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Senator Lindsay Graham opened the evidence session of the Senate Appropriations Committee which hosted U2 singer Bono yesterday by telling the room that you don’t win wars against terrorists by killing them, or “dropping bombs on their head” but rather, by spending U.S. tax payer cash attempting to keep migrants un-radicalised. He said that non governmental organisations and charities in the Middle East and North Africa “can do just as much good as any battalion of soldiers”.

Ted Cruz's and Marco Rubio's supporters have teamed up in Arkansas to pack the state delegation with individuals who'll turn against Donald Trump in a contested convention. Since Rubio ended his presidential bid March 15, his network of party insiders has lined up behind Cruz to win delegates who'd vote for the Texas senator once they're no longer bound to Trump in a floor fight. Trump won Arkansas' GOP primary March 1 with 32.8 percent of the vote compared to Cruz's 30.5 percent and Rubio's 24.9 percent. But Cruz's canny operatives, with Rubio riding shotgun, is likely to thwart Trump...

Florida may prove crucial to Donald Trump’s presidential hopes if the Republican nomination race goes to a contested convention. Under the state’s GOP rules, all of the 99 delegates Trump received when he won Florida’s March 15 primary must vote for him through the first three nominating ballots at a contested convention. That makes Florida unique. Thirty-one states and territories require Republican delegates to support the winner of a given primary or caucus only for the first ballot, according to the Republican National Committee. Seven require delegates to back the primary or caucus winner for the first two ballots. The...

OK. So Trump looks like he might end up a few delegates short of 1237. Maybe, maybe not. If he were to offer the VP to Rubio, in exchange for his 171 delegates, he the would only need to get to 1066. He freezes out Cruz, he freezes out Kasich and rewards them for their machinations with a loss. He solidifies his vote in Florida by adding Cuban American voters and other Rubio supporters. He wins back some of the disaffected fedgov employees of NOVA that went for Rubio and improves his chances in VA. He somewhat assuages the establishment....

Sen. Marco Rubio has fought to take the delegates he won to the Republican National Convention in July, leaving him in a position to be a power broker or even, if everything falls into place, to make another run at the top of the party’s presidential ticket. Under current rules, he doesn’t qualify to be considered for the presidential nomination — only Donald Trump has clearly met the threshold so far — but if the party starts looking beyond the billionaire businessman, Mr. Rubio could be in line. “You can see absolutely how it could play out,” said Chris Bravacos,...

An ad created by the super PAC supporting John Kasich has adopted Donald Trump’s nickname for rival Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): “Lyin’ Ted.” New Day Independent Media Committee’s video ad begins, “Many just call him Lyin’ Ted,” as a narrator proceeds to list Cruz’s alleged “lies.” “Lied about Ben Carson to steal a win in Iowa; lied about being the best for the GOP when polls show he can’t even beat Hillary Clinton; his TV ad about John Kasich lied. Stations had to pull it off the air.”“If Ted Cruz’s mouth is moving, he’s lying,” the ad continues.

Probably to stop Trump - and we'll explain how that works - but hey, you never know. Usually when candidates announce they’re “suspending” their campaign, that’s a legal term of art that simply means, “I’m no longer running but I need to be able to still raise money to pay off my campaign debts.” In Marco Rubio’s case, though, maybe he is only suspending it. In this election year there’s hardly anyone who can truly be said to be out of the running. And if we do get to a contested convention and the party starts looking for a compromise...

Ted Cruz dodges question about whether he's 'always been faithful' to his wife as endorser Carly Fiorina leaps in to insist a declaration that he's not an adulterer is a 'dance to Donald trump's tune' Texas senator could put National Enquirer scandal to rest with a simple statement that he has never strayed in his 14-year marriage Instead he has batted down the supermarket tabloid's speculative story about five alleged affairs in a more limited fashion Carly Fiorina leaped in to intercept DailyMail.com's request for a blanket statement of marital fidelity and Cruz ultimately punted on the question Fiorina pleaded...

"The Cruz campaign reportedly knew for weeks, at least since January, about the allegations."

Phil Houston is CEO of QVerity, a training and consulting company specializing in detecting deception by employing a model he developed while at the Central Intelligence Agency. He has conducted thousands of interviews and interrogations for the CIA and other federal agencies. His colleague Don Tennant contributed to this report.The eyebrow-raising story that appeared earlier this week in the National Enquirer, citing claims that Sen. Ted Cruz had engaged in five extramarital affairs, drew a sharp response by the Republican presidential contender. Sharp as it was, however, it was strikingly weak in terms of denial, and strong in terms of...

Oh, dear. Most of last week, American voters watched as two of the nation's Republican presidential contenders accused each other of insulting the other's wife and engaging in underhanded and inappropriate campaign tactics. And on Sunday, the start of a new week, the accusations continued to fly in both directions. On various Sunday morning political talk shows, both Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz spoke about a National Enquirer story claiming that Cruz has engaged in extramarital affairs and allegations that both men had inappropriately launched or been involved in attacks on the other's spouse.

Maybe Donald Trump isn’t behind the Ted Cruz “sex scandal” story leak to the National Enquirer after all. According to The Daily Beast, “for months and months, anti-Cruz operatives have pitched a variety of #CruzSexScandal stories to a host of prominent national publications.” One such outlet was Breitbart News, which was shown “a compilation video of Cruz and a woman other than his wife coming out of the Capitol Grille restaurant and a hotel on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” a source inside the publication told The Daily Beast. (Leave it to a politician to keep a standardized booty call schedule.) The...

...TRUMP: Totally. I had nothing to do with— the campaign had nothing to do with it. He’s got a problem with The National Enquirer. I have no control over The National Enquirer. I had no idea about the story. I just got it last night. I had nothing to do whatsoever with The National Enquirer, neither did the campaign. For him to say I had to do with it, try and put the shoe on the other foot is disgraceful. And by the way, He’s the one that started it. From what I hear, he and his campaign went out...

Donald Trump has denied any connection to the National Enquirer story released yesterday claiming Ted Cruz has had 5 mistresses: I have no idea whether or not the cover story about Ted Cruz in this week’s issue of the National Enquirer is true or not, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it, did not know about it, and have not, as yet, read it. Likewise, I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin’ Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchman and then pretend total innocence. Ted Cruz’s problem...

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The truth behind the rumor-mongering, however, is a little more complex. A half-dozen GOP operatives and media figures tell The Daily Beast that Cruz’s opponents have been pushing charges of adultery for at least six months now—and that allies of former GOP presidential hopeful Marco Rubio were involved in spreading the smears. For months and months, anti-Cruz operatives have pitched a variety of #CruzSexScandal stories to a host of prominent national publications, according to Republican operatives and media figures. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, Politico, and ABC News—reporters at all those outlets heard some version of...

Republicans Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, who suspended their presidential campaigns, removed their names from New York's primary ballot by the deadline Tuesday, but Ben Carson didn't. So New York Republicans will be able to vote for four candidates on April 19: businessman Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Carson, a neurosurgeon who suspended his campaign March 4 after failing to win in any states.

I grew up believing myself to have been born gay having always, and only, had the most powerful, all-consuming, erotic attraction towards my own sex.Teenage years were hell. I often thought of suicide, occasionally self-harmed and had a growing problem with alcohol. I lived in a rural mining community in the north of England believing I would never be accepted among my own as a gay man, particularly as I watched a male cousin some ten years older than me – now deceased from a drug overdose – struggle to find his place as a gay man in the late...

Talk about political whiplash. Exactly one week ago, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney -- in his effort to defeat Donald Trump -- campaigned in Ohio with John Kasich, telling the state's voters to cast ballots for their governor. "Unlike the other people running, he has a real track record," Romney said of Kasich. "He has the kind of record that you want in Washington, and that's why I'm convinced that you're going to do the right thing tomorrow." Today, however, Romney's voice appears on robocalls in Arizona and Utah, telling these voters to side with Ted Cruz -- and...

Ted Cruz’s campaign has been exploring the possibility of forming a unity ticket with ex-rival Marco Rubio — going so far as to conduct polling looking into how the two would perform in upcoming primary states. The motivation, hashed out in conversations among Cruz’s top aides and donors: to find a way to halt Donald Trump’s march to the Republican nomination. It’s unclear whether Cruz’s campaign brass views a partnership with Rubio as realistic or quixotic. In Rubio’s orbit, according to three sources, it’s seen as an outright nonstarter — with Rubio telling his team that he isn’t interested. Yet...