Carson says Iraq invasion was a mistake  —  Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson told The Hill on Wednesday that it was a mistake for the U.S. to invade Iraq, arguing that the nation should have found a different way to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Fox News rules will limit the field in first GOP presidential debate  —  Fox News, which is hosting the first Republican debate of the 2016 campaign, will require participants to place in the top 10 in an average of the five most recent national polls in the run-up to the event …

Five Major Banks Agree to Parent-Level Guilty Pleas  —  Five major banks - Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, The Royal Bank of Scotland plc and UBS AG - have agreed to plead guilty to felony charges.  Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, and The Royal Bank of Scotland plc …

A Gunfight, Not a Riot: What Happened in Waco  —  The shootout between members of rival outlaw motorcycle gangs in Waco has brought out a great deal of stupidity on the left — too much stupidity to catalogue, in fact.  But let us look at a few lowlights.  —  Making the comparison with Baltimore …

Iowa Republicans Are Worried About Jeb Bush's Viability  —  Focus group participants say they're worried the former governor's family loyalty-and his last name-could hurt him.  —  t margarettalev  —  Iowa Republicans say they feel overwhelmed by the large number of potential candidates …

Poof!  CNN's Jake Tapper disappears from Clinton Foundation website: Column  —  Journalists are supposed to report the news, not be part of it.  —  Yet another high-profile TV newsman may find himself embroiled in controversy over his connections to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary's private spy and their shady foreign policy  —  Hillary Clinton listens to Sid Blumenthal, and she doesn't care who knows it.  —  Never mind that Clintonland's longtime hatchet man fed her information at the State Department, which she then forwarded to her subordinates …

Sick man whose Obamacare story went viral could be screwed again by Supreme Court  —  By now you may have learned of the plight of one Luis Lang, a South Carolina man whose story went viral after it was reported that he couldn't afford to treat an illness that was threatening to make him blind — and blamed Obamacare for it.

Hillary hires illegal immigrant ‘Dreamer’ … Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign has hired an illegal immigrant “Dreamer” to work on her 2016 bid, activists said Wednesday, in a move that sees the Democratic front-runner check off yet another wish-list item for Hispanic voters.

Joe Morrissey confirms child with former receptionist  —  Virginia Senate candidate Joe Morrissey confirmed during a radio program on Wednesday morning he is the father of a child with his former receptionist.  —  Speaking on the Jack Gravely Show on WLEE radio, Morrissey confirmed …

Pitbull a fan of Bush's ‘slick’ humor  —  Rapper Pitbull appears to have a keen appreciation for a borderline R-rated joke Jeb Bush once told him.  —  The “Fun” singer recalled a “funny story” about the likely GOP presidential candidate during a Tuesday interview with Howard Stern on the radio host's SiriusXM show.

Exclusive: China warns U.S. surveillance plane  —  High stakes surveillance over the South China Sea 03:47  —  Above the South China Sea (CNN)The Chinese navy issued warnings eight times as a U.S. surveillance plane on Wednesday swooped over islands that Beijing is using to extend its zone of influence.

Chris Christie and the Distorting Lens of New York Media Dominance  —  As I noted below and as reality has noted several times in recent months, a series of self-inflicted wounds and news events over which he had little control have conspired together to make the idea of a Chris Christie presidential run …

Witnesses: School nurse yells profanity, racial slur at 6th grader  —  A mother is asking the investigation into a Mundy's Mill Middle School nurse be reopened.  The nurse is accused of yelling profanities and racial slurs at the woman's 11-year-old son last October.  WXIA  —  CONNECT

Cancer charities' $187 million in donations paid for luxuries and fundraisers, feds say  —  The pitch was simple, and played on the images of a devastating disease to tug on heartstrings and open pocketbooks.  —  One of the websites featured pictures of smiling children, some of them in hospital beds …

DEA staffers secretly owned strip club with illegal immigrant dancers: feds  —  Two Manhattan DEA employees secretly owned a low-rent strip club in South Hackensack, NJ, that employed illegal immigrants from Brazil and Russia as dancers, the feds say in a new criminal complaint.

Court Transcripts: Bill O'Reilly's Daughter Saw Him “Choking Her Mom”  —  Gawker has obtained partial transcripts from the custody trial at the center of Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly's vicious dispute with his ex-wife, Maureen McPhilmy.  The documents, which record testimony given last year …

Half of Democrats support a ban on hate speech  —  Most Americans support expanded federal hate crime laws, but are divided on banning hate speech  —  Since 1994 people convicted of federal crimes motivated by the ‘actual or perceived’ identity of victims have faced tougher sentences.

Obama: Climate change deniers endangering national security  —  President Obama in a speech on Wednesday cast climate change as a growing national security threat, accusing Republican skeptics of harming military readiness by denying its effects.  —  Obama argued in his address to graduates …