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Oh Kamala … we’re almost embarrassed for you. Almost. This is one of those instances where it’s better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove otherwise. She really thinks government has three functions (huh?) and they are as follows: " A government has three functions: public health, public safety, and public education. The GOP budget doesn’t prioritize any of them. " — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 5, 2017 Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wow, and this woman is a senator.

NBC Sports commentator Bob Costas suggested Saturday that protesting NFL players should wait until "the last note" of the national anthem to take a knee. Costas's comments came a week after NFL players locked arms to protest President Donald Trump's criticisms of those who kneel during the National Anthem. But the veteran sports journalist told CNN's Michael Smerconish that he believed a different approach could be more effective. "The idea of linking protests, no matter how legitimate the issue you are protesting, directly to the National Anthem is not just offensive to the love-it-or-leave-it crowd. It actually causes ambivalent feelings,...

He was just 24, but speechwriter David Litt had already become President Barack Obama’s go-to guy for anything considered “kishke-related.” In Litt’s parlance, that meant he wrote the president’s speeches aiming to connect with Jewish Americans on a gut level — things like holiday and anniversary commemorations, but not, say, Israel or foreign policy. That explains Litt’s presence one Friday night in the White House library in April 2012. A jet-lagged Obama had just returned from a trip to Asia and the last thing on his schedule was to record a video greeting for Passover. “All right,” Obama said grumpily...

All-Star pitcher Noah Syndergaard is criticizing President Trump for pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, suggesting the series of damaging hurricanes slamming the U.S. may be “karma.” “U.S. pulls out of Paris Climate Accord. Then hit by 4 Hurricanes in 6 weeks. Global Warming Karma?” Syndgaard tweeted late Monday night. He added a hashtag calling himself a Texan Republican. Syndergaard, a New York Mets star, grew up in suburban Dallas.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said the Republican party "acts as if climate change is not real" in an interview with Sen. John McCain on Sunday. "The Republican Party, as you know, generally speaking, acts as if climate change is not real," Tapper continued. "There are exceptions, you, your daughter, Meghan, the Republican mayor of Miami. But generally speaking, the president, the governor of Florida, et cetera, act as if it’s not real even though the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’s real and it’s man made." "Back in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy hit, your daughter Meghan McCain tweeted, 'So are...

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis and Orthodox Christian leader Patriarch Bartholomew called on Friday for a collective response from world leaders to climate change, saying the planet was deteriorating and vulnerable people were the first to be affected. The appeal comes three months after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from a global agreement, struck in Paris, to limit greenhouse gas emissions. “We urgently appeal to those in positions of social and economic, as well as political and cultural, responsibility to hear the cry of the earth and to attend to the needs of the marginalized,” Francis and Bartholomew said in...

UCLA professor Andrew Apter, a violinist in the Santa Monica Symphony, appeared on the Dennis Prager Show Monday to defend his call for musicians and members of the community to boycott a concert where Prager will be guest conducting the orchestra. Prager invited Apter onto the show after he and a fellow UCLA professor and violinist circulated a letter declaring: “Please urge your friends to not attend this concert, which helps normalize bigotry in our community.” After introducing his guest, Prager asked him if he would apply his liberal principles in all circumstances, such as the controversial 2008 visit of...

Sally Bedell Smith, dogged biographer and author of Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, out this week from Penguin Random House, has collected an exhaustive file of facts about the future king of England. Unlike his mother, Charles is not what you might call a beloved figure. And while Bedell Smith doesn't spare the touchy-feely, parapsychology loving, Dumbo-eared Charles, her portrait is also rich with sympathy, even affection. Bullied as a youth by his overbearing father (“Philip was the original alpha male,” Smith says), Charles spent his whole life seeking approval. Cowed by a sense of...

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center Pope Francis continues to argue for two interrelated points that, while seemingly humane, compromise Western nations and expose their citizens to danger. He reiterated his first point earlier this month when he said, “I appeal not to create walls but to build bridges.”  Francis has made this appeal frequently, both figuratively (when imploring Western nations not to close their doors against more incoming Muslim migrants), and literally—including by characterizing Donald Trump’s proposal to build a U.S.-Mexico wall as “not Christian.” Francis reiterated his second point a few...

In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd on Wednesday, billionaire tech giant Peter Thiel defended his support of President-Elect Donald Trump and offered some characteristically esoteric opinions on everything from Meryl Streep to “Star Wars.” To a question noting that “President Obama had eight years without any ethical shadiness,” Thiel replied, “But there’s a point where no corruption can be a bad thing. It can mean that things are too boring.”

Phil Murphy, the Democratic front-runner in the 2017 race to replace Gov. Chris Christie, picked up the endorsements of New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Senators on Monday and vowed to disobey orders from a President Donald Trump that would violate the constitution or are "un-American." Murphy appeared at his campaign headquarters in downtown Newark to tout the endorsements of U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez. "I will not take orders from an Administration that are unconstitutional or un-American," Murphy vowed.

“That’s not who we are,” Barack Obama often says when appealing to Americans to oppose illiberal policies such as torturing prisoners, barring immigrants on the basis of their religion, and denying entry to refugees. But now that Americans have elected a president who has called for precisely those policies, Obama’s confidence about who we are may seem misplaced. Questions about the defining values of our common nationality have haunted us before at critical moments in American history, and now they do again: In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, what does it mean to be an American? Will Trump and...

Celebrity chef and self-described “privileged Eastern liberal” Anthony Bourdain slammed his fellow leftist elites this week, arguing that their disdain for working-class Americans helped create “the upswell of rage and contempt” that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency. “The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now,” Bourdain said in an interview with Reason magazine. “I’ve spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America,” Bourdain...

What contracting Zika taught one traveler about traveling fearlessly I remember looking down at my polka-dotted legs as I lay by the pool of a small hostel in El Tunco, El Salvador. As I fought the urge to scratch, I counted the number of mosquito bites. Thirty-seven. I had thirty-seven bites on my legs, not to mention a few on my arms and the one driving me crazy on my back. I shrugged, sprayed my legs with more 99.9 percent DEET spray, and continued basking in the sun. A week after I tallied up my bites, on the last day...

A staff member at Ohio State University allegedly pleaded with Facebook friends to show a little sympathy for Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Somali-born terrorist behind Monday's attack that left nine people hospitalized. The since-deleted post attributed to Stephanie Clemons Thompson, Ohio State University Assistant Director of Residence Life, urged people to "find compassion for his life" and to "come together." The message also warned readers "DO NOT SHARE THIS POST."

Gannett publication - Title and link only. http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/28/elections-staff-layout-recount-timeline/94539210/

Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who was involved in an international custody battle 16 years ago in Miami, is mourning the death of Fidel Castro, a man he compared to a "father." Elian was a photogenic five-year-old in 1999 when he was found floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast. Sixteen years later, he is recalling Fidel Castro as a man he likened to a father. In an interview on Cuban State TV Saturday, he said he wanted Fidel to be proud of him. Speaking in Spanish, he said, "He is a father who like my father, I...

Congresswoman Barbara Lee expressed her sympathies with those mourning Cuban president Fidel Castro. He died Friday at age 90.

We are all still reeling from the shock of the election results. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote yet we now must brace ourselves for a Trump Administration. The more I think about it and see the reactions from all sides, the more this feels like the aftermath of an attack ― a literal attack ― on our communities. The groups that those “deplorables” love to hate and feel threatened by are now under attack: LGBT people, people of color, women, Muslims, the disabled and many others. This election was a hate crime. Not physical but psychological, and one that...

Osi Imeokparia, the Clinton campaign's chief product officer (don't ask), was interviewed on NPR yesterday and asked how she would feel if Donald Trump won the election. If you listen at about the 12-minute mark, you can hear her start to sob hysterically. "If Donald Trump is the victor, how devastating will that be to you?" she is asked. "Fairly. As you can see, I am a woman of color. I also am a recent naturalized citizen of the United States. On all dimensions this campaign is very personal (sob!) ... (sob! sob! sob!) ... So to work on behalf...