Christie Says Parents Should Have ‘Choice’ on Vaccinations  —  Gov. Chris Christie visited the headquarters of One Nucleus, a life science company, in Cambridge, England, on Monday.  —  Neil Hall/Reuters  —  Updated, 10:27 a.m. |  CAMBRIDGE, England — Amid an outbreak of measles …

Rand Paul: Vaccines Can Lead to ‘Mental Disorders’  —  Republican Sen. Rand Paul is standing by his statement that most vaccinations should be “voluntary,” telling CNBC that a parent's choice not to vac...

The FCC chair's Internet pivot  —  Tom Wheeler is poised to propose some of the toughest rules possible.  —  Tom Wheeler was feeling the heat.  —  It was August and the head of the Federal Communications Commission was sitting on the deck of his family's vacation home on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Alabama Lawmaker: Same-Sex Couples Don't Deserve Same Financial Benefits As Other Families  —  Most conservatives who oppose marriage equality will cite the Bible, “nature,” or polygamy and incest to justify their opposition.  —  But for one Alabama state senator, a reason to oppose marriage equality …

Warren Sapp — Arrested For Soliciting Prostitute (Update)  —  ARRESTED FOR SOLICITING PROSTITUTE  —  [Update: Fired by NFL Network]  —  EXCLUSIVE  —  2:15 PM PT — The NFL Network has fired Sapp.  He'd been with the network since 2008.  —  12:55 PM PT — New details in the Warren Sapp arrest ...

The GOP: Still the Party of Stupid  —  That Scott Walker speech was great?  It was shallow, tedious, and wrong.  In other words, it struck the perfect chord for today's GOP voters.  —  Mitt Romney definitely had his down sides as a candidate: the retread factor, and, as I noted two weeks ago …

If Republicans are smart, they will nominate for president someone in the mold of George W. Bush in 2000.  —  TO MAKE AN educated guess about whether these trends will continue, it helps to look at how the white working class and middle class have behaved historically.

God and the G.O.P.  —  The brief apparition of a third Mitt Romney Presidential bid vanished last Friday, with a conference call to several of his supporters.  “You can't imagine how hard it is for Ann and me to step aside,” Romney told them.  He added that he thought he would have won …

Teacher keeps job despite ‘unsatisfactory’ rating 6 years in a row  —  Six strikes and she's not out.  —  The city Department of Education has failed to fire a teacher rated “unsatisfactory” for six consecutive years.  Ann Legra, 44, a first-grade teacher at PS 173 in Washington Heights …

VIDEO: Fox Host Calls Out Anti-Vaccine Parents: 'You're Science Deniers!'  —  Fox News host Shep Smith slammed parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids as “science deniers” on Monday during his show.  —  He made the remark during a segment about President Obama's call for parents to vaccinate …

Portland strippers head to Salem to lobby for better work conditions  —  SALEM — Any tourist guide to Portland will tell you about the strip clubs.  —  There are dozens of them, something for any taste or any neighborhood, helped to ubiquity by Oregon's fierce protection of free speech.

The Kochs Are Already Getting What They Paid for in Congress  —  What the Keystone debate is really about  —  Ask progressives what the last three weeks of Senate debate on a Keystone XL bill was really about, and they might mention the Koch brothers.  “The Republican's Keystone XL obsession …

RadioShack in Talks to Sell Half Its Stores to Sprint, Shutter the Rest  —  Don't Miss Out —  (Bloomberg) — RadioShack Corp. is preparing to shut down the almost-century-old retail chain in a bankruptcy deal that would sell about half its store leases to Sprint Corp. and close the rest …

Vox Sets Out To Prove All Religions Are Equally Violent.  And Fails  —  “This study obliterates the myth that Muslims are more violent” says a trolly headline over at Vox, where Zack Beauchamp combines a strawman and an absurd study to tell us absolutely nothing about Islam.  —  He begins:

Harry Potter and the Healthcare Statute of Doom  —  On July 21, 2007, my daughter Maggie and I fought our way into a crowded Dublin bookstore and bought not one but two copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was published worldwide that day.  Over the next 36 hours …

Uber Opening Robotics Research Facility In Pittsburgh To Build Self-Driving Cars  —  Driver-on-demand service Uber is building a robotics research lab in Pittsburgh, PA to “kickstart autonomous taxi fleet development,” sources close to the decision have confirmed to TechCrunch.