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The First Lady will be featuring an empty chair as one of her guests for the State of the Union speech tonight. (It’s really rather crass to be stealing ideas from Clint Eastwood, isn’t it, Madam?) The empty chair will be joined by Syrian refugee Refaai Hamo, Paris train attack hero Staff Sgt. Spencer Stone, Ryan Reyes (whose boyfriend died at San Bernardino) and Satya Nadella.But it’s not just Obama cheerleaders in the crowd. As the Hill reports, one guest will be from a decidedly different camp. The Kentucky clerk briefly jailed last year for refusing to hand out...

Spanish authorities are actively investigating rumors that Iran's regime heavily financed the activities of the country's Podemos political party, according to Spanish media sources. The Union of Economic and Fiscal Delinquency, La Unidad de Delincuencia Económica y Fiscal (UDEF), an investigative arm of the country's National Police has launched a detailed probe in determining whether the party accepted €5m Euros from Iran in exchange for influence in the country's political and economic arenas, El Confidencial, a Spanish newspaper said.

Let’s just get one thing out of the way right up front here: when, if ever, are these stories going to stop? I feel like something of a monster for even putting these words into writing, but I don’t think I really even experienced any shock or sense of betrayal when I saw yet another headline at the Washington Post today recounting the story of more United Nations peacekeeping forces in Africa turning out to have been exploiting children for sex. It’s just become so commonplace now that it’s akin to reading about another meth lab being discovered on...

I rec'd an email from Yahoo with the subject line: "Donald Trump wants you to pay more for smartphones, TVs and a lot else" I clicked on the link and the article was about China's economic problems and currency problems not being that big of deal. The article doesn't mention Trump. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-china-s-problems-will-not-crash-the-u-s--economy-194809284.html#

The Google Doodle today is about a Frenchman who apparently preceeded Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers in the Fairy Tale genre. "Charles Perrault [(1628-1703)], author of Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella was born 388 years ago, and has been commemorated with a Google Doodle." - Rhiannon Williams, "Who was Charles Perrault? Why the fairy tales you know may not be as they seem" Google's Doodle today is not linking to their own servers, or WikiMedia Foundation, but directly to the reactionary, patriarchal (though distinctly not "homophobic") servers of Telegraph.Co.UK. Here is the Doodle. Here is...

Lets assume GOP nominee Ted Cruz will be Texas next U.S. senator. And lets assume he becomes a great senator and rises to the level of rumored potential national candidate (sometimes a surprisingly low hurdle). Heres the question that would invite: Is the Canadian-born son of a Cuban-born dad and a Delaware-born mom constitutionally eligible to serve as president or vice president?

The Powerball lottery has reached a record high of $1.4 billion. On Wednesday night, someone might win the jackpot and — even if they don't actually take home $1.4 billion — become incredibly rich in a matter of moments. Billionaire Mark Cuban has some idea of what that's like. Cuban recounted the moment he became a billionaire on an episode of James Altucher's podcast: "I was sitting in front of a computer, naked, hitting the refresh because we were close — waiting until my net worth hit that billion when the stock price got to a certain point, and then...

The verdict is in. On Friday, jurors found 56-year-old Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow guilty on all 162 charges against him, including murder, conspiracy to murder, racketeering, trafficking in stolen goods and 154 counts of money laundering. Though the FBI and U.S. attorney's office may feel vindicated by the verdict, the guilty verdict also serves as an indictment of the federal criminal justice system's standard operating procedure. It was the feds, after all, who chose to let Chow out of prison despite his long criminal career. In 2003, the feds freed Chow, who was serving a 160-month sentence on racketeering charges...

Marco Rubio's boots have the lead role in a new attack video from the Jeb Bush super PAC. The video asserts that Rubio has changed positions on key issues, from immigration to Syria. The aggressive attacks by Right to Rise in the past couple weeks -- including a new TV ad released yesterday -- have provoked a back and forth between the Bush and Rubio camps.

House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Monday that he has invited two representatives of Little Sisters of the Poor to join him at President Obama's last State of the Union address Tuesday night. Little Sisters of the Poor is an order of Catholic nuns who serve the elderly poor. It's also the group that sought protection from Obamacare's mandate to offer birth control and other drugs in violation of their religious beliefs. Ryan was part of a friend-of-the-court brief filed in support of a case filed with the Supreme Court by the Sisters...

Wanted billionaires to donate fortune to Palestinians Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton considered a secret plan created by her then-advisers to foment unrest among Palestinian citizens and spark protests in order to push the Israeli government back to the negotiating table, according to emails released as part of the investigation into the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s private email server.In a Dec, 18, 2011, email, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering suggested that Clinton consider a plan to restart then-stalled peace negotiations by kickstarting Palestinian demonstrations against Israel.Pickering described the effort as a potential “game changer in the region,” recommending...

Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton in a major Iowa poll for the first time since September, the latest sign the Democratic primary race is tightening between the two candidates.The Vermont senator wins 49 percent of likely caucusgoers in the Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday, compared to Clinton's 44 percent. It's a significant drop for the former secretary of State from last month's Quinnipiac poll, which had her up by 11 percent.Sanders is boosted by his 30-point lead among men, a significantly higher favorability rating, and more favorable views of his character traits and values. He's seen as a better steward...

Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States. The Constitution provides that "No person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of President." The concept of "natural born" comes from the common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept's definition. On this subject, the common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority...

Joe Biden may well be the most honest man in Washington. (barf) That's a very good thing if you are a member of the political press and, at the moment, not a very good thing if you are Hillary Clinton. Witness Biden's interview Monday night with CNN's Gloria Borger. Borger asked the vice president to explain why Bernie Sanders has found so much success in his challenge to Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Here's how Biden answered: BIDEN: I think that -- that Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real, and he has credibility...

Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention.

The word "parsing" was invented for the Clintons. This is one of Bill Clinton's greatest hits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0Here's the full quote from the deposition: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have...

Charles Perrault, author of Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella was born 388 years ago, and has been commemorated with a Google Doodle. Perrault was born in Paris in 1628, and was a lawyer before turning his hand to the written word. While the Brothers Grimm are widely credited with creating the fairy tale as we know it, Perrault actually wrote stories called Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, La Belle au bois dormant and Cendrillon a full 200 years before. In 1695, aged 67, he wrote Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, a series of moral tales...

Because Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz doesn’t properly crease his pants or favor the infanticide of partial-birth abortion, on the pages of The New York Times, columnist David Brooks (who identifies as a conservative) openly questions Cruz’s Christian faith, and does so for the sin of Cruz doing his job as solicitor general for the state of Texas. The case reveals something interesting about Cruz's character. Ted Cruz is now running strongly among evangelical voters, especially in Iowa. But in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian...

Three weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, and clarity emerges. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is in trouble. Polls show her slightly ahead of Socialist Bernie Sanders in Iowa, but narrowly behind in New Hampshire. And the weekend brought new revelations about yet more classified and secret documents sent over her private email server when she was secretary of state. Between now and November, she will be traversing a minefield, with detonations to be decided upon by FBI investigators who may not cherish Clinton, and might like to appear in the history books. Clinton's charge about Donald Trump's alleged...

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Monday delivered the nation's state of the family address, urging Americans in 2016 to "pray, organize, donate, speak to your neighbors, proclaim the truth and your views boldly." And then, he said, "When the time comes, take a little walk to the voting booth." Perkins' assessment of the family in America came just 24 hours in advance of Barack Obama's last State of the Union, set for 9 p.m. EST Tuesday, during which he's expected to advocate for a number of socially progressive issues. "May our children and our children's children know, as...