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As a child growing up in the fifties, I had an inside look at the day to day lives of many Black families in the small rural southern community in which I grew up. Before I reached my second birthday, my mother passed away. My dad hired a neighbor Black lady, Ms Oates, to look after me. She and her husband owned the farm next to ours and as neighbors did in those days, we worked together each year to plant and harvest our crops. Until the age of five, my only regular playmates were the Oates children. There were...

Self-driving cars seem likely enough; there’s still several tech and legal hurdles to clear, not to mention the question of how much they’ll cost, but most experts inside and out of the auto industry see them as inevitable given enough time. Now, Daimler’s Freightliner unit wants to push long-haul trucking in the same direction. Unveiled atop the Hoover Dam, the Freightliner Inspiration Truck is the first semi granted a license in the United States for autonomous driving, for tests on Nevada highways (note the special license plate in the photos below.) Equipped with arrays of cameras and radars, along with...

Republicans promised to restore order to a dysfunctional Congress in the midterm elections. Yesterday, they delivered on that campaign promise, passing the first regular-order budget framework since 2009. It didn’t come easy, though: The 51-48 vote capped weeks of work by Republican leaders in the House and Senate, who shepherded the blueprint through a messy debate over defense spending that at times threatened to split their conferences. … Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had ripped Democrats for years over their failure to pass a budget, and said Tuesday’s vote shows his GOP majority is getting the Senate working again. “No...

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Wednesday rejected the idea that Democratic political leaders were responsible for problems in Baltimore. [Snip] Some conservatives have suggested that Baltimore, where riots broke out last week over police mistreatment of minorities, is the result of failed liberal policies. Baltimore last had a Republican mayor in 1967.

In this final part of Taking Our Country Back, I ask what we can do to change the direction in which our country is headed. There are steps that can be taken involving both the individual and our culture. But nothing will change unless the American people understand that ignoring problems or pretending they will be resolved somehow at some point in the future are not options at this point. Low information voters must be made to get involved by understanding the dire consequences of remaining on the present path; that the ongoing, seemingly endless gravy train will soon end....

FORT HUACHUCA — The Joint Interoperability Test Command will conduct a change of responsibility ceremony between Sgt. Maj. Lewis Brown, outgoing senior enlisted leader, and Sgt. Maj. Monekia Denkins, incoming senior enlisted leader, May 21 at 10 a.m. in the Greely Hall auditorium here. A retirement ceremony for Brown will immediately follow. The public is invited to attend this event. For more information, please contact Maranda Flynn, (520) 538-2608.

There is no doubt that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been tarnished by the scandalous revelations regarding her tenure at the State Department that have dominated the headlines in recent weeks. While she remains a formidable candidate ahead of 2016, some have begun to question whether she can remain the prohibitive favorite to succeed President Barack Obama when a Republican challenger attains her level of name recognition. In public, Democrats may feign bravado about Clinton’s inevitability. In private, though, many would probably concede that they are nervous about what the future might hold for Clinton, 2016. It...

This guy is a professional journalist. And a Yale grad. And a law-school grad.But let’s be fair. If you polled the media, how many of them would agree? Don’t stomp Cuomo just because he’s bold enough to say what the rest are thinking.For once I’m with Glenn Greenwald. The funniest part of this, at least for law nerds, is Cuomo suggesting that a “hate speech” exception might be found in the text of the First Amendment itself rather than a Supreme Court case somewhere. You remember how James Madison went on and on about hate speech in the Federalist...

In 2012, it was Newt Gingrich who dug into the left’s playbook and tried to defeat Mitt Romney by portraying him as a rapacious businessman. In 2016, it seems like Huckabee will fill the role of Republican running for president as a liberal blogger.“Imagine members of Congress boasting that they will fight to repeal Obamacare, and then turning around and signing up for it,” Huckabee said while officially announcing his candidacy Tuesday, seemingly taking a subtle shot at fellow 2016 contender Ted Cruz, who signed up for Obamacare after his wife lost the family health insurance because she left her...

Twenty years ago this month, the Supreme Court placed a huge roadblock in the way of a grass-roots, bipartisan movement that had been gaining strength, namely the term limits movement. In many states, voters had approved limits the number of terms that state officials may serve. Back in the early 90s, there was similar pressure to limit the number of terms members of the U.S. House and Senate could serve. And then, the Supreme Court said such limits were unconstitutional in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton. By a 5-4 vote, the justices held that putting term limits on members of...

Anyone who thought Barack Obama’s boast that he would transform America would shrivel after he leaves the Oval Office is wrong. He will not retire to the golf course, as did Dwight Eisenhower to some extent. He stated Monday night that his “project” will continue after his presidency.  He is determined to continue to push for changes across a wide swath of America.  His presidency may end, but his agenda and his plans to play a role in promoting these changes won’t. And those battles are going to depend, in large part, on the continuing effort in the political...

URGENT: Stand with Ted Cruz now to help preserve the ability of Congress to stop a very bad deal with Iran: bit.ly/1P0t06G To opt-out reply STOP

A defense attorney for one of the six police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray is challenging prosecutors' claim that Gray was falsely arrested, and filed a motion Tuesday demanding to inspect the knife Gray carried. The motion was the first legal move in defense of an officer involved in the April 12 arrest of Gray, who died a week later from spinal injuries suffered while in police custody. As potential legal arguments for the six began to emerge, legal analysts debated the merit of the specific charges, as well as the strategies defense attorneys might pursue. Marc...

Thanks to assistance from Judicial Watch and the Freedom of Information Act, prominent conservative Obama administration critic Wayne Allyn Root believes that “I was targeted by the IRS in a coordinated attack at the highest levels of government...and we now have the proof.” In a Foxnews.com story, he narrates the story of his audits by the URS and what has been discovered in the course of responses to FOIA: I was audited in 2011, and it started in a way that government officials and IRS spokesmen claimed in a recent Wall Street Journal article can never happen -- with...

Recapturing the same level of Hispanic support that George W. Bush enjoyed is central to any successful Republican presidential bid, said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and author of a new book, 2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America. Ayres, who is working for Marco Rubio, said it’s obvious that Hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in the country and will hold increasing influence with every passing presidential election, especially in a number of swing states like Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and ultimately Texas. “So gaining a significantly larger share of...

ISIS appears to declare war on controversial blogger Pamela Geller on Tuesday in an ominous online message claiming it has fighters across America ready to attack "any target we desire." The threat, posted on anonymous message board JustPasteIt, singles out Geller, who helped plan a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that was attacked by two gunmen in Garland, Texas, over the weekend. ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting early Tuesday, marking the first time the terror group called an American attack one of its own, though lawmakers believe the two men were influenced by the group, not guided directly by it.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is framing the attack on a “Draw Mohammed” event in Texas as a failure by the Obama administration to protect the nation from terrorist threats.“Once again, as with Nidal Hasan and the Tsarnaev brothers, we have radical Islamic terrorists who this Administration knew about and yet failed to connect the dots and prevent this act of terrorism,” the White House hopeful said, according to The Dallas Morning News.He added that the shooting “underscores the need for vigilance” and the “Administration’s inability to combat radical Islamic terrorism.”The attack at the contest held by the American Freedom Defense...

A group of 8 high school students in Colorado have sparked controversy over their prom photo. The unidentified students posed in their prom dresses and tuxes holding a guns and a Confederate flag. According to KDVR, local parents and other students are not amused with the photo that could be construed as being racist.

Bush, widely viewed as a presidential front-runner on the Republican side, scored just 5% in the first primary state in a new Quinnipiac University poll out Wednesday. The survey found Bush in seventh place among likely caucusgoers — behind Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Walker, with 21%, was by far the leader in the poll. Rubio and Paul tied for second place with 13% apiece. The large field of candidates makes it difficult for any one candidate...

Maryland Democrat and 2016 presidential aspirant Martin O’Malley called the Baltimore riots a “wake-up call” for the entire country. O’Malley was a fixture in Baltimore politics and government for 24 years before Baltimore exploded last week. Was he asleep during that time? Eight years on Baltimore’s city council, eight years as Baltimore mayor, and eight years as Maryland’s governor. During much of O’Malley’s quarter century in power, he had an invulnerable Democratic majority in Annapolis, powerful Maryland Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate, and Democrats in charge in the White House. O’Malley’s tenure held promise for Maryland. But...