Headed to New Hampshire Friday for a sold out event in Manchester, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he’ll be making a decision about whether he’ll run for president by the spring next year.
“My wife and I are still talking about it, and we’ve agreed to continue talking about it, but I don’t think there will be a final decision made until the spring,” Paul said in a phone interview Monday evening.

"That’s about as specific as I can get, because I don’t know how convincing I can be with my wife. We have always sort of said we were going to wait until the spring, at least until after this election—and really, the more we’ve had time to think about it to see how things were going into spring. There’s a lot of different variables, not just family life but also whether or not we think the electorate is warming up to these ideas and ready for maybe a different kind of Republican—a Republican that keeps the core values and beliefs of what we stood for but also has issues and areas of where we can reach out to new people,” he added.

Paul's Manchester appearance is being billed as a unity event after the state’s primaries are over later tonight.

“It is sold out, and we’re in the process of trying to figure out if we can expand into another room,” New Hampshire GOP chairwoman Jennifer Horn told Breitbart News on Tuesday morning.

Horn said that Paul “gets a very good reception” whenever he’s in New Hampshire, one of the nation’s first presidential states.

“It’s part of our culture here,” Horn said. “Anyone who comes up here who’s even being talked about as a potential presidential candidate is always very well-received and we take very seriously the role that we play in that process. Everyone is well-received and given the opportunity to be heard. Sen. Paul is very warmly-received whenever he comes up here. He has a lot of friends in New Hampshire already and people are looking forward to having him back on Friday.”

Paul will be attending events with the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, the candidate who wins today’s primary and gets set to face Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in November. Horn and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) are expected to be at several of these events as well in an effort to unify the party after the primary. Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown is expected to edge out his challengers in the primary—Brown moved to New Hampshire after getting ousted from the U.S. Senate by Elizabeth Warren, and is running for the seat from there—but a last minute push poll from Jim Rubens’ campaign suggested he might have a chance.

“When I ran for re-election, I had a pretty bitterly contested primary but one of the things they ask us to do and some of this was at Sen. McConnell’s behest was to come together at a unity rally four days after the election,” Paul said. “I agreed in my primary, because I think what we represent as Republicans—we have some differences of opinion—but what separates us from the Democrats is a great deal and I think it makes a big difference to the country who runs the Senate and who sets the agenda. I’ve always been a big believer in supporting the Party’s nominee. I agreed when I ran for election that I’d support the nominee, and I’ve done several of these unity rallies—we’ve been asked to do others in several other states as well.”

...

MCALLEN, TEXAS — A Mexican national who crossed into the country with various types of drugs, at least seven different times, pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking charges.

Ricardo Garza Ramirez pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy just moments before his trial was about to start before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez.
Garza, 55, is due back in court in November where he faces a possible life term in prison for the charge.

Court records obtained by Breitbart Texas establish federal agents were tipped off to Garza’s BMW sedan in January by a smuggler they caught with more than 30 pounds of marijuana. The smuggler said he had been driving in tandem with a Ford Escort, which the agents were able to identify.

As part of their investigation, the agents learned that the Ford Escort had also been working with a BMW sedan, which the agents spotted on June 17 and stopped. Inside the vehicle the agents found more than 30 pounds of cocaine that had been hidden.

NEW YORK – President Obama’s left-leaning political ideology combined with sympathies for Islam acquired from being raised by a Muslim stepfather paralyze him as he faces the threat posed by the Islamic jihadist group ISIS, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told WND in an interview.

“In defending America against radical Islamic terrorism, Barack Obama cannot be trusted,” DeLay said.

“Barack Obama was raised a Muslim, and he claims he is a Christian, and I can’t say for sure whether he’s a Christian or not, but he has shown over the last few years that he has great sympathies with Islam,” DeLay explained.

“You combine that with Obama’s political orientation that is far to the left,” he continued, “and you get a president who hates war, hates the military, and you have a formula for military inaction when it comes to combating radical Islamic terrorists like we are seeing in ISIS.”

A group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people pushing for amnesty are planning a “Day of Action,” beginning with a press conference in front of the White House next week.

“President Obama has yet to deliver broad and inclusive relief, as promised,” the coalition of LGBTQ and immigration activists wrote in its Friday announcement.

“Our community has waited long enough,” they continued. “All decision-makers with the authority, ability, and responsibility must act on behalf of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, including 267,000 undocumented LGBTQ immigrants.”

The coalition — made up of GetEQUAL, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Freedom to Marry, LULAC, United We Dream, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Latino Institute for Reproductive Health, GLAAD, and Immigration Equality — said it will hold a press conference in front of the White House Tuesday and follow it up with visits to the offices of members of Congress “standing in the way of meaningful immigration reform.”

Some of the participating groups have a propensity for aggressive protesting and civil disobedience.

The announcement comes as the White House appears to be wavering on it deadline to announce executive actions on immigration amid concerns from vulnerable Democrats facing tough elections in November — something that has immigration activists frustrated.

The asteroid, designated 2014 RC, will be roughly over New Zealand at the time of closest approach, which will be about 2:18 pm EDT based on current calculations. Astronomers estimate that the asteroid is about 60 feet in size.

On the night of Aug. 31, the asteroid was first discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., and was detected independently the next night by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope that is located in Hawaii.

The orbit of 2014 RC was confirmed by both the Catalina Sky Survey and the University of Hawaii during follow-up observations.

It will be about 25,000 miles away at the time of its closest approach to Earth. It won’t be observable to the unaided eye, but amateur astronomers with small telescopes might be able to spot the fast-moving appearance of the asteroid.

...
Word of the attack on the diplomatic compound reached the CIA annex just after 9:30 p.m. Within five minutes, the security team at the annex was geared up for battle, and ready to move to the compound, a mile away.

“Five minutes, we're ready,” said Paronto, a former Army Ranger. “It was thumbs up, thumbs up, we're ready to go.”

But the team was held back. According to the security operators, they were delayed from responding to the attack by the top CIA officer in Benghazi, whom they refer to only as “Bob.”

“It had probably been 15 minutes I think, and … I just said, ‘Hey, you know, we gotta-- we need to get over there, we're losing the initiative,’” said Tiegen. “And Bob just looks straight at me and said, ‘Stand down, you need to wait.’”

“We're starting to get calls from the State Department guys saying, ‘Hey, we're taking fire, we need you guys here, we need help,’” said Paronto.

After a delay of nearly 30 minutes, the security team headed to the besieged consulate without orders. They asked their CIA superiors to call for armed air support, which never came.

Now, looking back, the security team said they believed that if they had not been delayed for nearly half an hour, or if the air support had come, things might have turned out differently.

“Ambassador Stevens and Sean [Smith], yeah, they would still be alive, my gut is yes,” Paronto said. Tiegen concurred.

“I strongly believe if we'd left immediately, they'd still be alive today,” he added.
...

(CNSNews.com) - A record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The labor force participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent in six of the last twelve months, but prior to last October had not fallen that low since 1978.

BLS employment statistics are based on the civilian noninstitutional population, which consists of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home.

In August, the civilian noninstitutional population was 248,229,000 according to BLS. Of that 248,229,000, 155,959,000—or 62.8 percent--participated in the labor force, meaning they either had or job or had actively sought one in the last four weeks.

#1 / Rand Paul

---------------------------------------------------------

Senator, Kentucky

THE MOST INTERESTING MAN IN POLITICS.


A civil liberties-loving peacenik with millennial appeal? Who’s willing to show up even at a midsummer NAACP convention to talk to a near-empty room? There’s no doubt Rand Paul is turning out to be a different kind of Republican, bringing libertarian—and contrarian—ideas to the national stage in a novel and calculated blurring of Washington’s otherwise rigid ideological battle lines.

Paul, the 51-year-old ophthalmologist son of libertarian gadfly Ron Paul, has made a concerted move from the political fringes over the past year; now he’s on a mission to remake his party, too. The GOP must “evolve, adapt or die” in the wake of two successive national defeats, the Kentucky senator insists. And, more than any other potential Republican presidential contender, he is taking his own advice. Paul’s ideas offer an utterly different Republican approach to questions of equity, education and fairness in America’s treatment of minorities, for instance—a post-partisan theme he has emphasized by teaming up with Cory Booker, the African-American former mayor of Newark turned freshman Democratic senator. Paul’s instinctive libertarianism, meanwhile, plays well with America’s pro-pot, pro-gay marriage younger generation, and the senator is aggressively wooing free-market millionaires for political support (and donations) in traditionally liberal Silicon Valley.

...

btw, there's also news of the ron paul scandal affecting rand.. i'm not quite sure how fair it is to label rand guilty by association, but that's the way it works i guess.

turns out ron paul was willing to "buy" endorsements, which to me, makes him the same as every other politician.