Donald Trump showed some confusion about government in a town hall meeting. He was asked to name the top three functions of the federal government. After security, he listed education and health care. When pressed by CNN host Anderson Cooper, Trump corrected himself, placing education at the state level and saying, "we have to have private health care."

As the former attorney general in Barack Obama's Democratic administration, Eric Holder unsurprisingly takes pot shots at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on several policy issues. But he sounds petty when he urges Trump's supporters to "give up the stupid little hats" and donate them to "trucker museums and hipster recovery programs."

Trump says he won't dismiss his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with battery in a campaign event encounter with a female reporter. But if he loses the Wisconsin primary next week, Trump might have to tell his top aide, "You're fired." So says reality show personality Omarosa Manigault, a former contestant on Trump's Apprentice show.

Donald Trump has a pat answer to why he won't give straight answers
when asked questions on foreign policy: "We need unpredictability."


House Speaker Paul Ryan admits he likes beer and ice cream and he usually gives them up for Lent. But this year he said he gave up "impatience and anxiety" -- he said they could be "character deficiencies" or "problems" for him.

A feud between Donald Trump backers and anti-Trump forces is shaping up for the Republican nominating convention this summer and it could get hot. Delegates might find themselves dodging real bullets if a move to allow firearms to be brought into the gathering. An anonymous petitioner is seeking to override the "gun-free zone" that exists for the arena in Cleveland.

Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., predicts that if the Republicans have an open convention to select a nominee for president, "it's very likely it would be someone who's not currently running." Walker, maybe?


It has been revealed that the woman who danced the Argentine tango with President Obama in Buenos Aires is a former Playboy model who did a nude spread. Who does Obama think he is, associating with women who pose nude, Donald Trump?

Joe Sixpack is interested in the president election, but he says if the dispute over the wives of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz comes down to hair pulling, he might just have to sit this one out.

Bill Clinton caused heads to turn when he spoke of "the awful legacy of the last eight years" in campaigning for his wife in Spokane, Wash. Hillary Clinton's flunkies quickly took to Twitter contending the former president was not referring to President Obama but to his Republican opposition.

Candidates' wives are in the middle of the political fray. Donald Trump accused Ted Cruz of using a semi-nude picture of his wife Melania in an ad and warned he would "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife, Heidi. Cruz fired back with a denial, adding, "if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought."

The scandal-ridden Veterans Affairs department has added another claim to shame. Elizabeth Rivera, a worker in the Puerto Rico VA hospital, was unable to report to work for an extended period of time because she had been sent to prison for armed robbery. When she got out she found she had been fired. But her union got her reinstated (with back pay) by pointing out that management's labor relations negotiator is a registered sex offender.

When President Obama stepped off of Air Force One to begin his historic trip to Cuba he was followed by First Lady Michelle Obama, daughters Sasha and Malia and mother-in-law Marian Robinson. Noticeably not there to welcome them was Cuban President Raul Castro. Maybe he didn't have enough cigars for everybody.

Former Democratic president candidate Michael Dukakis, a textbook example of how to run a losing campaign, has weighed in on the current contest. His words of wisdom: Donald Trump is "nuts" and Trump and Ted Cruz are engaged in a "food fight."

Don't Democrats in Congress get it? Haven't they got the anti-government message being sent to Washington, fanned by Donald Trump and other presidential candidates? Amazingly, five congressional Democrats are pushing for a 5.3 percent pay raise for federal employees who already make an average of $84,154 a year. Income of an average private sector worker is $56,350.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz picked up support from two of his former opponents but it was far from enthusiastic. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told his backers Cruz is "the only conservative left in the race." Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. said he'd be doing a fundraiser for Cruz, saying "he's certainly not my preference" but "he's the best alternative to Donald Trump."

Here's why it's hard to cut federal spending. An Oregon software developer, Martin Peck, had an inquiry about Hotplugs -- devices used by U.S. military forces to keep captrured enemy laptops running. He simply asked how many the Department of Defense had on hand. The DOD response was that the answer would require government employees to devote 15 million labor hours and would cost $660 million.!

How Your Taxes Are Spent
The House Committee on Natural Resources revealed that the Department of the Interior wasted $50 million and failed to create a functioning law enforcement data base for federal lands.

Super Tuesday 2 was a cloudy day for Marco Rubio in the Sunshine state. Florida voters overwhelmingly picked Donald Trump over their home state U.S. senator and he suspended his campaign for president. Fortune smiled on John Kasich, the big winner in Ohio, where he's the governor.

President Obama made some important choices this week and it's hard to tell which ones drew the most stinging criticism. Republicans expectedly voiced strong opposition of his action in nominating Merick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia as a Supreme Court justice, and liberal activists called the 60-year-old white man "uninspiring" and "disappointing." Of his NCAA March Madness bracket, sports writer David Hookstead called it "complete trash" and "isn't worth the paper it's written on."

Unlike Republicans, Democrats can pad their convention delegate count with so-called superdelegates. This is a special group of political officeholders, Democratic National Committee members, other party luminaries and at least one convicted felon. He is former New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, who was convicted last December on federal corruption charges.  The Daily Caller says neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has disavowed him.

As if giving bonuses to officials in VA hospitals where veterans died waiting for treatment weren't bad enough, now there's a proposal being pushed in Washington to double the pay of top VA administrators and give them the same employment classification as medical doctors.


Defense Secretary Ash Carter has approved plans to integrate women into combat jobs, despite his astute observation that "there tend to be physical and other physiological differences between men and women."

"We're gonna put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business," Hillary Clinton admitted at a town hall event in Ohio. But the Democratic presidential candidate is not backing down on her policies for "clean, renewable energy."

Donald Trump said at the Miami debate he draws bigger crowds than Ted Cruz because "Everyone's laughing. We're all having a good time." Cruz put it a different way saying America under Obama is the "laughing stock" of the world.

The new, young, fresh-faced Canadian prime minister and the once-young, once-fresh-faced two-term U.S. president met at the White House and sparked a "budding bromance." That's the way the Washington Post reported the meeting between Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama, with photos to match the verbiage.

Politics is a deadly game. A federal employee union president said in a radio interview veterans probably died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her VA facility because she didn't let congressional leaders know. She said she didn't tell them because they were Republicans.

Stung by a $38 million barrage of opposition ads, Donald Trump said,"I don't think I've ever had so many horrible, horrible things said about me in one week." Not since his last divorce proceeding, anyway.


ABC-TV is capitalizing on Donald Trump's current notoriety. His second wife, Marla Maples, was selected as a contestant in the new season of "Dancing With the Stars."


Attention Trump supporters: the last businessman to serve as president of the U.S. was ... Herbert Hoover.

Socialist Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, said, "When you're white ... you don't know what it's like to be poor. " Maybe that's true in Vermont, but has he been to Appalachia?


Is Arnold Schwarzenegger angling for a position in the John Kasich administration? He endorsed his former fellow governor at a campaign rally in Ohio, telling supporters Kasich "kicked some serious butt" during his time in Congress.

"The person I admire the most is me. And if you nominated me, I wouldn't vote for me this year." - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (And a lot of Republican voters agreed with him so he abandoned his run for president.)

As many times as he has run for office Bill Clinton should be well versed in the conduct of elections. But get this: more than 90,000 people have signed a  petition claiming the former president broke Massachusetts voting laws by being in three polling places shaking hands on Super Tuesday.


Donald Trump's run for president has been an educational experience for his foreign-born wife Melania. In a Fox News interview she said she had never been to Iowa before campaigning there with her husband. She also said she had not been inside the White House, but she already is making plans to be First Lady.

The toughest question at the Republican debate in Detroit came at the end - it was about party loyalty. All of the four Republicans remaining in the race gritted their teeth and said they would support the eventual GOP nominee.

After Donald Trump's showing in this week's elections, winning seven of 11 states, they'll be renaming Super Tuesday "H-U-U-U-G-E Tuesday."

Trump is so confident of being elected president he already has posed for his official portrait.


Here's a way to reduce the national debt: Require political commentators to send $1 to the U.S. Treasury every time they use the phrase "up for grabs."