Liberal activists and economists pressed hard for the latest postponement, arguing that the economic recovery remains incomplete.

But the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan in (late) 2001 means that anyone born in the past 13 years has never known an America that isn't at war. Anyone born after 1984 has likely seen America at war for at least half of his or her life. And that's a lot of Americans.

Moreso than those wars, war today is distant, fought on our behalf.

Furthermore, in the House and Senate at the beginning of this session of Congress, 92 percent of members were Christian, 5 percent were Jewish, 0.4 percent each were Buddhist and Muslim and just 0.2 percent were unaffiliated. For those doing the math, that leaves only one member unaffiliated: Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona.

This begs the question: How much longer will this be thought of as a strictly Christian nation (if it ever really was one) with an overwhelming Christian government?

In March, Kevin M. Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton University, argued in The New York Times Sunday Review that “the founding fathers didn’t create the ceremonies and slogans that come to mind when we consider whether this is a Christian nation. Our grandfathers did.” This, according to Kruse, began with anti-New Deal business leaders in the 1930s who linked capitalism to Christianity as a public relations move.

We already see a rising sentiment in America that Christianity is under attack and losing the culture wars. Some even try to link Christian persecution abroad to the plight of Christians in this country.

If the unaffiliated are to make their presence felt in terms of more representation, it will most likely come on the Democratic side. As PRRI points out, in 1980 unaffiliated support for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan was by a margin in the single digits by percentage; in 2012, they supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 51 percentage points.

At one point Mr. Rubio, in discussing the importance of hindsight on the Iraq war, raised a recent boxing fight to make a point. “Based on what we know, a lot of things — based on what we know now, I wouldn’t have thought Manny Pacquiao was going to beat, uh, in that fight a couple weeks ago — — ” Mr. Rubio said before Mr. Wallace interrupted.

Mr. Rubio’s readiness for the presidency has been questioned among some Republican voters, given than he is a 43-year-old first-term senator, and moments like the boxing reference seemed discordant on a subject like the Iraq war.

Last week, former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida was the one in the hot seat, giving four different answers to whether he thought President Bush, his brother, made a mistake going to war in Iraq. The former governor ultimately said he would not have ordered the invasion in hindsight given that intelligence about Iraq’s chemical weapons turned out to wrong. Mr. Rubio, in his interview on Sunday, chose not to pile on Mr. Bush.

“I think any president, regardless of party, probably would have made a similar decision to what President Bush did at the time with the information he had available,” Mr. Walker said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” That said, Mr. Walker added that knowing now that the 2003 weapons intelligence was flawed, “we probably wouldn’t have taken that tack” in invading Iraq.

“You can’t be on the fence on this one: You’re either for it or against it,” Mr. Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Mr. Sanders opposed the trade authority and has drawn support from liberals for his stances to the left of Mrs. Clinton. “No fence-sitting on this one,” he added.

Mr. Haimour said that at least 500 civilians and security personnel had been killed over the last two days in and around Ramadi, either from fighting or executions. Among the dead, he said, was the 3-year-old daughter of a soldier.

Anbar Province holds painful historical import for the United States as the place where nearly 1,300 soldiers and marines died after the American invasion of 2003. Since the beginning of 2014, months before the fall of Mosul and the start of the American air campaign against Islamic State, the United States has been working with the Iraqi government to push back the extremist group in Anbar, sending vast supplies of weapons and ammunition and, more recently, training Sunni tribal fighters at an airbase in the province.

On Mr. Putin’s side, the Russian economy is getting a respite from the battering it has taken from falling oil prices and Western sanctions, with the ruble rebounding somewhat over the past three months. A semblance of calm on the Ukrainian front might help him argue against renewal of European Union sanctions when they expire at the end of July. The United States needs Russia’s cooperation in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have suffered setbacks, raising the question of what next. And, in Iran, where negotiations to limit Tehran’s nuclear program, in which Washington and Moscow are partners, are approaching a critical deadline.

The Iranian president called for an end to the Saudi-led airstrike campaign in Yemen — Tuesday was its 13th day — and for all Middle Eastern countries to “fight terrorism and extremism” together.

If confirmed, Mr. Mubarak’s release would be the latest erosion of the charges, convictions and sentences that the authorities had hurled against him after the 2011 uprising.

More than a month after the liberation, there is an undeniably Sunni face to the constellation of armed groups in control of the area, even if Shiite militia commanders still appear to be ultimately calling most of the shots.

The victory gave the slaves nothing but a sense of the grandeur of their master’s empire. The great victory only reinforced their great slavery.

The chief Russian question is: If the fatherland is a monster, should it be loved or hated? Here everything has run together, inseparably. Long ago, a Russian poet put it this way: “A heart weary of hate cannot learn to love.”

Of course, I wish my homeland victory. But what would constitute a victory for my country? Each one of Hitler’s victories was a defeat for the German people. And the final rout of Nazi Germany was a victory for the Germans themselves, who demonstrated how a nation can rise up and live like human beings without the delirium of war in their heads.

Today, though, Victory Day has nothing to do with the people’s victory or my father’s victory. It is not a day of peace and remembrance for the victims. It is a day for rattling swords, a day of zinc coffins, a day of aggression, a day of great hypocrisy and great baseness.

In the 16th year of his rule, President Vladimir V. Putin has achieved everything a dictator could strive for. His people love him; his enemies fear him. He has created a regime that rests not on the shaky paragraphs of a constitution but on the unshakable laws of the vassal’s personal loyalty to his sovereign, from the bottom to the top of the pyramid of power.

My father was a Russian; my mother, a Ukrainian. But the Putin regime has set our peoples against each other. Sometimes, I think it’s good my parents did not live to see how Russians and Ukrainians are killing one another. Continue reading the main story Write A Comment

It is impossible to breathe in a country where the air is permeated with hatred. Much hatred has always been followed in history by much blood. What awaits my country? Transformation into a gigantic version of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region?

Once again, the dictatorship is calling on its subjects to defend the homeland, mercilessly exploiting the propaganda of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Russia’s rulers have stolen my people’s oil, stolen their elections, stolen their country. And stolen their victory.

For example, recent research by the Economic Policy Institute shows that men still outearn women at every rung of the income ladder. The higher up the ladder, the bigger the gap. In 2014, women in the 95th percentile of female earners made 79 percent of wages for men at the 95th percentile, while women in the lowest 10th percentile made 91 cents for each $1 earned by their male counterparts.

Men even make more than women in traditionally female occupations. Recent research led by the University of California, San Francisco, shows that male registered nurses outearn female registered nurses by an average of $5,100 per year across most specialties and positions — an earnings gap that has not improved over the past 30 years. Other research has shown that male schoolteachers tend to outearn female schoolteachers.

In 2010, 2012 and 2014, congressional Republicans blocked consideration of the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill supported by President Obama that would have extended pay-equity rules that apply to federal contractors to the entire American work force, in addition to making needed updates to the Equal Pay Act. Obstructionism has only made the problem worse, and an even more pressing one for the presidential candidates to address.

Iran is already on a path to nuclear capability. Netanyahu should know, because he’s been pointing that out for more than two decades. B

■ We can try to obtain a deal to block all avenues to a bomb, uranium, plutonium and purchase of a weapon. This would allow Iran to remain on the nuclear path but would essentially freeze its progress — if it doesn’t cheat. To prevent cheating, we need the toughest inspections regime in history.

We can continue the sanctions, cyberwarfare and sabotage to slow Iran’s progress. This has worked better than expected, but it’s not clear that we have a new Stuxnet worm to release. And, partly because of congressional meddling, international support for sanctions may unravel.

We can launch military strikes on Natanz, Isfahan, Arak, Fordow and, possibly, Tehran. This would be a major operation lasting weeks. Strikes would take place in the daytime to maximize the number of nuclear scientists killed. All this would probably delay a weapon by one to three years — but it could send oil prices soaring, lead to retaliatory strikes and provoke a nationalistic backlash in support of the government.

Imagine if we had launched a military strike against Chinese nuclear sites in the 1960s. In that case, Beijing might still be ruled by Maoists.

“We do continue to have concern about the commitment of the Russians and the Russian-backed separatists to live up to the commitments they made in Minsk,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. “That failure on their part only puts Russia at greater risk of facing additional costs.”

“To Ferguson residents, business owners and to the entire country, the City of Ferguson looks to become an example of how a community can move forward in the face of adversity,”

Chief Jackson, 58, will receive a year’s pay — about $96,000 — and a year of health insurance as severance, the mayor said.

The Foreign Ministry in its statement said that the Year of Friendship would also commemorate the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s liberation, and was intended to bring relations “in the political, economic, humanitarian and other areas to a new level.”

but the closer ties to North Korea may serve only to reinforce his image as increasingly isolated from the world’s more established powers.

North Korea, meanwhile, has taken at least one step to reduce its own isolation. Last week, the country said it was reopening its borders, which had been closed to foreigners for four months over fears of Ebola, just in time to allow international participants in the Pyongyang marathon next month. It is only the second year that foreigners have been allowed to participate in the race in the North Korean capital.

Russia is one of just four countries — the others being Venezuela; Nicaragua; and Nauru, an eight-square-mile island in the South Pacific — to recognize Abkhazia as an independent nation.