Political Commentary & Opinion

Police in Ferguson, Mo.,  this morning released stills from a video that they said shows 18-year-old Michael Brown strong-arming a smaller, older man during a robbery inside a convenience store shortly before Brown was fatally shot Saturday by a town police officer. https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/500279952160600064 Police said the video shows Brown as he grabs the store employee by the…

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal still wants your kid to take rigorous exams. He just doesn’t want the federal government to proctor them. Jindal said Common Core has become more bureaucratic than educational. The potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that decisions about testing should come from parents and teachers at the local,…

After being shot at with rubber bullets and sprayed with tear gas, The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery was in no mood for MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s lecture about his reporting in Ferguson, Mo. Following Lowery’s arrest Wednesday while covering the Ferguson riots, Scarborough criticized journalists for disobeying police. Lowery responded with some choice words for…

President Obama appealed for calm in Ferguson, Mo., as tensions mounted between some black residents and police in the St. Louis suburb on the fifth day since the fatal police shooting of a young black man. Relative peace returned to the town last night after one of its own, a captain with the Missouri Highway Patrol, assumed…

Federal regulators have backed away from pressuring banks to stop doing business with legal enterprises that the Obama administration labeled “high risk” — including selling guns, making payday loans, and trading in rare coins. Late last month, the Federal Depositors Insurance Corporation told banks that it had removed a list of 30 examples of “high…

Over the past 50 years, the Edward C. Mazique Parent Child Center became a familiar backdrop for advocates of Head Start. Pictures of President Obama and his Cabinet secretaries dot its D.C. office. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even invited a Mazique Center child to a Head Start signing ceremony on Capitol Hill. Now, the…

A new study finds the government’s Cash for Clunkers program hurt the industry it intended to help, leaving taxpayers to cover the $3 billion price tag. The Texas A&M University study reveals that any benefit “was completely offset” by a consumer’s tendency to purchase cheaper vehicles with the federal credit. Altogether, researchers estimate the auto…

If Tate Reeves has his way, one of the Mississippi's most onerous taxes may be on the chopping block. The Republican lieutenant governor wants the state Senate to look at tax cuts this legislative session, and the corporate franchise tax might top the list, along with a cut to the state’s income tax. Mississippi ranks…

Half of America’s public school employees aren’t classroom teachers, according to a new study. Instead, they’re non-teaching personnel such as instructional aides, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, secretaries, and librarians. It hasn’t always been this way. The study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit think tank specializing in education policy, found that the number of non-teaching…

It’s not just the Internal Revenue Service that allows hundreds of employees to do union business full time on the public’s dime. “Taxpayers spent around $156 million [in 2012] on federal employees who did no federal work at all,” said Nathan Mehrens, president of Americans for Limited Government. An earlier report revealed how the practice—known…