NEWSMAX: The major problem is obesity, reports military recruiters. But young adults are also being turned away because they lack high school diplomas, have felony convictions, and are on prescription drugs for ailments such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Still more do not meet the military’s appearance standards. New rules issued in March forbid large-scale tattoos […]

ALJAZEERA: …“They weren’t soldiers because they wanted to be soldiers,” explained Marine First Lt. Dave Jackson, who fought with Iraqi forces during his two deployments to Iraq. “They were soldiers because they wanted a job.” He said the decision in 2003 to dissolve Saddam Hussein’s army created a vacuum of structure and experience. Gone were […]

HUFFINGTON POST: HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher offered some advice to Hillary Clinton on Friday: Take a hiatus from the public stage before you blow another run for president. The former secretary of state was forced to walk back comments earlier this month in which she said she and her husband, Bill, were “dead […]

PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE: Support for medicinal marijuana reached a high-water mark in the Capitol on Friday when the Senate Law and Justice Committee unanimously passed a legalization proposal, but that may be as far as it gets for now. The first-of-its-kind vote marked the most legislative progress a marijuana-related legalization bill has made in Pennsylvania. Supporters […]

NEWSMAX: Two student leaders at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas called on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to return the “outrageous” $225,000 fee she will be paid for speaking at the school in October. “We really appreciate anybody who would come to raise money for the university,” Daniel Waqar, the UNLV student government’s public […]

USA TODAY: … Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that getting enough sleep — eight hours on average — benefits American teenagers in a host of ways, from boosting grades to literally keeping them alive. They tracked 9,000 students at eight high schools across several Western states and discovered that at the school in […]

AOL: U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday blasted House Republicans who have threatened to sue him for issuing executive orders to implement policies that would have a hard time passing in the Republican-controlled chamber of Congress. “They don’t do anything except block me and call me names,” Obama said in an economic speech that concluded […]

NEW YORK TIMES: With jihadists continuing to entrench their positions across the north and west, and the national army seemingly incapable of mounting a challenge, Americans and even some Iraqis have begun to ask how much blood and treasure it is worth to patch the country back together. It is a question that echoes not […]

PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE: The temperature in the Legislature for a severance tax on natural gas cooled considerably on Thursday, as Senate Republicans look at putting together a state budget without new tax revenue despite a $1.4 billion deficit. “They (Republicans) told us they’re heading down a path of passing a budget without new revenue,” said Senate […]