Free Republic

Esther Duflo is one of those people who are taken seriously by the sort of people who eat up TED talks with a silver spoon. Her big number is how to help people in the Third World up from poverty, which is a surprisingly profitable branch of economics when you consider the sheer number of NGOs and billionaires interested in getting into the aid business. But there’s one particular billionaire at Duflo’s back. Abdul Latif Jameel. Esther Duflo is one of the co-founders of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, more commonly known as J-PAL for the father of Abdul...

An Egyptian magazine claims that six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy. The Dec. 22 story published in Egypt's Rose El-Youssef magazine (read an IPT translation here) suggests the six turned the White House "from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood." The story is largely unsourced, but its publication is considered significant in raising the issue to Egyptian readers. The six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland...

Egyptian lawyers today accused the Muslim Brotherhood of taking 10 billion Egyptian pounds (U.S. $1.5 billion) from the Obama Administration. Egypt’s Chief Public Prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim has ordered an investigation in an accusation against the Muslim Brotherhood of receiving 10 billion Egyptian pounds from the United States, asking for the sources of the Brotherhood’s money to be revealed. According to Aswat Masriya, the two plaintiffs claimed that the United States granted the Brotherhood the money illegally to back its interests in the region.

Representative Michele Bachmann has claimed that Barack Obama is determined 'to lift up the Islamists' and bow to their 'ultimate demand' of imposing Sharia law on America. In an extraordinary interview at the weekend, the woman who once had high hopes of being the Republican candidate in this year's presidential election, said that Americans should study Islamist texts just as those worried about fascism pored over Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' in the 1930s and 1940s. In an extended on-air conversation with conservative radio hosts Jan Markell and Eric Barger, Bachmann contended that Obama was endangering the United States and Israel...

Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, and the Muslim Brotherhood are holding, on December 15, 2012, a referendum on a new constitution. You know, the constitution that President Barack Hussein “vote buyer” Obama refuses to criticize. You know, the constitution written by a committee of 100 selected by the now disbanded Egyptian parliament that, at the time of the creation of the Constituent Assembly, was dominated by Islamists. Fifteen committee members quit the Assembly in protest. Of the 85 members remaining, none were Christians, and only four were women. So much for “diversity,” one of the Democrats/liberals/progressives’ (DLPs) most precious ideals. You know,...

Oopsie! In what has to be one of the least-shocking outcomes of Barack Obama's Libyan adventure, the New York Times reports that his administration secretly gave approval of weapons shipments to Libyan resistance fighters, only to learn that the weapons ended up arming Islamist terror networks. Who could have seen that coming, right? The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.No evidence...

(snip)Because you see, even with smoke and *ahem* mirrors, we can’t do this without help. Which is to say, without the State Run Media (SRM). "He did call it an act of terror," Chapter VIII, The Queen's Croquet-Ground, by Lewis Carroll: 'A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red.' Barack Obama, Rose Garden, September 12 Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one...

....TheBlaze decided to speak with experts at some of America’s leading universities. One academic, a professor at Duke University, provided a candid assessment, but asked to remain off-the-record. Based on the images and analysis present in the WND report, he said that the script present on Obama’s ring appears to be Arabic and that it does, indeed, include the first portion of the shahada. “I think this is accurate,” he said of the description surrounding the ring.

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is making big news by accusing the Obama Administration of lying about progress in the war on terrorism. She also urged the administration to avenge the murders of four Americans in Libya, and declared that Islamist terrorists want to destroy the West and the American way of life. An FBI investigation is not the best way to handle the murders in Libya, she said. “I hope to God that you’re sending in your best clandestine warriors to exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own...

Since his inauguration, President Obama’s family in Kenya has been on a mission to use the Obama name to transform Kenya from the nation’s current Christian majority to an Islamic majority that will spread Islamic law, or Shariah, through the country. Arab researchers Walid and Theodore Shoebat have documented the claims in a special report that translates an explosive television interview never before seen in the West. In the interview, Musa Ismail Obama, President Obama’s first cousin in Kenya, told the Arabic-language satellite TV network Al-Jazeera that the Saudi Arabian royal family has developed a strong relationship with the Obama...

"Bush Lied, People Died" they chanted. When the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- information that was believed by the intelligence agencies of our major allies; that was described by the Clinton-appointed head of the CIA as a "slam dunk"; and that was agreed to by heads of state and leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties -- turned out to be badly mistaken, George W. Bush was branded a liar. Even Democrats such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle, and Ted Kennedy, who had warned about Saddam's WMD program...

How far down the rabbit hole have we gone? Under the Obama regime, we have seen a media blackout when it comes to the truth about radical Islam and their stated mission to destroy Western Civilization. In the 20th Century our enemy was Communism, which we defeated. Back then, we knew what Communism was and we called it by its real name. In the 21st Century, America’s enemy is radical Islam and with Obama as President, we are not permitted to call it by its real name. We have seen the name of America’s enemy stricken from all training manuals...

President Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated his opposition to Iran possessing a nuclear weapon, but he did not accede to Netanyahu’s request for a red line statement. “The two leaders discussed a range of security issues, and the President reaffirmed his and our country’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security,” the White House Press Office stated in a readout of Obama’s call. “The two leaders underscored that they are in full agreement on the shared goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Twitchy headline says it all.Context provided by Erick Erickson at Red State: In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly today the President of the United States declared that the future does not belong to practicing Christians. Already, the media and the left are in full denial, probably based on their general lack of understanding of theology. This would have been a gaffe had Mitt Romney said it. But with Barack Obama, he’s just speaking bold truths. His bold truth declares that the future does not belong to practicing Christians. Pay careful attention to what he says: "The future...

Call it a video reprise of the Obama Apology Tour: "The American Embassy in Islamabad, in a bid to tamp down public rage over the anti-Islam film produced in the U.S., is spending $70,000 to air an ad on Pakistani television that features President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton denouncing the video," the Associated Press reports.

The enthusiastic celebration of Arab Spring by the American left has at last been repudiated by the gruesome realities of Islamic Jihad. But don’t expect to hear much about this sudden intrusion of brutal fact into the left’s pathetic dabblings in American foreign policy. Politically embarrassing events such as the failure to protect American diplomats being murdered and dragged through the streets before cheering throngs rarely make for lasting headlines, especially not when a Democrat president has ignored advance warning of the threat which he more than anyone else was responsible for bringing about. “Once the US successfully overthrew [Muammar]...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is Marc Thiessen, opinion writer, Washington Post: "Obama Alone: This President Does Not Need Intel Briefers." Wait 'til you hear this spin. We've already got Obama walking back a major gaffe, this statement that Egypt is not an ally. They have been since 1989. Regardless the Muslim Brotherhood situation now, they've always been an ally. Folks, they've had to walk that back now. This is a major gaffe, and even foreign policy media people know this, and that's why they're walking this back, because there are some people who are not in the media laying down...

President Obama on Tuesday extended to Libya’s transitional leader a diplomatic honor never offered his predecessor, meeting formally with Mustafa Abdel-Jalil at the United Nations and heralding the victory of Libyan rebels who brought an end to the 42-year reign of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. It was not quite a victory lap, but it came pretty close. Mr. Obama credited his new doctrine with helping to topple the man whom Ronald Reagan once famously called the “mad dog of the Middle East.” And he held Libya up as “a lesson in what the international community can achieve when we stand together...

Despite calls for ending foreign aid to Egypt in the wake of an attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, the White House is standing by funding commitments. Asked on Air Force One Thursday if the United States would withhold aid, White House press secretary Jay Carney said simply: "No."

In his ghost-written (by William Ayers) 'autobiography', "Dreams of My Father", Barack Hussein Obama said, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction..."