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President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row. In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman. Truman lost a total of 83 House seats during his two midterms (55 seats in 1946 and 28 seats in 1950), while Republican Dwight Eisenhower lost a combined 66 House seats in the 1954 and 1958 midterms. Obama had one midterm where his party lost 63 House seats, and Democrats are...

Whatever happens next Tuesday, President Obama’s time in office will have cost his party more seats in Congress than any president in at least half a century. The numbers are stark. President Obama took office after the 2008 elections with 257 Democrats in the House of Representatives. At the moment, there are only 199 members of his party left — a net loss of 58 seats. And, virtually all analysts expect the number of Democrats to decline even more next Tuesday. The only question is by how much. To put that number in perspective, the 58 seats already lost by...

Speaking to a mostly white college audience: "“This progress has been hard but it has been steady and it has been real,” Obama said at Northwestern University on Oct. 2. “And it’s the direct result of the American people’s drive and their determination and their resilience, and it’s also the result of sound decisions made by my administration. So it is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office.” Obama griped to party donors several days later that his accomplishments are a mystery even to his most loyal supporters. “Most of you don’t know the statistics...

The investigator leading the probe into the Secret Service's 2012 prostitution scandal quietly resigned in August after he was implicated in a prostitution entanglement of his own. A senior administration official confirmed to Fox News that David Nieland was observed entering and leaving a building that was under surveillance as part of a prostitution investigation by sheriff's deputies in Broward County, Fla.

Coumo and Warren Wilhelm Press Conference

A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea tested positive for the Ebola virus Thursday, becoming the city’s first diagnosed case. The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital on Thursday and placed in isolation while health care workers spread out across the city to trace anyone he might have come into contact with in recent days. A further test will be conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control to confirm the initial test. While officials have said they expected isolated cases of the disease to arrive in New York eventually,...

In response to fears of Ebola spreading within the U.S., the Pentagon is forming a “quick strike team” consisting of 30 people. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Sunday that the medical support team will feature 20 critical care nurses, five doctors and five trainers who specialize in infectious disease protocols. The team is composed of civilian health care providers though no names have been released at this point. The team was created in response.....

...Obama is hitting the links on Saturday, joined by ESPN commentator Tony Kornheiser after a hectic week for the White House in response to the Ebola outbreak.... ...golfing at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, according to a White House pool report.

While federal and local officials rethink their Ebola containment strategy, they've also riled front-line health care workers by repeatedly pointing the finger at nurses as new infections surface. Most recently, federal sources even suggested the second Dallas nurse to test positive for the virus "lied" to the CDC about her symptoms.

As U.S. and coalition partners repeatedly bomb Islamic State fighters trying to capture the Syrian city of Kobani, analysts in the United States warn that the IS organization is an experienced and resilient force that will be hard to defeat. Despite days of punishing airstrikes in and around the Syrian city of Kobani and inside Iraq, the black and white flag of the Islamic State still stubbornly flies above rooftops from the Turkish border in the west to within miles of Baghdad.

Two months after American bombs and missiles began pounding fighters of the so-called Islamic State, President Barack Obama’s undeclared war in Iraq and Syria finally has a name: Operation Inherent Resolve. The Wall Street Journal had reported on Oct. 3 that the name had been considered and rejected, with one unnamed military officer saying “it is just kind of bleh.” The long search for a name had sparked a flurry of jokes on Twitter, where one leading tongue-in-cheek suggestion was that it be called “Operation Hey Wasn’t That My Humvee” – a reference to U.S. airstrikes hitting Islamic State fighters...

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Elementary school students joined first lady Michelle Obama for the fall harvest of the White House Kitchen Garden Tuesday afternoon. Students from D.C.'s Harriet Tubman and Bancroft elementary schools, who often help with the garden, joined in, as did children from Arizona, California and Ohio schools. The students were selected because they attend schools that teach students about healthy eating through their school gardens and provide local prduce in school meals.

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) sued the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, intensifying its battle with federal agencies as the Internet industry's self-described champion of free speech seeks the right to reveal the extent of U.S. government surveillance. The lawsuit, which Twitter said follows months of fruitless negotiations with the government, marks an escalation in the Internet industry's battle over government gag orders on the nature and number of requests for private user information.

.....some scientists who have long studied Ebola say [federal government] assurances are premature — and they are concerned about what is not known about the strain now on the loose. It is an Ebola outbreak like none seen before, jumping from the bush to urban areas, giving the virus more opportunities to evolve as it passes through multiple human hosts. Dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeys housed in Virginia and who later led the CDC's most far-reaching study.....

A U.S. Marine who went into the sea from a V-22 Osprey during a flight mishap over the northern Gulf this week is the first American to be killed in U.S. military operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Corporal Jordan Spears, 21, of Memphis, Indiana, was a crewman aboard a V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft flying off the USS Makin Island and went into the sea when the aircraft lost power shortly after takeoff, the Navy said on Friday. The V-22 descended to the surface of the ocean.....

NIH spends $466,642 to determine if it’s all about that bass The federal government is spending nearly a half a million dollars to find out why obese teenage girls have a hard time getting dates. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a $466,642 grant last week for the study, which will examine whether social skills have an impact on why obese girls have fewer dating experiences than their less obese counterparts.

A new poll finds that three-fifths of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare. A large plurality — 44 percent — wants to see Obamacare repealed replaced with a conservative alternative. A much smaller group —16 percent — wants to see it repealed but not replaced. Less than one in three respondents — 32 percent — would like to keep Obamacare, whether in its current form or in amended form. So, with a conservative alternative in play, 60 percent of Americans support repeal, while only 32 percent oppose it.

Should he have switched hands? Dropped the cup? Not drank the coffee? Declared war on coffee growers? Any way, the right woulda whacked him.Since his inauguration, Republicans have criticized President Obama for everything. For launching military strikes. For not launching military strikes. For taking vacations. For being too uptight. For fist-bumping. For being too detached. You name it. Progressives and those who simply like fair-minded political debate have alleged that the actual facts of President Obama’s actions are irrelevant, that Republicans who were determined to oppose everything the president did from Day One would criticize his every move no matter...

For most of his six years as president, Barack Obama has behaved as if the U.S. could opt out of the war Islamist terrorists have been waging on it and to pretend that outreach or the magic of his personality could bridge the gap with the Muslim and Arab worlds. But in his speech today to the United Nations General Assembly, the president seem to find a new, tougher, and more realistic voice about this threat. Instead of pious liberal platitudes at times he sounded like the grown up America needs at its helm. While the change is heartening, it...