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While delivering the first address from a pontiff to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis touched on topics ranging from the plight of immigrants to climate change and the death penalty. Many of his comments were lightly delivered and unlikely to elicit much controversy, though the reaction might be different if they were given by another world leader. Case in point: Toward the beginning of his address, Francis alluded to religious extremism, noting that "no religion is immune" from it. His full quote as prepared for delivery: "Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred...

Believe it or not, the one line he devoted to abortion was one line more than he devoted to the subject of Jesus, who wasn’t mentioned at all in this morning’s speech according to the transcript. Maybe that was a deliberate choice made by Francis, to stick to politics and universal principles before a domestic television audience with many millions of non-Christians. (He did mention Moses.) Or maybe he just had more important things that he wanted to talk about, like the environment.This is exactly right: The Holy Father's politics, as w/his predecessors, defy easy right-left categorization. Not sure...

Pope Francis was not afraid to critique Congress in his historic address on Capitol Hill, calling on the body to do better in several areas of political debate. In a speech of about 40 minutes made in front of a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, the pope commended positions supported by both parties. He nodded to the plight of immigrants and refugees, also noting the sanctity of human life "at every stage of its development" and hinting that Congress should take action to address these problems. And, as he did on Wednesday from the White House, he explicitly called...

Pope Francis on Thursday urged the U.S. Congress to reject a "mindset of hostility" on immigration and to recognize people who wish to move to the United States as people who are trying to improve their lives and those of their families.

IN HIS visit to the United States beginning Tuesday, Pope Francis will meet not just President Obama and Congress but also those marginalized by our society: homeless people, immigrants, refugees and even the inmates of a jail. He’s expected to raise topics that many Americans will find challenging, such as his harsh critique of capitalism. His supporters say it’s all part of the role the pope has embraced as an advocate for the powerless, one that has earned him admiration from both Catholics and some outside the church. How, then, to explain Pope Francis’s behavior in Cuba? The pope is...

Thursday afternoon Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun advocacy group Everytown for America held a small rally in Washington D.C. in front of the Capitol Building in an effort to shame Congress into passing gun control legislation. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe spoke at the event and brought his armed body guard with him. Terry McAuliffe Shows Up With Armed Body Guard at Anti-Gun EventA few things. First off, McAuliffe's claim that people "can be armed" while we were standing on the Capitol grounds in Washington D.C. is false. It is nearly impossible for law abiding civilians to be legally armed in Washington D.C....

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton posted a message Thursday saying that government officials should "uphold the law – end of story." [Snip] The message from the former secretary of State came in response to news that a judge had found Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

President Obama returned from a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard on Sunday, but not before criticizing members of Congress for taking their own recess. During President Obama’s weekly address released on Saturday, the president chastised Congress: “Unfortunately, Congress left town for five full weeks—and they left behind a stack of unfinished business. For the first time ever, Congress failed to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. That left thousands of business owners and their employees at a serious disadvantage compared to their competitors overseas,” Obama said. …

Saudi Arabia recently preached to the international community about the need to confront “intolerance, extremism and human rights violations.” If this sounds surreal, consider the following excerpts from a July 26 report in the Saudi Gazette (emphasis added): Saudi Arabia has reiterated its call on the international community to criminalize any act vilifying religious beliefs and symbols of faith as well as all kinds of discrimination based on religion.

No one can deny the explosive impact of the Planned Parenthood videos painstakingly obtained over three years of undercover reporting by the Center for Medical Progress. A GOP that had shoved the abortion issue to the political back burner has suddenly seen it boiling over, with major Republican candidates (such as Marco Rubio) now speaking loudly about the “barbarism” of “murdering babies.” As Jason Jones and I wrote here last week, if you tune out the Trump-induced static at the last Republican debate, you will hear one message loud and clear: The Republican party has committed itself to advancing protection...

RUSH: Folks, get a load of this. This is Hillary Clinton. This is today, Claremont, New Hampshire, at River Valley Community College. It's a town hall campaign event, and Hillary decided that she would talk about something she's responsible for, and that is the lack of civility on the Internet. Yes, I knew that would get your attention. I knew that would get your attention! She doesn't say she's responsible for it. I'm saying she's in part largely responsible for the incivility on the Internet. I'll explain why in a moment. It should be obvious. But here's what she said......

Hillary Clinton just spoke, along with Republican presidential contender and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, at the National Urban League Conference. She preceded Bush on stage and used the moment to seize his campaign slogan, "Right to Rise," and give it her own spin to attack the governor before he could speak. According to Clinton, "I don't think you can credibly say everyone has a right to rise and then say you're for ... repealing Obamacare. People can't rise if they can't afford health care. They can't rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can't...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wondered Thursday whether opponents of President Obama’s Iran nuclear program agreement read the deal before coming out in opposition to it, and said she’s certain she can keep enough Democrats in line to sustain an Obama veto and preserve his policy. Praising both Mr. Obama and former President George W. Bush, who she said began building the international coalition that first imposed sanctions and then earlier this month agreed to the deal with Iran, Mrs. Pelosi said she was confident the opponents’ campaign to try to defeat the deal in Congress will fail. She also...

Just hours after Hillary Clinton unveiled her presidential campaign's push to solve global warming through an aggressive carbon-cutting plan, she sauntered up the steps of a 19-seat private jet in Des Moines, Iowa. The aircraft, a Dassault model Falcon 900B, burns 347 gallons of fuel per hour. And like all Dassault business jets, Hillary's ride was made in France. The Trump-esque transportation costs $5,850 per hour to rent, according to the website of Executive Fliteways, the company that owns it. And she has used the same plane before, including on at least one trip for speeches that brought her $500,000...

The defendant in last week’s landmark Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage attended a gay wedding on Thursday. Rick Hodges, the head of Ohio's Department of Health, was the named defendant in Obergefell v Hodges. Hodges gave a Bible reading during a wedding between two male friends in Columbus, Ohio, according to The Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Steve’s been my friend for 25 years, and I am looking forward to celebrating with him,” Hodges said of the ceremony that saw his friends Steve George and Jeff Gatwood married. “I love my friend,” he added. Hodges's attendance came just six days after...

Cass Sunstein, the former Obama administration “regulatory czar,” has warned the campus crusade against “microaggressions” could potentially be enforced by a “new cadre of thought police.” […] Sunstein chastises the University of California at Berkeley for its “willingness to consider disciplining people for making one of a large number of statements, many or all of which most Americans would consider harmless or even correct.” He also mentions another university, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, has taken a stand against microaggressions by publishing a list of “examples of racial microaggressions.” …

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the Confederate battle flag should not be displayed “anywhere,” weighing in as South Carolina lawmakers seek to remove it from the grounds of their statehouse. The Democratic presidential candidate called the deadly shootings of nine black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God.” Clinton called the Confederate flag a “symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future. It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere.” …

Hillary Clinton: “I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day,” Clinton told The Associated Press in an interview. “I personally would like to see it removed from the Statehouse grounds.”

Hillary Clinton spoke about the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina by posing the following questions: How many innocent people in our country from little children to church members to movie theater attendees? How many people do we need to see cut down before we act? In the first question, Hillary makes obvious references to the shootings at Sandy Hook, the theater shooting in Colorado as well as both the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin and last night's attack. Hillary speaks of little children, church members and movie theater attendees. But what about our...

President Barack Obama on Thursday expressed profound “sadness and anger” at the Charleston church shooting as well as deeply personal frustration that America’s political climate makes it virtually impossible for now to tighten restrictions on who can buy firearms. “We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” Obama said in the White House briefing room, Vice President Joe Biden standing at his side.