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A feisty Jeb Bush gave a full-throated defense of his immigration stance in front of a Washington audience on Thursday, laying out the economic case that reforms he champions could return the nation to prosperity. Bush took a swipe at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely opponent against Bush for the Republican presidential nomination next year, for saying that he favors limiting legal immigration to the U.S. as a means of preserving jobs in the nation for current citizens.

A plague-infected dog spread the dangerous disease to four Colorado residents, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials told ABC News that this the first report of a dog infecting a human with the plague in the U.S. The dog, a 2-year-old American pit bull terrier, became sick last summer with a fever and jaw rigidity, among other symptoms. The dog's health declined so quickly that it was euthanized the following day at a local vet's office, health officials said. Four days later, the dog's owner entered the hospital with a...

Cruz guilty of demagoguery Sunday morning I arose early, turned on the news to the headline, “There is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party”— Republican candidate for president, Ted Cruz. To say that I was incensed would be an understatement. I could not believe a candidate for president, or anyone in a position of leadership, could make such an assertion. For a person to set himself up in judgment to decide who is Christian and who is not, puts himself in the position of God.... ...Until war’s end, Jews and others were killed by the millions to rid...

Jeb Bush is going to spend the next year defending his positions on issues that don’t always sit well with the conservative wing of his party. And on Thursday, he test-drove his defense of immigration and Common Core at an event organized by the conservative National Review. -snip- Bush gave a full-throated defense of his views on immigration Thursday, saying that the nation suffers when high-skilled and low-skilled workers aren’t allowed to legally immigrate into the country. “You need younger more dynamic people inside of our economy that are productive to get to 4 percent growth,” Bush argued. He knew...

Fresh off a setback on his tax reform plan, Puerto Rico's governor laid out a recovery roadmap on Thursday for the U.S. commonwealth's struggling finances. In his state of the Commonwealth address, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla chastised the Puerto Rico House of Representatives for rejecting tax changes critical to his financial recovery plan, saying it made recovery harder but not impossible. Padilla said he will form a group of financial experts charged with improving Puerto Rico's liquidity and another to take on a reorganization of the government. He also released an agenda that calls for spending cuts in all government...

Minnesota's childhood obesity problem is a threat to national security, a group of retired military generals said Thursday in St. Paul. Mission: Readiness, a national nonprofit group of more than 500 retired senior military leaders, says one-third of young Americans are too overweight for military service. In Minnesota, it said, 69 percent are unqualified for duty for a variety of reasons, including obesity, asthma, criminal histories and the location of their tattoos. In a report called "Too Fat, Frail and Out-of-Breath to Fight," the group highlighted three ways to address physical fitness in America's youth: -- More community paths for...

We’re finishing the Victorian novel class I have been taking at a college in St. Paul with Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I want to offer a few notes on the novel in the hope that some readers may share their thoughts and others may take up the novel if they haven’t read it before. It is an essential novel. Our great young teacher has structured the course with four novels that evoke the plight of women in Victorian fiction. With Tess we reach the summit (or a summit) of this plight. Tess is an extraordinarily lovable woman who...

The Alaska Permanent Fund, established using revenues paid to the state by oil and natural gas producers, provides Alaska residents with an annual cash dividend, which is unique among natural resource permanent funds in the United States. In 2014, the annual dividend was $1,884 per resident, more than double the 2013 dividend and the highest since 2008. All Alaska residents receive an annual cash dividend from the permanent fund. The fund was established by voters in 1976, as the extent of Alaska's oil and natural gas resources began to emerge, and retains at least 25% of the royalties that oil...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took his presidential campaign to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this week, where he raised a provocative point about, of all things, panhandling. Benjy Sarlin reported: “If you look at the values that resonate in our community, they are faith, family, patriotism, hard work,” he told host Javier Palomarez, the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “Some years ago I was having lunch with a Hispanic entrepreneur in Austin and he asked me a question: He said, ‘When was the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?’ It’s a great question…. I’m not sure I’ve...

China has conducted the first test flight of a new, upgraded version of its J-11 fighter jet. According to Russian media outlets, which cited unnamed Chinese reports, on Wednesday the People’s Liberation Army Air Force conducted the first flight tests of its J-11D fighter aircraft. The plane is an upgraded version of the J-11B fighter jets, which themselves are copies of the Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27. According to the reports, the new J-11D incorporates a number of technologies from China’s J-16 fighter jets. Both planes are manufactured by the Chinese company, Shenyang Aircraft Corp, and the J-16 is believed to have...

Presumed presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s strong support of immigration reform, including a pathway to an “earned legal status” for the estimated 11 million illegal aliens in the country, did not sit well with conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin. Speaking before the National Christian Hispanic Leadership Conference in Houston on Wednesday, the former Florida governor said fixing our broken immigration system means not only “controlling the border” and “making legal immigration easier,” but also “dealing with the 11 million undocumented workers who are here in this country, 11 million people that should come out of the shadows and receive...

If National Review editor Rich Lowry was looking for compromise on immigration from Republican Jeb Bush, he’s still looking. According to NR, Bush “and Lowry tussled over immigration policy and tax pledges.” Jeb wasn’t even willing to take the seemingly easy out of opting to secure the border first. One is left to wonder what the unemployed, “younger, more dynamic people” of Baltimore and other areas might think of Jeb’s reasoning.

Protesters and the family of a 25-year-old black man who died of injuries sustained while in police custody planned a May Day march in Baltimore as they demanded answers and punishment for the officers involved. Freddie Gray's death is the latest in a string of incidents exposing the tense relations between U.S. minorities and police. Protesters planned to use annual May 1 marches, marking International Labor Day, to focus attention on the case, which follows the killings of unarmed black men in recent months.

Taipei, May 1 (CNA) Taiwan's Navy decommissioned two of its eight Knox-class frigates Friday with the intention of replacing them with two Perry-class guided missile frigates that is part of a fleet modernization effort. The two Knox-class vessels were retired from service at a ceremony in the southern city of Kaohsiung, which was presided over by Navy Commander Adm. Li Hsi-ming (李喜明). It was part of the effort to modernize the Navy's fleet of vessels and enhance the country's maritime defense capabilities. The Navy plans to decommission all eight of its 4,300-ton Knox-class frigates that were built in the early...

On his radio show yesterday, Mark “The Great One” Levin did something he usually doesn’t — or at least not to this degree. He truly blasted, if not utterly destroyed, Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate for opposing amendments to the now notorious Iran bill, which grants President Obama the power to do whatever he wants to do in order to get a deal with Iran. Snip It’s shocking to the extreme, which is why Levin went off on an epic rant. He called out every single one of the eight Republican senators voting against it: “We have eight Republicans...

The National Climatic Data Center has bragged for years about how they provide open access to the raw US and global temperature data. But as of today they have changed their name and blocked access to the data. As of today, they require a username and password. Apparently they are unhappy about being caught data tampering and committing fraud. Blocking access will make it easier for them to step up their fraud in the future. All of my temperature analysis is based on this no longer accessible data.We knew it was just a matter of time before they did this....

The last year could be described as The Year of Transgender Propaganda. The Hollywood and news media push on the latest frontier of "gender fluidity" demonstrates the libertine left's absolute arrogance that the LGBT revolution is an unstoppable juggernaut. Time placed Laverne Cox on a "Transgender Tipping Point" cover last June, and the aggressive culture tipping took off. Amazon created a series around a retiree and father of three deciding he was a woman in "Transparent," and won Golden Globes. Fox's "Glee" had their female football coach grow a beard and be celebrated by a "historic" 200-member transgender choir. The...

BALTIMORE – People in Baltimore and other cities accuse police of sometimes giving prisoners an extra-rough "nickel ride" — a reference to amusement rides that once cost a nickel. Now, the safety of people in Baltimore's police vans is under scrutiny because of a past death and a new fatal injury, one that came after police failed to put a seat belt on a passenger. One of those, Dondi Johnson, died of a fractured spine in 2005 two weeks after he was arrested for urinating in a public street and transported by van. Johnson's family won a $7.4 million judgment...

Happy International Workers Day, the perfect occasion to write about Bernie Sanders, an actual Socialist running for President. The jokes fairly assemble themselves, mostly along the lines of: Sanders is far from the first Socialist presidential candidate, he’s just the first to admit it. You may assemble your own snarky rejoinders as the cranky 73-year-old gears up a challenge to Ms. Inevitability, Hillary Clinton. But once the chuckles fade, it is worth noting that Sanders brings some wild cards to the table. None of them suggest strongly that he will be the nominee, but they do suggest that he could...

Saudi Arabia has been making some big moves lately, most notably in its leadership reshuffle, but the country also has raised the number of rigs it has actively drilling for oil and natural gas by 30% since March 2014. James Williams, an energy economist at WTRG Economics, suggests that the Saudis are working toward increasing their oil-production CLM5, -0.65% LCOM5, -0.99% capacity to gain even more leverage over the oil market than they already have as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ so-called swing producer. The concept isn’t totally new, as some media reports also mention Saudi efforts to...