Walker Surging in Iowa Poll as Bush Struggles  —  Hillary Clinton is running away from the potential Democratic field.  —  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is surging, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is an also-ran and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is dominating in a new poll …

Disneyland, Measles and Madness  —  A FEW years back, an acerbic friend of mine who was a recent transplant to Los Angeles told me that she itched to write a satirical novel with the following narrative:  —  A group of wealthy, educated people in Santa Monica who deliberately didn't vaccinate …

Retroactively Authorizing War  —  They went largely unnoticed, four words President Obama ad-libbed during the State of the Union address last month as he asked lawmakers to provide legal cover for America's military intervention in Iraq and Syria.  —  “We need that authority,” the president said …

Our Loud, Proud Left  —  FOR the last week, liberal journalists have been furiously debating whether a new political correctness has swept over the American left.  The instigator of this argument was New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, normally a scourge of Republicans, whose essay on what he dubbed …

Texas boy suspended for saying he could make classmate ‘disappear’ with ‘Lord of the Rings’ sorcery  —  The ring little Aiden brought to school may not have been the true ring of power, but it had enough controversy to get him suspended from a Kermit, Texas, school.

Stephen Fry explains what he would say if he was ‘confronted by God’  —  Staunch atheist Stephen Fry left a television host stunned when he explained what he would say if he was “confronted by God”.  —  The actor and author, who recently married his partner Elliot Spencer …

Ratings Now Cut Both Ways, So Don't Sass Your Uber Driver  —  People routinely use the Internet to review services from plumbers to hairdressers.  Now the tables are turned.  Companies are rating their customers, shunning those who do not make the grade.  —  Hussein Kanji insists he is not a bad Uber passenger.

Obama pledges ‘new era of medicine’  —  President Obama on Friday made a major commitment to a new field of medical research that he said will “lay the foundation for a new generation of life-saving discoveries”  —  The $215 million initiative, which was first unveiled during the State …

Rand Paul slams Bush ‘hypocrisy’ on pot  —  DALLAS — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) accused Jeb Bush of hypocrisy after The Boston Globe reported the former Florida governor was a heavy marijuana smoker while at an elite prep school.  —  Bush opposed a Florida medical marijuana ballot initiative …

JIM WEBB AND THE MERITS OF BEING HALF-RIGHT … Prospective presidential candidate Jim Webb has said something that has made some people very angry, some other people a little angry, and some people simply disturbed at the way he said something that's more than half-true, but not a lot more than half-true.

New York birth certificates now ask the mother if she is a male or a female  — The change in form is aimed at transgender women who may identify as male but still are able to give birth because of their female anatomy  — In 2008 Governor David Patterson changed the form everywhere …