Anthony Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison for exchanging sexually explicit messages with a 15-year-old girl, capping the spectacular fall of the former congressman whose self-destructive behavior wrecked his career and marriage and played a role in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign. A tearful Weiner told U.S. District Judge Denise Cote that “the crime I committed is my rock bottom.” He was ordered to surrender to prison on November 6.

There are no national elections for president in the United States. Democrats relearned that lesson the hard way in 2016, when President Trump won the Electoral…

Organizers have stripped Miss Turkey 2017 of her crown over a social media posting that was deemed insulting to the memory of the 250 people killed while opposing last year's failed military coup. Miss Turkey organizers said the 18-year-old Itir Esen was dethroned on Friday, a day after she won the contest and the right to represent Turkey at the Miss World contest in China. The organizers said in an emailed statement that her title was revoked because of a tweet in July that they described as "unacceptable."

In a leaked audio tape of the Koch brothers top secret June 2014 retreat, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) not only admitted that the Republicans would be lost without the Kochs, and revealed who the real power is in the GOP.

The pressures of the presidency have pushed Donald Trump to the edge, but is he crazy enough to be removed from office? By Matt Taibbi.

Governor Huey Long was so anxious to get to the White House that he built his own in Baton Rouge. An assassin’s bullet cut short Long’s ambitions, but his gaudy knock-off survives. By William O’Connor.

Deconstructing power through fetish

Donald Trump has used his first address to the UN General Assembly to make clear that the US may have no choice but to “totally destroy” North Korea.  With North Korean diplomats sitting just yards from him, Mr Trump said he will have no option to resort to such actions if Pyongyang does not halt the development of its nuclear weapons programme.

Anita Felicelli on Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America."

The Senate contest in Alabama is testing the power of moneyed interests against Trump’s conservative base. By Michael Scherer and Matea Gold.

Voices for change are growing louder against a process that poisons our politics.

US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN.

A Tennessee town’s absurd and tacky monument to General Nathan Bedford Forrest. By Connor Towne O'Neill.

The vintage-style propaganda posters in Washington, DC take aim at white supremacism, racism – and Donald Trump. A daring act of resistance, or an insulting slur on the US President? By Rachel Stewart.

Kyiv should cease negotiations with Right Sector and declare its armed forces illegal, prosecuting those who continue to fight under its banner while allowing qualified former members to enroll in the National Guard and other state security organs as individuals. By Kimberly Marten, Olga Oliker. (Sept. 14, 2017)

Ignoring or downplaying colonial atrocities is the moral equivalent of Holocaust denial. By Nathan J. Robinson.

The United States could remain in the Paris climate accord under the right conditions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday, signaling a shift in tone from the Trump administration, which angered allies with its decision to pull out of the agreement.

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic is the first openly gay leader in the archly conservative Balkan country to walk in its pride parade. She said her presence shows that the government respects all of its citizens.

Memphis, a majority black city, can't take down a statue honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest because state law blocks the removal of Confederate monuments. By Liliana Segura. (Sept. 2, 2017)

Bright Future have just announced that they will be ending their coalition with the Independence Party, effectively collapsing Iceland’s government. By Paul Fontaine.

Legal experts say the revelation has enormous implications for the trajectory of Mueller's investigation into Russia's election interference.

Forty years ago, on Sept. 19, thousands of men walked into the Campbell Works of Youngstown Sheet and Tube along the Mahoning River before the early shift... By Salena Zito.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dropped the gloves Monday in his fight with Boeing, saying the government won't do business with a company that he's accusing of attacking Canadian industry and trying to put aerospace employees out of work. Trudeau's broadside represents the strongest Canadian rhetoric yet against the U.S. aerospace giant since Boeing launched a trade dispute with Montreal-based rival Bombardier earlier this year.

As tensions continue to ratchet up with North Korea, CNN has learned that the US is considering shooting down a North Korean ballistic missile even if it does not directly threaten the US or its allies.

Just when you thought your health care was safe...

In February, Arkansas lawmakers marked the 50-year anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act with a resolution calling it “a shining example of open government” that had ensured access to vital public records for generations.They spent the following weeks debating and, in many cases approving, new exemptions to the law in what critics called an unprecedented attack on the public’s right to know. By Andrew DeMillo and Ryan J. Foley.

"The nuisance for Merkel is that Seehofer, while less popular than she is even within his own party – the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung called him ‘Crazy Horst’ – has aired the possibility of withdrawing support for her, and habitually demands right-wing concessions, especially as they pertain to refugees." By Thomas Meaney.

Donald Trump once boasted that he’s so beloved that his base would stick with him even if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Thankfully he’s never tested this theory, though a polling company once looked into it and found that roughly a fifth of American voters would stand by him. Turns out Russia’s Vladimir Putin inspires a similar degree of blind devotion among his supporters.

Even if the referendum was born out of political manoeuvring within Iraqi Kurdistan, it has now built up its own momentum as Kurds rally around their red, white and green flag. By Patrick Cockburn.

Pournelle, Gingrich and Trump see a future that must be secured by authoritarian institutions that group together humanity’s best and prevent the rest from stifling them. By David Auerbach.

A furore over a paedophile's links to Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson has triggered the collapse of Iceland's ruling coalition. The Bright Future party announced it was withdrawing from the three-party coalition after nine months in office. It blamed a "serious breach of trust within the government". Earlier it emerged that the prime minister's father had written a letter recommending a convicted paedophile have his "honour restored".

“It’s *high* time to address research into medical marijuana,” Hatch said.

Former President Jimmy Carter offered a damning indictment of U.S. foreign policy and domestic affairs Tuesday, saying money in politics makes the nation more like an “oligarchy than a democracy” and casting President Donald Trump as a disappointment on the world stage.

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a strong supporter of gay marriage, defended the right of a church to refuse to marry a young couple who had posted support for same-sex unions on social media. The minister of a Presbyterian church in the southern state of Victoria told a young couple in their 20s that they would not be allowed to hold their ceremony at the church after the bride posted a message on Facebook supporting same-sex marriage.

The C.I.A. is pushing for expanded powers to carry out covert drone strikes in Afghanistan and other active war zones, a proposal that the White House appears to favor despite the misgivings of some at the Pentagon, according to current and former intelligence and military officials. If approved by President Trump, it would mark the first time the C.I.A. has had such powers in Afghanistan, expanding beyond its existing authority to carry out covert strikes against Al Qaeda and other terrorist targets across the border in Pakistan.