“You’re official,” Maj. Stephen Snyder-Hill said to his husband, Joshua, after he got his spousal military ID card on Tuesday. Stephen and Joshua Snyder-Hill talk to BuzzFeed about the process, the change, and what remains.

Photos courtesy of Joshua and Stephen Snyder-Hill

WASHINGTON — Major Stephen Snyder-Hill found himself at the center of the national debate over the end of "don't ask, don't tell" when he was booed by audience members at a a September 2011 Republican presidential debate when he asked about the change that allows him now to serve his country and talk openly about his husband, Joshua.

Two years later, in a sign of the changed landscape for same-sex couples, Stephen and Joshua Snyder-Hill went to the Defense Supply Center, Columbus, or DSCC, in Ohio on Tuesday — where Joshua became "official," as Stephen put it, and received his spousal military ID card on the first day the cards were available to same-sex spouses.

"I've been in the military for 24 years. I was pre-'don't ask, don't tell,' during and after. It's just been a really long fight, I think, for [same-sex couples'] military families to be able to get the same protection that other soldiers' families get," Stephen Snyder-Hill told BuzzFeed Tuesday afternoon. "I mean, we've had times when we've had family days, things that just beat down your morale because you just feel like you're not the same or you're not equal or you're not protected as well. And I think that now, we're pretty much equal."

The U.S. military began recognizing married same-sex couples Tuesday, and one of the key changes allows service members' same-sex spouses to obtain a spousal military ID card. The card provides access to bases and services provided by the military to military families, and, before Tuesday, it was available only to opposite-sex spouses.

Before June, when the Supreme Court struck down the ban on the federal government recognizing same-sex couples' marriages, the military had at first refused equal recognition and then announced it would prepare "domestic partner" ID cards. With the ruling, however, the Pentagon changed course, announcing that full marital recognition would be forthcoming.

Tuesday it arrived, and Stephen and Joshua Snyder-Hill were among the first to take advantage of the change — although both pointed to the fact that, off base, their home state of Ohio does not recognize their marriage.

"It's weird, because today was when the reality is finally hitting. We've been watching it gradually change ... It's one of those instances where, I didn't even get excited for the moment because you don't know what it's going to be like. You kind of have reservations about whether it's actually going to happen. You saw some of the posts about different places in Texas saying they wouldn't be able to recognize it," Joshua said of the Texas National Guard's notice, reported by The Washington Blade, that relying on Texas law it would not be recognizing same-sex spouses despite the Pentagon's change in policy.

"You don't know how the people are going to react to you. There's this weird kind of suspicion as to whether it's actually going to happen, even though it's all over and you see it and it's moving in the right direction. It just didn't feel real until the guy handed me the card."

The couple's day began early on Tuesday, as Joshua told BuzzFeed on Tuesday.

"We found out, actually, that they had just changed the hours this week to 6:15 in the morning, so we literally pulled up to the office at 6:15 this morning. So, that very, very dark picture is because, yes, it was pretty early," he said.

"I even got to work on time. I was able to go home, have a cup of coffee and still come to work and be there on time."

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“Secretary Kerry, the American people say no to war. Ban Ki-moon says no to war, the Pope says no to war. We don’t want another war,” Medea Benjamin of Code Pink yelled at the hearing after Kerry was finishing his remarks. “The first time I testified before this committee, when I was 27 years old, I had very similar feelings to that protester,” Kerry said.

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“All I did was raise a hypothetical question,” Kerry says.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey (left), Secretary of State John Kerry, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel testify at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press / MCT

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry refused to absolutely rule out the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground in Syria on Tuesday.

During a hearing on Syria in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, committee chairman Sen. Bob Menendez asked Kerry whether there would be any possibility of ground troops eventually entering Syria at some point.

The administration has "no desire" to do that, Kerry said.

But, "In the event Syria imploded for instance or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of al-Nusra or someone else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies — all of us, the British, the French, and others," Kerry said, "I don't want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the president of the United States to secure our country."

Kerry quickly walked it back, saying, "The bottom line is, the president has no intention and will not, and we do not want to, put American troops on the ground to fight this, or be involved in the fighting of this civil war, period."

As it stands, the administration's proposal for Syria has consisted of limited air strikes that would take place over a few days.

Pressed on this point later by Sen.Bob Corker, Kerry said, "All I did was raise a hypothetical question about some possibility — and I'm thinking out loud — about how to protect America's interests."

"There will not be American boots on the ground with respect to the Syrian civil war," Kerry concluded, still not absolutely closing the door on the idea of American boots on the ground for another purpose.

Later, Kerry returned to the question, saying "I don't want anyone misinterpreting this from me earlier" and specifying that in the authorization of force proposed by the administration "there's zero capacity" for ground troops. Kerry reiterated that he was "hypothesizing" about potential future scenarios, "but not in this authorization."

"As Secretary Kerry made clear repeatedly during the hearing and over the last several months, the Administration is not considering and has no plans to consider boots on the ground in Syria," said State Department spokesperson Jennifer Psaki in an email to BuzzFeed. "Period."

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“Aware of the threat to peace and security in the region posed by all weapons of mass destruction and of the need to establish a zone free of such weapons in the Middle East,” the proposed U.N. resolution read.

SANA, File / AP

Syria once pushed at the United Nations to make the Middle East a "zone free of weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons." The draft resolution from the now war-torn regime of Bashar al-Assad came in December 2003, after the United States had accused Syria of developing weapons of mass destruction in the wake of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The move was aimed at Israel, which is believed to possess nearly 100 nuclear weapons, something the Israeli government neither confirms or denies.

The proposed resolution called on Middle East states to adopt the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (PWC), and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.

The United States' representative to the United Nations at the time, John Negroponte, said the U.S. was still "concerned" about Syria's chemical weapons stockpile.

"We think the focus at the moment is the search for WMD in Iraq," Negroponte said. "Secondly, we are concerned about Syria's own WMD and obviously, if a council member or any member of the United Nations proposes a resolution for consideration, we are prepared to consider it, that doesn't mean to adopt it, embrace it or endorse it in any way, shape or form."

The draft resolution, which was never adopted, was a regular move by Arab states hoping to take a stand against Israel's nuclear weapons.

"As the Arab representative on the council, they wanted to take a strong stand against Israel. It's a move that regularly comes up in the General Assembly but can usually be fought off in the Security Council before it is brought to a vote. The Syrians turn on the council was tumultuous as they tied everything they could to Israel," former U.N. spokesman Ric Grenell said.

According to a declassified United States intelligence estimate, more than 1,400 people died in the chemical weapons attack that took place in the Damascus suburbs on August 21st. The report says the Syrian government carried out the attack.

A PDF of the resolution draft has been embedded below:

Oh my.

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Getting out of Vietnam vs. getting involved in Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry, 69, spoke before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday about getting involved in Syria.

On April 22, 1971, Naval Lt. John Kerry, 27, spoke before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about leaving Vietnam.

A protester inturrupted the hearing Tuesday, and Kerry responded by mentioning his remarks in 1971.

"The first time I testified before this committee when I was 27 years old," Kerry said. "I had feelings very similar to that protestor and I would just say that is exactly why it's so important that we're all here having this debate talking about these things before the country and that the Congress itself will act representing the American people and I think we can respect all those who have a different point of view."

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“I think we need to talk about that in our classified session.”

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“100% of Americans will say no” to war in Syria, Kerry said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presents the administration's case for U.S. military action against Syria to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington September 3, 2013.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a fiery rebuke to Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's line of questioning at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on possible U.S. engagement in Syria Tuesday. Kerry said Americans were not going to be declaring war "in the classic sense," and that "100% of Americans would say no to such a scenario.

"We don't want to go to war. We don't believe we are going to go war in the classic sense of taking american troops and America to war," Kerry said to Paul. "The president is asking for the authority to do a limited action that will degrade the capacity of a tyrant who has been using chemical weapons to kill his own people. It's a limited action. It's limited."

Kerry continued, abated, by Sen. Paul saying, "if your goal is not to win you shouldn't be involved."

"Senator, when people are asked do you want to go to war in Syria? Of course not. Everybody, 100% of Americans will say no, we say no. We don't want to go to war in Syria either. It is not what we are here to ask. The President it is not asking you to go to war. He is not asking you to declare war. He is not asking you to send one American troop to war," Kerry said.

Kerry, making the case that action would be limited, said action was needed to degrade Assad's capacity to use chemical weapons. Arguing again it wasn't war in the "classic" sense.

"He is simply saying we need to take an action that can degrade the capacity of a man who has been willing to kill his own people by breaking a nearly 100-year-old prohibition, and will we stand up and be counted to say we won't do that," Kerry added. "Ya know, I just don't consider that going to war in the classic sense of coming to congress and asking for a declaration of war and training troops and sending people abroad and putting young americans in harms way. That is not what the president is asking for here."

Earlier in the hearing, Kerry said he didn't want to "take off the table an option" of Americans ground troops being involved in the case of chemical weapons falling into the hands of someone not in support of U.S. interests.

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An aide to the former secretary of state says Clinton is on board with asking Congress for a “strong and targeted response.”

Clinton on July 9 in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Matt Rourke, File / AP

For the first time since Aug. 21's deadly apparent gas attack, Hillary Clinton's camp has come out to support President Obama's decision to ask Congress to approve a military strike against Syria.

"Secretary Clinton supports the President's effort to enlist the Congress in pursuing a strong and targeted response to the Assad regime's horrific use of chemical weapons," a Clinton aide told Politico on Tuesday.

ABC and The New York Times received the same statement.

Clinton has thus far been publicly silent on the issue of intervention, though she did tweet congratulations on Monday to Diana Nyad, who had just completed a swim from Cuba to Florida.

LINK: What If Congress Says No? White House Won’t Say

LINK: Boehner: "I’m Going To Support The President’s Call For Action"

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“People always complain we don’t have enough bipartisanship around here, this would be a example of bipartisanship if we could stop this war.”

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 03: Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday he saw the best opportunity to defeat a resolution to strike Syria in House, where he said it was possible a bipartisan coalition could vote down any military action.

Speaking on a conference call with reporters after a more than three hour Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on authorizing force against Syria, the libertarian leader said he had started to speak with several Senators and representatives to begin to drum up opposition.

But he said Democrats would need to join them: he pointed to a narrowly defeated House amendment to defund the National Security Agency as proof that bipartisan opposition was possible.

"I think the NSA vote the other day, is a good example of Republicans and democrats coming together on an issue. I think the only problem here is because it's so high profile, some Democrats are going to vote party politics over their conscience and it'll be close," he said. "The only way to defeat it is a bipartisan fashion. People always complain we don't have enough bipartisanship around here, this would be a example of bipartisanship if we could stop this war."

Paul, who earlier this year staged a 13-hour filibuster on President Obama's drone policy, did not rule out doing the same to protest a military strike on Syria.

"Whether there's a standing filibuster, I've got to check my shoes and my ability to hold my water and we'll see. I haven't made decision on that," he said.

Paul aggressively questioned Secretary of State John Kerry during Tuesday's hearing, but also acknowledged in his questioning that a resolution to use force in Syria could ultimately pass.

"Say you're going to obey the Constitution and if we vote you down — which is unlikely, by the way, but if we do — you would go with what the people say to their Congress and you wouldn't go forward with a war your Congress votes against," he pressured Kerry.

Kerry would only say that he did not know what the President would do but that Obama had the constitutional authority to strike even if Congress voted the measure down.

Liberal group behind the “General Betray Us” ad turns its aim to Obama’s war.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

WASHINGTON — One of the defining foes of George W. Bush's war in Iraq is taking the first steps toward a broad-based campaign against the march to war in Syria.

On Tuesday, MoveOn formally polled its membership to form an official stance on the Congressional authorization for military action in Syria the White House wants to see pass next week. A MoveOn leader told BuzzFeed Saturday that the group's membership is broadly opposed to the war in Syria.

The results of the poll, expected to come Wednesday, will likely formalize that view and let MoveOn begin a campaign to convince Democratic members of Congress to oppose authorizing military action.

"When we're considering launching intensive national campaigns, MoveOn has historically given our full membership a chance to make their voices heard via a formal vote," MoveOn spokesperson Nick Berning said. "That's what we're doing here."

No campaign will go forward if MoveOn members vote to support the authorization of military action in Syria.

During the Iraq war, MoveOn's sometimes controversial campaigns helped push Democrats into supporting bringing an end to the conflict. Its influence was essentially unrivaled among progressive groups at the time.

Years later, however, things have changed. As the Huffington Post first reported last year, MoveOn has gone through a significant changes at the national level, leading to the loss of key personnel. It's not clear what influence the new MoveOn would have on the debate if it launches a national effort to defeat Congressional authorization of the Syria strikes Obama wants.

But with much of the progressive organizing community is still on the sidelines of the Syria debate, MoveOn could end up being the most vocal progressive force opposing Obama's war.

Despite lingering questions, even critics of the Obama administration’s plans for military strikes on Syria say “you’re probably going to win.”

Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press / MCT

WASHINGTON — As they made the first public pitch to Congress for military action in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey were consistent about why the administration must intervene. But when it came to defining the goals, strategy, and end-game of the mission, the three were often unclear.

Kerry began by re-stating the administration's case that U.S. intelligence showed that a large-scale chemical weapons attack on August 21st was definitely carried out by the Assad regime.

"We're here because against multiple warnings from the President of the United States, from the Congress, from our friends and allies around the world, and even from Russia and Iran, the Assad regime – and only, undeniably, the Assad regime – unleashed an outrageous chemical attack against its own citizens," Kerry said.

Hagel then argued that the use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces could lead to chemical weapons proliferation throughout the region, including to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanon-based militant group.

"If Assad is prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people, we have to be concerned that terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which has forces in Syria supporting the Assad regime, could acquire them," Hagel said.

But once the presentations were over and the questioning began, the three officials were sometimes convoluted in their answers and gave little indication of exactly how the mission would work, how long it would last, and how much risk there would be that the Syrian president could carry out further atrocities.

Dempsey, under questioning from Senator Jeff Flake, acknowledged that the delay resulting from the Obama administration's decision to put the proposed strikes to a congressional vote had already complicated the military's job.

"There is evidence that the regime is reacting to the delay but also they were reacting before that to the unfortunate leak of military planning," Dempsey said. "This is a very dynamic situation." At a separate point in the hearing, Kerry also criticized leaks of military planning.

Yet Kerry argued that the delay was in fact beneficial, saying: "We are not losing anything by waiting and in fact, in my opinion, there are advantages."

Kerry at one point appeared to suggest that the strikes could eventually be followed by ground troops in a hypothetical future scenario, eliciting criticism from some members of the committee. Obama has repeatedly said there will be "no boots on the ground" in Syria.

Kerry said: "I think the President will give you every assurance in the world, as am I, as is the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman, but in the event Syria imploded, for instance, or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of somebody else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies and all of us, the British, the French, and others, to prevent those weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of the worst elements, I don't want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to a president of the United States to secure our country."

He walked back that statement later, while still not completely closing off the possibility of ground troops outside the parameters of the proposed authorization of force sent by the administration to Congress.

"All I did was raise a hypothetical question about some possibility — and I'm thinking out loud — about how to protect America's interests," Kerry said. "There will not be American boots on the ground with respect to the Syrian civil war."

"I didn't find that response very appropriate," Senator Bob Corker, the ranking member on the committee, said of Kerry's answer about ground troops. "I don't think there are any of us here who are willing to support boots on the ground."

The State Department pushed back almost immediately on a BuzzFeed story about Kerry's answer, sending the following quote from spokesperson Jen Psaki: "As Secretary Kerry made clear repeatedly during the hearing and over the last several months, the Administration is not considering and has no plans to consider boots on the ground in Syria. Period."

Kerry faced a serious challenge from Senator Rand Paul, one of the few members of the committee who appeared vehemently opposed to the proposed intervention. In response, Kerry made a confusing argument that the air strikes did not constitute an act of war.

"We don't want to go to war. We don't believe we are going to go war in the classic sense of taking American troops and America to war," Kerry said. "The president is asking for the authority to do a limited action that will degrade the capacity of a tyrant who has been using chemical weapons to kill his own people. It's a limited action. It's limited."

"The President is not asking you to go to war," Kerry said. "He is not asking you to declare war. He is not asking you to send one American troop to war."

Though Paul conceded that "you're probably going to win" Congress' approval of the strikes, he demanded that Kerry assure him that the U.S. would not attack Syria without the approval of Congress.

"[Obama] still has the constitutional authority and he would be in keeping with the Constitution" if he acted without the approval of Congress, Kerry said.

Despite the frequent fumbling, the administration officials appeared to have the support of most of the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They will face a tougher crowd during a similar hearing on Wednesday, when they face the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Following a federal court’s order Tuesday, the Cincinnati Health Department is expected to issue a death certificate recognizing the marriage of William Herbert Ives, who died at 54, and his surviving spouse, David Michener.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich

Rick Osentoski / AP

WASHINGTON — Ohio, despite a constitutional amendment to the contrary, is poised to recognize a same-sex couple's marriage for the first time, following a judge's order Tuesday in a lawsuit that specifically aims to "set a precedent that will lead to relief for other same-sex couples."

The recognition will be bittersweet for David Michener, however, as the marriage will be noted on the death certificate of his husband, William Herbert Ives, who died unexpectedly at 54 on Aug. 27. According to an obituary, Ives leaves three children he and Michener are raising.

United States District Court Judge Timothy Black issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday that requires the registrar of the Office of Vital Records in Cincinnati's Health Department and state officials to recognize Ives' and Michener's marriage. The order echoed one he previously issued in the case as to another same-sex couple who married in Maryland.

Black held previously and again Tuesday that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their lawsuit claiming that Ohio's constitutional and statutory bans on recognizing same-sex couples' marriages violate the U.S. Constitution.

The original complaint was brought by James Obergefell and John Arthur to enable Arthur, who is in hospice care, to be listed as married and Obergefell to be listed as his surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate when he dies. As both men remain alive, the court order has not led Ohio officials to take any specific action recognizing the Obergefell–Arthur marriage.

By amending the complaint on Tuesday to include Michener's claim, however, Ives' death certificate — listing him as married — likely will be issued in the coming day, as the complaint states that "[a] death certificate is needed now in order to proceed with a cremation of Mr. Ives on September 4, 2013."

Although Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, also named in the lawsuit, continue to defend Ohio's bans on recognizing same-sex couples' marriages, neither opposed the request to amend the complaint to include Michener's request. Cincinnati's registrar, Dr. Camille Jones, meanwhile, has notified the court that she "will not defend Ohio's discriminatory ban on same-sex marriages."

As Judge Black already had issued the order as to Obergefell and Arthur, there was little doubt as to whether he would reach the same result as to Michener.

DeWine's office, meanwhile, does not appear to see a means of opposing the ruling at this time. Following Black's decision on the temporary restraining order Tuesday, a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General's Office, Dan Tierney, simply told BuzzFeed, "Temporary restraining orders generally are not appealable."

Prior to the Tuesday decision to amend the complaint, the temporary restraining order regarding the Obergefell–Arthur marriage was extended on Aug. 13 "until December 31, 2013, or to the date of decision on the merits," with a hearing on a permanent injunction set for 10 a.m. Dec. 18. It was not immediately clear if the Tuesday amendments to the complaint would lead to changes in that timeline.

Illustration by John Gara / BuzzFeed; Joe Raedle / Getty Images; Saul Loeb / Getty Images

Richard Branson, James Cameron, Ted Turner, Tom Brokaw, and Tommy Lee Jones joined more than 100 other paying guests — Gore's handpicked best and brightest — on the National Geographic Explorer, an ice-class 367-foot cruise ship, to see "up close and personal" the effects of a warming planet, courtesy of the former vice president's environmental nonprofit, the Climate Reality Project. Singer Jason Mraz, another passenger aboard Gore's Antarctic voyage, would later describe the trip on his blog as "a kind of floating symposium, much like the TED Talks series."

Back in the more populated areas of the world, climate change activists snickered. The trip, and the Climate Reality Project, drew headlines but did little, they said privately, to affect the movement Gore hoped to revolutionize when he founded the group in 2006.

In the years since the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the Nobel Peace Prize that followed made Gore the number-one climate change advocate in the world, the activist group he created with his fame has been steadily shrinking, as has its once-lofty mandate: to create a new nonpartisan global movement around climate change.

The numbers, according to a review of the nonprofit's tax filings, show the change has been severe. In 2009, at its peak, Gore's group had more than 300 employees, with 40 field offices across 28 states, and a serious war chest: It poured $28 million into advertising and promotion, and paid about $200,000 in lobbying fees at the height of the "cap and trade" energy bill fight on Capitol Hill.

Today, the group has just over 30 people on staff and has abandoned its on-the-ground presence — all of its field offices have since shut down — in favor of a far cheaper digital advocacy plan run out of Washington. Advertising expenses have decreased from the millions to the thousands, and the organization no longer lobbies lawmakers. Donations and grants have declined, too — from $87.4 million in 2008 to $17.6 million in 2011, and many of its high-profile donors have drifted away, one telling BuzzFeed she now sees the group's initial vision as "very naïve."

Slick and omnipresent television ads from the group's early years, produced by the same agency that made the Geico Auto Insurance gecko famous, have been replaced by smaller web-based programs. One ongoing effort, "Reality Drop," helps activists post boilerplate comments to blog entries written by climate change skeptics.

Some climate change activists look at the Climate Reality Project today and question whether it can do much in its newest, stripped-down iteration. In a testament to Gore's celebrity, however, most of these comments come in private.

"I can't really think of much to say about Gore's efforts that I'd want to put on the record," a prominent climate change activist told BuzzFeed in a typical email.

Gore poses for a photo with singer Jason Mraz (left) on the Climate Reality Project ice cruise to the Southern Hemisphere last January.

Jason Mraz / Via jasonmraz.com

Supporters of Gore's team, including the current leadership of his group, say the changing focus of the organization — first called the Alliance for Climate Protection — reflects the shift in the climate debate that has transformed nearly every player in the movement since Gore won his Oscar in 2007.

In those six years, a Democratic president was elected; a Democratic-led Congress tried and failed to pass legislation limiting carbon emissions; and a conservative revolution inside the GOP has all but banished talk of a bipartisan climate change bill from mainstream Republican politics. In 2008, both candidates vying for the White House had to sell their solutions to climate change on the national stage; in 2012, the subject didn't come up in a single debate question. The issue got something of a reboot this year when, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, President Obama gave it top billing in his inaugural address, delighting activists and putting the issue back on the table in an era when skeptics are as powerful as ever.

Yet there's no denying the Gore organization is significantly smaller in size and scope than when it first launched. Back then, the Nobel laureate aimed for a "blitz as sweeping and expensive as a big corporation's rollout of a new product," according to a 2008 60 Minutes segment on Gore's early efforts. Press coverage at the time noted blanket coverage by the group's signature ads featuring unlikely political allies: Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson in one spot, Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich in another. The ads appeared on American Idol and across prime-time television.

Now, discussing their efforts online, Gore staffers say the effort isn't smaller — the group has just found its "niche," said Dan Stiles, the chief operating officer of the Climate Reality Project, in a wide-ranging interview with BuzzFeed on the organization's history. "I don't think what we're doing right now is any less expansive than what we were doing before," Stiles said. "We're not narrowing the blitz, but we're doing it in a digital space."

Rev. Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson, an unlikely bipartisan pairing, film a climate commercial on Virginia Beach for Gore's group in 2008 as part of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.

Alliance for Climate Protection / Via thedailygreen.com

But a person close to Gore, who was present at the creation of the Alliance for Climate Protection and was a former senior official with the group, described an original plan to create something like the Apple Computer of climate change. There was the expensive signature logo, described in The New York Times as an update of "1960s Swiss/Modernist poster design." There was the CEO, Maggie Fox, a 30-year veteran of environmental and progressive organizing. And then there was the goal: to revitalize climate change activism, building a national movement with fans focused on unique solutions to the problem rather than fear-mongering about a future in which climate change goes unchecked.

"When we first started it, it was about lobbying big national groups and rallying the country," the former official said. "The Alliance was supposed to be the big force in climate change, the group that united America behind the problem."

In 2009, the political landscape changed. With climate-change-friendly leadership in Washington, Gore's group shifted gears to focus almost entirely on lobbying Congress to pass climate change legislation. That year, the organization invested in 40 field offices around the country, poured hundreds of thousands into lobbying government officials directly, and beefed up its staff and volunteer army to partner up with older and larger grassroots organizing groups like the Sierra Club. "After the stimulus bill, the decision was made to move [the Alliance] to D.C. and go full-court press on a climate bill," the senior person familiar with the early years of the group said.

Stiles described the significant and expensive change of course as a period referred to internally as Climate Reality Project's "Chapter 2." ("Chapter 1," he says, spanned years 2007 and 2008, when the group focused its national media campaign.) "To build broad public support for the passage of climate change legislation," Stiles said, the organization "focused on building out a full-scale boots-on-the-ground campaign across the United States, which involved expanding our staff greatly."

That move turned out to be a mistake. Instead of turning Gore's group into a major national institution, it left it much diminished.

"Turning the organization into a lobbying group didn't really work," the former Alliance official said.

Conservatives quickly villainized the "cap and trade" bill that became the focus of advocates' efforts in 2009, and the legislation died in the Senate, sending the climate change community and the Gore group into a tailspin from the defeat.

"We all know what happened there," said Stiles, referring to the failed legislation. "We came up short in the legislative battle, and we took some time as an organization, with our chairman Vice President Gore, to take a step back and look at what was missing, and why we had come up second as a movement."

That soul-searching process, said Stiles, led to the group's current iteration: "Chapter 3." From the embers of the lobbying effort came a smaller, less ambitious Alliance. The group that had planned to bring revolution to climate change advocacy instead sought out a smaller part of the existing movement. "We saw as our niche to bring together leaders in the advertising and social media and marketing worlds from some of the world's most innovative companies," Stiles said.

The former top official said it was an end to the broad ambitions. "Everyone hunkered down and stopped going for the moonshots," the former official said. Gore himself took a step back, as his involvement was seen as politicizing in a way that it hadn't at the outset, when his documentary was an international hit.

The smaller operation has drawn less interest from the national media — and even from some of the group's own early backers. Susie Tompkins Buell, a California-based Democratic donor and one of Hillary Clinton's closest friends, seeded $5 million in 2007 to the organization, but now says she hasn't "followed it very much" or contributed since.

Buell cited her admiration for Gore — for "sticking with it," she said in an interview by phone — but acknowledged her frustration at the lack of progress from the group, and the climate movement on the whole. (Last year, she notably declined to contribute to Obama's reelection campaign because, she said, he had not been "vocal enough" on environmental issues.)

"I don't regret doing it," Buell said of her initial donation. "I think, honestly, we were all very naïve. We thought this would catch on. I really felt with the right media, with everything in place, we could really bring this problem to the forefront and really solve it."

The Gore group's current era, Stiles said, is focused on a "lean, mean machine" — but practically, that means an organization that is spending less, raising less, and employing fewer people.

Gore gives the climate change slideshow presentation that served as the centerpiece of his Academy Award-winning documentary.

Eric Lee / Paramount Classics

Current efforts include "leader trainings" for the "Climate Reality Leadership Corps," a volunteer group well acquainted with the up-to-date science on climate change, tutored on public speaking best practices, and versed in the rhetoric that made An Inconvenient Truth so accessible. Earlier this year, Gore held two climate leader trainings, one in Istanbul and the other in Chicago. Between the two events, the group trained 1,500 new people, 100 of whom were members of Organizing for Action, Obama's outside grassroots organizing group, and the latest player in the climate movement. An attendee at the Chicago training said she learned "how to communicate climate change in a compelling and informative way" at the session.

Outside the trainings, the Gore group focuses on the digital world, trying to tell the story of climate change and shame skeptics online. The "Reality Drop" program, still in beta phase, allows users to post prewritten comments on articles the group says distort the facts about climate change. The effort has caught the attention of the Heartland Institute, the biggest skeptic group in the country — but it hasn't impressed officials there.

"They credit themselves with 55 'drops' into one of our recent environment blog posts, of which I approved one for posterity," said Jim Lakely, communications director at Heartland and the main author of posts on the group's blog, "making their claims of 'victory' as exaggerated as their claims of man-caused climate catastrophe."

More than one climate change activist said privately it might be better for Gore to divert his fundraising prowess and brand awareness to other, longer-lasting groups at this point and abandon the idea of running his own operation. Gore and his prowess are still praised, but there seems to be confusion about what exactly the group does.

"[They] did an amazing production end of last year, a 24-hour live broadcast on climate that circled the globe," said Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace, referring to a live-stream video project the group aired last November that picked up 14 million unique viewers worldwide. Davies also cited Gore's continued influence as a singular voice in the climate change community; the former vice president recently gave an interview on the subject to the Washington Post. "They have creative juices and cash and also do a lot of work behind the scenes. And they have Al Gore."

Though the group has long since abandoned lobbying, current climate change activists still associate the group with those efforts.

"I'm on their email list and that's about all I know," said Daniel Kessler, spokesperson for 350.org, a grassroots climate change start-up that has worked with billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer. "Their emphasis seems to be ongoing after congressional deniers."

Stiles described a third iteration of Gore's climate change group that no longer casts Gore as Steve Jobs. Rather than revolutionize the movement, Gore's group is settling into a role of support player in climate change fight.

"Everything from what 350.org is doing and their impact on the movement to what we're doing and our impact on the movement — we're all contributing to the momentum that's out there that we can feel," said Stiles, when asked what specifically Gore's group had brought to the climate change movement. "It takes all of us, so that's really how we're moving forward on this issue. That's together, and not really pointing to any particular impact that one organization is having over the other."

Stephen Colbert, Mr. Met, a Miley costume, and much more begat his fiery return. There were tough words for Obama, too.

After a summer spent in Jordan directing his first feature film, Rosewater, Jon Stewart made his triumphant return to The Daily Show. He was well-tanned, temporarily bearded, and grateful to be back.

"Boy, I'm western, in all its glorious imperfections. I remembered thinking, 'Hello dildo shop next to a school,'" he cracked when he reached his desk.

The evening began with John Oliver, the hit summer replacement host, summoning Stewart from his dressing room; bearded and dazed, Stewart spoke in a gibberish dialect — you know, foreign stuff — and it required an intervention. He went through a run of different personalities — Larry the Cable Guy, Miley Cyrus, Hitler — before Stephen Colbert brought him back to the cynical, good-natured Emmy-winner of yore.

Oliver handed off the show formally with a quick rundown of the summer — Paula Deen, Anthony Weiner, the Royal Baby — then bam, things got serious with talk of Syria. Right on time, Jon.

As if he never left, Stewart got to work on the Syria issue, with a little segment called "Uncle Jonny Stew's Good Time Syria Jamboree."

"America taking action against a Middle East regime? It's like I never left," he teased, cutting to videos of both Presidents Bush — and then Independence Day (which featured the most justified of all wars, he noted).

After running through the similarities between the arguments made to justify striking in Syria and Iraq, Stewart compared our foreign policy to 7th grade bullying; then he eviscerated cable networks for having "The Idiot Parade" — Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol and L. Paul Bremer — discussing the conflict on TV.

Oh, there were penis analogies, too. Lots of penis analogies.

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OUCH.

John Kerry showed up at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday to defend the administration's desire to bomb Syria.

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

But the Committee really just looked at him like this the whole time:

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Getty Images

Kerry realizing that these guys in the Senate are not his friends anymore.

Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press / MCT

He got a migraine while listening to Bob Corker.

Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press / MCT

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“My credibility’s not on the line, the international community’s credibility is on the line,” Obama tells reporters in Sweden.

Scanpix Sweden / Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Obama told reporters in Sweden Wednesday his push for military strikes in Syria is not about saving face, as some critics have alleged.

"My credibility's not on the line, the international community's credibility is on the line," Obama said at a press conference. "And America and Congress' credibility is on the line, because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important."

Critics have claimed Obama is pushing for military strikes in Syria to back up his comments about a "red line" for the country's regime he made at a press conference in September. White House officials have rejected that claim, and Obama dismissed it in Sweden.

"First of all, I didn't set a red line. The world set a red line," Obama said. "The world set a red line when governments representing 98% of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use even when countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty."

Obama said his "red line" comment last year was simply a reiteration of existing policy.

"When I said in a press conference that my calculus about what's happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn't something I just kind of made up," he said. "I didn't pluck it out of thin air. There's a reason for it."

Obama is hoping to get Congressional sign off on his plan to attack Syria in response to what U.S. intelligence agencies say is clear evidence that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against rebels. Obama said he expects Congress to approve his plan.

"What happens if Congress says no?" Obama said. "I believe Congress will approve it."

“You know nothing,” Weiner says. “You think you can judge me?”

In the video uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday, Democratic mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is leaving a bakery when a man apparently shouts at him from off-camera. Weiner engages him, getting into a heated argument with dozens of cell phone cameras recording the altercation.

The man calls Weiner "disgusting."

"You're my judge? What rabbi taught you that?" Weiner responds.

"Your behavior is deviant. It's not normal behavior," the man continues. "Think about your wife. Right, how could you take the person you're most closest to — and trusts you — and betray her?"

"You don't get to judge me because you've shown no sign your superior to me and you are not my god," Weiner responds at one point.

The New York City mayoral primary election is Tuesday, Sept. 10. Weiner is the candidate of choice among 7 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday.

Weiner was a top candidate in the race until Sydney Leathers, a woman he sent lewd messages to after resigning from Congress, came forward with her story in July.

Update: The Weiner campaign has uploaded an extended version of the video. The argument begins around 3:40 with the man calling Weiner a "scumbag." At 3:53, it sounds like the man says, "You're married to an Arab." After Weiner calls him "charming" and a "jackass," the man says, "Don't lose your temper."

Later on Wednesday, when asked about the exchange by a reporter, Weiner said he thought the man "deserved to be put in his place."

"If you're gonna say vile things about me and my family, you should expect that I'm gonna go back at you," Weiner said. "I don't want to make more of it than what it was, but ... you don't have an unfettered right to say vile things just because I'm a candidate, and I felt that it was important that I respond."

But, he added, "in the spirit of the new year, I forgive him."

LINK: BuzzFeed Brews: Anthony Weiner Stays Defiant, Blasts News Media And Critics

Chuck Hagel makes the claim in testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

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WASHINGTON — Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said on Wednesday that Russia is supplying the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with chemical weapons, marking the first time a U.S. official has publicly made the claim.

Under questioning by Rep. Joe Wilson during a hearing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Hagel said the chemical weapons had come from Russia as well as other sources.

"Where did the chemical weapons come from?" Wilson asked.

"There's no secret that the Assad regime has had chemical weapons, significant stockpiles of chemical weapons," Hagel said, prompting Wilson to ask: "From a particular country?"

"Well, the Russians supply them," Hagel said. "Others are supplying them with those chemical weapons. They make some themselves."

"In a response to a member of Congress, Secretary Hagel was referring to the well-known conventional arms relationship between Syria and Russia," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said in a statement. "The Syrian regime has a decades-old largely indigenous chemical weapons program. Currently, Russia provides the Syrian regime a wide variety of military equipment and support, some of which can be modified or otherwise used to support the chemical weapons program. We have publicly and privately expressed our concern over the destabilizing impact on the Syrian conflict and the wider region of continued military shipments to the Assad regime."

This post has been updated with Little's comment.

“[C]ontinued enforcement of the Title 38 provisions pending further judicial review is unwarranted,” Attorney General Eric Holder says.

J. Scott Applewhite, File / AP

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday that President Obama directed the executive branch to stop enforcing two laws that prevented same-sex married couples from receiving the same veterans' benefits as are available to opposite-sex married couples.

The move is the latest fallout from the Supreme Court's June decision in United States v. Windsor striking down the federal ban on recognition of same-sex couples' marriages that was found in the Defense of Marriage Act.

"This announcement means gay and lesbian veterans who are legally married can better protect themselves and their children," White House spokesman Shin inouye told BuzzFeed. "The President believes that all couples who are legally married deserve respect and equal treatment under the law, and his Administration continues to work to implement the Supreme Court's Windsor ruling swiftly and smoothly."

The laws, found in Title 38 of the U.S. Code, had been found unconstitutional this past week by a federal trial court judge in California.

The decision to stop enforcing a law, Holder wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, "is appropriately rare." In this situation, however, he wrote that "continued enforcement of the Title 38 provisions pending further judicial review is unwarranted."

The Justice Department had earlier concluded that the DOMA and Title 38 provisions were unconstitutional. Until Wednesday, however, the Justice Department had a policy that, although it would not defend the provision in legal challenges, it would continue to enforce the law until a final judicial determination was reached as to its constitutionality.

On Wednesday, however, Holder wrote, "Although the Supreme Court did not directly address the constitutionality of the Title 38 provisions in Windsor," the Supreme Court's June ruling striking down the provision in DOMA, "the reasoning of the opinion strongly supports the conclusion that those provisions are unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment."

Inouye told BuzzFeed, "The President has accepted the Attorney General's recommendation and has directed that the Administration no longer enforce certain provisions of Title 38 that discriminate against legally married gay and lesbian veterans. This is an important step forward for the families of veterans and their ability to access survival, health care, home loan, and other benefits.

"As the Attorney General's letter to Congress states, the circumstances of the situation demonstrate that this is the appropriate course of action. Even the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group has ceased to defend the constitutionality of those provisions of Title 38 in legal challenges."

The American Military Partner Association praised the decision.

"No longer will Tracy Johnson, the surviving spouse of Staff Sergeant Donna Johnson who was killed in Afghanistan, be treated as if she doesn't matter by the Department of Veterans Affairs," Stephen Peters, president of AMPA, said in a statement. "All of our veteran military families will finally be recognized and supported for their service to our nation."