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To hear President Obama and the Cabinet officials he has been steadily trotting out like show ponies tell it, the sequester cuts cannot, must not happen, because we’ll subsequently be hit with all kinds of disasters just short of a plague of locusts. Come on, White House, get it together --- I don't know that the sequester is the best specific way to get this done either, and maybe defense-related spending is getting the short end of the stick, but not even the Department of Interior can manage their devastating, draconian budget cuts, really? It's almost like you're trying to...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: John Kerry, the secretary of state, is in Berlin, ladies and gentlemen. And while he's there he's probably reminiscing about the good old days of the Cold War wishing that there were an East Berlin that he could visit. You know, hang around with the buddies. You know, go to East Berlin and say, "Hey, you know me? I'm the guy that threw the fake metals from my Vietnam War service over the White House fence. Remember me?" There is no more divided Berlin, but that didn't stop John Kerry. He was speaking with students in Berlin...

Obama: 'You Can't Do Things By Yourself' Daniel Halper February 26, 2013 2:36 PM President Obama said that "you can't do things by yourself" at a speech today in Virginia: "You know, the one thing about being president is, after four years, you get pretty humble. You'd think maybe you wouldn't but actually you become more humble--you realize what you don't know," Obama said. "You realize all the mistakes you made. But you also realize you can't do things by yourself. That's not how our system works. You've got to have the help and the goodwill of Congress, and what...

I told you the yays would be closer to 70 than to 60. Final tally: 71-27. You didn't seriously think these losers would go to the mat to block a nominee just because he's manifestly unqualified, did you?Eighteen Republicans voted yes, according to Fox's Chad Pergram. The roll of glory: R's voting to end debate on Hagel: Alexander, Ayotte, Blunt, Burr, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Collins, Corker, Flake, Graham, Hatch ...— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) February 26, 2013 R’s voting to end debate on Hagel (con’t): Johanns, McCain, Murkowski, Sessions, Shelby and Thune.— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) February 26, 2013 Remember, Maverick has...

The sequester is officially still three days away, but the Obama administration already is making the first cuts, with officials confirming that the (Homeland Security Department) already has released several hundred illegal immigrants from detention in order to save money. The move is proving controversial. Immigrant-rights groups say it shows the administration was detaining folks it never should have gone after in the first place, while Republicans questioned the decision-making.[snip] While being released from detention, the illegal immigrants are still subject to supervision — either by electronic device or by being required to check in with ICE by phone or...

Barack Obama apparently hoped that a private meeting with GOP governors would help push House Republicans to compromise on the sequester. The meeting backfired in that regard, at least partially. The private meeting so incensed Nikki Haley that she could barely contain herself afterward at the US Chamber of Commerce afterward, and while she expressed frustration with both sides, she delivered a withering shot at Obama for refusing to make even slight cuts in federal spending: “I could not be more frustrated than I am right now,” Haley told reporters after the meeting. She said that when she asked Obama...

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So not only did Michelle Obama hijack the Oscars, she stuck it (again) to the tax payers as-well. You’ll be happy to know that the cost of Michelle Obama’s hideous Oscar dress designed has an estimated price tag of $8,990.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing. It also marks three weeks since the attempted murder of Lars Hedegaard, the intrepid Danish champion of free speech. These events are not unrelated. Back in 1993, there was a tireless effort to limn the WTC bombers as wanton killers. They were, we were to understand, bereft of any coherent belief system, unrepresentative of any mainstream construction of Islam. In reality, though, they were devout Muslim operatives who belonged to a jihadist cell formed in the New York area by Omar Abdel Rahman — whose notoriety as the shadowy...

Your key to winning conservative activism is simple: know, grow, and go. After you learn what’s going on and learn the tools you need, you’re ready to take productive action at the right time. We use emails, our blog, and our activist website to let you know what needs to happen when. Take Action! Your activism dashboard: create a profile on our activist website and use your dashboard to stay up to speed on the latest conservative fights on Capitol Hill. Action Alerts: posts we use to let you know when to take action. Post Your Action Story: send us...

FORT HUACHUCA — For nearly a half century the 11th Signal Brigade headquarters has been associated with this southern Arizona Army post in some form or another, first as the 11th Signal Group which arrived in 1966. But on Feb. 18, the Department approved the relocation of the approximately 100 personnel headquarters to Fort Hood, Texas. The local announcement was made Monday. However, the brigade’s 40th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, consisting of nearly 500 people, will remain on Fort Huachuca, according to the 11th’s public affairs noncommissioned officer Staff Sgt. Kelvin Ringold. The brigade headquarters returned from a deployment to Afghanistan...

At a 2006 conference in Washington, D.C., then-Senator Chuck Hagel laid out an appeasement policy that he claimed was the only sane option for the United States.The conference, hosted by the New America Foundation, was devoted primarily to Iran sanctions, which were coming before the U.S. Senate again the very next day for renewal.Sen. Hagel’s entire presentation was devoted to blasting the notion of sanctions and economic pressure as tools of diplomacy.“Great powers are secure enough to engage,” he said. “We need to engage Iran and Syria, and find those common denominators.”Sen. Hagel claimed that U.S. sanctions on Cuba were...

In an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts aired this morning, First Lady Michelle Obama recalled the tragic death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton who was shot and killed in Chicago after performing during the President’s Inauguration celebration in Washington D.C. “She was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need,” the First Lady explained. “I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.” Chicago police reported, however, that Pendleton was shot by a man who “opened fire with...

Human longevity has improved so rapidly over the past century that 72 is the new 30, scientists say. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, said progress in lowering the odds of death at all ages has been so rapid since 1900 that life expectancy has risen faster than it did in the previous 200 millennia since modern man began to evolve from hominid species. The pace of increase in life expectancy has left industrialized economies unprepared for the cost of providing retirement income to so many for so long

<p>In a highly unusual move, federal immigration officials have released a wave of detainees from immigration detention centers around the country in an effort to save money as automatic budget cuts loom in Washington, officials said.</p> <p>The government has not dropped the deportation cases against the immigrants, however: The detainees have been freed on supervised release while their cases continue in court, officials said.</p>

We suppose the “logic” behind this lunacy is the dreaded 2.3% federal budget cut coming our way this Friday. The only surprise is helpful Obama aides weren’t there to sign them up for driver’s licenses and EBT cards. They probably took care of that before releasing this wave of criminal upon unsuspecting Americans. The federal government released groups of illegal immigrants from custody across the country Monday at the same time the White House was making its case that impending budget cuts would harm efforts to protect the border and enforce federal immigration laws. Advocates reported “waves” of illegal immigrants...

Never one to let a crisis go to waste, President Obama is using impending budget cuts to justify releasing “waves” of illegal immigrants from detention centers throughout the country. Groups of illegal aliens have been freed this week from facilities in Texas, Florida and Louisiana, according to a mainstream newspaper story that quotes advocates reporting “waves” being released. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed the secret liberation program, but wouldn’t say how many illegal immigrants were let go or what facilities they came from. One appreciative illegal immigrant, Manuel Perez, actually issued a statement after getting released from a...

Gov. Chris Christie will expand the state's Medicaid program to cover 300,000 uninsured New Jersey residents, The Star-Ledger learned today. The governor's new budget, which he plans to unveil at joint session of the Legislature this afternoon, also relies on state revenue growth of 4.9 percent and delays some property tax rebates for local taxpayers, according to three sources with knowledge of the budget plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The sequester is scheduled to take effect on Friday, and that means Florida stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding and 80,000 jobs. One program that will likely get slammed is Head Start, which provides early education and health services to tens of thousands of Florida children. About 2,700 of those kids will lose those benefits if the sequester kicks in. Dr. Daniel Armstrong, director of the Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, says the sequester could have devastating consequences for the children being booted off the rolls....

This David Weigel post on Friday reminded me that I should use the final election data to check a point I’d talked a fair amount about right after the election: that Romney ran ahead of the Republican Senate candidates in tightly contested races. My AEI colleague Caroline Kitchens went to the official state election-result sites and pulled the numbers, which are better than what we had in mid-November.In Wisconsin, Virginia, and Texas, Romney ran just barely ahead of Tommy Thompson (by 0.03 percent), George Allen (0.3 percent), and Ted Cruz (0.7 percent), respectively.In Nebraska, Ohio, and Arizona, Romney ran...