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It’s a big week in the Republican presidential primaries. Today, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson both announced their candidacies, and Mike Huckabee is expected to make his official tomorrow. Now that the field is filling out (though there are still plenty of candidates in the running-but-officially-not-yet-running category), it’s looking a little unusual.In fact, the group of Republicans running for president is almost everything the Republican Party itself is not: it’s demographically diverse, it’s less wealthy than you might expect, and it’s extremely young. The question is whether voters will look at them and say that the GOP really has changed.By...

Among the many painful ironies in the current racial turmoil is that communities scattered across the country were disrupted by riots and looting because of the demonstrable lie that Michael Brown was shot in the back by a white policeman in Missouri — but there was not nearly as much turmoil created by the demonstrable fact that a fleeing black man was shot dead by a white policeman in South Carolina. Totally ignored was the fact that a black policeman in Alabama fatally shot an unarmed white teenager, and was cleared of any charges, at about the same time that...

Blogger Pamela Geller, 56, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, has been highly critical of Islam for yearsGeller's group was behind anti-Islamic ads that began appearing on New York City buses and subway entrances last yearShe said Sunday that the shooting showed how 'needed our event really was' The woman behind the Muhammad cartoon contest targeted in a Texas shooting Sunday has a long history of inflammatory anti-Islam propaganda, and watchdogs have labeled her organization a hate group. Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), said immediately after two armed men opened fire on a security...

ANNISTON, Ala. —An east Alabama congressman has a plan to save taxpayers money when it comes to storing vintage firearms for the Army. The plan involves moving the weapons to the Civilian Marksmanship Program, which includes its facility in Anniston. Congressman Rogers says it's a win-win because the pistols are placed in very capable hands at the Civilian Marksmanship Program and it also saves taxpayers roughly $200,000 per year. The M1911A1 pistol was once the standard sidearm for U.S. armed forces. Rogers says a little over 8,000 of the 100,000 pistols were sold to law enforcement and transferred to foreign...

The White House refrained Monday from condemning the Prophet Mohammad cartoon contest that provoked an attack Sunday night in Garland that left two gunmen dead. “There is no act of expression, even if it’s offensive, that justifies an act of violence,” press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One as the president flew to New York for fund-raising and a TV appearance with David Letterman. “The president was informed last night of the violence outside Dallas,” Earnest said, condemning “extremists” who have responded with violence after expressions they find offensive. “We have seen extremists try to use expressions...

As with the “would you attend a gay wedding? question, I can’t tell how much I should be surprised by Republican pols’ answers to LGBT-themed questions anymore. Policy responses are easy: If you’re running for president, you oppose legalizing gay marriage and strongly, strongly support exceptions to antidiscrimination laws for business owners who refuse to cater gay weddings on religious grounds. Beyond that, once you stray from policy to personal relations with gay/transgender people, things get more complicated and unpredictable. (Which, actually, is why gay-rights activists encourage people to come out. Polls show that people who know someone who’s...

The hero cop who was shot in the face by an ex-con died Monday after a two day struggle to stay alive, sources said. Officer Brian Moore’s death at Queens General Hospital plunged the NYPD into grief.

When Michael Blake was writing his novel "Dances With Wolves," he was living in Los Angeles on friends' couches or, sometimes, in his car. He did occasional odd jobs and finally, with $1,000 borrowed from a pal, headed for Bisbee, Ariz., where he washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant for $3.35 an hour.

In a move amusingly reminiscent of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Russia, NBC News has removed the image of suspended anchor Brian Williams from its Apple iTunes podcast. In the old Soviet Union, when a party member was purged, his photographic images were also sent down the memory hole in the form of being airbrushed out of official pictures. A similar fate appears to be happening to Brian Williams according to a UPI report about Williams being airbrushed out of NBC News history. Despite the fact that Williams' obituary has already been declared, let us not feel too sorry for him. After...

A picture is worth a thousand words

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is traveling to Colorado to announce funding for conservation projects in all 50 states. […] The Department of Agriculture says the projects concern water quality, soil health, wildlife habitat and agricultural viability. …

You know how Jeb Bush and other immigration enthusiasts are always telling us how conservative immigrants are, how they’re more religious and traditionalist? Appealing to their supposed conservatism is the key, we are told, to getting their votes, if only we would embrace amnesty and mass legal immigration. There are two problems with this argument: First, there’s a pretty clear consensus that Latin American and Asian immigrants (who comprise 75 percent of all immigrants) and their U.S.-born children do not vote based on social issues, assigning them low priority. Second, immigrants are not particularly conservative. There is a mountain...

I'm reconsidering the merits of the NSA. What if they droned the riots, face recognized every thug, and called their moms?If Republicans and Tea Partiers are the racists, why are the riots always in Democrat and usually Black strongholds?Leftists believe in separation of church and state, until the state can order pastors to conduct same sex weddings, and strip religious colleges of their tax exemption. Then they're all into violation of church by state.This is all planned. The community organizers don't spawn riots in cities that would shut them down cold. Urban thugs: Lets riot! Conservative critics: These thugs are...

A mother from Riverton, Utah makes a shocking discovery -- pictures of her children on websites connected to porn. Brittany Champagne was on Instagram Wednesday night when she came across her 8-year-old daughter’s picture on somebody else’s profile. “I clicked on there and I found a girl claiming to be 11-years-old as my daughter, and she's a bisexual cheerleader and her whole page is about gay pride,” Champagne said. This was clearly a fake account, so Champagne did some digging and made more disturbing discoveries -- pictures of Champagne herself and her 9-month-old son.

Grade inflation is rampant on American campuses. According to a study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, A’s represent 43 percent of all grades awarded today—up from 15 percent in 1960. In fact, an “A” is now the most common grade awarded in college, and 73 percent of all grades are A’s and B’s. The problem is especially acute at private colleges and top public universities, particularly in the humanities and social sciences (except economics). How then, in the face of all this blurring of lines between good, bad, and excellent, can higher education maintain a system of meaningful measures...

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Even small differences in economic growth make a big difference to living standards over time. I frequently share this chart, which highlights how long it takes to double economic output based on different growth rates. I also use real-world examples to show how some nations become much richer than other nations within just a few decades because of better policy and faster growth.HereÂ’s another way to approach the issue. LetÂ’s use a hypothetical example to reinforce the importance of growth. If we went back to 1870 and assumed our economyÂ’s nominal growth rate was one percentage point slower than it...

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I had a vision of a tiny Asian country being used by two large countries to attack Taiwan unless they repent Jonah 3 3 And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach and cry out to it the preaching that I tell you. 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city of three days’ journey [sixty miles in circumference]. 4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey,...

A stable of Trojan horses is pulling the president’s carriage toward the fundamental transformation of America. And the symbolism of the Greek pillars from the 2008 Democratic Convention seems to grow clearer than most of us want to acknowledge.The Supreme Court will soon rule on same-sex marriages, but the U.S. military has already received its marching orders. It’s just bizarre that a record number of senior officers have been dismissed for adultery and similar misconduct when the uncomfortable truth about same-sex marriage is that monogamous nuptials are not the objective. According to a 2010 article in the New York Times,...