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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The damage caused by Hurricane Sandy sent U.S. jobless claims soaring by 78,000 in the week ended Nov. 10 to an 18-month high of 439,000, according to the latest government figures. A Labor Department official on Thursday said claims surged in the eastern parts of the country that laid in the path of the storm....

Gen. David Petraeus will testify before a House Committee on the Libya embassy attack Friday morning, despite the ongoing FBI investigation into an extramarital affair that led to his resignation as director of the CIA. The hearing to be held by the House Intelligence Committee is closed to the public and the media. Petraeus is expected to answer questions about the CIA's knowledge and handling of the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. Two of those Americans were with the CIA. It was unclear at first whether or...

Now that the GOP-e's anointed RINO has failed to attract sufficient numbers of conservative voters (the Republican base) to defeat the most blatantly corrupt liberal, er, communist useful idiot to ever occupy the White House, they've come up with an ingenious plan. We should "moderate" our stances against liberal causes like abortion, illegal aliens, the homosexual agenda, socialized healthcare, gun control, carbon tax, recreational drugs, resisting over taxing the "wealthy," etc. Our self-appointed Republican political "experts" now say we've lost the war against socialism and therefore must run up the white flag of surrender and become just like the godless...

The UN Security Council will hold a closed emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss Israeli strikes against the Gaza Strip, France said, as Israel threatened a wider offensive in the Palestinian enclave to stem rocket salvoes by Hamas militants.

November 14, 2012 RNC chairman calls for full recount in West-Murphy race Alexandra Jaffe Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus is echoing Rep. Allen West's (R-Fla.) call for a full recount of early ballots in his race, offering a rare show of support for a Republican lawmaker still locked in a yet-undecided race. "The voters of Florida's 18th Congressional District deserve to have their ballots counted properly. Congressman Allen West has asked election officials in St. Lucie County to count all early voting ballots, and I strongly urge them to do so in order to erase any existing concerns about...

President Obama, irritated by Republican pledges to prevent Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice from receiving a promotion, said that Rice’s critics “have a problem with me.” “When they go after the UN ambassador apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me,” Obama told reporters today. “And should I choose — if I think that she would be the best person to serve America in the capacity of the State Department [head] then I will nominate her, but that’s not a determination I’ve made yet.” Obama was responding to a press conference...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks briefly trimmed losses on Wednesday as President Barack Obama pushed for his proposal to have the wealthy pay more in taxes as a way to tame the federal deficit. Taking a hard line in his opening bid before he begins fiscal talks with U.S. lawmakers later in the week, the president also said he was encouraged that some Republicans have agreed to raising new revenues.

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After confirming the death of Ahmed Jabari, commander of Hamas’s military arm, Ezz e-din al-Qassam, Hamas announced: We are now at war with Israel. Jabari, 52, was killed by a targeted Israeli air attack in Gaza City. A key figure in the radical Palestinian Hamas movement, he was caught driving in a black Mercedes in Gaza City. Hamas has announced a general call-up and threatened to respond not just with rockets but suicide attacks. Israeli sources say the air operation called Pillar of Cloud is underway against more Hamas leaders and its military infrastructure and rocket stocks across the Gaza...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will remain atop the Democratic caucus for at least two more years, her office announced Wednesday.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus has agreed to testify about the Libya terror attack before the House and Senate intelligence committees, Fox News has learned.

Hamas confirms Ahmed Jabari killed when a missile hit two cars near the Gaza port; Palestinians report another person was killed.

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), three key Republican players on immigration, told The Hill they're ready to start working on broad-based reforms next year that could include a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.

West asks court to order full recount of early votes in St. Lucie Countyby George Bennett | November 13th, 2012 Republican Rep. Allen West‘s campaign says it filed a request for an injunction late today ordering St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker to conduct a recount of all 37,397 ballots from early voting rather than the 16,275 ballots the county canvassing board decided to recount Sunday.A copy of the filing wasn’t immediately available.A partial recount of early votes on Sunday showed Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy losing 667 votes and West losing 132 — a net gain of 535...

After Romney's unfortunate, but all too predictable loss, we see the weaker sisters of the GOP now pushing for "moderation." To cut back on the so-called "social issues." They want us to "moderate" our positions on God, Life, Family, Country, Borders, Guns, Constitution and Liberty. They feel we must pander to the godless liberals to get votes. Got news for them. Not only, no, but hell NO! That's exactly the wrong formula. We cannot and do not want to try to out pander the socialist democrats. That's a losing proposition from the git go. That's exactly why they lost with...

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The FBI probe into the sex scandal that led to the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday. According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of “potentially inappropriate” emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close friendship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. The...

Federal agents are inside the home of the Charlotte author at the center of a scandal involving CIA Director David Petraeus, who resigned on Friday. The Federal Bureau of Investigations confirms that it has agents inside Paula Broadwell's Dilworth home. While agents on scene would not confirm what they were looking for, nearly a dozen agents were seen carrying boxes and taking photographs inside the home. Paula Broadwell, the biographer who wrote a book about retired four-star general David Petraeus, 60, has not been seen at her Dilworth home since the news connecting her to an extramarital affair with Petraeus.

Bid for freedom: People from the states marked in red have lodged petitions asking to break away from the rest of the United States since Obama returned to the White House Although America carried President Obama confidently into a second term last Tuesday - not everyone is jumping for joy at the prospect of four more years. Tens of thousands have put their names to secession petitions in 20 states, asking that they peacefully become independent from the rest of the country. The documents have been lodged on a government website We The People - and Texas has almost enough...

Just a single source, but this does jibe with what Broadwell said in her Denver speech. In the original Oct. 26 Fox News report, sources at the annex said that the CIAÂ’s Global Response Staff had handed over three Libyan militia members to the Libyan authorities who came to rescue the 30 Americans in the early hours of Sept. 12.A well-placed Washington source confirms to Fox News that there were Libyan militiamen being held at the CIA annex in Benghazi and that their presence was being looked at as a possible motive for the staged attack on the consulate and...

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned as CIA director last week after admitting an extramarital relationship, could possibly face military prosecution for adultery if officials turn up any evidence to counter his apparent claims that the affair began after he left the military...