From the AP:

LOS ANGELES — Lenders took back more homes in August than in any month since the start of the U.S. mortgage crisis.

The increase in home repossessions came even as the number of properties entering the foreclosure process slowed for the seventh month in a row, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

In all, banks repossessed 95,364 properties last month, up 3 percent from July and an increase of 25 percent from August 2009, RealtyTrac said.

August makes the ninth month in a row that the pace of homes lost to foreclosure has increased on an annual basis. The previous high was in May.

Banks have been stepping up repossessions to clear out their backlog of bad loans with an eye on eventually placing the foreclosed properties on the market, but they can’t afford to simply dump the properties on the market.

Concerns are growing that the housing market recovery could…

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From Michelle Malkin:

I just finished watching Karl Rove trashing GOP Senate primary winner Christine O’Donnell. It was on Sean Hannity’s FNC show. Might as well have been Olbermann on MSNBC. The establishment Beltway strategist couldn’t even bother with an obligatory word of congratulations for O’Donnell. He criticized her “character” and “rectitude” and claimed she hadn’t answered questions about her financial woes. She did so here. Rove mocked her security concerns as “nutty.” Yet, her concerns have been more than justified. See here (second video clip).

Rove came across as an effete sore loser instead of …

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Nichols was recently endorsed by former White House Advisor and Fox News Commentator, Dick Morris, citing “Natalie Nichols is one of the rising, young stars in the Republican Party.”

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PENSACOLA, Fla. – A federal judge said Tuesday he will likely dismiss only parts of a lawsuit by 20 states challenging the Obama administration’s health care overhaul as unconstitutional, though he didn’t specifically say what portions.

The Obama administration had asked U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson to dismiss the entire lawsuit. The states and the administration disagree over whether people should be required to have health insurance, and whether states should pay additional Medicaid costs not covered by the federal government.

The judge said he will issue a ruling by Oct. 14. The lawsuit is likely to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

If Vinson upholds the states’ challenge, he would…

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The campaign has already made its way to the Bryan-College Station area and is expected to be in Houston soon.

The billboards read ‘Black and Unwanted’ and show an image of a baby’s face. The campaign’s website, toomanyaborted.com, appears at the bottom.

“This campaign wants to expose the destruction of hope and possibility that abortion brings and offer something that is a life affirming solution like adoption or parenthood,” said Ryan Bomberger, one of the creators of the Radiance Foundation.

The Radiance Foundation and the Life Education Resource Network (L.E.A.R.N.) are behind the initiative. Both groups are led by African Americans and say they are trying to expose what they call a huge racial disparity of abortions in Texas.

“Out of the over 80,000 abortions, 25 percent of those are on African American women even though African American women only comprise 12.7 percent of the population,” said Bomberger…

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet at the State Department, relaunching talks after a 20-month hiatus and seeking a deal within one year that will set up an independent Palestinian state side-by-side with a secure Israel.

Obama, who has staked considerable political capital on the Washington talks during a pivotal U.S. congressional election year, urged both sides to grasp the chance for peace after separate meetings at the White House on Wednesday.

“This moment of opportunity may not soon come again. They cannot afford to let it slip away,” Obama said after a day of personal diplomacy on a problem that has confounded generations of U.S. leaders.

But opponents of a settlement and the concessions that would be required to reach it threatened to

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NAGS HEAD, N.C. – Hurricane Earl steamed toward the Eastern Seaboard early Thursday as communities from North Carolina to New England kept a close eye on the forecast, worried that even a slight shift in the storm’s predicted offshore track could put millions of people in the most densely populated part of the country in harm’s way.

Vacationers along North Carolina’s dangerously exposed Outer Banks took advantage of the typical picture-perfect day just before a hurricane arrives to pack their cars and flee inland, cutting short their summer just before Labor Day weekend.

The governors of North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland declared states of emergency, sea turtle nests on one beach were scooped up and moved to safety, and the crew of the Navy’s USS Cole rushed to get home to Norfolk, Va., on Wednesday ahead of the bad weather. The destroyer was supposed to return later this week from a seven-month assignment fighting piracy off Somalia.

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“Natalie Nichols is one of the rising, young stars in the Republican Party,” said Dick Morris, President of Vote.com. “She is struggling to make Bowie County a two-party government with checks and balances. Right now, it is run by the fiat of the Democratic Party organization.” Morris explained, “The Clerk’s office is the key to releasing the voting records of the Commissioners Court. The current clerk sits on the records and won’t release them without a formal request. Natalie, not to be deterred, now videotapes their meetings and posts them on her website for all to see.”

Morris worked as a Republican strategist before serving as a White House Advisor under President Clinton, and is credited for helping President Clinton succeed by convincing the President to adopt Conservative Republican policies. He is an 8 time NYT best-selling author, renowned political strategist, and a regular commentator on Fox News.

“We need the likes of Natalie in politics and, I suspect, the people of Bowie County need her, in particular, as an advocate. They couldn’t get a better one,” added Morris.

“I’m honored to receive the endorsement of Dick Morris, and am so grateful for his advice and friendship. I was deeply humbled when he wrote to offer the endorsement,” said Nichols. “He is one of the strongest voices in the Conservative movement today. His wisdom and wealth of knowledge is beyond compare. Public Information has been under lock and key in our county for decades. I will give our citizens every opportunity to view our elected officials’ voting records, without having to ask for them. The records in the County Clerk’s office do not belong to the Clerk, they belong to the people.”

Editors note:  Natalie Nichols is a co-founder of Political Integrity Now

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The proposed mosque near to ground zero is not really a religious institution. It would be — as many mosques throughout the nation are — a terrorist recruitment, indoctrination and training center. It is not the worship of Islam that is the problem. It is the efforts to advance Sharia Law with its requirement of Jihad and violence that is the nub of the issue.

There is a global effort to advance Sharia Law and make it the legal system of the world. Most major banks and financial institutions offer Sharia Compliant Funds which have their investments vetted by the most fundamentalist and reactionary of clerics to assure that they advance Sharia Law. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of the proposed Mosque, helps to prepare a Sharia Index which rates countries on their degree of compliance with Sharia Law. In the United Kingdom, many courts have recognized Sharia as the governing law on matters between two Muslims.

Not only is Sharia Law a vicious anti-female code which orders death by stoning, promotes child marriage, decriminalizes abuse of women, and gives wives no rights in divorce, but it also explicitly recognizes the duty of all Muslims to wage Jihad against non-believers and promotes violence to achieve its goals. In this respect, violent Jihad is as inherent in Sharia Law as revolution is in Communist doctrine.

But there are non-Sharia mosques where peaceful and spiritual Muslims worship God in their own way without promoting violence. A soon-to-be published study…

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Recovery summer, opposition to Arizona’s immigration law, negative campaigning, and intervention in the Ground Zero mosque dispute—call them Obama’s Four Disasters. As policy, they’re questionable. As political exercises, they’re losers. As clues about Obama, they’re evidence he’s lost his political knack.

What was Obama thinking? These weren’t initiatives taken suddenly. They were carefully thought out and plotted, no doubt in expectation the president would gain politically and so would Democratic candidates. Whatever calculations the White House made, they were faulty.

Recovery summer. This was proclaimed in June, with fanfare, in a briefing by Vice President Biden and the issuance of a report titled “Summer of Recovery: Project Activity Increases in Summer 2010.” The report said “millions of Americans [are] on the job today thanks to the Recovery Act”—better known as the “stimulus package”—but its work is not done. “Summer 2010 is actually poised to be the most active Recovery Act season yet.”

Not quite. Obama, Biden, and company should have known better. It’s true there were indicators the economy would grow and hiring by private firms would increase. But anyone who traveled outside Washington would quickly discover…

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