sex crimes, bolstering efforts to combat what advocates decry as “modern-day slavery.”

Dear Steve, I had two citi-student loans and at some point in time within the last 5 years they went to Navient (Sallie Mae) I recently called to ask if I could get a lower pay-off amount as the original loans were 32K and now they are up to about 64K because of deferment and interest. They said no and I believe these may have been private loans. My conditions have changed. I was born into Islam, but never knew much about my religion. Since 2012 I have been learning more about my faith and it is strictly forbidden in...

Last month Pope Francis appointed Bishop Thomas Daly, 54, an auxiliary bishop with the Diocese of San Jose, California, as the seventh bishop of Spokane, Washington. Daly will be installed in his new position at Spokane’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes on May 20. He succeeds Archbishop Blase Cupich, who was installed as archbishop of Chicago last November. Daly grew up in San Francisco, a parishioner at St. Brendan Church. The fourth of seven children, he attended Catholic schools from first grade through college with classes taught by religious, including the Daughters of Charity and the De La Salle...

PRINCETON, N.J. — By the time he was a senior at Princeton University in 1992, Ted Cruz had developed an arsenal of rhetorical skills and theatrical gestures that made him one of the most polished performers on the college debate circuit. So when he reached the quarterfinals of the national championships at M.I.T., with the title that had eluded him so far now in sight, he decided to try to knock his Harvard opponents off balance with one of his favorite tricks. Instead of the regular practice of defending his proposed topic — the merits of mind-reading — Mr. Cruz...

Dear Steve, I had two citi-student loans and at some point in time within the last 5 years they went to Navient (Sallie Mae) I recently called to ask if I could get a lower pay-off amount as the original loans were 32K and now they are up to about 64K because of deferment and interest. They said no and I believe these may have been private loans. My conditions have changed. I was born into Islam, but never knew much about my religion. Since 2012 I have been learning more about my faith and it is strictly forbidden in...

And he’s just one of the network’s four tax scofflaws Touré Neblett, co-host of MSNBC’s The Cycle, owes more than $59,000 in taxes, according to public records reviewed by National Review. In September 2013, New York issued a state tax warrant to Neblett and his wife, Rita Nakouzi, for $46,862.68. Six months later, the state issued an additional warrant to the couple for $12,849.87. In January 2014, Neblett tweeted, “Regressive taxation & tax-avoidance & union crushing & the financial corruption of legislation has fueled inequality more than hard work.” In 2012, he also criticized Republican politicians, saying they were “all...

The Obama administration has admitted that an illegal immigrant and known gang member -- who recently was charged in the murders of four people -- was allowed to remain in the United States under President Obama's executive actions. Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez was allowed in August 2013 to remain in the U.S., following his request about seven months earlier to stay under the president's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Leon Rodriguez. Rodriquez acknowledged in a letter to a top Republican senator that Rangel-Hernandez's application was approved, even though a federal crime database...

Jurors in the death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Wednesday were shown video of him making an obscene gesture as well as holding his fingers in the shape of “V” to a surveillance camera in a courthouse holding cell three months after he was arrested in the terror attack. A prosecutor had shown a picture of Tsarnaev making the obscene gesture to the jury in US District Court in Boston at the end of her opening statement in the penalty phase of the trial on Tuesday, underlining her argument that he was “unconcerned, unrepentant, and unchanged”...

The next generation of social media use in political electioneering is about to take off as the 2016 presidential hopefuls start lining up for media attention to vie for the nomination of their respective parties. Hillary Clinton recently came out swinging for the Democratic nomination, thus far the only Democrat to announce her candidacy, with a short video released a week ago. While the Clinton machine is already gearing up to take social media by storm, the Republican landscape looks to be where most of the early online fisticuffs will be playing out. So how do the contenders stack up...

Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame is running for President, and he wants your support. The artist sat down with Rolling Stone on 4/20, what Flame calls “the best day of the year,” to outline his presidential ambitions. Some of the planks of a Waka Administration would include: – LEGALIZATION “The first thing I’ll do when I get into office is legalize marijuana.” “A blunt a day will take the pain away. Wake up, hit a blunt, go to work, sh*t gonna be okay. You look around, things ain’t looking good, you roll a blunt, sh*t gonna be okay. School work...

Since January, when Mitt Romney officially bowed out of the 2016 presidential race, the assumption hanging over the Republican primary has been that Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, son of a president, and brother of a president, is the runaway favorite to win the party's nomination. Of course, anointing frontrunners eight months before the Iowa Caucuses is a little like naming your child before you've met someone to have it with. But with the Koch Brothers bestowing their papal blessing this week on a candidate that does not share his name with a former White House resident, it might...