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Federal authorities on Thursday formally charged a Marine reservist in connection with 2010 shootings at the Pentagon and the National Museum of the Marine Corps. According to a criminal complaint, law enforcement officers searched the residence of Yonathan Melaku and found numerous documents concerning bomb-making and explosives. Melaku was arrested last week after he was found trespassing in Arlington National Cemetery before dawn. A car he pointed authorities to set off a bomb scare near the Pentagon. Officials said they seized a digital videotape in Melaku's bedroom desk. According to the criminal complaint, a review of the videotape showed Melaku...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.number10.gov.uk/news/prime-minister-statement-on-alan-mcmenemy/ Prime Minister's statement on Alan McMenemy Friday 20 January 2012 Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed the British Embassy in Baghdad have received the body of hostage Alan McMenemy. The Prime Minister said: “It is with great sadness that I can confirm that the British Embassy in Baghdad received a body today that has been identified as Alan McMenemy, who was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2007, along with four other men. The bodies of Jason Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell and Alec MacLachlan were returned in 2009. Peter Moore was the only hostage released alive...

The United Nations was paying one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups after getting “too close” to it, secret documents disclose. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) had to suspend activities in southern Somalia after being manipulated by al-Shabaab, which is linked to al-Qaeda. In a meeting last year with the UN ambassador Susan Rice, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the special representative for Somalia, said the WFP had been withdrawn “because it had become too reliant upon al-Shabaab and its system of pay-offs”. Al-Shabaab, an Islamic group fighting to overthrow the Somalian government, controls much of south and central Somalia and...

The Political Derby Composite Poll is a tool that takes the most recent major polls and weights their results based on poll age, sample type, and margin of error each day using a proprietary formula. Unlike other poll compilations, this is not a simple average. The polls that make up the PD Composite are well-known reputable national polls who sample “likely primary voters” and “registered voters”, as opposed to only “adults, including, but not limited to: NBC News/Wall Street Journal, Pew Research, Quinnipiac University, and Rasmussen Reports... The PD Composite will be updated in a regular post that will run...

Newt Gingrich will bring his surging campaign for the Republican presidential nomination to Bluffton on Tuesday for an outdoor rally. The former U.S. House speaker from Georgia will campaign at the Calhoun Street Promenade in Old Town, said James Epley, the Gingrich campaign’s Beaufort County manager. First, at 12:45 p.m. Tuesday, he will go to a campaign office opening and ribbon cutting ceremony at 6 Promenade St., Suite 1001 B. Then, “from 1 to 2:30 p.m., he’ll be doing an outdoor Town Hall meeting in the Promenade. It’s open to the public,” Epley said. The free event will be in...

The FBI rounded up a network of deep-cover Russian spies last year after the group came close to placing an agent near a Cabinet official in the Obama administration, a senior FBI counterspy said Monday as the bureau released once-secret documents on the case. ...U.S. officials said it was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Figliuzzi said in an interview that the FBI decided to end its more than 10-year-long counterspy investigation of the network because of concerns that the spies were “getting very close to their objective.” “These 10 Russian officers were sent to the U.S. on a...

More information on the man who would dethrone Obama in the New Hampshire 2012 primary. The registration deadline ended today, and the field includes 14 candidates on the Democrat side alone. Darcy Richardson wrote a book about the McCarthy campaign which ousted LBJ in 1968, so he's done his homework. Old timers may recall that the Dump-Johnson movement didn't happen by itself, but was an intra-party insurgent movement started in 1967 by attorney Allard K. Lowenstein. With the media consensus trying to force-feed the GOP into accepting Mitt Romney as an opponent to Obama, it's worth looking at other avenues...

Former Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush has said he won’t endorse anyone in the presidential primary. [Snip]... In a rare intervention into electoral politics since his departure from the Florida governorship, he decided that Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s venture into birtherism has gone on long enough. In an exclusive statement to Right Turn, he e-mailed me: “Republican candidates should categorically reject the notion that President Obama was not born in the United States. It is a complete distraction from the failed economic policies of the President.” And that was it. [Snip] At this point, few responsible Republican office-holders dare defend...

And the next President of the United States will be: teleprompter populist extraordinaire, Barack Obama. Should the Republicans nominate one of the three current frontrunners – Mitt Romney, Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann – Barack “Back-on-track” Obama wins (despite polls showing him with just a 41 percent approval rating) by playing the populist card he’s already begun to deal, forecasts Gerald Celente,Trends Journalpublisher.

Obama Admin Reworked Solyndra Loan To Favor Donor By MATTHEW DALY The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show. Newly released emails show that the Obama administration was worried about the financial health of a troubled solar energy company even as officials publicly declared the company in good shape. An email from a White House budget official to...

According to data just released by the U.S. Census this morning, in 2010, the median income earned by an individual American was $26,197, or rather, 50% of Americans earned more than that amount and 50% earned less than that amount. The average (or mean) income was $38,337. We've presented the cumulative distribution of the total money income earned by individuals in the United States in the chart below: So what percentile does your income place you on that chart? Well, wonder no more! Our latest tool will tell you exactly where you rank among all Americans, or rather, the 211,492,000...

Obama called for $50 billion more in infrastructure spending to rebuild roads, railways and runways -- a proposal that GOP leaders immediately cast as dead-on-arrival. Obama will also pitch a $100 billion proposal Wednesday to increase and make permanent research and development tax credits for businesses. Obama is expected to ask lawmakers to close tax breaks for oil and gas companies and multinational corporations to pay for the plan. The administration is also urging the Senate to pass the small business bill that calls for about $12 billion in tax breaks and a $30 billion fund to help unfreeze lending....

EXCERPT FROM FORBES MAGAZINE: She says she never wanted to make the ad - which was prompted by questions about a statement she had made on a late-night talk show years earlier - and was surprised when it showed up on the Internet. She blames an insistent media consultant but also her own inability to put her foot down. "It was a wrong-headed move, made for all the wrong reasons, but it was mine," O'Donnell writes in "Troublemaker: Let's Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again." The book is scheduled to go on sale Aug. 16. The Associated...

Exxon Mobil Corp. has made one of the largest oil and gas finds in the Gulf of Mexico in a decade, the company announced today. The oil major said it made two oil discoveries and a natural gas discovery in its Keathley Canyon blocks, including an oil discovery in the company’s first exploration well since last year’s moratorium on deep-water drilling. Exxon expects the combined finds to yield more than 700 million barrels of oil equivalent. More than 85 percent would be oil, the company said. Drilling early in 2010 turned up oil and natural gas at the well 250...

It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend. Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?

Jama'a al-Islamiya leader Omar Abdel Rahman, who is being held in a prison in North Carolina, US, in a 15-minute telephone conversation with his wife Aisha said “the Egyptian revolution achieved the impossible.” His son Mohamed said an officer from the prison called Abdel Rahman’s home on the landline first to make sure that his wife was there, and that her voice matched the registered "voiceprint." He added that a recorded message from the prison’s phone said the line would be cut immediately if any person other than Aisha talked on the phone. He also said that his father was...

The big news today is that the $38.5 billion in budget cuts announced with such fanfare on Friday night mostly aren’t real. A good deal of it involves money from previous years and previous budgets that hasn’t actually been spent. As the AP puts it, the budget deal is financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially ‘score’ as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, -snip- The total amount actually cut appears to be somewhere between $8 and $14 billion. The politics here are very complicated now. On the one hand, polls suggest the public is overwhelmingly...

. In an interview last night on Fox News, Gov Palin stated that the Paul Ryan budget was a good start. She thanked him for having the political courage to bring the budget issues to the debate. However, she went further than any other potential POTUS candidate in calling for more and quicker cuts than even Paul Ryan's budget. In one interview, Gov Palin has positioned herself has the most fiscal conservative of the possible candidates. Her leaving her state with $12 billion surplus lends even more weight to her argument. The massive surplus in AK that Gov Palin left...

President Obama formally launched his re-election campaign Monday, urging grass-roots supporters central to his first White House run to mobilize again to protect the change he's brought over the past two years. The official start of his second White House bid comes 20 months before the November 2012 election. "We've always known that lasting change wouldn't come quickly or easily. It never does," the Democrat said in an e-mail to

Here are the official numbers from Publisher’s Weekly (h/t cuatrocinco45): Nonfiction 1. Decision Points. George W. Bush. Crown (11/10) 2,653,565 2. Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth, and Treasure. Glenn Beck. Threshold Editions (10/10) *860,0002 3. Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. Geneen Roth. Scribner (3/10) *850,000 4. Life. Keith Richards with James Fox. Little, Brown (10/10) 811,596 5. America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag. Sarah Palin. HarperCollins (11/10) 797,955 6. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race. Jon Stewart. Grand...

Organized labor vs. Tea Parties By Henry LambMarch 21, 2011 Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature kicked a rattlesnake when they significantly reduced the power of the state's public employee labor unions. Labor unions across the country have declared war on Republicans, even threatening death, and the Tea Parties that support them. A battle between organized labor and the Tea Parties is decidedly a one-sided battle. Organized labor receives regular income from every member, often deducted by the employer and paid directly to the labor union. National Education Association attorney, Bob Chanin says: "The NEA and its affiliates are...

Obama's Approval Rating Dropped in All 50 States in 2010 Washington, DC -- A new Gallup polling analysis finds pro-abortion President Barack Obama saw his approval rating drop in all 50 states in 2010 -- in what could be an indicator of a weakened position heading into his 2012 re-election campaign. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/02/23/obamas-approval-rating-dropped-in-all-50-states-in-2010/

Bolivia blames capitalism Mexico: Bolivian President Evo Morales said capitalism was responsible for climate change in his speech at the Climate Change Summit Thursday and he insisted on the need for the developed countries to make new commitments to reduce their greenhouse effect gas emissions. “We are sometimes debating only the effects of global warming, and not the causes, and we should be responsible and debate those causes,” said the Bolivian President in the high level segment of the 16th Climatic Change Summit in Cancun. Morales recalled the responsibility of the Governments so that key decisions are adopted to face...

The results of the CPAC straw poll of presidential candidates are in, and the winner is Ron Paul, with 30% of the vote. Mitt Romney was the runner-up with 23%, and all other candidates tied with about 6% each. 84% of the voters identified themselves as fiscal conservatives, placing their highest priority on economic growth and restraining the growth of government.

As the cliche goes, there are no coincidences in politics. Obama fundraiser group Code Pink just happened to have arrived in Cairo last week for the group’s ninth visit there in two years as part of its campaign to undermine the Mubarak government and help Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza. Code Pink and the media are trying to portray the leftist group's 'sudden' appearance in Cairo Wednesday as an act of courageous support for a democratic revolution. Nothing could be further from the truth.Code Pink protests the Mubarak government in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. February 2, 2011. Code...

<p>The U.S. economy accelerated in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department reported Friday. Real gross domestic product rose at a 3.2% annualized rate in the fourth quarter, up from a 2.6% rate in the third quarter. The gain was slightly below expectations.</p>

School Salary Database Reveals What Ohio Educators Earned In 2010By Patrick Preston Published: January 18, 2011 COLUMBUS, Ohio - An updated salary database allows Ohioans to search the salaries of administrators and teachers in Ohio's 613 public school districts. The Buckeye Institute, a conservative think tank based in Columbus, received the data from the Ohio Department of Education showing 1,800 public school employees made more than $100,000 in 2010. In the Columbus City School District, 78 employees earned more than six figures in 2010. Superintendent Gene Harris topped the list in Columbus with a salary of $185,912. The head of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Last year tied for the warmest since data started in 1880, capping a decade of record high temperatures that shows mankind's greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet, two U.S. agencies said. Global surface temperatures in 2010 were 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 Celsius) above the 20th century average, tying the record set in 2005, the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Wednesday. "These results show that the climate is continuing to show the influence of greenhouse gases. It's showing evidence of warming," David Easterling, the chief of the scientific services...

Ron Brownstein has a piece in National Journal about voters' "white flight" from the Democratic Party during the midterms that is bound to get a lot of attention: By any standard, white voters' rejection of Democrats in November's elections was daunting and even historic. Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Not even in Republicans' 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote. If you're curious as to why we...

No doubt, 2010 was a historic year. While it's not unusual for Big Media's undeniable bias to lead them to miss, if not intentionally ignore, certain stories, in terms of volume, 2010 seems to have offered a banner crop. Granted, no single story in 2010 compares to the biggie they missed in 2009: the ascendancy of the "Tea Party" movement. After the better part of a year, the mainstream press finally caught up in 2010. Oh, sure, they're still miscasting and criticizing the phenomenon, but they no longer deny its existence or impact. The delightful irony in Big Media's year-long...

As voted on by LR readers during the month of December. Out of 568 votes cast, 58% of LR readers chose Sarah Palin as the “Best Libertarian for 2010.” Runners up included New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Kentucky Senator-elect Rand Paul, and Florida Sen.-elect Marco Rubio. Out of (approximately) 120 votes cast, 45% LR readers chose Geert Wilders, Member of Parliament in the Netherlands and leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, as the “Best Libertarian Internationally” for 2010. Runners up included Conservative Party MP in the United Kingdom Daniel Hannan, Nigel Farage – leader of the UK Independence Party, and...

The second year of President Obama's foreign-policy and national-security management continued the pattern of decline established in his first year. The unbridled and naive optimism that ill-served the country in Mr. Obama's failed freshman outing gave way to a sense of policy drift in 2010. Even the president began to question whether the United States should maintain its primary global leadership role. Mr. Obama's first-week-in-office pledge to close the U.S. detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year remained unfulfilled, the upside of which is that it has reduced the number of terrorists being released to continue their deadly...

Ayatollah Khomeini once observed that there is no humor in Islam. Well, perhaps there is no intentional humor in Islam. However, the fact is that each of our religions probably has an ounce of human unintended humor to mix with the divine aspects. My Baptist friends joke that Baptists are the ones who yell "sinner!" at other Baptists next to them in the checkout line at the liquor store. Lutherans joke about the church potlucks laden with mayonnaise-filled recipes. Jewish friends joke that a room with four Jews also contains five opinions. What of Islam? Is there a faith on...

2010. I remember when I was growing up how 2010 sounded so futuristic. And now it’s come and gone. As a kid, I used to think that by the year 2010 we’d have flying cars and that everything would be so space-age. What do we have to show for 2010? The iPad. The Chevy Volt. Those little gel toilet dots that supposedly keep you from having to clean the toilet as often. So much for a wide-open future of technological innovation. At the same time, during my politically precocious childhood, I was captivated by the seemingly limitless optimism of the...

Let's put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been much worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes, we can, because they were not exposed to "Jersey Shore." So, on second thought, we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever. The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which...

WASHINGTON - No numbers in the year just ending are more consequential for President Obama than the results of the midterm elections. His party lost seats in the Senate and its majority in the House. The full impact of those numbers will only start to be felt when the 112th Congress convenes next Wednesday.But other numbers from 2010 add shading and perspective to other aspects of the second year of the Obama presidency: Speeches, statements and remarks: 491 -Since taking office: 883 --News conferences and press availabilities: 27

....In arts and entertainment, the year saw the deaths of two members of the Redgrave acting dynasty: Lynn Redgrave and her brother Corin Redgrave. Another who died was author J.D. Salinger, who spent much of his life retreating from the fame garnered by his book "The Catcher in the Rye," which shocked and inspired millions. Other artists and entertainers who died this year: Lena Horne, Dennis Hopper, Jimmy Dean, Tom Bosley, Gary Coleman, Dixie Carter, Ronnie James Dio, Art Linkletter, Kazuo Ohno, Corey Haim, Robert Culp, Peter Graves, Joan Sutherland, Leslie Nielsen, Tony Curtis, Rue McClanahan, Johnny Maestro and Eddie...

At the start of 2010, who would have predicted that we'd spend so much time talking about the ethics of Wikileaks, or a political advertisement in which a candidate for the U.S. Senate looked into the camera and declared, "I am not a witch," or whether or not Barack Obama should emulate George W. Bush or Bill Clinton? Well, former Vice President Dan Quayle once said, "The future will be better tomorrow," and in that spirit, here are some things that could happen in the coming year: Kathleen's predictions: 1) Sarah Palin won’t go away, but she’ll continue to pretend...

In this last year (2010), we have seen what remains of our American Judeo/Christian culture literally wiped out. Socialism and the secularization of America is now dominant in our media and culture. What is also quite alarming is that even those who profess to be “Christians” are being led astray by this change and are being seduced by the subtle doctrines of Fallen angels (demons). This demonic and godless kool aid is so subtle and bewitching that it has made even so called professing “Christians” drunk and numb to the realities of this world as stated in Almighty God's infallible...

In this last year (2010), we have seen what remains of our American Judeo/Christian culture literally wiped out. Socialism and the secularization of America is now dominant in our media and culture. What is also quite alarming is that even those who profess to be “Christians” are being led astray by this change and are being seduced by the subtle doctrines of Fallen angels (demons). This demonic and godless kool aid is so subtle and bewitching that it has made even so called professing “Christians” drunk and numb to the realities of this world as stated in Almighty God's infallible...

1. The Citizens United Decision Enshrines Corporate Power When the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in January that corporations are persons and can spend unlimited amount of funds from their treasuries to tell people to vote for Candidate A and not to vote for candidate B, any hopes for democracy began to fade. Fortunately, a grassroots effort arose to amend the Constitution and overturn this decision. See movetoamend.org and freespeechforpeople.org. 2. Schism Widens Between Obama and Much of His Progressive Base Disappointment turned to fury for many progressives when Obama compromised on health care reform and then caved in on the...

Hollywood Celebs Helped Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz in 2010 Hollywood, CA -- The Planned Parenthood abortion business reported making more than $1 billion in income in 2010, but they achieved that with a little help from their Hollywood friends. http://www.lifenews.com/2010/12/31/hollywood-celebrities-helped-planned-parenthood-abortion-biz-in-2010/

“Top 10 2010 – 2011 New Year’s Eve Jokes” 10. 2011 is not a leap year, so … NO JUMPING!9. Auld Lang Syne inevitably gets mispronounced.8. Jumpin’ Jupiters! The Earth has spun around the Sun one more time. Hooray!7. New Year’s Eve is like a box of surprises. You never know if you’ll get any chocolates.6. Be a Rebel: Celebrate the Old Year.5. The End of the year is Nigh. That means more soon-to-be obsolete techno junk is coming your way.4. Father Time is old. Just one look at him and you could see he was long in the...

Move on over, Oprah. There's a new media queen in town. In a feat that may have seemed impossible at the conclusion of 2009, Sarah Palin became an even more visible national personality in 2010. After she and Republican presidential nominee John McCain lost the 2008 election by some 8 million votes to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, it may have seemed that Palin would simply fade out of the national spotlight and return to Alaska politics. And when Palin abruptly announced in July 2009 that she was quitting her job as Alaska's governor, little more than two years after...

This year has been a tumultuous one, particularly when it comes to politics. The economic pain has continued and has seemingly awoken American voters, who voiced their frustrations at the polls in November. After about 365 days of ups and downs, here's who came out on top, and who didn't fare as well. Winners Tea Party: They were dismissed as phony as "astroturf" by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and "manufactured outrage" by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, while the ever-smug Anderson Cooper made crude "teabagging" jokes. But who's laughing now? The Tea Partiers are the political phenomenon of the...

What would an end-of-year recap of the last 12 months be without revisiting the most recent and most important event of the year?... The 2010 mid-term Elections! If you are like me, you are left wondering... What the hell happened to California with the election of Jerry Moonbeam Brown and the re-election of Barbara Boxer, amidst all of the conservative backlash against liberals which took place across the country??? This video started out as a post-election in-your-face conservative gloat piece, combined with anti-liberal rib jabbing fun poked at California for electing someone like Jerry Brown for Governor. However, the lyrics...

Top 6 most covered Tea Party news stories of the yearAlex Pappas--the Daily Caller Tue Dec 28, 1:26 am ET Tea Party activists often say the media ignored them when the movement burst onto the political scene in 2009. They can’t say the same thing about 2010. Thousands of articles were written over the last 12 months about Tea Party activists, whether it had to do with Scott Brown’s election to the Senate, President Obama’s health-care bill or the year’s midterm elections. As we look back on those articles, here’s our list of the top 6 of the most covered...

In 2010 Fox News Had More Total Viewers Than MSNBC, CNN, And HLN COMBINEDGlynnis MacNicol | Dec. 28, 2010, 1:16 PM The ratings are out for 2010. Perhaps not surprisingly Fox News continued its march of dominance through the cablesphere, clocking its second-highest rated year ever in total viewers. It was also the only news channel to hit the top 10 in cable networks, ranking fourth in Primetime behind USA, ESPN and TNT. Want some context for that? Fox News' total viewers for the year exceeded MSNBC, HLN, and CNN combined. That dominance came primarily at the expense of CNN...

This time every year, the New York Times' David Brooks writes a column lauding the year's best magazine articles -- a nice gesture from every liberal's favorite nice-guy-on-the-Right. For my last column this year, I'd rather tap into my inner Scrooge for a list of the worst op-eds of 2010. The modern op-ed dates from 1921, when New York World editor Herbert Bayard Swope first inflicted the genre upon the world. "Nothing is more interesting than opinion," he rationalized, therefore, "I decided to print opinion, ignoring facts." The worst op-eds of 2010 stayed true to that vision. I looked for...

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's write-in election victory last month, clearing the way for Murkowski to be sworn in for a second term next week. Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell later announced that the director of the Alaska Division of Elections certified Murkowski as the winner, defeating fellow Republican Joe Miller by a vote of 101,091 to 90,839. Murkowski was defeated in the Republican primary in August by Miller, a Tea Party-backed candidate. Murkowski then waged the write-in campaign in the general election in November to defeat Miller, who filed a lawsuit challenging...