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President Barack Obama took unprecedented steps Thursday to retaliate against alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, prompting vows from Russian authorities that Moscow will respond in kind.

The Latest on President-elect Donald Trump (all times EST):

The US has ordered 35 Russian diplomats to leave the country in retaliation for alleged interference in the presidential election — and imposed sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence servi…

John Kerry ends his long career in politics the same way he began it: disgracefully. Kerry debuted on the national stage in 1971 by telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the American public that U.S. servicemen in Vietnam “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.” It was a stunningly thinly sourced, hotly disputed, and broad accusation, echoing the propaganda of America’s enemies around the world. Perhaps only in the Democratic party of the 1970s could this be the perfect audition for a political career. He would speak for many on the hard left on the day when he declared, “There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald’s hamburger stands.” Over four decades, Kerry established himself as one of the Democratic party’s loudest, if not wisest, voices in foreign affairs. In 1991, he voted against authorizing military force to expel Iraq from Kuwait, predicting that future historians “will ask why there was such a rush to so much death and destruction when it did not have to happen.” Twelve years later, he voted for the Iraq War, then turned around and tried to run as an antiwar presidential candidate. In September 2003, Kerry sounded as if he supported wartime funding bills — “I don’t think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running” — but as the Democratic presidential primaries heated up, he decided to vote “no.” That led to his infamous quote, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” In 1997, he wrote a book titled The New War, which touched briefly on terrorism but predicted that the preeminent threat that would face America in the coming years was#…#international crime syndicates. In that book, he saluted “Yasser Arafat’s transformation from outlaw to statesman.” Three times before 9/11, he voted against allowing terrorists to face the death penalty. In his 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry asserted that U.S. interventions had to pass a “global test” for legitimacy. RELATED: Kerry to Israel: A State Cannot Be Both Jewish and Democratic He loved to reach out to the world’s rogues. In 1985, he traveled to Nicaragua to meet and praise the country’s Communist strongman, Daniel Ortega, and to accuse the Reagan administration of funding terrorism. He praised the Clinton administration’s 1994 agreement to send aid to North Korea. Pyongyang’s violation of the agreement, a secret uranium-enrichment program, was discovered in 2002. Starting in 2009, he visited Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad several times, and in 2011 he said Assad was “very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had. . . . My judgment is that Syria will move; Syria will change, as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West.”  Against this ignoble record, one wonders why Kerry never seemed to get tired of giving dictators, terrorists, thugs, and brutal regimes the benefit of the doubt and having it blow up in his face. EDITORIAL: Obama’s Shameful Parting Shot at Israel In some ways, Kerry in 2013 was a perfect choice for Obama’s second secretary of state. For the better part of three decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry had spoken as if statecraft and international diplomacy were relatively easy tasks, and only the bunch of idiots in the current administration — Republican or Democrat — could mess it up like this. Finally, Kerry would get the chance to show everybody how it’s done. We see the results today: Syria is a charnel house. The Middle East has had plenty of bloody wars before, but only this one overwhelmed the countries of Europe with seemingly endless waves of desperate refugees. The preeminent form of Islamic fundamentalism used to be al-Qaeda, a bunch of extremists hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan. Now bloodthirsty Islamists run an actual state in the middle of the Arab world. Four years after the Benghazi attack, only one perpetrator has been brought to justice. Russia is emboldened, taking over Crimea, biting into Ukraine, and launching not-so-subtle cyber-warfare against the United States. The Iranians, too, are emboldened, despite the much-touted agreement on their nuclear program. China and North Korea keep rattling their sabers. Venezuela is collapsing. The Taliban continues to control swaths of Afghanistan after 15 years of war. Confronted with this litany of disaster, Kerry would probably point to four years of endless summits, meetings, joint statements, and — whether he’s honest enough to use these words or not —​ photo opportunities. Just as Hillary Clinton’s millions of miles traveled were supposed to represent some great accomplishment, Kerry will blur the distinction between activity and results. Kerry never seemed to get tired of giving brutal regimes the benefit of the doubt and having it blow up in his face. American foreign policy has been reduced to Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s asking whether Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the Ayatollah’s Iran have any shame. No, of course they don’t, and anyone who’s been paying any attention knows they don’t. The Iranians used children to clear minefields during the Iran–Iraq war. The Russians contaminated two British Airways jetliners with radioactive material in their successful plot to kill former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. What kind of administration would rely on the Russian and Iranian regimes’ sense of shame to protect civilians in Syria? Thus, it’s fitting that John Kerry’s last major act as secretary of state is a speech that offers up hot nonsense, a bitterly hostile address that called Israel’s government “the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by its most extreme elements.” (Mind you, the opposing side in this conflict elected Hamas, an actual terrorist group, to govern the Gaza Strip.) #related#Kerry and the administration assented to a statement declaring that the Western Wall and Temple Mount are illegally occupied, then shamefully insisted “this administration has been Israel’s greatest friend and supporter.” After signing on to the Iran deal, Kerry claimed that “no American administration has done more for Israel’s security than Barack Obama’s.” (Why do Israelis disagree so vehemently?) Kerry warned that Israel had to recognize a Palestinian state or effectively wither under endless terror attacks: “If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic —​ it cannot be both —​ and it won’t ever really be at peace.” He even seemed to suggest that those who support Israel’s current policies are un-American, asking, “How does the U.S. continue to defend that and still live up to our own democratic ideals?” The cement hardens on the Obama-Kerry foreign-policy legacy: They were toothless and hapless against ISIS, Bashar al-Assad, North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, and the world’s worst and most ruthless regimes. But as for Bibi Netanyahu, they came down on him like a ton of bricks. — Jim Geraghty is National Review’s senior political correspondent.

The president-elect seems intent on flouting anti-nepotism rules.

American taxpayers will pony up around $3.024 billion this year towards the United Nations’ regular and peacekeeping budgets, more than what 185 other countries combined are paying, an expert on the international body told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday.

When it comes to parenthood, you're never going to be fully 'ready.' But that's okay: despite all the difficulties, saying no to abortion is worth it.

Huckabee: Defund United Nations --- Use Money for Veterans Benefits

By TRAVIS ALLEN Beginning on Jan. 1, prostitution by minors will be legal in California. Yes, you read that right. SB 1322 bars law enforcement from arresting sex workers who are under the age of 18 for soliciting or engaging in prostitution, or loitering with the intent to do so. So teenage...

In his waning days in the White House, President Obama is desperately trying to make his policies as permanent as possible by tying the hands of his successor — and far more than other presidents h…

Michelle is going to be FURIOUS...

On Wednesday, Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, an anti-gun group, got herself tangled up in lies and obfuscations as she tweeted a response to Kimberly Corban, who was raped as a 20-year-old student in 2006 and has since become a passionate advocate for gun rights. Corban set off Watts’ demagoguery with this tweet:

President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian suspected spies and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies over their involvement in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 presidential election.

We all know the rules. Political leaders cannot be allowed unsupervised access to social media. David Cameron knew those rules. He refused to use Twitter and made fun of lesser politicians who did, and who often made fools of themselves doing so. 

GOP Rep Blackburn to Dems: Stop Blaming Russia and Realize Voters Didn't Like Your Candidate

The Buffalo School Board voted 6 to 2 on Thursday to call on the state education commissioner to remove Carl P. Paladino from office, a decision made amid the rallying cry of thousands of people outraged by controversial remarks he made about President Barack Obama and the first lady. A resolution approved by the board Thursday calls on Paladino to…

McConnell pledged that lawmakers will review Russia's meddling next year.

The White House rebuffed President-elect Trump's criticism of the administration's decision to not veto a U.N. resolution critical of Israel's settlements. In a briefing on the move Friday, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, said, On the president-elect, the first thing I'd just say is that there's one president at a time. President Obama is the president of the United States until Jan. 20, and we are taking this action, of course, as U.S. policy. Trump had tweeted his concern about the move at the United Nations that the U.S. did not disavow. As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th, Trump tweeted. Rhodes also said of Israel, I believe that despite what has at times been very strident Israeli government criticism of U.S. policies that President Obama has always made Israel and its security sacrosanct in his approach to these issues.

72 hours to leave.

Ryan added the sanctions are an "appropriate" way to end the Obama administration.

Here's the list of the top 10 fake news stories of the year. Fake news has been a huge problem for many years, but this year 'Fake News' became one of the to...

Kellyanne Conway may have managed to get Donald Trump to Washington, but she is finding it harder to do the same for her children.

A lack of patriotism, at a school named for the founder of our country.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that the United States and Russia lay to rest the controversy over Moscow's computer hacking of Democratic Party computers, saying, "We ought to get on with our lives."

Today, a truce has been brokered in Syria that will hopefully turn the corner on the worst humanitarian crisis in modern history. With the country torn to pieces, refugees have been flooding into E…