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President Obama says part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "shtick" is to look like the tough guy in Russia. "I think that’s where some of these perceptions come up," Mr. Obama said. "My sense is that’s part of his shtick back home politically as wanting to look like the tough guy. U.S. politicians have a different style. We tend to smile once in a while. ..." ...""There is no doubt we wanted to make it very clear that we do not abide by discrimination in anything, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,..."

Returning to The View seven years after departing in an angry, liberal tirade, Rosie O'Donnell sat down with Barbara Walters and some of her former colleagues on Friday. Updating everyone on life since the show, she revealed that Parker, her now 18-year-old son, will be attending the Citadel. The 9/11 truther snapped, "...How do you annoy your left-wing liberal pacifist mother? You become a big military man." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] O'Donnell admitted she interrogated her son as to why he made such a decision and he responded, "Only in America, mom, could somebody like you who came from...

SOCHI — The protest was tiny by any global, urban standard. But the sentiment of the pair of men holding the signs was unmistakably loud. On a promenade in front of this city’s main railway station, one man held a placard, written in Russian and topped with an American flag, that read, GOD BLESS PUTIN BECAUSE HE IS AGAINST THE SIN OF SODOMY AND GOD BELIEVES IT IS DISGUSTING. Another raised a sign in English, this one surmounted by a Russian flag, with four boldfaced words: HOMO SEX IS SIN. Protests in and around these Olympic Winter Games are supposed...

Anti-abortion groups angry over what they see as the Girl Scouts' support for abortion-rights advocates, including Democratic Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, have launched a cookie boycott. The groups have taken issue with tweets and Facebook postings that link to articles recognizing Davis, who shot to political stardom last year with a filibuster of abortion limits, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, another Democrat who supports abortion rights. "It's very clear that they are not citing any pro-life leaders with any praise, even though their official stand is they are not taking any position on abortion," said John...

An 11-year-old boy is in the hospital after trying to commit suicide—the victim of bullying at school. It’s not a new problem in North Carolina, but this puts a new face on the age-old problem as Michael Morones remains in WakeMed with a tube down his throat and potentially life-long brain damage. Michael tried to kill himself, apparently because he could no longer take the torrent of bullying he was facing at school. “He’s the kid that never walks. He dances everywhere,” said Michael’s mother, Tiffany Morones-Suttle. “He’s so full of energy. He’s always on the move.” …

As if by magic, the stage morphed into a massive cathedral with imposing stained-glass windows and a marriage archway. High Priestesses “Material Girl” Madonna and pure “royalty,” Queen Latifah, then appeared on stage to join in marriage 33 couples of numerous sexual permutations, thereby sealing the new religion’s Oneist creed: all religions and all sexualities are One—to the thunderous applause of the thousands present, and to the approbation of millions of television viewers. The vacuous marriage sacrament of the “Grammys religion” and its further trivialization as an entertainment stunt, only underlines the spiritually empty gospel that Tinsel Town and its...

Conner Mertens, a redshirt freshman kicker at D-III Willamette University in Oregon, did something on Monday night that no college football player on any level had ever done before. He came out, while still an active player. First to his coach, then to his team, and now Conner Mertens is coming out publicly. “I'm bisexual,” Mertens told head coach Glen Fowles via Outsports.com, who informed his young kicker prior to his message that all the coach cared about was his kicker's accuracy. His off the field actions wouldn't affect his playing time, Fowles told Mertens. In fact, when Mertens asked...

<p>Ellen DeGeneres made television history in 1997 by having her character come out of the closet on a two- party episode of Ellen.</p> <p>Now, DeGeneres is a force behind One Big Happy, a new sitcom pilot featuring a pregnant lesbian and her gay best friend.</p>

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) says it was women joining the workforce after World War II that helped the economy grow, producing a “strong and healthy middle class.” And that continues to be the case today, she told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday. “And now, in very, very significant numbers, women are…a part of the workforce and have contributed greatly to allowing families to get ahead in the economy. What permits that is women being able to control when or whether they have children and how many. And it is so basic to our economic prosperity that women have that control.”...

Liberal pundit Sally Kohn on Saturday turned to Twitter to ask Disney when they will produce a movie featuring two princesses marrying another. “Watching Frozen, it’s awesome,” the CNN contributor and Daily Beast columnist tweeted. “But come on @DisneyPictures ain’t it finally time for a kid’s film where the princess marries a princess?!”

<p>A former aide to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander has been found dead in Maryland, just weeks after the former staffer’s arrest on child pornography charges.</p>

A former chief of staff for Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, has been found dead after committing suicide while awaiting court proceedings on child pornography charges. Jesse Ryan Loskarn's lifeless body was found Thursday by family members in their Sykesville, Maryland, home, and officials told MailOnline the former Senate staffer killed himself by hanging.

What to ask the ruler? Last summer I joined the presidential press pool in Sochi, Russia, the home of February's Olympics. Russian president -- and self-appointed Sochi Games manager -- Vladimir Putin was in town to christen an Olympic hockey rink and watch a junior game between the U.S. and Russia. The woman from his press office said I would have the chance to ask him a question. This was a significant proposal. Putin holds just one press conference a year, and even that is more like an autograph session. I hopped inside the van outside the Sochi Breeze Spa...

...Sizzurp is traditionally a blend of codeine syrup, a fizzy drink (in this case, Pineapple Fanta) and maybe some crushed up sweets or something for flavour, all served in a Styrofoam cup for added class – and police allegedly found a mountain of empty soda cans, personalised-with-a-biro Styrofoam cups and empty codeine bottles in Bieber’s mansion. However, as TMZ reports, police had to pass up a number of not-very-well-hidden-at-all items of drug paraphernalia while raiding Justin’s Calasbasas home – apparently including two cookie jars stuffed with ‘whacky tobacky’, as well as the aforementioned sizzurp ingredients – as the search warrant...

Robert Reece has found that ignoring the Man Code has improved his life enormously. Not only does traditional masculinity oppress women but it also severely restricts the agency of men (a topic, I’ve written about in the past in the context of straight man love and hip-hop), often in simple, taken-for-granted ways. Straight men go to extreme lengths to perform masculinity. They avoid a wide variety of activities that they arbitrarily deem feminine or “gay” without analyzing the detrimental effects of this type of gender policing. Often mundane, seemingly inconsequential activities are heavily policed, inhibiting men’s ability to live freely...

A law in Russia banning "homosexual propaganda" has been condemned by critics, who say it incites hatred. But a day hunting and relaxing in the forest - and hearing some extreme views - suggests it has plenty of support. Saunas are supposed to be relaxing but the prospect of this one filled me with dread. I was to share it with two heavily armed Russian hunters - Yuri, a steely-eyed veteran of Russia's bloody war in Afghanistan, and Georgy, a burly businessmen who cut his teeth during the violent chaos that consumed Russia after the fall of communism. That afternoon,...

This a collection of articles reflecting the developing news from Russia. The short of it is that a popular theologian, professor and thinker Deacon Kurayev decided to publicly condemn homosexuality and possibly pedophilia in his beloved Orthodox Church, to which he has every intention to remain faithful. The accusations take the form of a series of publications in Kuraev's blog; the accounts from the victims are published and the peculiar pattern of careers blocked or promoted based apparently on the intimacy of the candidate to a gay sponsor. The abuse itself is rarely criminal (other than grounds for a harassment...

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Friday that gay people have nothing to fear in Russia as long as they leave children alone. Putin met with a group of volunteers in the Olympic mountain venue at Krasnaya Polyana near Sochi on Friday to wish them success at the Games. During a question-and-answer session, a volunteer asked him about Russia’s attitudes toward gays, a subject that has provoked worldwide controversy, and Putin offered what was apparently meant to be a reassuring answer for visitors to the Olympics. “One can feel calm and at ease,” he said. “Just leave kids alone, please.”...

Jimmy LaSalvia, the founder of the conservative gay advocacy group GOProud, has officially announced his departure from the Republican Party. “Today, I joined the ranks of unaffiliated voters. I am every bit as conservative as I’ve always been, but I just can’t bring myself to carry the Republican label any longer,” LaSalvia wrote. “You see, I just don’t agree with the big-government ‘conservatives’ who run the party now.”

<p>On Friday a producer and former CBS reporter named Itay Hod put up a Facebook post intended to out Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock. The tabloid media, for years, has played a game with the young Republican—wink-wink stories about his photoshoot for a men's health magazine, the sexy celebrities he follows on Twitter, stuff like that.</p>