Russian President Vladimir Putin shook hands (and smiled) with President Obama on Thursday morning at the 2013 G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, where leaders of major countries were ostensibly meeting to discuss the stability of the global economy. The tense handshake — a controversial trope during Obama’s previous visits to Russia — underscored Putin’s interference with American foreign policy. Up until yesterday, Russia supplied arms to the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, and Putin has helped stanch a United Nations resolution to sanction military intervention in Syria, while demanding that such a resolution pass before Russia would support a U.S.-led strike.

This is how it starts. In a brief follow-up to Secretary of State John Kerry's statements today, President Obama this afternoon slammed the U.N. Security Council's "incapacity" to act in Syria and said that he is considering an American intervention to try and mitigate that nation's attacks on its civilians. Don't call it a "war," though; President Obama prefers a "limited, narrow act."

As U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon awaits a report from weapons inspectors about last week's alleged chemical attack on civilians in Damascus, the U.S. is playing down expectations for a "smoking gun" connecting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the attack—and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is facing fierce opposition to intervention in parliament.

President Obama told CNN's Chris Cuomo that Wednesday's alleged chemical attack on Syrian civilians was "clearly a big event of grave concern" and agreed that the U.S. faces "an abbreviated timeline" in crafting a response.

This innocent, minute-long video of a young boy saying a few kind words about President Barack Obama while closing his eyes and clasping his hands would have gone wholly unnoticed — if not for the heaving mass of True Believers who see it as an absolute sign of an impending Apocalypse.

In a lengthy press conference this afternoon, President Obama touched on everything from Russia's codified homophobia to Edward Snowden to Al-Qaeda. The strangest moment, however, came when Obama started in on a metaphor about his wife not trusting that he did the dishes, and how that is kind of like Americans not trusting their government's surveillance programs. Maybe he just needs to show everyone the dishes, you know? See how that works? No? Well, he tried.

The White House just released this remarkable shot of President Obama and his family visiting Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island while on their tour of South Africa last month.

If you needed proof that the current IRS "scandal" is far less scandalous than the American people have been led to believe—besides the proof that already exists, of course—the New York Times has it for you today.

On the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his nation would not hand over NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Snowden, who remains ensconced in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, has allegedly released a statement of his own—but not everybody is buying it.

Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, two of the plaintiffs who brought California's same-sex marriage ban before the Supreme Court, were discussing the court's decision with MSNBC this morning when an unexpected phone call came from on high. The next thing you knew, President Obama was on speakerphone, calling from Air Force One to congratulate the women. Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami, Perry and Stier's co-plaintiffs, were called over from off-camera to take part in the president's well-wishing, which was brief but kind.

Smirking Punch puppet of a man Sean Hannity recently gave an interview with Playboy magazine, a dying softcore porn brand that in just 50 years has gone from interviewing people like Malcolm X to interviewing people like Sean Hannity.

Three people were wounded in a shooting today at Santa Monica College, and a suspect has been detained in the college library.

This week, we learned that the NSA is engaged in a series of prodigious data-mining operations in concert with several huge communications and technology companies. Today, Obama addressed the news. He didn't make anyone feel better.

When the Paper of Record published a blistering editorial on President Obama's overbearing national security precautions today, one line stood out from the dozens of others as being the most vicious: "The administration has now lost all credibility."

A day after a ricin-laced letter intended for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was intercepted by authorities, the FBI has seized another suspicious piece of mail—this one sent to the president.

In a speech interrupted by frequent heckling, President Obama today made a bold and daring call for America to try to adhere to age-old concepts of "law" and "basic human rights" in the amorphous and endless "war on terror." But might treating people "decently" threaten Our Freedoms?

Planned protests at IRS offices across the country seemed to stall at a few dozen Tea Party people outside the Treasury Department offices in Boston, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Washington today. Maybe there just aren't that many Tea Party people after all, or maybe Obama really did deploy the HAARP tornado machine.

If you have a keen memory, you may recall that U.S. president and Hellfire missile proponent Barack Obama once promised to close down our prison at Guantanamo Bay, where hope and civil rights go to die. That never happened, of course. But now, Obama has a golden opportunity to shut that motherfucker down.

Barack Obama's press conference today wasn't just about a couple of scandals and whatever's happening in Syria or Turkey. It was actually a metaphor, or a series of metaphors. Jessica Yellin knows this, because she was there, and she saw God punish Obama's lies with His rain.

Barack Obama and a visiting foreigner just had a press conference, but nobody cares about the other country (Turkey?) because there are scandals afoot in Washington, so everything's about Eric Holder always doing terrible things. Eric Holder is Obama's friend. So he won't be fired unless all of this doesn't go away in the next couple of news cycles.