Kansas City Star

We parents of college students had better get the basements fixed up. According to none other than Karl Rove and his political action group, chances are better than eight in 10 that the kids will be hauling themselves and their ratty belongings back home after graduation.

American Crossroads is out with a political ad that disses President Barack Obama for being "cool." It shows him dishing with celebrities and quaffing a beer, and notes that "after four years of a celebrity president" half of college graduates can't find jobs that fit their skills, student debt has topped $1 trillion and -- OMG! -- 85 percent of recent college grads have been forced to move in with their parents.

I don't think this ad will phase college students, who tend to be optimistic about overcoming the obstacles mentioned. But parents, that's a different story. Eighty-five percent of college grads moving back home? You can see a shudder moving through the land.

Parents can stand down, however. PolitiFact, the fact-checking service of the Tampa Bay Times, examined the claim and pronounced it false.

ISLAMORADA, Fla. -- Charter captain George Coffey was steering his 25-foot boat across the aqua waters of the Florida Keys, heading for the place he calls "a fishing paradise."

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- American soldiers in Afghanistan aren't supposed to drink booze. They're not supposed to stray "outside the wire" of their fortifications on their own.

And they aren't supposed to train their rifles on innocents.

Yet that's just what Army Staff Sgt.

BRANSON, Mo. -- Trashed by a tornado that cruised its strip and blew the roofs of its hotels before moving on, this music Mecca is surveying what needs fixing before visitors arrive in two weeks.

While most of the shows will go on, the tourist area suffered damage amounting to many millions of dollars to theaters, strip malls, marinas, go-cart tracks, apartments and bass boats.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A relentless Danish sex predator who used Facebook to stalk and threaten an 11-year-old Missouri girl likely will spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison.

Kai Lundstroem Pedersen, 61, whose own lawyer described his crimes as "horrific" and "unspeakable," was sentenced to 30 years in prison for using multiple aliases and online accounts to extort the Buchanan County girl into making child pornography.

It's important that a thorough investigation determine what happened in the recent NATO airstrike in a rugged border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A joint American-Afghan patrol in Afghanistan began taking mortar and small-arms fire from Taliban fighters. The patrol apparently mistook a Pakistan border outpost for an insurgent detachment and called for help from the air. The airstrike took place at night, after the U.S.-Afghan patrol was told by the Pakistani army that it had no troops in the area. Two dozen Pakistani soldiers were killed.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- Independence authorities are awaiting autopsy results before considering possible charges in an apparent case of elder abuse so severe that emergency responders described the victim as a "rotting corpse that was still breathing."