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Robert Alphonso Taft, Sr. (September 8, 1889 – July 31, 1953), son of President William Howard Taft, was a leading Republican Senator (1938–53) and known as "Mr. Republican". He was a leader of the Conservative Coalition, working with other Northern Republicans and some Southern Democrats to control Congress on most domestic issues (aside from civil rights, which the conservative Republicans supported while the Boll Weevils opposed). Little major legislation passed the Senate against his objections. His crowning achievement was writing and passing the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 over President Truman's veto. It balanced the interests of unions, management and the...

Jesuit who became a Byzantine priest worked to help disparate parts of the Church understand one another Fr. Robert Francis Taft, preeminent historian of the Eastern Christian liturgy and an outspoken voice in relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, died at his home in Weston, Massachusetts, November 1, at the age of 86. Fr. Taft, who taught at a pontifical institute in Rome for several decades, is best known for his six-volume History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Born into a family that had ties to a U.S. president and a senator from Ohio, he grew up...

Would a candidate for president of the United States ever officially condone a riot on the floor of a national convention? Would a candidate actually ever seek to provoke one? Should delegates at a convention be permitted to carry guns? Can supporters of a candidate try to buy delegate votes? Could any of these things happen at a contested Republican Convention this year in Cleveland? It seems unlikely, but there would be precedents. Amazingly, in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt tried to wrest the nomination from William Howard Taft, there were plans for riots, plenty of guns, and more than a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on campaign 2016 (all times Eastern): 8:15 a.m. Donald Trump says he believes transgender people should be able to use whichever bathroom they choose. Speaking at a town hall event on NBC's "Today" Thursday, Trump said North Carolina's so-called "bathroom law," which directs transgender people to use the bathroom that matches the gender on their birth certificates, has caused unnecessary strife.

If you think the Trump campaign is full of amateurs, you are correct. Donald Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino, eager to prove that his boss was an expert on tax reform, posted a link to an appearance Trump made in 1991 before the House Budget Committee: There’s one problem: in his testimony, not only did Trump bash Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986, calling it a catastrophe and saying income taxes should be raised to increase investment in real estate, but Trump actually compared the United States to the Soviet Union. Why, you’d almost think Trump is a...

On April 13, ABC’s World News Tonight correspondent Tom Llamas devoted most of that night’s report to chilling death threats against the Colorado state Republican party chairman, angered at how Donald Trump failed to win any delegates at the weekend party convention. Besides that one report, and two minor mentions (one on ABC’s Good Morning America and on Thursday’s CBS Evening News), that’s all the broadcast news attention given to reports of actual death threats in this increasingly nasty presidential race: 110 seconds in total, not a moment of which was on NBC. But since the Colorado convention through Thursday...

As an undecided democratic Latina who had recently attended a Bernie Sanders rally last month, I couldn’t help but be curious to see what Ted Cruz had to say during his recent visits to Irvine and San Diego last Monday. I really didn’t know much about him, but perhaps he might be able to offer a different perspective on the future of America – something that could benefit me and the rest of my UCI peers to give him some consideration. As a last minute decision to attend the rally, I missed his appearance at the Irvine Hotel and opted...

This is all fun stuff and will no doubt lead to some very clever jokes on The Daily Show. But there were also some very serious legal questions at stake. Namely, what limits does the U.S. Constitution place on the legislative power of state governments, and what role do federal judges play in enforcing those limits? Related to that, what sort of unenumerated rights (if any) are protected from state infringement by the 14th Amendment?

Via Red State, not a huge deal but worth flagging in case there’s another poll this weekend showing his numbers dipping a bit in New York on the eve of the primary. That would suggest a trend, and that would be a big deal given what’s at stake. To be clear: Trump’s going to romp in NY on Tuesday night, winning by 25 points or better, and will pick up something like 75 delegates even in a worst-case scenario. But since his path to 1,237 is so difficult, it matters a lot whether he ends up with 75 in New...

On March 1, the Colorado Republican party prepared for 60,000 voters to arrive at nearly 3,000 precinct-caucus sites across the state. Those voters would select men and women to attend the party’s county assemblies and congressional district conventions, in the first step of a multi-part process that determined 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. To hear Donald Trump and his fans tell it, those tens of thousands of Republicans never arrived, never made their choices, and never had the chance to play a role in selecting the party’s delegates. Matt Drudge, the populist Right’s...

Donald Trump is right: The system is rigged. It’s rigged in favor of front-runners. That’s why Trump, who is leading the Republican nominating contest, has a larger percentage of delegates (46 percent) than of votes (37 percent). Unsurprisingly, Trump never mentions when the rules have helped him. He much prefers to whine and peddle conspiracy theories when they don’t. Trump’s latest tantrum is over Colorado, where Ted Cruz just swept all 34 of the state’s available delegates. Trump is calling the results “totally unfair” and on Twitter he asked: “How is it possible that the people of the great State...

Stephen Miller may be the brightest official inside of politics today. The former Jeff Sessions’ staffer joined the Trump campaign in January. Miller went on America’s Newsroom today to discuss the Colorado voter-less scam and the current state of the GOP race for president. This was another excellent interview by Stephen Miller. “ The most wrong thing about it, of course, is that Colorado canceled their election so there wasn’t even a vote of the actual residents of Colorado. You have soldiers, men and women who fought from Colorado, who fought in Iraq so they could vote – Remember the...

[Colorado Republican Party Chairman Steve] House acknowledged that there are a lot of deeply entrenched players within the party who think the system works well and believe that those who are the most politically engaged should determine who becomes the party’s presidential nominee.

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump held rallies today in Racine, Wausau and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. During his Eau Claire speech Donald Trump lashed out at the Republican party apparatus, “Soon they will say Trump will be the future of the Republican Party… They want to knock out the outside. They want to keep their little party going…”https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5436&v=Ofp0vWhaWng  

ed Cruz will grab an upset win over Donald Trump in Arizona's presidential primary election on Tuesday, as he's the "only candidate with any kind of organization out here," a close confidant of Sen. John McCain predicts. "They have him positioned to spring the upset," Kurt Davis, a GOP operative in Arizona, told The Hill. "They just have to deliver."

The organic act establishing the Department of Labor was signed on March 4, 1913, by a reluctant President William Howard Taft, the defeated and departing incumbent, just hours before Woodrow Wilson took office. A Federal Department of Labor was the direct product of a half-century campaign by organized labor for a "Voice in the Cabinet," and an indirect product of the Progressive Movement. In the words of the organic act, the Department's purpose is "to foster, promote and develop the welfare of working people, to improve their working conditions, and to enhance their opportunities for profitable employment." Initially the Department...

2 shot at California high school Published January 10, 2013 | FoxNews.com DEVELOPING: At least two people were shot at a high school in Taft, Calif., Thursday morning and the shooter was taken into custody, local reports say.

Conservatism is a negative philosophy. I don’t mean “negative” in the sense that it proposes something undesirable. I mean that it seeks to negate objectionable aspects of the human condition. Man has a propensity for evil. This means that men must be restrained in some fashion — which is precisely why conservatives have typically stressed religion, conventional morality, humility, etc. But conservatives have also stressed that any government designed to be powerful enough to restrain men will also be run by men, whose collective propensity for evil is to be feared even more. Conservatives have never argued that man should...

As of late there has been "rumors" that the state of New Jersey's Governor Chris Christie, (R/NJ) is considering a run for the United States of America White House come next November, 2012. While there has been a number of denials that Gov. Christie IS PLANNING to run, this rumor in and of itself have begun to have a life of its own. Well Governor Christie, I have ONE QUESTION and ONE QUESTION ONLY. If you want to END the rumors game, for goodness sakes, Gov. Christie, PLEASE in a DIRECT MANNER, answer the question of your decision whether or...

When Ohio's concealed carry law passed in 2004, then-Governor Bob Taft made sure to insert poison pills designed to make it nearly impossible for a citizen to carry legally. It took nearly seven years, but as of today, September 30, 2011, the onerous car-carry restrictions that Taft created and that made countless honest Ohioans into felons are being relegated to the political scrap heap. Ohioans will also be able to carry in restaurants that serve alcohol for consumption, as long as the license holder does not drink and is not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Attorney General Mike...