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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm trying to put my finger on what bothers me the most. There's something that's been gnawing at me. I always try to not get caught up. It's very hard. It's hard to avoid this. The narrative. I was talking about the narrative when the program started. The daily media narrative. There is one. We wonder how they can all end up using the word "gravitas." We wonder how they can all end up using the same words. We heard it with Jan Crawford and Ari Shapiro setting the narrative. Grab audio sound bite 26. I'm sorry...

Sen. Chuck Schumer last week lit into New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for pulling the plug on that $8.7 billion trans-Hudson rail tunnel. “A terrible, terrible decision,” Schumer told a Crain’s breakfast. Schumer being Schumer, of course, he sees in Christie’s decision the coming of a national apocalypse — a “turning point,” he said, that historians will one day look back on as the day when we “stopped looking toward the future.” Hyperbole, thy name is Chuck Schumer. Fortunately, Chris Christie is not one to be intimidated, even by so formidable a presence as Chuck Schumer’s — and, even more...

Weekend, November 13 & 14 The Thanksgiving Table: The Mashed Potatoes Nevertheless...the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loves you. Deuteronomy 23:5 Recommended Reading Nehemiah 13:1-3 There's nothing simple about mashed potatoes. A combination of soil, sun, and water produces an underground crop of tubers that are dug up, cleaned off, and cooked in a pot of boiling water. The heat and kinetic energy bursts the walls of the starch within the potatoes, which releases an enzyme named amylase that breaks down starch and creates a kind of sugar. These...

Monday, May 10 'Bulletproof Glass' And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 1 John 2:1 Recommended Reading Zechariah 3:1-5 Recently a young man in suburban Chicago tried to escape during his trial, as he'd seen done many times on television. While being led out of the courtroom, he burst free, ran across a walkway, and tried to leap through a window. But the bulletproof glass didn't break, and the man bounced off, landing on the floor where he was promptly rearrested, this time in worse trouble than ever. There's no escaping judgment;...

In a stinging setback for the national gay-rights movement, Maine voters narrowly decided to repeal the state’s new law allowing same-sex marriage. With 87 percent of precincts reporting early this morning, 53 percent of voters had approved the repeal, ending an expensive and emotional fight that was closely watched around the country as a referendum on the national gay-marriage movement. Polls had suggested a much closer race. With the repeal, Maine became the 31st state to reject same-sex marriage at the ballot box. Five other states - Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire and Vermont - have legalized same-sex marriage, but...

LONDON – Concluding his first international summit, President Barack Obama hailed agreements at the emergency meeting of world powers Thursday as a "turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery." ... He spoke shortly after G-20 leaders pledged an additional $1.1 trillion in financing to the International Monetary Fund and other global institutions and declared a crackdown on tax havens and hedge funds. The leaders announced the creation of a supervisory body to flag problems in the global financial system — but did not satisfy calls from the U.S. and others for new stimulus measures.

WASHINGTON, April 1, 2009 – Last spring’s Iraqi-planned and Iraqi-led military campaign that successfully subdued insurgents in and around Iraq’s southern city of Basra was a turning point in the conflict, a senior U.S. officer posted in Iraq said today. When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki decided in March 2008 to attack insurgents and criminals lodged in Basra, Multinational Corps Iraq “had its first opportunity to gain the initiative in the south,” Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. “We didn’t hesitate in partnering with the Iraqi security forces,” Austin, commander of Multinational...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The highest-ranking U.S. soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq has been sentenced to eight years in prison. Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, a U.S. Army reservist from Virginia, also was sentenced Thursday to a forfeiture of pay, a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank to private.

Eager to recover from the worst political crises since he took office--capped on October 28th with the criminal indictment of a top White House advisor--President George W Bush is moving swiftly to regain momentum. On the morning of October 31st he announced his new nominee for the Supreme Court, conservative judge Samuel Alito, to replace the embattled Harriet Miers, who withdrew her name four days earlier. In nominating Mr Alito the president has bowed to pressure from his right-wing base, which found Ms Miers’s conservative credentials unconvincing. The battle to gain Mr Alito’s approval by Congress will be a fierce...

George W. Bush's administration has come through what many have been saying would be its worst week, and it has turned out to be -- well, if not one of the best, then one that is far more encouraging than most of the mainstream media expected. Four events, or non-events, have put the administration in a position to make progress and advance the standing of the president and his party in public policy and in the public opinion polls. The first of these events, at least in world importance, was the announcement on Oct. 25 of the approval of the...

George W. Bush's administration has come through what many have been saying would be its worst week, and it has turned out to be -- well, if not one of the best, then one that is far more encouraging than most of the mainstream media expected. Four events, or non-events, have put the administration in a position to make progress and advance the standing of the president and his party in public policy and in the public opinion polls.

October 27, 2005, 5:07 p.m. Starting Over After Miers. Within hours of the withdrawal of the Harriet Miers nomination, commentators were labeling President Bush a "lame duck." They have their analysis exactly backward. Continuing a debilitating fight with his own political base over a weak Supreme Court nominee would have hastened the day that Bush lost his political juice entirely. Withdrawing Miers is the first step toward recovery. It shows that the White House has not lost all of its political judgment, that it has no mad design to try to govern without its most loyal supporters, and that it...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's bad week may yet prove the administration's great turning point. None of the reverses need be fatal; each of them contains an opportunity to move back on to a more successful path. Everything depends on the wisdom, self-discipline, and perspective of the President himself. Yesterday's indictments of Lewis Libby are one opportunity. For while Mr. Libby now stands in serious legal peril, the broader administration has been exonerated of intentional wrongdoing. From the start, there have been two competing theories of what happened in the CIA leak scandal. Call them the "big" theory and the "little"...

The clock is ticking. Unless Congress acts -- who knows? -- we could see a wave of suicides, patricides, matricides and rich-uncle killings in 2010. That's the year that the federal tax on estates -- also known as the "death tax," the most hated tax exacted by the U.S. Treasury -- will be repealed. If you die in 2010, you can pass along all your assets to your heirs without a penny to Uncle Sam. But the repeal recedes. If you die after 2010, only $1 million of your estate is exempt from tax, and the rest gets hit with...

<p>NEW YORK -- With most of the profit warnings for the third quarter out of the way, many money managers are hoping for a kinder month of October.</p> <p>''The mea culpa period is largely over,'' says David Sowerby, who helps manage $60 billion in funds at Loomis Sayles. ''Now, the companies who have sat quietly are ready to report the strongest earnings growth since 2000.''</p>

<p>This follow-on post does some in-depth analysis of what the Muhajir arrest really means, and the game that's afoot here. Which is not the story the media is talking about. Mujahir's M.O. tells us a lot about Al-Qaeda, and he could be our Midway on that front of our War Against Islamists. I explain how and why.</p>