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What started as a seemingly mild admiration between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin took an uncomfortable turn Friday when the GOP White House hopeful seemed to defend the Russian president’s strong-arm tactics – and dismiss his alleged killing of journalists and others who cross him.

American conservatives are rightfully annoyed with the Obama administration, and Democrats generally, for refusing to name radical Islam or Islamism as the major source of terror. When Nidal Hasan murdered 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood ,the administration refused to label the mass murder -- committed by a Muslim in the name of Islam -- an act of Islamist terror, or even terror at all. Instead it was officially declared a "workplace shooting." And when President Obama convened an international conference on terror, he refused to include the word "terror" or any form of the word "Islamist" in the title....

If there was any doubt that Ted Cruz is the hot commodity of late in the Republican presidential race, it should be dispelled by the results of the latest national poll. Ryan Lovelace of the Washington Examiner reports, “A new national survey shows that while Donald Trump maintains a huge lead among GOP primary voters, Sen. Ted Cruz is continuing to surge. Marco Rubio“According to the latest New York Times/CBS poll, Trump wins 35 percent of the vote, and has a 19-point lead over Cruz. But Cruz jumped into second place with 16 percent, which is roughly four times the...

<p>Chicago - Members of the Sikh religion are feeling more uneasy amid simmering anti-Muslim sentiment because many are being mistaken for Muslims.</p> <p>But instead of distancing themselves, Sikhs increasingly are working with Muslims to combat hateful rhetoric and dispel misconceptions about their respective faiths.</p>

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This reminds me what else I did last night. I finally sat down with my new iPad Pro, and I ran the app Apple Music, and I started searching Christmas music. Mannheim Steamroller, they've got all kinds of Christmas playlists that they put together, Christmas cocktail, which is jazz, country Christmas. I was just reveling. Now, it has to be stuff that I've heard before for me to be able to enjoy, but Christmas music fits the bill. There isn't that much new since I lost my hearing, so I spent some time doing that, just finding...

So dominant is Hillary Clinton's polling in the presidential primaries, notes the press critic Howard Kurtz, that the media have essentially stopped paying attention to the Democratic race at all. The logic, for a media organization, is simple: Why lavish limited resources on a fait accompli? The Democrats, after all, have spoken. They are fully ready for (or perhaps fully resigned to) Hillary. That's certainly not the case on the Republican side, where, we are told (ad nauseam), that the race is still "wide open." With "no clear frontrunner" on the GOP side, the contrast between the Republican and Democratic...

On Tuesday, the Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District announced that all schools would be shut down today due to an unspecified terror threat. According to ABC News, that threat also carries “unknown credibility.” Bus drivers say they have been returned to their bus depots. LAUSD is the nation’s second-largest school district, with 640,000 students and 900 schools; children range from kindergarten to 12th grade.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The poor Drive-Bys are so confused. I mean, they're really riding a roller coaster of emotions, the seesaw of emotions -- up, down, up, down, where are we going, when's it gonna stop, is it good, is it bad. They just can't quite figure it out. Greetings, my friends. Great to have you here, as we head on down the tracks. Rush Limbaugh from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Three hours broadcast excellence hosted by me. Telephone number, if you want to join us, is 800-282-2882. Look at what is happening in Los Angeles. Either...

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reveals that following the San Bernardino terrorist attack, 70 percent of Americans now believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction and only 43 percent approve of Barack Obama’s job performance as president. About 71 percent of Americans say that the “shootings and random acts of violence that took place this year in Charleston, S.C., Oregon , Colorado, and the terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, California — are now are now a permanent part of American life.” Domestic terrorism and national security have more than doubled this year and now are the...

Some days I think Barack Obama is trying to get Donald Trump elected. My theory on Trump's rise focuses on the surge Trump's polling at the same time President Obama has visibly failed to keep Americans safe from ISIS. Fourteen dead in San Bernardino, the Los Angeles schools closed after a credible bomb threat to multiple schools, and the President looking dazed and lost in rhetoric repeated so often he knows it by heart. Trump now has two respected polls, Monmouth and ABC/WashPost that show him essentially cracking 40% support. This breakthrough has the political professionals leaping to all kinds...

President Obama made a pitch Tuesday for Americans to remember their immigrant roots, describing the U.S. as the traditional home for refugees fleeing the world's worst troubles. He compared today's climate of fear over immigration and terrorism to what he called some of the darkest days of the country's immigrant history, such as when black Africans were brought in the slave trade, when Irish and Chinese faced discrimination and when Japanese were pushed into internment camps during World War II. "In the Syrian refugee of today we should see the Jewish refugee of World War II," the president said as...

[Full title] Trump Edges Cruz in Iowa; His Supporters Think Japanese Internment Was Good; Clinton Still Well Ahead of Sanders In State PPP’s newest Iowa poll finds Donald Trump and Ted Cruz at the top of the heap with 28% and 25% respectively. Marco Rubio at 14% and Ben Carson at 10% are also in double digits with Jeb Bush at 7% the only other candidate who clears even 3%. Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee all hit that level with John Kasich and Rand Paul each getting 2%, Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum each getting 1%, and Jim...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The latest on the closure of Los Angeles Unified School District schools due to a threat (all times local): 9:40 a.m. New York City officials say they and many cities across the country received the same threat that closed the Los Angeles school system. Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters Tuesday that the threat came in the form of a "generic" email and that New York officials quickly concluded that it wasn't credible. Los Angeles Unified School District officials say they closed all of the system's more than 900 schools and 187 public charter schools as...

— Terrorism has emerged as the top concern among Republican primary voters, and Donald Trump is seen as the candidate best equipped to combat it. This is the main reason Trump has popped in the polls since his call last week for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration into the United States. A fresh Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 38 percent of Republicans name terrorism as the single most important issue, compared with 29 percent who name the economy and just 6 percent who highlight immigration. “Asked to choose which candidate among the top five they would trust most...

In the five months since Jan Morgan banned Muslims from her gun range in Hot Springs, Ark., business has boomed and predictions of a lawsuit brought by federal civil rights enforcers have so far proved inaccurate. Morgan, who claims keeping Muslims out of her Gun Cave Indoor Firing Range is a matter of public safety and not a constitutional issue, says she made the decision in September after two customers she deemed suspicious visited. She said their furtive behavior and cellphone ringtones of “Allahu Akhbar” prompted her to revise her range’s policies. “We are dealing in lethal firearms,” Morgan told...