Rich Tucker

Tim Kaine and his wife were up early on Election Day, walking to a nearby polling place in Richmond shortly before it opened at 6 AM.

For the second straight year, the White House released the complete text of the State of the Union to Medium.com:

The RNC is pulling the plug on NBC, after the network’s sister station botched a GOP debate this week. However, the organization plans to go ahead with a debate on that day, probably on a different network.

As Paul Ryan takes over as Speaker of the House, he has a big shadow falling across his new gavel. To get the office, Ryan vowed to uphold a promise made by former Speaker Dennis Hastert.

On a day when National Security Advisor Susan Rice partially blamed climate change for the conflict in Syria, Democrat presidential candidates lined up to warn about the international dangers of climate change. The big question is control. “Climate change” is a way for politicians to assert it. If that’s what voters want, they should select somebody from the Democratic debate. If not, they’ll need to look elsewhere.

The story is developing, but House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has withdrawn from the race to replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner.

In this year of the political outsider, the ultimate political insider — President Barack Obama — is reminding us how politics has always been practiced. And how it shouldn’t be practiced any more.

Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine speaks to Stuart Stevens, who guided Mitt Romney’s campaign to a historic loss in 2012 and is out with a new book.

As members of Congress consider whether to defund Planned Parenthood, a new video highlights the abortion provider’s booming business in baby organs.

“We’ve just been working with people who want particular tissues, like, you know, they want cardiac, or they want eyes, or they want neural,” Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, Senior Medical Advisor for Planned Parenthood for America tells a hidden camera. “Certainly, everything we provide–oh, gonads! Oh my God, gonads. Everything we provide is fresh.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and billionaire GOP frontrunner Donald Trump plan to headline a rally against the Iran deal on Sept. 9 at the Capitol. Cruz says he extended the invitation to Trump.

Donald Trump is now the frontrunner in Texas, polling at 24 percent, roughly what he gets nationally. Sen. Ted Cruz drops to second in his home state with 16 percent. Longtime Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a non-factor, polling just 4 percent alongside Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Fox News viewers won’t have Megyn Kelly to turn to for the next 10 days. It comes less than a week after Kelly made headlines by grilling GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump during the initial debate.

In New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait writes: “[Rand] Paul finds himself languishing in every metric of campaign success: polls, fund-raising, insider support, media attention. Two pre-postmortems today convey the stench of death that clings to Paul’s once-buoyant presidential hopes. … “Paul

“Folks, we ought to start in our own party,” he told a liberal gathering this week. “You ought to be demanding of all of us, all of us, because at least in our own party fights among ourselves, in primaries, that we adhere to a policy that doesn’t rest on millionaires and billionaires.”

We need a new Bond. No need to be tied to convention here; the era of middle-aged white British men is over. In the spirit of the Jenner clan, the 21st Century cries out for an androgynous Bond. Maybe Miley Cyrus? Also, the name “James” is too 20th Century. Something like “Jamey” would be more appropriate, and allow Bond to swing easily between male and female, as necessary or desired.

In her book The Big Ratchet, Ruth DeFries explains how humanity went from hunger to plenty by making more efficient use of Earth’s resources. Even with more people than ever before, “Our current problems are more about abundance than about lack of food. Our species has never had to grapple with such surplus,” she writes.

Former Sen. Jim Webb will challenge Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chaffee in the Democratic primaries.

Americans used to say “you can’t fight City Hall.” But at least they could see City Hall, and had an idea who they were fighting against. These days, edicts come from Washington bureaucrats hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. There’s no recourse, no choice but to comply. Small wonder anxiety abounds. Yet Christie’s version of Washington would look distressingly similar to today’s bureaucrat-driven behemoth.

Since humans don’t behave the way models say we should, those economic models make a lot of bad predictions. “Virtually no economists saw the financial crisis of 2007-08 coming,” he admits (although another behavioral economist, Robert Shiller, did warn about soaring housing prices). “Worse, many thought that both the crash and its aftermath were things that simply could not happen.” The answer is to empower people through free markets.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal became the latest Republican to jump in, in front of a raucous crown in New Orleans.

One week after the House of Representatives rejected Obamatrade by voting against a key provision of it — Trade Adjustment Assistance — GOP establishment lawmakers resuscitated Trade Promotion Authority and rammed it through Thursday afternoon.

The House of Representatives just passed a measure that will allow it to consider a Trade Promotion Authority bill, often known as Obamatrade, later today.

Desperate House leadership may attempt to keep TAA alive by using procedural tricks.

After two months of beta testing, working out the bugs in a campaign announced on Twitter that featured a cross-country van tour but virtually no interactions with actual reporters, the Clinton campaign relaunched Saturday with an event on Roosevelt Island in her adopted home state of New York.

The House of Representatives prepares to vote on trade agreements pushed by President Obama.

In the U.S. today, all the focus seems to be on gay marriage. It’s a central topic at the Supreme Court this month, for example. But the real story isn’t the death of men; it’s the death of marriage.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is on his way to Iowa to pursue a newly-announced mission: become president of the United States.

Americans pride ourselves on being people who have a government. But these days, it more often seems as if we’ve got a government that has people.

As lawmakers headed home for a week of vacation–or as some of them return next weekend, earlier than they had expected–they’ll certainly notice the nation’s airports are not in tip-top shape.

Economists understand that the government creates both positive and negative incentives. Tax credits may encourage people to have more children, but higher tax rates discourage people from working more.

Bribery is mostly a problem in dealing with government officials, who have a legal monopoly in a particular area. So it makes sense to allow free markets to prevent bribery, rather than counting on governments to root it out.

If younger people seem uninspired by the Democratic party, maybe that’s because the party is itself uninspiring.

The U.S. Senate limped into its Memorial Day recess leaving a key piece of legislative business unfinished: how to handle the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of telephone data.

Homeschooling is taking off because it works, and because it empowers parents. The bigger question isn’t whether it’ll be banned in 100 years; it’s “what will government schools look like in 100 years, with dwindling student populations?”

The Senate voted 62-37 late Friday to approve a controversial trade measure that President Barack Obama has made a priority.

Senators have one more chance to block one of the president’s signature initiatives with a procedural vote on Friday.