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Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews and a handful of his teammates, as well as one ex-teammate, now have more in common than just being Stanley Cup champions. They can say they were called out by the President of the United States at the White House. Not too shabby. President Barack Obama honored his hometown hockey team Monday for its 2013 Stanley Cup championship in front of a standing-room only crowd in the East Room. During his remarks, President Obama referenced Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, Bryan Bickell, Dave Bolland, Andrew Shaw and Corey Crawford in various forms of praise and...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Six in 10 Americans (60%) believe the federal government has too much power, one percentage point above the previous high recorded in September 2010. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the government has too much power. Thirty-two percent now say the government has the right amount of power. Few say it has too little power.

How Does the Tea Party Affect the Republican Party? There is an opinion that the Tea Party Movement diminishes the Republican Party. The most important opinion is the Tea Party Patriots’ opinion. The Republican Party’s direction must weaken before achieving the Tea Party’s objective of a constitutional government. My motto if you will, “Tea Party Patriots don't make the Republican Party weaker, Tea Party Patriots make the Republican Party Conservative. The grass roots Tea Party Movement is unique because all they ask for in exchange for their vote is a constitutional government. I would love to hear every American demand...

The bullets start to fly overnight outside a birthday party in north Harris County, and one teenage boy ended up with a bullet in his face. That teen is expected to survive, but the person who shot him remains on the run. It happened at a strip center on Aldine Westfield near FM 1960. Harris County Precinct 4 deputy constables tell us it all started when a group of about 10 to 20 people got into a fight inside the birthday party. They continued to fight in the parking lot, and that's when some of the other guests decided to...

This fact marks our political age: The pendulum is swinging faster and in shorter arcs than it ever has in our lifetimes. Few foresaw the earthquake of 2008 in 2006. No board-certified political professional predicted, on Election Day 2008, what happened in 2009-10 (New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts) and has been happening, and will happen, since then. It all moves so quickly now, it all turns on a dime. But at this moment we are witnessing a shift that will likely have some enduring political impact. Another way of saying that: The past few years, a lot of people in...

A Democratic Party official in Sacramento County has resigned after sending an offensive Twitter message during a heated exchange over President Obama’s health care law. SNIP Brauer addressed the offensive tweet to Amanda Carpenter, a speechwriter for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, as House Republicans voted to defund the health care law. Brauer wrote, “May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases.” SNIP

A former NFL player’s home was broken into and thoroughly trashed by teenagers in upstate New York over Labor Day weekend. Brian Holloway, a three time all-pro lineman for the New England Patriots, arrived to his second home in Stephentown on Tuesday to find it covered in urine, graffiti and empty cups and booze bottles. While he and his family were in Florida, the area high schoolers broke into the $1.5 million house and then with the help of Twitter quickly attracted hundreds of their peers from miles around. Now Holloway, himself a father of 8, has used the same...

**SNIP** “Our peers mingled for hours while dressed as bloods or Crips while using racialized language,” accused the letter, circulated on campus. “It then turned into a ‘ghetto party’ with racialized language, speech and dress. Over 200 individuals attended this racist and classist event.” The letter went on to urge students to report the event to the Dartmouth administration “as a bias incident” using an included hyperlink. "We are asking everyone to flood the bias incident account with our call for justice, right now,” reads the email. “[O]rganizations across campus will be mobilizing for further steps. Reporting with the above...

Maybe it was something she sang? Oakland Tea Party protester Celeste Paradise used her one minute of public comment time to sing a protest song at a public meeting. That’s when the committee shut her mic off.

The pendulum swings away from Sheikh Hasina and her governmentAHEAD of the festival of Eid-al-Fitr on August 9th-11th, the two quarrelling heads of Bangladesh’s political dynasties exchanged greetings cards. But the outward signs of peace between the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League, and the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), mean little. A European diplomat says he has just sent two cables to his capital. The first discusses the growing chances of the League’s defeat in elections due by next January. The second is about the dynastic succession plans of the battling...

(CNSNews.com) – IRS employees were ordered by their superiors--including Lois Lerner who pleaded the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination rather than testify in Congress--to send certain Tea Party tax-exemption applications to the office of the IRS's Chief Counsel, which was headed by William Wilkins, who at that time was the only Obama political appointee at the IRS, according to a letter released today by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “As a part of this ongoing investigation, the Committees have learned that the IRS Chief Counsel’s office in Washington, D.C. has been closely involved in some of the applications,”...

Boston cops crack down on after-hours parties Saturday, July 6, 2013PrintEmail Comments (9) By: O’Ryan Johnson Boston police are using social media, as well as old-fashioned walking beats, to find huge after-hours parties before they happen in an effort to tamp down summer violence. “It’s about trying to be proactive,” said Bureau of Field Services Superintendent William Evans. “If we find out about a party, we’re going to visit that house ahead of time. If they have a DJ, they need an entertainment license. If they’re going to serve alcohol, they need a liquor license.”Evans said police are spotting upcoming parties...

Responding to harsh criticism from Tea Party activists and conservatives, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) defended his support of the current immigration bill on the Senate floor Wednesday. He appealed directly to the people who helped him get elected, saying “their opinions really matter to me.” “Over the last few days, I have received numerous emails and calls from conservatives and tea party activists from across the country regarding immigration,” Rubio began. “And they are increasingly unhappy about the immigration reform proposal in the Senate.” Marco Rubio Defends Himself Against Tea Party Attacks on Senate Floor Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks...

When Barack Obama gave a speech in Berlin in 2008, he drew a crowd of 200,000. Wednesday's speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate was a little less popular. White House pool reporter Elmar Jakobs estimated the crowd at only 4,500.

Conservative activists are planning to storm Capitol Hill on Wednesday for what they are predicting will be “the largest Tea Party protest since 2010.” The protest — drawing tea partiers like TV host Glenn Beck and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — is in response to the Internal Revenue Service’s recent admission that it has been specifically targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny. The gathering on the West Lawn of the Capitol is being called the “Audit the IRS” Rally. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/18/the-largest-tea-party-protest-since-2010-is-tomorrow/#ixzz2WaxhEEBG

Republican voters have an unfavorable view of their party in Congress, according to a new survey from Public Policy Polling. The poll found that overall, only 24 percent of voters approve of the job congressional Republicans are doing, compared with 67 percent who disapprove. That's down from a 25-68 approval split in May.

(CNSNews.com) - In a belated and incomplete response to the House Ways and Means Committee’s request for Internal Revenue Service documents relating to the agency’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups for heightened scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has informed the committee that the agency is in the process of reviewing approximately 64,600,000 pages of documents from IRS officials “who may have potentially relevant information” about the targeting. Werfel also suggested to the committee that he believes the ultimate answers to who knew what and when in the White House and the...

This is an important point because Democrats like to pretend that if you have tax-exempt status that you are being subsidized by the taxpayer. But Laurens County Tea Party group founder Dianne Belsom, who says she’s outraged by the accusation, corrects the record and points out that donations her C4 group receives are not tax deductible and have already been taxed when they were earned. The point, she says, of C4 is to ensure those donations don’t get taxed again at the end of the year.

Meet Karen Kenney, the first in what will undoubtedly be a parade of victims of the intimidation tactics of the IRS aimed at conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Twitchy captures Kenney’s statement and the immediate Twitter reaction to it. With President Obama attempting to pre-empt the hearing with an odd live statement on judicial nominations — usually a matter left to press releases — coverage of the hearing has been spotty, but this needs to be seen and read in full:

A tea party witness from Alabama launched into emotional testimony Tuesday as she described her group’s political abuse at the hands of the Internal Revenue Service. “We peacefully assemble. We petition our government. We exercise the right to free speech. And we don’t understand why the government tried to stop us,” Wetumpka Tea Party President Becky Gerritson said during her opening statement before the House Ways and Means Committee. “I’m not here at as a serf or a vassal,” she went on, beginning to choke up. “I’m not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother...