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The United States announced Monday it would boycott the upcoming Paralympic Games in Sochi to protest Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, as a State Department spokesperson said it was “likely” that the U.S. would impose sanctions on Russia. The boycott effectively means a presidential delegation will not be attending the games, an announcement that comes as President Obama and Congress scramble to respond to Russia’s aggression on Ukrainian territory in Crimea. “In addition to other measures we are taking in response to the situation in Ukraine, the United States will no longer send a Presidential Delegation to the upcoming Winter Paralympic...

MOSCOW - The Sochi Olympics "opened Russia's soul" to the world and wrongfooted critics of the host country, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks broadcast on Tuesday. Taking stock after Russia topped the medals table and avoided major security problems at its first post-Soviet Games, Putin said constructive criticism from the International Olympic Committee had helped make Sochi 2014 a success. But there were other critics whose jabs were motivated by "the competitive struggle in international politics, maybe even geopolitics". "They used the Olympic project to achieve their own aims in the area of anti-Russian propaganda," he said. "Because when...

As soon as the Winter Olympics draw to a close tonight in Sochi, another sport will begin: debate over whether the city will actually benefit from hosting the games. “If costs are the benchmark for ‘successful’ Games,” says Janice Forsyth, Director of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada, “Sochi is the most unsuccessful games in history, bar none.” The Sochi organizing committee spent an estimated US$51 billion on the Games, surpassing the next most expensive Olympics (Beijing Summer Games, 2008) by about $8 billion. The problem is that “rarely, if...

From the opening ceremony with a malfunctioning ring, to police officers singing Get Lucky, the Sochi Winter Olympics have been a games to remember. But tonight marks the end for the highly controversial games, which are also the most expensive in Olympic history. Showing that the country has a sense of humour, dancers during the opening section of the show mocked the moment a ring failed to open during the opening ceremony. The joke was followed by an opulent show of ballet, circus performances and classical music, an ode to the country's rich literary history - before the Olympic flame...

I thought I did. Now I know I did. Why is it so hard for the blow hards on our alphabet news networks to give credit to a movie about Texas whose score was written by a Russian born American composer.Obviously, the Russians are proud of him.Why isn't our media? Just because he was a patriot in Hollywood in a time when it wasn't overwhelmingly dominated by Marxists?As soon as the opening dance becomes available on You Tube, I would appreciate it if someone would post it!

<p>Abortion proponents push for easy access to abortion, deemphasizing its after-affects to the point they absolutely refuse to acknowledge post-abortion depression, which further incapacitates those actually living through it.</p> <p>This is such a tragedy. Charlotte Dawson, RIP, was born in New Zealand but achieved fame in Australia as a model and a judge on Australia’s Next Top Model.</p>

The Canadian men’s hockey team took gold on the final day of the 2014 Olympics, defeating Sweden 3-0 in the gold medal game at the Bolshoy Ice Dome on Sunday.

SOCHI, Russia — Ukraine's victory in the women's biathlon relay was the standout moment of the Sochi Olympics, a powerful symbol of unity during the country's bloody political crisis, IOC President Thomas Bach said Saturday. In an interview with The Associated Press, Bach praised Ukraine's athletes for staying in Sochi to compete for their country despite the violence and turmoil that has left scores dead back home. "In this moment, mourning on the one hand, but knowing what really is going on in your country, seeing your capital burning, and feeling this responsibility, and then winning the gold medal, this...

The head of Russia’s Communist Party held up a hammer-and-sickle Soviet banner during a flower ceremony at the Winter Olympics, leading to a confrontation with staff over violating Olympic rules that bar political statements at the games. A series of photographs taken Friday night shows Gennady Zyuganov in a group of five men in the stands displaying the historic Soviet Banner of Victory toward the podium while medals were being awarded in three short track speedskating events at the Iceberg Skating Palace. The banner was a replica of the flag raised by Soviet soldiers in Berlin in 1945, in victory...

Before he headed to Moscow in January 2012 as Barack Obama’s new ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul was itching to get out of government. He had dreams of moving back to Palo Alto. The weather’s nice, his family missed the place. But Obama had come to rely on McFaul, a longtime Russia scholar and the National Security Council’s point man on the country. So he offered him a posting he couldn’t decline. McFaul’s academic specialty is revolution—a detail that Vladimir Putin, hounded by a bubbling uprising, immediately seized on. State television vilified McFaul as the man Washington had sent to...

Rematch of the epic gold medal game from Vancouver. Winner will face Sweden in the gold medal game. Let's hope the USA can get its revenge.

Change.org, a website that hosts public petitions, crashed Friday morning after a flood of users signed a petition to investigate a controversial Olympic figure skating result. Russia's Adelina Sotnikova won the gold medal in an upset over South Korea's Yuna Kim. After the event, a Change.org petition called "Open Investigation into Judging Decisions of Women's Figure Skating and Demand Rejudgement at the Sochi Olympics" was started by a user named "Justice Seeker." It went viral in a way the website had never seen before. "The petition gained 700,000-plus signatures in just six hours and is sending traffic to our site...

Dear Entertainment Tonight: You had invited me to do an interview concerning the Ladies’ Figure Skating results and my advice for gold medal winners. I had agreed subject to you allowing me to also use the interview to raise awareness to the more than 70 people killed and 600 injured in the Ukraine in their fight against Ukrainian government corruption. Unfortunately, you pulled a “bait and switch” on me and instead dealt with issues in your program irrelevant to anything that we had agreed to discuss. I should have known better than to trust you after having only recently learned...

What's missing from this list of people Mika Brzezinski blasted on today's Morning Joe for "making a lot of money at the Olympics" while Vladimir Putin's suppression of democracy in the Ukraine unfolds: "the people performing there, the people competing there, the people sponsoring there"? Did you say NBC, Mika's own parent network? You get a gold medal! To whom does Mika think "the people sponsoring there" are paying their millions to promote their products? Has Mika not noticed that regular programming on MSNBC itself has been pre-empted by the Putin Olympics? View the video here.

A revealing reminder of the provincial, bubbled leftists that run our media can be found in an NBC News piece profiling Olympic gold medal skier David Wise. NBC informs us in its headline that what led Wise to Olympic gold was his "alternative lifestyle." NBC was apparently surprised to learn that, at 23-years-old, Wise is already a husband and father. At such a young age, Wise has the lifestyle of an adult. He wears a Baby Bjorn baby carrier around the house. He also attends church regularly and says he could see himself becoming a pastor a little later down...

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American figure skater Johnny Weir has made quite an impression in Sochi working as a commentator for NBC during the Olympics. He frequently sports bright outfits, proclaimed his fearlessness in the face of Russia's anti-gay policies, and painted the town red (OK, pink) with fellow commentator Tara Lipinski. But on Wednesday, with his eyes on figure skating but his heart and mind on more pressing matters elsewhere, he used his fashion and his flamboyance to make a political statement. As only he can. Here is the statement:

In a preview of the U.S. military’s planned integration of females into combat positions, female skiers and snowboarders have been wiping out at disproportionate numbers at the Extreme Park in Sochi. Unlike traditional ski runs, which vary in difficulty according to whether they are designed for males or females, the course for highflying snowboarders and freestyle skiers is largely unisex: Females are expected to navigate the same jumps as the males. The result has been an avalanche of female falls and injuries: Of the 22 accidents that either forced athletes out of the competition or required medical attention on the...

Are you now, or have you ever been, a shill for Coca-Cola? A conservative think tank denounced Tuesday a nutritional advocacy group for its attacks on Olympic figure skater legend Michelle Kwan for being a pusher of soft drinks while sitting on President Obama’s fitness council, while the group doubled down on its position. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) had said Miss Kwan’s dual roles as a Coca-Cola “ambassador” to the Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, and her membership on the Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition were “unacceptable.” It “cannot be reconciled, since Coca-Cola and...

Jimmy Fallon proved Tuesday he wasn't a one-night wonder. The new "Tonight Show" host — oops, star — drew 7.4 million viewers for his second night, more than the combined total for his rivals, David Letterman on CBS and Jimmy Kimmel on ABC. Fallon still had, and will have all this week, the benefit of a lead-in from NBC's popular Olympics coverage.