Caught on Tape: What Mitch McConnell Complained About to a Roomful of Billionaires (Exclusive)  —  At a secret meeting of elite donors convened by the Koch brothers, McConnell laid out his plan for shrinking the federal government and whined about having to vote on minimum wage bills.

The Left's Ridiculous Burger King Freakout  —  Burger King plans to merge with Canuck coffee-and-doughnut chain Tim Hortons and base the company's headquarters in Canada where it will enjoy the kind of reasonable corporate tax structure that Democrats continue to obstruct here in the United States.

Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty  —  WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.

Jon Stewart Goes After Fox in Powerful Ferguson Monologue  —  Jon Stewart returned from a long summer break to tackle the unrest in Ferguson over the past few weeks.  In fact, he started out by taking the Ferguson Challenge.  It's like the Ice Bucket Challenge, only with mace and tear gas.

U.S. Mobilizes Allies to Widen Assault on ISIS  —  WASHINGTON — The United States has begun to mobilize a broad coalition of allies behind potential American military action in Syria and is moving toward expanded airstrikes in northern Iraq, administration officials said on Tuesday.

Could an Independent in Kansas Swing the Senate?  —  In national politics, Kansas is considered as Republican as they come: Mitt Romney carried the state in 2012 by twenty-two percentage points, and the last Democratic Presidential candidate to carry Kansas was Lyndon Johnson, in 1964.

Video shows police shot Ohio man ‘on sight’ as he leaned on toy gun in Walmart, attorney says  —  Surveillance video shows an Ohio man talking on a cell phone, leaning on a toy gun, and facing away from officers moments before police shot and killed him in a Walmart store, according to an attorney for the man's family.

Plea to Islamic State for Release of Steven Sotloff  —  The mother of an American hostage being held by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria released an emotional video appeal to his captors on Wednesday.  Shirley Sotloff, the mother of the 31-year-old freelance journalist Steven J. Sotloff …

Marco Rubio's course correction on immigration  —  BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL IMMIGRATION BARACK OBAMA MARCO RUBIO  —  Marco Rubio's office got in touch this week to say the Florida senator and possible 2016 GOP presidential hopeful wanted to discuss immigration.

The NRA Pissed Off the Wrong Nerd Genius  —  Billionaire Michael Bloomberg already had the gun lobby in his sights.  Now Bill Gates is donating $1 million for universal background checks—and there's more where that came from.  —  Somewhere in a large glass tower in Northern Virginia …

World's Greatest Two-Year-Old Drops F-Bomb After Ice Bucket Challenge  —  We have seen have seen more ice buckets dropped on heads than we care to remember.  We have seen superheroes and wanted criminals, former presidents and wisdom teeth patients who are obviously faking it.

This is Uber's playbook for sabotaging Lyft  —  ‘Brand ambassadors’ with burner phones and credit cards attempt to #shavethestache  —  Uber is arming teams of independent contractors with burner phones and credit cards as part of its sophisticated effort to undermine Lyft and other competitors.

Between the World and Ferguson  —  When I was eighteen, I stumbled across Richard Wright's poem “Between the World and Me.”  The poem, a retelling of a lynching, shook me, because while the narrator relays the details in the first person, the actual victim of that brutish ritual is another man, unknown to him and unknown to us.

IRS ethics lawyer facing possible disbarment, accused of lying … A lawyer in the IRS ethics office is facing the possibility of being disbarred, according to records that accuse her of lying to a court-appointed board and hiding what she'd done with money from a settlement that was supposed …

Obama's Iraq Policy Has Been Pretty Masterly  —  I'm not a diehard supporter of Barack Obama's foreign policy.  Some of his actions I just plain disagree with: the surge in Afghanistan, the enormous increase in drone use, his almost inhuman patience in putting up with Bibi Netanyahu's nearly open contempt for him.