"My whole life really has been a 'no' and I fought through it," Trump said Monday at an NBC-sponsored town hall here. "It has not been easy for me, it has not been easy for me. And you know I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars."

In the story, Times reporter Jonathan Mahler asserted that it was "impossible to know what was true and what wasn't" about the saga of the hunt for bin Laden and his death in Pakistan, a story that he asserted is now "floating somewhere between fact and mythology."

With the big news out of Congress today the warm welcome received by Pope Francis, one might forget that our nation's august legislature is headed for yet another government shutdown, this time over Republican demands that the government cut off all funding for Planned Parenthood, most of which comes in the form of Medicaid reimbursements for women's health care.

But as rival nations, such as China and Russia, expand their own naval capabilities, and with China's increasingly aggressive posture in the South China Sea, GOP presidential candidates are warning voters that America's dominance of the world's oceans could end unless lawmakers add significantly more ships to its arsenal to bring the fleet size closer to historic levels.