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<p>NEW YORK (AP) Actors Jonah Hill, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kristen Bell are among a batch of celebrities donning Russian-language "Love Conquers Hate" T-shirts to show support for gays in Russia alarmed by a new law banning pro-gay "propaganda."</p> <p>It's part of an initiative launched Monday by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. gay-rights group.</p>

President Barack Obama is not an overtly religious man. He and his family rarely attend church, and he almost never elaborates in public about his own relationship to his Christian faith. But away from the public eye, advisers say, the president has carefully nurtured a sense of spirituality that has served as a grounding mechanism during turbulent times, when the obstacles to governing a deeply divided nation seem nearly insurmountable. Every year on Aug. 4, the president's birthday, Obama convenes a group of pastors by phone to receive their prayers for him for the year to come. During the most...

ABC is reporting that it is now almost certain Congress and the White House will not reach an agreement to avoid a government shutdown. On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl said, “I would now put the chances of a government shutdown at 99.9 percent” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Scathing allegations surface that Boy Scouts of America hid sex abuseParents, sons outraged, say they weren't notified09/16/2013 By: Laura Harris Stunning and disturbing revelations about the Boy Scouts of America on Monday morning. According to a Tampa Bay area attorney as well as a former Boy Scout parent, the Boy Scouts of America have been keeping a long standing record of scout on scout sexual abuse, but have at no point shared that information in a way to educate other Boy Scouts, Boy Scout Troops or their communities. The current lawsuit, set to go to trial in 2014, graphically details...

Speaking with Laura Ingraham this afternoon, George Stephanopoulos addressed Republican Sen. Rand Paul‘s suggestion that the ABC host purposely aided the Obama White House in driving the “war on women” narrative of 2012. In an interview with Geraldo Rivera last week, Sen. Paul asserted that Stephanopoulos’ “obscure” question about contraception during a GOP debate might hint that the newsman colluded with the Obama campaign to generate the resultant “war on women” narrative.

President Obama knows something about being a low-level, nonviolent drug offender, such as the kind the Justice Department today exempted from harsh mandatory prison sentences. In a sense, he was one himself once, although the young Barry Obama was never arrested or charged with a crime. Obama wrote openly in his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” about using marijuana and “maybe a little blow” during his high school days in Hawaii in the 1970s. Biographer David Maraniss reported that Obama was even a pot-smoking trend-setter and leader in the “Choom Gang.” But decades later, openly reflecting on the “stupid”...

Potential 2016 presidential contender Donald Trump spoke to ABC's Jonathan Karl Sunday morning and reignited the birther issue that he helped spark back in 2011, questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama's birth certificate and wondering whether Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada, was eligible to president. "Was there a birth certificate?" Trump asked. "You tell me. Some people say that was not his birth certificate. I'm saying I don't know. Nobody knows. And you don't know, either, Jonathan. You're a smart guy, you don't know, either." "I'm pretty convinced he was born in the United States," Karl said. "Ah!...

ABC News editor Don Ennis suffered a very public identity crisis by switching his gender twice in a three-month period, and posting a workplace memo attributing his actions to amnesia. According to a report by The New York Post, Ennis started dressing as a woman and going by the name “Dawn” in May, but recently switched back to being a “just another boring straight guy.” In a memo posted to the newsroom bulletin board Friday and first obtained by the website NewsBlues.com, Ennis called the episode a “transient global amnesia” and said he accused his wife of playing “some kind...

Wendy and Tom Montgomery are devout Mormons from California who pounded on doors in 2008 to support the passage of Proposition 8, the state referendum that overturned the ruling that allowed same-sex couples to marry in California, and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. They did so not knowing that their now 14-year-old son, Jordan, was gay and would later contemplate suicide because of the church's steadfast belief that homosexuality is a sin that would cut him off from his family not only here on earth but in the afterlife. "One of core tenets we believe in as Mormons...

On Friday it was revealed that the FBI is investigating Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) for allegedly sleeping with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. Despite this, when Menendez was given a six-minute interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC's This Week Sunday, he was not asked one question about the investigation or the allegations (commentary follows with full transcript at end of post): Raddatz began the interview asking Menendez about what Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had previously said on the program concerning immigration. She followed this up by asking Menendez what he wanted to hear from the President about this issue....

In a disgraceful breach of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, Disney Execs allowed their television network to willfully and premeditatedly expose millions of children and families to two men performing homosexual acts with one another. This was in the middle of the afternoon's highly rated college football game coverage on Thanksgiving Weekend. This is a clear example of incompetent executives abusing shareholder assets, undermining the reputation of the brand and the trust that the word Disney used to convey. This was all committed for the selfish desire of advancing their own lascivious agenda...(video)

In a clip posted to online knowledge forum Big Think via YouTube, former children’s show host Bill Nye spoke out against the denial of evolution, saying such views harm young people especially and hamper scientific progress. Nye, who hosted the educational show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” which aired on PBS Kids from 1993 through 1998, made the statements in a clip posted online on Thursday, and has since been viewed over one million times. In the clip, Nye praises the United States for its contribution to technological innovation, but says that the denial of evolution is unique to the...

The moderator of the lone October vice presidential debate was previously married to a top Obama official, an association both ABC News and the left-leaning Commission on Presidential Debates do not view as a conflict of interest. ABC Senior Foreign Correspondent Martha Raddatz, whose role as moderator was announced on August 13, was previously married to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski — an Obama appointee. Genachowki and Raddatz were married in 1991, the same year he graduated from Harvard Law School. Their marriage ended in 1997; the two have a son together. Raddatz does not report on the FCC...

The young serviceman convicted of plotting a massacre of his fellow soldiers near Fort Hood in Texas received dual consecutive life sentences today. Naser Jason Abdo, 22, sat in a Texas court today in a bizarre mask made of white cloth around his mouth and a black mesh covering over his hair and face, a Department of Justice official told ABC News. The life sentences were handed down for attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and for possession of a weapon in furtherance of a federal crime. Abdo got another 60 years for the attempted murder of "officers...

/user-picture --> Comedienne Joy Behar is starting to realize that nobody knows or cares about the perilously liberal cable network she starts working for in September. Promoting her soon to begin show on Al Gore's failing channel, Behar commented via Twitter Tuesday, "Current is like the g-spot of TV": So @current is like the g-spot of TV–it may be hard to find but once you find it, there’s nothing better.Channel finder current.com/joy — Joy Behar (@JoyVBehar) July 31, 2012 I guess no one at Current has had the heart to tell Behar the reason nobody in America knows how to...

Dick Cheney has some advice for Mitt Romney on choosing a running mate: Don't pick another Sarah Palin. In his first interview since receiving a heart transplant in March, Cheney told ABC News, that John McCain's decision to pick Palin as his running mate in 2008 was "a mistake" - one that it is important from Romney not to repeat. It's subject on which Cheney has some unique experience. He helped Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush lead their vice presidential searches and, of course, served as vice president for eight years. He's also privately offered some advice to...

If you were a television news anchor reporting on falling gas prices, why would you say "the best news" was that a gallon of gasoline "might drop another 50 cents by Halloween, just in time for the election?" Believe it or not, ABC's Paula Faris, appearing on Monday's Good Morning America, actually said exactly that (video follows with transcript and commentary): ABC Anchor: 'The Best News' - Gas Prices 'Might Drop Another 50 Cents...Just in Time For the Election' GRAPHICS: PRICE PLUNGE AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS): And millions of Americans are getting ready to hit the road for the July...

BOSTON - At his 99th fundraiser of the year, on the home turf of rival Mitt Romney's re-election campaign, President Obama tonight presented a vigorous case for a second term, framing the November vote as a series of personal choices that will have tangible effects on the lives of everyday Americans. On Afghanistan: "You can decide whether we keep our men and women in Afghanistan indefinitely, as Mr. Romney proposes, or we can stick to the timeline that I established that allows us to bring finally bring our troops home," Obama said. "That's my decision." On Women's Health Issues: "You...

Canadian Luka Rocco Magnotta, who allegedly videotaped the murder of his lover and mailed his body parts, has been captured in a Berlin Internet cafe, according to the Berlin Police Department. A man in an Internet cafe spotted Magnotta about 2 p.m. in Germany and recognized him as the Canadian fugitive, Berlin Police spokesman Thomas Neuendors told ABCNews.com.

"Whatever people think about this issue, we know it's controversial, there's no denying when a president speaks out for the first time like that, it is history," co-host of ABC's "Good Morning America" George Stephanopoulos said to Robin Roberts. And let me tell you, George, I'm getting chills again," "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts said about her interview with Obama. "When you sit in that room and you hear him say those historic words. It was not lost on anyone in there right there. You never know what he's going to say until you ask him," she added.