“Crimea’s parliament voted to join Russia on Thursday and its Moscow-backed government set a referendum on the decision in 10 days’ time in a dramatic escalation of the crisis over the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula.” – Yahoo! News

“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that if the 2016 presidential election were held today, 47% of Likely U.S. Voters would choose Clinton, while 33% would opt for Bush. Fourteen percent (14%) prefer some other candidate, while six percent (6%) are undecided.” – Rasmussen Reports

“A restaurant owner who provides a meal to a homosexual is not helping that person commit sin, and in fact by not serving that person would probably do more harm than good to the cause of evangelization. Similarly, a doctor who saves the life of a gay person is not an accomplice to that person’s immoral actions later on in life, in the same way that doctor is not responsible for the immoral sexual activities of a heterosexual person who sleeps around. However, a Catholic restaurant owner who provides a wedding reception for a homosexual couple would be participating in sin.” – Hot Air

“So where does the battle for the Senate stand today?” – The Federalist

“Traditionally, Russian power has rested on four pillars: population, energy, weaponry and geography. Three of these are diminishing.” – The Diplomat

“Yesterday Debo Adegbile’s nomination to head the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department failed 47-52. It didn’t take long for left-wing media to claim Adegbile was rejected … (drum roll) … because America is a racist country. Such a claim puts him right there in a class with Mumia Abu Jamal as a supposed victim of American structural racism.” – Christian Adams/PJ Media

“According to this, the University of Pittsburgh just did a study which says that yelling and shouting or otherwise raising your voice at your kids is basically the same as spanking, and that raising your voice at your kids could result in long term effects SIMILAR TO PHYSICAL ABUSE, and so we should all just start speaking softly and calmly and not upset our precious snowflakes in any way.” – Chicks On The Right

“In the six blue states with Democratic senators up this fall, Mr. Obama’s approval rating last year was below his 2013 national average in four and in two it was just above it. If the president’s ratings in these states have moved in tandem with his national number, he’s less popular in them now, since the president’s Gallup approval was down to 42% on Wednesday. History says it will be hard for Democrats to run much ahead of the president’s October approval number—and odds are that number will be lower than it is now.” – Karl Rove/WSJ

“House of Cards, the Netflix series about a lethally unscrupulous Washington politician, is a wonderful show, but it does sometimes stretch the limits of credulity. I have no trouble believing that a Democratic congressman would push a reporter in front of a train, but the idea that anyone in the press would try to expose him for it is flat-out ridiculous. After all, Barack Obama has been pushing reporters under the bus for six years and nobody’s said a word. Ah, well. If the show gives leftist politicos nightmares about being held accountable for their actions by American journalists, they can simply keep repeating, ‘It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie.’” – Andrew Klavan/City Journal

“Iran is scheduled to receive another $550 million in unfrozen assets from the Obama administration on Friday, just days after Tehran unveiled a slew of new weapons and advanced ballistic missiles.” – Washington Free Beacon