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People often assert that this or that gun control measure is 'common sense'. Cherry Picking https://mises.org/blog/mistake-only-comparing-us-murder-rates-dev...

Ted Cruz has overtaken Donald Trump in Iowa, according to a Monmouth University survey of Iowa Republicans released Monday.

The Hillary Clinton campaign is out with an ad highlighting her record as an advocate for LGBT rights.

UPDATE:

In this week's edition of the boss's Kristol Clear e-newsletter (sign up here!)-- readers are asked to rank their top three picks for the GOP's 2016 presidential nominee. The boss's impressions of Iowans seem to be borne out by the new Monmouth poll. The boss writes: Well, the results of this week's presidential straw ballot were interesting. For the first time in our seven straw polls, Ted Cruz took the lead, with 30% of the first place votes, closely followed by Marco Rubio with 26%, and Donald Trump with 17%. No one else was chosen first by more than 6% of you. Here's the tally: the first number is the percentage of the ballots on which the candidate was selected for first place; the second is the percentage of ballots in which the candidate was chosen for any of first, second or third. Ted Cruz 30% 66% Marco Rubio 26% 60% Donald Trump 17% 32% Ben Carson 6% 28% Chris Christie 5% 28% Carly Fiorina 4% 32% Mike Huckabee 3% 13% Jeb Bush 3% 13% Rand Paul 3% 10% John Kasich 2% 10% Rick Santorum -- % 2% What does it all mean? For what it's worth, these straw poll results are more or less in accord with the impressions I formed from a day and a half in Iowa at the end of last week. I spoke and mixed and mingled at a GOP event, and spent some time with friends and political types from the state. My sense was that Cruz and Rubio were strong, that Trump had solid support but much less room to grow, that Carson was fading, Bush had faded, and that Christie probably had the best chance of moving up from the second tier as a long shot. But my main takeaway from Iowa was this: It's a fluid and volatile race; few Republicans have definitively made up their minds; and a lot depends on what the various candidates say and do, and the cases they make for themselves and against their rivals, in the weeks to come. I can also report that national security, as you'd expect after San Bernardino, was very much on people's minds--and that voters seem to be paying attention to the Cruz-Rubio foreign policy and intelligence capabilities debates, and perhaps to claims such as Christie's to be better ready to handle national security issues By the way, perhaps the most startling thing I discovered from my brief sojourn in Iowa is that Iowans really are nice. On Sunday morning, after Iowa's traumatic defeat by Michigan State in the Big Ten championship Saturday night, a loss that cost Iowa its first chance for a national title in ages, all the Iowans I spoke to were gracious about MSU's victory, grateful for Iowa's exemplary season, and looking forward to the Rose Bowl against Stanford. I expected Iowans to be morose and sullen, as we East Coasters surely would have been after such a turn of events. They were instead pleasant and upbeat. Weird. One additional note about Iowa: The Machine Shed in Urbandale was memorable--though I was disappointed no one in our group had the nerve to order The Hungry Man's Breakfast TM (#11 on the second page of the menu). In any case, here's the menu. It's a great country. And nothing I saw in Iowa dissuaded me from the generally upbeat conclusion of my editorial in this week's issue--that Republicans are in better shape for November than lots of people worried about the current shape of the race think.

On Sunday, The Daily Beast's Christopher Dickey furiously tried to connect the Second Amendment to the protection of slavery before the Civil War. Dickey touted how Charles Dickens and "several British visitors to American shores...discerned... [that] people who owned slaves...wanted to carry guns to keep the blacks intimidated and docile." He also wildly claimed that "the Second Amendment...was essentially written to protect the interests of Southerners" to crush slave revolts.

Senate Democratic plan would create an "ISIS czar"

One of James Taranto's tongue-in-cheek tropes at his Best of the Web Today column is "We Blame George Bush." As Wikipedia describes it, the trope "is a play on the perceived tendency for many of his detractors to lay the blame for pretty much anything" on Bush. In a recent example, "We Blame George W. Bush" was placed over a headline reading “Slipping Into a Food Coma? Blame Your Gut Microbes.”  And lo and behold, from today's Morning Joe comes a real-life example of the phenomenon. Mika Brzezinski blamed Donald Trump's proposal to ban all Muslims from the US, on in part—you guessed it—George W. Bush. In fairness, Mika did also blame the Obama admin. She argued that foreign policy blunders not just by the Obama administration but "by the George W. Bush administration"  created feelings that Trump is tapping into. For Mika to reach back to blame Bush for Trump's proposal, when even liberals praise him for going out of his way, for example, six days after 9-11, to declare "Islam is peace," etc. is something between outrageous and hilarious.

Jihadists represent the outgrowth of a faith that is given over to hate on a massive scale, with hundreds of millions of believers holding views that Americans find revolting.

The Supreme Court will take on a case on Tuesday that could upend the way that states draw their legislative lines.

Jihadists represent the outgrowth of a faith that is given over to hate on a massive scale, with hundreds of millions of believers holding views that Americans find revolting.

Erika Christakis, who had suggested there could be negative consequences to the university’s directive to be sensitive when choosing Halloween costumes, resigned from her position voluntarily, the school said.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a city ordinance in Illinois restricting so-called “assault weapons.”

ISIS and its sympathizers have killed more than 500 people in attacks around the world in the past two months.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump called Monday for barring all Muslims from entering the United States. "Donald J. Trump is calling for a to...

“Oh, for the love of God,” one said of a plan that several experts agreed would violate treaties and international law.

In the name of being 'inclusive' ...

A Paris-bound flight that departed from San Francisco International Airport was diverted to Montreal, officials confirmed late Monday.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters was responding to the president's national security address Sunday night.

The President has assured us that there are no links to worldwide terror in the San Bernardino, but a report obtained exclusively by Fox News says that there’s evidence they might have receiv…

When Hillary Clinton supporters were asked if they hope she'll lower the standard of living if she's elected President of the United States, many of them tho...

Donald J. Trump is the very definition of the American success story, continually setting the standards of excellence in business, real estate and entertainment. Show support for his presidential campaign here.

On Mark Levin’s radio show tonight he responded to a clip of Obama lecturing Americans on how we should reject discrimination and not be bigoted toward Muslims and such after the recent San B…

The elder Syed Farook, 67, spoke to Italian newspaper La Stampa and said that the 28-year-old had become 'too shy, conservative, and fixated against Israel' before the San Bernardino attack.

Four times in his Sunday night address to the nation, President Obama explained that he wouldn't take this or that course of action because it's just what ISIS -- or as he calls it, ISIL -- wants.