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A new poll shows Ben Carson's net favorability rating has dropped 12 percentage points, while Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz's favorability ratings have each risen nine points. The GOP presidential candidates' favorability rankings have undergone some massive shifts, according to Gallup's Daily tracking poll. Carson has long held the largest net favorability rating among the Republican candidates, but the senators are gaining ground fast. Carson's net favorability rating is 49 percentage points, while Rubio's net favorability rating is 48 points, and Cruz's net rating is at 45 points, according to data collected from a survey conducted since November 6. "For...

The United States spent a total of $5.9 billion to fund militaries around the world in 2014, according to the government’s 2015 Foreign Assistance report. Of that total, some 75%, or about $4.4 billion, was divided between Israel and Egypt. Clearly, the Middle East, at 64% of the pie, is the theme here, with Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon also found among the top 10 recipients. Closer to home, Colombia led the Americas with a relatively scant $29 million. Still, that’s enough to place it ninth overall on the list.

From November of 1980, here is CBS's coverage of Election Night. Taped from WJKW-TV8, Cleveland. This is part 1 of 3

They already have engaged them, of course, per the otherwise successful raid to liberate an ISIS prison in Iraq last week that ended with one American soldier being killed. That sounds suspiciously like combat, and if there’s one thing Barack Obama stands for, it’s that the era of combat in Iraq is over.How can combat not be combat? Easy. Just call it something else. It wouldn’t be the first Orwellian euphemism this White House has used to reassure progressives that they may be at war but they’re not at war-war. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook had been blunter on...

Former President Jimmy Carter said recently that he provided maps of Islamic State positions in Syria to the Russian embassy in Washington, a move apparently at odds with the Obama administration’s official policy of not cooperating with Russia in the Syrian war. Carter said on Sunday in Georgia that he knows Russian President Vladimir Putin “fairly well” because they “have a common interest in fly fishing.” When he met with Putin in April along with other global leaders to discuss the crises in Syria and Ukraine, the Russian president gave him an email address so the two could discuss his...

Former President Jimmy Carter is helping settle a dispute between Martin Luther King Jr.'s children over whether to sell King's 1964 Nobel Peace Prize medal and the Bible he carried during the civil rights movement. King's sons, Martin Luther King III and Dexter King, want to sell their father's possessions, while the late civil rights leader's surviving daughter, Bernice King, opposes the sale, calling the items "sacred." Earlier this year, a judge in Georgia approved mediation to resolve the legal fight after attorneys in the case said they were close to an agreement and that a mediator would help finish...

From Andrew O’Hehir writing at Salon: At some point during the Iran hostage crisis of 1980 – an event that, lest we forget, decisively scuttled the presidency of Jimmy Carter and got Ronald Reagan elected – I remember seeing a hand-painted banner outside a working-class tavern in South Baltimore. Its centerpiece was a caricature of the Ayatollah Khomeini, done in political-cartoon style with an oversized head and undersized body.

With Jimmy Carter's brave and touching announcement that he has cancer lesions on his brain, it's a good opportunity to reflect on his unexpected rise from small-town peanut farmer to president of the United States. How, to put it bluntly, did a little-known, two-term state senator and one-term governor from Georgia defeat better-known members of his own party and then an incumbent president to win the White House, seemingly overnight? If anyone's taking a page from Carter's playbook, it might just be Donald Trump. Let's set the table: Eight years with the same party in the White House, two terms...

Pentagon chief Ashton Carter issued a strong statement Thursday in support of closing the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay. At a press conference at the Pentagon, Carter said the military prison in Cuba should be closed before President Barack Obama leaves his post in 2016. “This is not something, in my judgment, that we should leave to the next president,” Carter said, according to AFP. The defense secretary's reasons for wanting to close Guantanamo — something Obama made a cornerstone of his campaign back in 2009 — are manifold. "As long as this detention facility remains open, it will remain a...

President Carter, I’m truly sorry you are having such terrible health challenges at the end of your life. I have watched my husband die from melanoma and my uncle die from liver cancer. It’s certainly no walk in the park. I thought it was brave of you to call a press conference today and speak boldly and honestly about your condition and prognosis. You handled yourself so well in discussing the things that are likely going to be ending your life. Compassion toward you and your family for the road ahead filled my heart. And then came the following exchange:...

ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that doctors had found cancer on his brain and that he would begin radiation treatment later in the day. Mr. Carter, speaking at a news conference at the Carter Center here, said his health had been under scrutiny since May, when he had a cold while traveling in Guyana. The former president added that the cancer, which he said was melanoma, had been found in his liver, part of which was removed during a procedure on Aug. 3. He described the melanoma on his brain as four “very small spots.”

Verbal announcement that the previous surgery for a liver tumor has now been diagnosed as a cancer and it has apparently spread beyond the liver.

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Obama, Hu toast 'strategic mutual trust' at state dinnerBy Christina Wilkie - 01/19/11 10:30 PM ET President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao toasted U.S. and Chinese collaboration and mutual interests on Wednesday night at a festive state dinner for 225 guests at the White House. Their toasts marked the high point of an evening notable for its strict adherence to the protocol and symbolism valued in Chinese culture, but which, at the same time, managed to fulfill the Chinese delegation's request for a thoroughly American dinner party. Guests dined on a meal of pear salad, lobster, ribeye steak and...

In 1981, Jimmy Carter said the world could never know West Germany’s role in the negotiations for the release of 52 hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran. New research sheds light on the important part the country played in ending the crisis. […] The details of the German contribution, however, remained unclear. Now historian Frank Bösch, the director of the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam and Spiegel have conducted research in German archives and spoken with period witnesses. This has revealed that the West German government at the time had a “smooth intermediary role,” as Bösch puts it....

Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on the nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program that the United States is now an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” Both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, “look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.” Carter was responding to a question from Hartmann about recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing like Citizens United. …

We worry about our presidential primary process. Some wonder why. Some believe that we worry too much, and it all fixes itself in time; why get so worked up? Be patient, they say, the primaries will handle it, and then comes the election, don’t worry so much. And if you’re not in an early primary state, you have no effect anyway, so you’re better off saving your energy and just watching TV or going to a game. So we’re told, especially by friends and acquaintances who just don’t think it all matters that much, and who wonder why we’re willing...

“SHOOT REPUBLICANS” Says Former Carter Staffer July 17, 2015 by Michael Strickland “Republicans and conservatives are the enemy. They are expendable. They will be targets in the Revolution when it comes” writes Roland Windsor Vincent, in a recent post on his blog, Army Of The Revolution.The entry, entitled “Protect Animals And The Environment. Shoot Republicans“, centers around animal rights and how “active Republican and conservatives voters are enabling the Animal Holocaust” and “If we were to start shooting Republicans, we would likely not harm a single friend of animals or the environment.”His article ends with: I mention Republicans and conservatives,...

Jimmy Carter: ‘Jesus Would Approve Of Gay Marriage’ By David Sherfinski July 8, 2015 Former President Jimmy Carter says he believes Jesus would approve of gay marriage but that he has a hard time believing Jesus would approve of abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life was in danger. “I believe that Jesus would approve gay marriage,” Mr. Carter told HuffPost Live. “That’s just my own personal belief.” Mr. Carter described himself as a “born-again Christian” and said faith has always been an important part of his life.

snip “I believe Jesus would,” Carter said when asked whether Jesus would approve of gay marriage. “I don’t have any verse in scripture ... I believe that Jesus would approve gay marriage, but that's just my own personal belief. I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I don't see that gay marriage damages anyone else." Carter, a born-again Christian and Baptist, said he still teaches Sunday school whenever he attends his home church. He. said he has never ran across “any really serious conflicts” between...