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(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)Goodbye to the peaceful transfer of power.

The frenetic opposition to Donald Trump by the Washington establishment, the new progressive, hard-left Democratic party, and in particular the veterans of the Obama administration has led to the ruination of a number of hallowed protocols and customs.

Impeachment has been redefined as a mere vote of no confidence and will become a rank political ploy for years to come once an opposition party gains a majority in the House. It is taking on the flavor of a preemptory device, a vaccination, rather than a medicine, as if to prevent future hypothetical crimes in the absence of current impeachable offenses.

Whistleblowers are now mere political operatives, who work with the opposition party to disseminate second- and third-hand rumor to prompt impeachment frenzies.

The FISA court has been disgraced. It was revealed to be either incompetent or actively partisan in its failure to question the Steele dossiers legitimacy, in ignoring the warnings of Devin Nuness memo, and in the courts selection of hard-core anti-Trump partisan David Kris to monitor FBI compliance with the recommendations of the Horowitz report. At this point, the existing FISA courts should probably be dismissed and the laws authorizing their creation rewritten.

In addition, the anti-Trump mob has now ended any idea that prior administrations should step aside, mostly stay quiet, and allow successors to fail or succeed on their merits.

During the Reagan years, a frustrated emeritus president Jimmy Carter more or less kept still. True, a sometimes-exasperating Carter chose to travel abroad and dabble publicly in foreign policy. But for the most part, he did not offer play-by-play, negative criticism of Ronald Reagan or his successors.

Reagans team kept a low profile during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, as is usually the case when a president is succeeded by his own vice president or a member of his own party.

In turn, a reticent elder Bush was especially magnanimous during the Clinton years despite occasional nastiness directed at him from Clintonites.

Clinton himself was not vocal during George W. Bushs first term, especially in the aftermath of 9/11. When Bushs polls tanked and the Iraq War was at its most unpopular moment in 2006 and 2007, Clinton opportunistically began to attack Bush. Nonetheless, he was not an active Bush hater.

Bush himself was idealistically silent during the Obama years, despite the Obama administrations turns to the hard left on immigration, health care, the Iran Deal, and foreign policy and Obamas constant negative references to Bush himself.

All those Marquess of Queensberry Rules of post-presidential decorum abruptly ended in 2017. What superseded them was, at best, a kind of British-style, European shadow government, in which mostly ex-Obama officials became nonstop activist critics of almost everything Trump has done.

At worst, the endless opposition turned into a slow-motion sort of coup in which progressive, life-tenured bureaucrats leaked, obstructed, and connived to stop the daily operations of the administration as they often proudly admitted to the media. The subtext was that the Obama-progressive-media complex would create enough momentum to abort Trumps first term. Or was it that Trump represented such an existential danger to the administrative-state way of doing business that any means necessary were justified to end his presidency?

The locus classicus was Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national-security adviser, and Jack Sullivan, who had been Obamas White House deputy assistant. Together, they formed the National Security Action organization in early 2018. The two promised that they would offer an effective, strategic, relentless, and national response to this administrations dangerous approach to national security. Translated, that meant that Rhodes and Sullivan would aggregate former Obama officials and progressive analysts to launch nonstop attacks on all of Trumps foreign-policy efforts. And they have.

More ironic was Hillary Clintons announcement in May 2017 that she had officially joined the Resistance by forming Onward Together to stand up to Trump.

Resistance was not meant to denote principled and traditional opposition to the incumbent party. Instead, the noun was intended to invoke the guerrilla-warfare campaigns of the French Maquis who fought as rural bands against the Nazi occupation of France. The metaphor was clear: Trump administration = a fascist foreign military occupation; Trump = Hitler; Democrats = courageous anti-Nazi guerrillas.

Since her defeat in November 2016, Clinton has become a tedious bore in her frequent insistence that the Russians stole the election in cahoots with Donald Trump, despite the fact that neither the Mueller nor Horowitz investigations found any evidence for her conspiracies. The culpable incompetence of her campaign is a matter of record.

The irony, of course, is that Clinton herself hired foreign national Christopher Steele to find (or create) dirt on opponent Trump, hid her payments through three firewalls, and unleashed Steele to coax and cajole mostly lying Russian sources to slander her opponent. Those facts prompt the question: Did Russian collusion begin as an elaborate hoax to disguise the wrongdoing of the Obama administration, the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, and the Clinton campaign in the face of the unexpected Trump victory?

Former Obama officials were sometimes even more active in their ongoing efforts to derail Trumps foreign policy. Former CIA head John Brennan kept his security clearance, went to work for MSNBC, and, with a wink-and-nod smugness, relentlessly told his viewers that he knew really important but undisclosed things about Trumps supposed crimes. Brennan reached a nadir when he began to exonerate his own behavior that was increasingly revealed to be central to a number of ongoing scandals, and when he predicted, based on his sources, that Muellers team would indict Trump and company for collusion a prediction that proved spectacularly wrong.

James Clapper, Obamas director of National Intelligence, xeroxed Brennans career on CNN to the tee: He too began analyzing scandals in which he himself had been knee-deep while accusing the president of being a virtual traitor in service to Vladimir Putin. Previously the emeritus heads of these agencies had not been considered overtly political. It was almost unheard-of for former CIA and NSA officials to wade into politics and issue on-air attacks on the current president.

The FBI soon followed suit. Little more need now be said of former and now disgraced FBI director James Comey, who still has a rendezvous with an accounting for his past behavior. He was the most political and least successful director in FBI history. He soon found himself, in passive-aggressive fashion, trying to run investigations of the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency that included everything from lying to the president, leaking confidential meetings of White House meetings to the press, and deluding a FISA court into granting writs to surveil an American citizen. The past three years of Comeys life have been devoted to destroying Donald Trump as a way of dealing with his own self-ruination.

Obama himself, in contrast to George W. Bush, did not retire to his home. Instead, he stayed on in his principle residence in Washington in a fashion that no ex-president had done since Woodrow Wilson. Obamas chief lieutenants have unleashed nonstop invective against their successors, whether its Eric Holder attacking Attorney General Bill Barr, or Susan Rice going after the Trump national-security team.

The most egregious shadow official has been former secretary of state John Kerry. During the controversies over Trumps cancellation of the Iran Deal, private citizen Kerry met with his former counterpart, the foreign minister of Iran, Javad Zarif, and he lobbied EU officials to oppose the cancellation and tried to line up congressional opposition to Trump. After the recent killing of Qasem Soleimani, Kerry hit the airwaves blasting U.S. policy; at times he bordered on offering lamentations for the loss of the terrorist Soleimani. Kerry often seemed bewildered that anyone would dare ask him whether his sponsorship of huge cash transfers to Iran, well aside from the windfalls that followed from lifting the sanctions, had fed Iranian-directed terrorist operations in Syria and Yemen.

The direct participation of former Obama officials of course is in addition to the so-called deep-state opposition, which has manifested itself in a variety of disturbing ways: leaking Trump private phone calls with foreign officials; seeding the Steele dossier among government agencies and cabinets; leaking confidential presidential memos to the press; bragging publicly about resistance efforts to impede the implementation of the Trump policy; warping the whistleblower statutes; and redefining impeachment as a partisan no-confidence vote, a preemptory check on future presidential behavior, and an election-year effort to unseat a first-term opposition president.

The parlance of the embittered Obama team is revealing. Eric Holder accused Attorney General Barr of being unfit for office. Clapper said Trump was a Russian asset, Brennan trumped that with all roads with Trump lead to Putin. Susan Rice said that America was under attack by the Trump team.

What is behind this radical departure from past practice? One factor is that Trump is a most un-McCain, un-Romney Republican who believes in dont-tread-on-me, disproportionate retaliation. The result is that Trump answers with megatonnage to any insult to his person in a manner that the establishment believes does not befit a president but which certainly frightens and enrages it. And one of the symptoms of the ensuing derangement syndrome is a 24/7 addiction to opposing Trump in any way possible, often to the ruination of all past custom, tradition, and practice, with the subtextual justification that Trump did it first.

Fear also explains a lot.

For all the various protestations from John Kerry, Joe Biden, and Barry Obama that the Obama administration was scandal-free, it most certainly was not. By the current standards of impeachment, once Obama lost the House in 2011, he would have been impeached for Obstruction of Congress and Abuse of Power for the Fast and Furious scandal and for invoking executive privilege to justify administration officials refusal to testify to Congress. Also impeachable by the new standard: political corruption at the IRS that was sicced on conservative groups during the Obama reelection bid; the lies and obstruction about the Benghazi disaster; the hot-mic quid pro quo promise Obama made to the Russians that resulted in the dismantlement of Eastern Europe missile defense in exchange for Putins good behavior to the benefit of Obamas reelection campaign; the abuse of executive orders to nullify federal immigration law; the failure to consult Congress on the prisoner swap with the Taliban; the lying under oath to Congress by both the CIA director and the director of national intelligence; the secret monitoring of the communications of Associated Press reporters and Foxs James Rosen, along with former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson; the deliberate nullification of the constitutional treaty-making prerogative of the Senate during the Iran deal, whose secrete accords were never disclosed to the American people; and the warping of the CIA, DOJ, FBI, and National Security Council respectively, in their unethical and often illegal efforts to mislead the FISA courts, surveil the Trump campaign, unmask and leak the names of U.S. citizens whose communications were tapped, and disrupt a presidential transition. Before 2019, none of these offenses would have been impeachable; all now, and things like them, will be in the future.

One way of keeping all that quiet was for Obama-era officials to preemptively go on the offense, screaming of collusion, and then obstruction, and finally quid pro quo all while supposedly impeachable statutes, people, and countries came and went, whether Russia, Ukraine, Stormy, the 25th Amendment, the Logan Act and the emoluments clause, and dozens more distractions from the Obama administrations systematic constitutional violations and the trampling of the civil rights of American citizens.

The most baleful legacy of the current Trump hatred is a new model of out-of-power administrations that never quite leave. Instead, apparently from now on, the retired, the fired, the voted out, the emeriti, and the transitioned will become opposition activists who seek to destroy their successors whose record they cannot abide and whose agendas they deathly fear.

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Government in the Shadows - National Review

Editor's note:The following is an excerpt from TABOO: 10 Facts You Can't Talk About(Regnery; January 28, 2020).

Cultural differences between groups (1) exist and (2) predict success. A corollary to these points is that, when all cultural differences are adjustedfor, contemporary racism has almost nothing to do with the major problems faced by minority Americans today. This is, of course, a wildly provocative statement. The idea that the United States today is an institutionally or structurally prejudiced society is a cornerstone of modern liberal thought. The Black Lives Matter movement alone has staged 2,406 major marches against racism during the past few years. However, any serious claim that contemporary or recent bigotry is the cause of phenomena such as the 75 percent Black illegitimacy rate founders on three rocks. First, these problems did not exist among Blacks (or anyone else) when racism was much worse, (2) these problems do not exist for successful, dark-skinned African and Asian immigrants to the U.S.A., and (3) many or most such problems do exist among poor whitesperhaps the most genuinely neglected group in Americato roughly the same extent that they do among Blacks.

The idea that prejudice is the cause of virtually all poor group performances, at least among minorities, remains the foundation of the contemporary activist movement. That movement is as vigorous today as it has ever been. Rather remarkably, civil rights activism against perceived oppressionnot counting the gay rights movementseems to be more widespread today than it was in the 1960s. Leanna Garfields recent list of the largest protest marches in U.S. history opens with the 2017 protest of Donald Trumps inauguration and goes on to include Louis Farrakhans Million Man March (1995), a 1993 march on Washington targeted at eliminating racism and (primarily) at achieving civil rights for gay Americans, the Million Woman pro Black march (1997), the 2003 protests against the Bush administration, and the feminist March for Womens Lives (2004). Astonishingly, Martin Luther Kings March on Washington was more poorly attended than any of the later marches on the list, drawing only 250,000 attendees as opposed to anywhere from 500,000 to two million people for the Million Woman March 34 years later. A cynic might suggest that Kings followers, Black and white, were more likely to have jobs they could not leave at will than the Antifa fighters and BLM radicals who came after them.

Garfields list would probably have been swelled by at least a few additional rallies if compiled at this point in the Trump presidency. The seven-page Wikipedia article headlined Protests against Donald Trump, which is an actual thing that exists, lists (as of July 25, 2018) 32 major American or international anti-Trump protests, including: the Womens March, the Day Without Immigrants, Not My Presidents Day, the Charlottesville rally, and the recurring and no doubt delightful Resist Trump Tuesdays. Quite a few of these attracted at least a few hundred thousand participants; Wikipedia provides a figure of 100,000 plus for the inaugural protest and lists the Womens March attendance at 24 million participants in the U.S.A. and 45 million worldwide. At least a few were more lively than the organizers probably expected; the casualty toll across anti-Trump events so far is four dead, 81 injured, and 1,040 persons arrested.

With perhaps two or three exceptions, almost every march listed so far included opposition to racism or prejudice among its core principles. In recent years, mass mobilization events like these have been supplemented by specifically pro-Black protests organized by the Black Lives Matter movement. Almost 3,000 of these have taken place in the past 5 years. A report from Elephrame, a data archive website, lists 2,406 major BLM rallies (protests and other . . . demonstrations) over a period of 1,467 days. The list of these includes the various Trayvon Martin demonstrations and riots, the Ferguson Freedom Ride, the Ferguson riots, and the massive protests following the deaths of (among others) Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Philando Castile. This is to some extent speculation, but the hard numbers indicate that there are probably more civil rights marches per year today than there were in 1960!

Not a few of todays major marches are literally held at the locations where historic rallies took place during the original civil rights movement, either to commemorate the old leaders or to commiserate about how nothing has changed. On March 8, 2015, a memorial of the Bloody Sunday marches and police attacks in Selma, Alabama, made national news, with the Washington Postreporting that tens of thousands of marchers, government officials, and other public figures gathered Sundayfor the second or third day in a rowto commemorate the 50th anniversary of a brutal police assault on civil rights demonstrators. By mid-afternoon, area police reported, apparently with some trepidation, that at least 15,000 to 20,000 people had joined the crush on and around the bridge.

Eric Holder, then-President Barack Obamas attorney general, showed up and gave a speech denouncing . . . youll never guess it . . . racism. Holder argued that the U.S.A. has perhaps improved since the 1960s, but that conservatives on the Supreme Court were attempting to use profoundly flawed decisions to weaken the federal governments voting rights enforcement powers. He closed by saying that, as in the days of one-hundred-dollar-poll taxes, Fair and free access to the franchise is still, in some areas, under siege. Holder also compared todays scuffles between BLM fighters and city cops to the civil rights movement, drawing applause when he noted that murdered civil rights workers such as Jimmie Lee Jackson were unarmed Black men.

The problem with the idea that racism has declined (gone underground) little, if at all, and that the minority problems of today are caused by racismjust as those of the past may have beenis threefold. First, most contemporary Black problems were less serious when racism was much worse. Few Black teenagers had babies out of wedlock in 1960, and almost no middle-class Black men went to jail, although the Black crime rate was still frankly a bit higher than the white crime rate. Second, most of these contemporary problems do not exist today for visibly nonwhite immigrants from Africa, South Asia, and the West Indies, who often outperform both American whites and Blacks. Finally, most of these issues, along with other terrible problems like opiate addiction, do exist for the working-class whiteswho live alongside poor Blacks. All of this indicates that internal American cultural collapse is the root cause of the problems we as a society face today.

Read more:
Taboo Obvious Fact: Racism Didnt Cause the New Problems of Today - Townhall

Last week, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent an alarming email to his supporters. Jordan, who is one of Donald Trumps most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill, warned that Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder is on the cusp of using the courts to steal his congressional seat and replace him with a radical liberal. He asked readers for $25 or more to fight this liberal scheme.

Theres just one problem: It wasnt true.

Since Obama left officeHolder has been focusing his energy on the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), a liberal group whose goal is to steal Conservative seats in Congress, not at the ballot box, but in the courts, Jordans January 1 email read. And now his sights are set on me!! Recently, three judges struck down Ohios Congressional map, stating that all Ohio Congressional districts must be redrawn before next year, including mine!

The legal battle Jordan was describinga challenge to Ohios heavily gerrymandered congressional mapreally did happen. But it ended months ago after the Supreme Courts controversial ruling that the judiciary could not intervene in such cases. The Ohio map will remain in place. Jordan omitted that fact entirely from his fundraising pitch.

Rep. Jordans claim that Ohios congressional districts must be redrawn before next year is incorrect, says Corey Goldstone, spokesperson for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog organization.

Heres the backstory: In May 2018, the ACLU of Ohio filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Ohios congressional maps amounted to unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. A year later, in May 2019, a three-judge panel for the Southern District of Ohio ruled that the states districts had indeed been gerrymandered to favor Republicans, whose majority status in state government means that they control the redistricting process. The judges set a June 14 deadline for the state to redraw the lines.

But the voting-rights victory was short-lived. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which had recently heard similar arguments in gerrymandering cases from Maryland and North Carolina. In June, the Supreme Court delivered a 5-4 ruling in the Maryland and North Carolina cases, declaring that partisan gerrymandering cannot be challenged in federal court. That decision would reverberate in similar legal fights across the country, including Ohio. In October, the Supreme Court formally tossed out the challenge to Ohios Republican-drawn map. Thanks to that ruling, Ohios congressional map will not be redrawn until the census results are released prior to the 2022 election cycleand the states Republicans will once again have the ability to shape districts that give them a substantial advantage.

For many Democrats and voting rights advocates, the Supreme Court ruling was a huge blow in the fight to redraw districts around the nation that had been created to stack the deck in favor of one party, usually Republicans. Heres what Mother Jones Ari Berman and Pema Levy wrote when that decision came out:

Though both parties have done their fair share of gerrymandering, Republicans did it in far more places over the past decade. In 2010, Republicans took control of nearly every major swing state and oversaw the redistricting process for four times as many state legislative seats as Democrats, giving them a virtual lock on powerfor the remainder of the decade. Republicans were able to hold onto an additional 16 congressionalseats and seven state legislative chambers in 2018 because of these skewed maps, according to anAssociated Press analysis.

In Ohio, Republicans received 52 percent of the vote in the 2018 congressional elections but won 75 percent of the states 16 congressional seats, thanks to the gerrymandered map. Jordan, who touts himself as being one of the most conservative members of Congress, won the sprawling 4th districtwhich is often pointed to as one of the states mostgerrymanderedby more than 30 points.

But one would never know that from Jordans fundraising email. The Democrats are leaping with joy, because with a stroke of the pen they could flip critical seats in Congress and maintain Nancy Pelosis majority!! it says, before asking supporters to make a generous donation of at least $25 today to help fight back.

Beyond the questionable claims made in Rep. Jordans fundraising email, he seems dismissive of the obvious conflict of interest presented by politicians redrawing district maps more generally, Goldstone notes. To curb partisan gerrymandering, there have been increasing calls for states to adopt independent redistricting commissions, a reform that Holders NDRC has supported.

Jordans campaign didnt respond to a request for comment, but hes clearly not a fan of independent commissions. Holder and the Democrats know they cant win in a fair fight, he wrote in the fundraising email, thats why having unelected and unaccountable commissions potentially drawing the congressional lines excites them so much.

Goldstone disagrees. Gerrymandering is a serious problem facing our democracy,he says. Independent redistricting commissions are a reform supported by 60 percent of Democrats, Independents and Republicans.

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Jim Jordan Is Lying About Voting Rights - Mother Jones

Duluth and Superior are honoring and celebrating the legacy of Civil Rights Movement leader, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a series of tribute events on January 19 - 20 coordinated by the Duluth Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These events are free and open to the public.

This years theme is Give Us The Ballot which is centered around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s "Give Us the Ballot and We Will Transform the South." In his speech, Dr. King speaks to the importance of political power and the right to vote. He states that the right to vote is a sacred right. A right that should be defended and aggressively upheld. The Reverend goes on to say that if we are to achieve racial justice we need strong leadership from our government and our communities. He speaks to the coming freedom and independence of communities of color and the importance of leading with love. Dr. King suggests that even in victory we must avoid the temptation of being victimized with the psychology of victors. We must work to pursue victories while seeking harmony with those who would see us harmed. Dr. King would have us focus on the future and not despair. He states Let us realize that as we struggle for justice and freedom, we have cosmic companionship.

We will honor Dr. King in this years events including:

The 2020 MLK Community Breakfast will feature a free, hot, delicious meal provided by the Duluth Grill and served by the African American Mens Group; a presentation by Eric Holder, former U.S. Attorney General via a live-streamed broadcast of the Twin Cities MLK Day Celebration. The freewill offering recipient will be Family Freedom Center.

The 2020 MLK March will be led by the Men as Peacemakers "Girls Group" Restorative Justice Programand will host a variety of youth and community activities, poster making, and refreshments starting at 10 am, and the March will begin promptly at 11:00am.

For our 2020 MLK Rally, the Keynote Speaker is Autumn Brown, and our emcee will be Doreen Nyamwaya. Performers include the Miziiweykaamikiinaang drum group, the ARE Poets, and the Major Atraktion Dance Group. The Drum Major for Peace Awards will be announced and presented. There will be childrens activities, a selfie photo booth, vendors, and free MLK buttons while supplies last outside the DECC hall before and shortly after the Rally. The Rally will begin promptly at 12 pm. The rally will be interpreted into American Sign Language and recorded for broadcast.

All events in the MLK Tribute series serve to inspire and educate our community, honoring the work and life of Martin Luther King, Jr. through meaningful local community engagement.

For more on all of our MLK Tribute events, please visitduluthnaacp.org/mlk.

Our Mountain Top Sponsors are The College of Saint Scholastica and the Duluth Entertainment. Our Drum Major for Peace Sponsors include Blackbird Revolt, ISD 709 Office of Educational Equity, and the School District of Superior. Our I Have a Dream Sponsors include Duluth Grill, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Interfaith Action, Northland Foundation, Lake Superior College, UMD African & African American Studies Program, 1Roof Community Housing, UMD Campus Climate, and the Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans. Our Beloved Community Sponsors include Girl Power! YWCA Duluth, National Audio Visual, UMD Office of Diversity & Inclusion, Clayton Jackson McGhie, and Duluth Superior Pride. Thank you for your contribution to the success of the MLK Events!

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Twin Ports 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr Events Themed "Give Us the Ballot" - BusinessNorth.com

Florida woman doubles down on twins

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Doctors told a Florida woman she had a better chance of winning the lottery than of giving birth to two sets of twins in the same year.

But Alexzandria Wolliston said she won the jackpot with the births of Mark and Malakhi in March and Kaylen and Kaleb in December.

Oh, yes, I feel like I hit the twin lottery, Wolliston told WPTV.

The tired mom said her 3-year-old daughter helped her prepare for the double dose of twins.

She was actually worse than them, so she was like having two babies in one, Wolliston said.

Two months after the first set of twins arrived, Wolliston learned about the second set, she said. They were born in West Palm Beach on Dec. 27. Wolliston said Kaleb was dismissed from the hospital on Monday and shes hoping to bring Kaylen home soon.

She said she recently learned that both of her grandmothers lost twin boys at birth, which makes her believe her four babies are a blessing from above.

I always say that I feel like my grandmothers gave me their kids because two sets of twins and their twins passed away, she said. I feel like they just sent them down for me.

TUCSON, Ariz. A man convicted of shooting a U.S. Border Patrol agent nine years ago in a case that exposed a botched federal gun operation known as Fast and Furious was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison.

U.S. District Judge David C. Bury sentenced Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes to the mandatory life sentence after hearing tearful statements from the sisters of Brian Terry, the agent who was fatally shot while on a mission in Arizona on Dec. 14, 2010.

Osorio-Arellanes is one of seven defendants who were charged in the slaying of Terry. Osorio-Arellanes was convicted of first-degree murder and other charges last year after being extradited from Mexico in 2018.

Terrys death exposed the Fast and Furious operation, in which U.S. federal agents allowed criminals to buy firearms with the intention of tracking them to criminal organizations. But the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of most of the guns, including two found at scene of Terrys death.

The Obama administration was heavily criticized for the operation. Then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by Congress for refusing to turn over documents related to the sting.

PHILADELPHIA A man walking to the hospital after he was stabbed was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Philadelphia, authorities said.

Karon Underwood, 36, was struck around 10:20 p.m. Monday just blocks from the hospital.

One driver saw him and was able to avoid him, authorities said, but a second vehicle swerved to avoid the first and hit Underwood. Both vehicles drove away.

Underwood was pronounced dead at the scene. He was the father of five children who range in age from 2 to 13.

No other injuries were reported in the hit-and-run, which remains under investigation.

The hit-and-run was captured on surveillance video, and authorities hope witnesses will come forward with information about the vehicles and their drivers.

PASADENA, Calif. Modern Family will air its finale after 11 seasons on April 8, and there are no spinoffs in the works involving its large cast.

Eric Stonestreet jokingly pitched one featuring Cam and Mitch, the gay couple played by him and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, after executive producer Steven Levitan told a TV critics meeting on Wednesday that nothing is planned.

The Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker clan isnt done traveling, though. They visit Paris in an episode airing Feb. 12, continuing their tradition of trips to such places as Australia, Hawaii, Las Vegas, New York and Wyoming.

I was able to do a lot of shopping, so it was perfect, said Sofia Vergara, who became a breakout star when the series began in 2009.

The show starring Ed ONeill was an immediate hit and holds the record with Frasier of five straight Emmy Awards as televisions best comedy.

Levitan and co-creator Christopher Lloyd knew from the start the show would include a gay couple who adopts a baby.

When we locked it in, I remember saying to Chris, Well, there goes Middle America, said Levitan, whose concern proved to be unfounded. We got zero blowback. They were embraced because here was this couple, their first priority was their baby and raising it and doing it right, and people said it was hard to argue with that.

Stonestreet added: We were able to make all the same mistakes raising a child that everyone else did.

The Associated Press

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Your nation and world news in brief - Winston-Salem Journal