The Taliban, bane of America's post-9/11 Afghanistan operations, said Wednesday that they captured Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, a renegade insurgent and ex-Guantanamo detainee who was in Afghanistan recruiting for the Islamic State, the latest parry in a messy internecine conflict between violent Islamist regimes.

Back in August, an Iowa Republican state senator pled guilty to taking cash payments to abandon Michele Bachmann's 2012 presidential campaign and endorse Ron Paul. Also in August, Paul started spending oodles of cash on lawyers. There's ample evidence to suggest the two events are connected.

At least two electronic voting machines in a North Carolina county have been taken out of service after early voters reported that the machines repeatedly registered their Democratic choices as Republican votes in Sen. Kay Hagan's contentious reelection bid.

Sometime soon, a grand jury in St. Louis County, Missouri will decide whether or not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing black teenager Michael Brown. Local officials are preparing for that moment by buying heaps of military-style riot gear.

In bunkers now held by ISIS militants, and sometimes in streets emptied by bomb threats, scores of American service members secretly helped find and dispose of Saddam Hussein's aging chemical weapons. Now stateside, many troops are sick with mystery ailments the military has at times tried to conceal.