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The globe just experienced the hottest May in recorded history, according to reports from multiple organizations. Ocean and land temperatures rose 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Fahrenheit) over the 20th Century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That makes May 2014 the warmest May since the agency started tracking those figures in 1880. Both NASA and Japan Meteorological Agency came to the same conclusion — this was the warmest May ever recorded. Overall, this was the second warmest spring ever, trailing only the March-May period in 2010, according to the NOAA.

The IRS—remember those jaunty folks?—announced Friday that it can't find two years of emails from Lois Lerner to the Departments of Justice or Treasury. And none to the White House or Democrats on Capitol Hill. An agency spokesman blames a computer crash. Never underestimate government incompetence, but how convenient. The former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations was at the center of the IRS targeting of conservative groups and still won't testify before Congress. Now we'll never know whose orders she was following, or what directions she was giving. If the Reagan White House had ever offered up this excuse, John...

BRUSSELS — Defense and intelligence officials told senators at a classified briefing on Wednesday that they kept secret from Congress the pending swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban prisoners because they feared for his life if the deal became public, a senior administration official said Thursday. “The Senators were told, separate and apart from Sgt. Bergdahl’s apparent deterioration in health, that we had both specific and general indications that Sgt. Bergdahl’s recovery — and potentially his life — could be jeopardized if the detainee exchange proceedings were disclosed or derailed,” the official said in a statement. Several senators...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended his decision to release five Afghan detainees from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for an American soldier's freedom, saying his administration had consulted with Congress "for some time" about that possibility. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff left open the possibility of desertion charges against the soldier.

A top aide to President Obama is now apologizing to Congress for not informing lawmakers, as required by law, that the White House was planning to trade an alleged deserter for five top Taliban commanders. The apology comes after Obama himself defended his actions this morning, insisting his administration had discussed the release with Congress “for some time.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told reporters that she received a call from Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken on Monday evening apologizing for failing to inform Congress about the deal to exchange five Taliban detainees for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl....

In a sweeping initiative to curb pollutants blamed for global warming, the Obama administration's EPA unveiled a plan Monday aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by nearly a third by 2030. But it delays the deadline for some states to begin complying until long after President Barack Obama leaves office. The 645-page plan, expected to be finalized next year, is a centerpiece of Obama's efforts to deal with climate change and seeks to give the United States more leverage to prod other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year. Under the...

There comes a point where the Left’s calumnizing of conservatives, its endless quest to delegitimize ordinary words, and its determination to criminalize religious expression all combine to make me want to offend as many leftists as I can, in response, just for fun. But not only for fun: Deliberately choosing to offend them, and thus trying to shred their ideological straitjackets, is occasionally a necessary endeavor. We on the right must show that we need not cower; we can and must fight back. In that spirit: To 50-year-old men, 20-year-old females are indeed “girls.” Not women. Get over it. If...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who suggested on Monday that "every institution" in America should ignore the nation's immigration laws until Congress passes amnesty legislation, said President George W. Bush will go down as the last Republican president in history if Congress does not act on immigration. "I give you George W. Bush--the man who will go down in history as the last Republican president in American history," Gutierrez said Tuesday on the House Floor. He added: If you do nothing on immigration, I guess you can take comfort in knowing that from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, you had...

"With the news this week that more than 600,000 Washington residents have acquired new health care plans through the state exchange, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said it’s unlikely the Affordable Care Act will be repealed.... "...She also discussed... the feasibility of immigration reform this year..."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Internal Revenue Service told House Republicans on Wednesday that it would take years to provide all the documents they have subpoenaed in their probe of how the agency handled tea party groups' applications for tax-exempt status. The comments by IRS chief John Koskinen drew a frosty response from Republicans who run the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, one of several congressional panels investigating the controversy. The panel's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., warned him he should comply with the request "or potentially be held in contempt" of Congress, a sometimes threatened but...

Obama delivers remarks in Brussels Belgium

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 175,000 workers were added to nonfarm payrolls in December, well above Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 149,000. 162,000 of those hires were to private payrolls, above expectations for a 145,000 rise in the ranks of private-sector workers. The unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 6.7% from 6.6%. Labor force participation was unchanged at 63.0%. 610,000 were unable to work due to inclement weather in February, above the historical February average of 317,000.

The winners have accepted their statuettes at the 86th Annual Academy Awards show at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. This is the complete list of Oscar award winners:

Enjoy Classic Duck Dynasty

U.S. consumer prices barely rose last month as a sharp increase in energy costs was offset by cheaper clothing, cars and air fares. The figures indicate inflation remains mild. The Labor Department said Thursday that the consumer price index rose just 0.1 percent in January, down from a 0.2 percent gain in December. Prices have risen 1.6 percent in the past 12 months. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices also rose just 0.1 percent last month and 1.6 percent in the past year. The year-over-year increase in core prices was the smallest in seven months. The "mild...

Democracy is starting to get me down. Oh, I know what you're thinking: I write regularly about American politics, and democracy is only just starting to get me down? Okay, good point. Maybe I should say that democracy is starting to get me down even more than it usually does. And why is that? Because it's beginning to dawn on me that Jeb Bush is probably going to be the Republican Party's nominee for president in 2016. Consider: With the ongoing implosion of Chris Christie's political career, the GOP establishment has lost its best hope for a candidate who could...

Geneva (AFP) - Last year tied for the sixth-hottest on record, confirming that Earth's climate system is in the grip of warming that will affect generations to come, the UN's weather agency said Wednesday. "This is confirmation of the trend of global warming of the planet," World Meteorological Organization (WMO) chief Michel Jarraud told AFP. Last year equalled 2007 as the sixth-warmest year since reliable records began in 1850, with a global land and ocean surface temperature that was 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1961-1990 average, the WMO said in a statement. Last year equalled 2007 as...

In a recent interview, 57-year-old Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, said that the network “has never had an ideology.” The former NBC researcher, who prefers jogging suits to business suits and is beset with constant nervous twitching, insisted that the network stays “true to the facts.” Griffin maintained that if a Democrat has problems, MSNBC anchors are not going to bail them out. He claimed, “If you’re a Democrat in trouble, we’re not a place where we’re going to rehabilitate you. You’re not going to get a free ride if you did wrong.”

The iconic Doomsday Clock remains poised at five minutes until midnight, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced today (Jan. 14). The clock is no doomsday device — rather, it's a visual metaphor for the danger of a "civilization-threatening technological catastrophe." Every year, the board analyzes international threats, particularly nuclear arsenals and climate change, and decides where the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock should rest. The closer it is to midnight, the closer the world is to doom. "As always, new technologies hold the promise of doing great good, supplying new sources of clean...

The next time you hear someone dispute that human activity is destabilizing our climate, remember this pie chart. It represents geochemist James Lawrence Powell's review of 2,258 peer-reviewed scientific articles about climate change, written by 9,136 authors, published between Nov. 12, 2012 and December 31, 2013. Of all those hundreds of papers and thousands of researchers, Powell found one article, authored by a single scientist, that attributed climate change to something other than human actions: "The Role of Solar Activity in Global Warming," by S.V. Avakyan, appearing in the Herald of the Russian Academy of Science, Vol. 83, No. 3....