The Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce touts the state as the "horse show capital of the world" and "the venue of choice for more than a dozen top national and world championship horse shows, attracting riders from across the nation - and world - each year."

The horse community was hit particularly hard on Wednesday when the devastating level 5 tornado tore through Oklahoma City and its suburb, Moore. More than 150 horses have died as a result of the violent storm that swept through the area.

The number represents the entire community of farms that sit on the southern border of Oklahoma City, including Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses who were based at Celestial Acres Training Center.

Several organizations coordinating horse-rescue efforts, as well as local veterinarians and horse owners themselves, determined the number, said Joe Lucas, executive vice president of the Thoroughbred Racing Association of Oklahoma.

“We’ve counted, unfortunately, 150 head or more that have been found [dead], were killed, or had to be put down,” Lucas said. “And that’s not just Celestial Acres. That’s the Moore area. That’s what we’ve gotten up to.”

Lucas said a hotline is being set up through the state Department of Agriculture for owners to inquire about lost horses. In addition, there are plans to post photos taken of both surviving and deceased horses for the purpose of identification. The Thoroughbred Racing Association of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Racing Association are helping with the process, Lucas said.

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A law enforcement official has told NBC News that Attorney General Eric Holder is the one who signed the search warrant for the private emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen. The warrant was signed under the guise that Rosen might be a "possible co-consiprator" in violation of the Espionage Act.

The law enforcement official said Holder's approval of the Rosen search, in the spring of 2010, came after senior Justice officials concluded there was "probable cause" that Rosen's communications with his source, identified as intelligence analyst Stephen Kim, met the legal burden for such searches. "It was approved at the highest levels-- and I mean the highest," said the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said that explicitly included Holder.

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Writing at the American Spectator, Robert Stacy McCain perceptively identifies a perky blonde Florida teenager as the "poster girl" for pedophilia:

The case involves Kaitlyn Ashley Hunt, an 18-year-old in Sebastian, Florida, who was arrested in February after admitting that she had a lesbian affair with a 14-year high-school freshman. (Click here to read the affidavit in Hunt’s arrest.) It is a felony in Florida to have sex with 14-year-olds. Hunt was expelled from Sebastian High School — where she and the younger girl had sex in a restroom stall — and charged with two counts of “felony lewd and lascivious battery on a child.” The charges could put Hunt in prison for up to 15 years. Prosecutors have offered Hunt a plea bargain that would spare her jail time, but her supporters have organized an online crusade to have her let off scot-free — in effect, nullifying Florida’s law, which sets the age of consent at 16.

Using the slogan “Stop the Hate, Free Kate” (the Twitter hashtag is #FreeKate) this social-media campaign has attracted the support of liberals including Chris Hayes of MSNBC, Daily Kos, Think Progress and the gay-rights group Equality Florida. Undoubtedly, part of the appeal of the case is that Hunt is a petite attractive green-eyed blonde. One critic wondered on Twitter how long activists have “been waiting for a properly photogenic poster child of the correct gender to come along?”

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(LAS VEGAS)  A 26-year-old law school student at the University of California in Berkeley pleaded no contest Wednesday for his role in the beheading of an exotic bird at Flamingo Hotel's wildlife habitat on the Las Vegas Strip. Hazhir Kargaran is the third Berkeley student to be charged for the incident that occurred October 12.

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A heckler, believed to be Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, rudely interrupted President Obama's speech on counter-terrorism several times. Distasteful as I find Benjamin and her interruptions, she did have a point.

The point is this: The President took the easy way out. When discussing the use of drones versus American citizens the President used the targeting of Anwar al-Awlaki as an example:

When a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America – and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot – his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team. That’s who Anwar Awlaki was – he was continuously trying to kill people.

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President Barack Obama called on Congress to take action, so Guantamo terrorist detainees can be transferred to the United States at a designated detention site in the country, where military trials and commissions can take place.

"There is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened," Obama said. The president and his party has faced great opposition to opening up detention facilities in the U.S. to terrorists from Guantanmo Bay, Cuba. "Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system," he said. However, Republicans will likely block any legislative moves taken by the Democrats.

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In response to 'Whoops, My Bad!': Judge apologizes for lack of transparency in James Rosen probe:

The "Check Engine" light for my Shocked Face just started blinking.

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The growing and non-reported divide within the Democratic Party continues to deepen as party members are now openly voices their frustrations and disagreements with their party leaders.

 The proud liberal Democratic Congressman, Alan Grayson, has recently stated that “roughly 170 of them (Democratic Representatives) need to be primaried” in the 2014 mid-term elections. This after only 30 of his fellow Democrats in the Congress “promised to vote against”  the chained CPI measure that would slow down the Social Security benefit growth.

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In a speech on national security today, President Barack Obama made a bizarre reference to an incident that occurred in Austin, TX on February 18, 2010 when a pilot deliberately crashed a small aircraft into an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building, killing himself as well as an IRS employee, and injuring many others.

At the time, the media blamed the attack on the Tea Party--the first of many false accusations. The New York Times, among other mainstream outlets, wondered whether the pilot was "the first Tea Party terrorist."

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One of the great unheralded screen duos of Hollywood's Golden Era was Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, two character actors who made a total of nine films together between 1941 and 1946. The most famous of these pairings are the first two, "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) and "Casablanca" (1942), in which both men played memorable supporting roles.

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