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The United States admitted that more needs to be done to uphold its civil rights laws........."The tragic deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Ohio and Walter Scott in South Carolina have ... challenged us to do better and to work harder for progress," he said. The U.S. is currently undergoing a Universal Periodic Review of its rights record, something all 193 U.N. countries must undergo every four years

....today we have a possible egregious distortion of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s views on Medicaid. Here’s the headline from the AP that looks to be in error: Gov. Scott Concedes That Earlier Medicaid Support Was A Ruse.... ...But is it true? Politico’s Marc Caputo reports: ...I'm a fan of @AP, but I think a line editor screwed this up. Scott never explicitly said his Medicaid support was a "ruse"

American taxpayers will pony up around $3.024 billion this year towards the United Nations’ regular and peacekeeping budgets, more than what 185 other countries combined are paying, an expert on the international body told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday.

Journalists help promote Hollywood celebrities while condemning average Americans for causing climate change. The same media go out of their way to ignore or excuse the hypocrisy of celebrity “environmentalists” who fly their private jets around the world, rent mega-yachts and live in massive mansions. Avatar Director James Cameron warned of a future “world that’s in shambles” because of climate change, and said he believes “in ecoterrorism” yet, he owns an impressive private collection of motorcycles, cars, dirt bikes, a yacht, a helicopter, a Humvee fire truck and a $32-million submarine. ABC and CBS even praised Cameron for his submarine...

"In a Hillary Clinton campaign—not to mention a Hillary Clinton administration—her husband is a tremendous asset, someone who could help make the difference in a close election, or give valuable advice to a first-term president.....But there’s a cost to flying with Bill Clinton; you also have to carry his baggage........It was his fame,reputation,and powers of persuasion that drove the effort,which has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charitable activities around the world....but while Clinton and his foundation have done tremendous good, they have also had a questionable relationship with donors and contributors.........(NYT) published its first take on...

..... Obama's approval rating is shifting back toward positive territory, as the public's take on the economy hits a new high mark for Obama's tenure, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. For the first time since May of 2013, more Americans polled say they have a positive impression of how Obama is handling the presidency than a negative one: 48% approve of the way Obama is handling his job, while 47% disapprove.

More than five years after President Obama and other leaders agreed on a 2020 goal of raising $100 billion each year from public and private sources to help developing countries deal with climate change, the United Nations wants to see action. Ahead of Earth Day on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is pointing to a meeting next month in New York where he says he will be looking for clear indications from governments and investors as to how the ambitious goal will be reached.

Despite questions of the Rev’s financial irregularities and allegations of shakedowns, they support him. Several big corporations sponsored the annual convention last week for National Action Network, Al Sharpton’s in-the-red nonprofit, according to a list obtained by National Review.

This is an estimate of the money that police departments spend to respond to and investigate gun-related crimes. It includes police salaries, benefits, and equipment, as well as overhead costs to the police department. Miller based this calculation on the amount of time police spent on initial response and follow-up (based on this sample survey) and the amount of money police departments spend on average per officer (including fringe benefits, equipment, supervision, etc.) using data from the 2006 Census of Governments

One of the wonders of modern times is that reality is often seen as a social construct and therefore optional. Thus, if one finds a particular reality offensive or inconvenient, he just "changes" it. Say that one is born a male or a female but believes that nature made an error. Some believe that nature's "error" can be corrected by calling oneself another sex. Possibly a medical procedure on one's genitalia can correct nature's error. However, Mother Nature is ruthless. Sex determination is strictly chromosomal. Females are XX, and males are XY. There is no medical procedure that can change...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: Something happens to men and women when they gain a proximity to power. Most in public service, one can only assume, begin with noble purpose: to serve, to change and improve the world — whether that be a small town or, literally, the world. Soon enough, many — not all, but many — want only to stay in that position of power, and will do what it takes, whatever it takes, to stay there. Where once they talked only of their dreams and ambitions, not for themselves, but for those they served, soon enough they spend their days tearing...

President Barack Obama will ask Americans to think of climate change as a threat not just to the environment, but also to their health. Obama on Tuesday was to announce a series of steps that private entities like Google and Microsoft are taking to better prepare the nation's health systems for the inevitable effects of a warmer, more erratic climate. He was to be joined at Howard University Medical School by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.

Environmental activist and billionaire Tom Steyer served notice on Monday that he will use his wealth to try to bring climate change into the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, vowing to target Republican hopefuls who deny the connection between burning fossil fuels and rising global temperatures. Steyer’s NextGen Climate political action committee launched what it calls the Hot Seat campaign aimed at calling out Republican candidates for taking money from the billionaire Koch brothers. The group will target Senator Rand Paul, who is expected to launch his presidential campaign on Tuesday.

Throughout Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House he’s been accused of leading a lawless presidency and cheapening the rule of law through his Department of Justice. Many say these accusations are simply based in politics, but a closer look at the way the Department of Justice has handled multiple cases in federal court suggest misleading or lying to judges is a habit, not a mistake. Most recently, we’ve seen this happen in the case surrounding President Obama’s executive action on illegal immigration. Twenty-six states are suing against the action, and in February, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen issued...

In the Bible, Esau sold his birthright for a mess of potage -- some red lentil soup, to be exact. Looking at the week’s events, it seems that this country has sold its glorious birthright of constitutional government by honest men and women for a mess of potage -- a false promise of hope and change delivered by a glib huckster and his shady friends. The deceit and lawlessness of Obama and those around him and the consequences have never been clearer than they were this week. Nothing shows better the unprincipled nature of the administration and the acquiescence of...

Discredited by reality, the U.N.'s prophecies go missing. In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers. Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made—and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers. The map, which can still be found elsewhere on the Web, disappeared from the program's...

For those of us who do not live in the memory hole that shields this administration from any accountability, here are some relevant facts about Acting Director Brandon and his involvement in the Fast and Furious cover-up. According to outgoing Director Jones's sworn testimony of April 2, 2014 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mr. Brandon was the person who determined disciplinary punishments for all of the ATF personnel involved in Fast and Furious. Brandon was "the ultimate decision maker." Director Jones confirmed that Thomas Brandon did not fire a single person for participation in Fast and Furious.

Susan Rice, our national security advisor, is supposed to be a bona fide expert on Africa. And the credentials she brings to her job are impressive. Former ambassador to the United Nations, graduate of Stanford, Rhodes Scholar, and author of a prize-winning dissertation at Oxford on African affairs. Yet, yesterday, she sent out two tweets mourning the burial “today” of the most famous Nigerian of the last 50 years. But our sharp-as-a-tack expert on Africa didn’t realize that the man had died two years ago. Business Insider noted the beclowning, as the tweets were hastily deleted once the gaffe was...

For the second consecutive year, the Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

Highlights: "Having aligned with everyone from Castro to the Supreme Leader of Iran (a country which rapes teenage girls so that they don’t die as virgins, and stones teenage rape victims), Obama has to make it seem as if it’s the Republicans who are the traitors." "During his original campaign, Obama said, “We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon." Bill Clinton said during his first term in office, 'North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb.' North Korea could and did. Bill Clinton knew all along that it could and would." "Clinton and Obama didn’t accidentally...