Free Republic

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The head of Iraq's largest church said on Sunday that Islamic State militants who drove Christians out of Mosul were worse than Mongol leader Genghis Khan and his grandson Hulagu who ransacked medieval Baghdad. Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako led a wave of condemnation for the Sunni Islamists who demanded Christians either convert, submit to their radical rule and pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. At the Vatican, Pope Francis decried what he said was the persecution of Christians in the birthplace of their faith, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the...

Anyone who believes that Hillary Clinton will not run for President in 2016 should examine her recently-published book, Hard Choices, which in places reads like a campaign manifesto. The 600 pages of text offer much more, but on myriad domestic and international issues readers can readily predict her positions as president, even beyond what she has already indicated as first lady, senator from New York, and Barack Obama’s first secretary of state. With the escalating violence in Israel and Gaza, for example, her chapter on the Middle East indicates in detail how she dealt with key regional leaders in earlier...

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, made a surprising suggestion Thursday night: If he had been elected in 2000, there might not have been a war in Iraq. The Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, who lost his race for the GOP nomination that year but went on to become his party’s nominee in 2008, made his comments in a far-reaching interview in CNN and National Journal’s “Politics On Tap” event, after this reporter asked him what would be different if he had won either in 2000 or 2008. On 2008, McCain said “national security” would be different, and he delineated...

Will Mitt Romney run again for president? The question seems absurd. Aside from a single commanding debate performance against President Barack Obama, he was not a very good candidate in 2012. After failing in his first attempt at gaining the Republican nomination four years earlier, Romney struggled across the finish line against weak, underfunded primary opponents whose best days were mostly behind them. He then promptly lost to Obama in November. In fact, Romney has only won one general election in twenty years of running for office. He will be fourteen years removed from that lone victory in November 2016....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)MSNBC fill-in host and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson is no fan of calling for a president’s ouster . . . unless it’s George W. Bush. Although he personally signed his name onto a group looking to “create a political situation where Bush himself is driven from office,” Dyson labeled Sarah Palin’s comments about impeaching President Obama as “treasonous accusations.” “The president is acutely aware of the dire situation facing the children and their families crossing into the United States, as evidenced by his tireless effort to help them,” he said on Wednesday’s show in defense of President Obama....

The surge of Central American families and unaccompanied children into south Texas has focused public attention on one of the few recent revisions of immigration law, the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, or TVPRA, also known as the Wilberforce Act. Championed by congressional Democrats such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, the law was a hastily written attempt to improve the handling of trafficked children who came into the custody of immigration authorities, either at the border or within the country. In the face of public alarm over the Obama administration’s massive catch-and-release operation dispersing tens of thousands of illegal border...

NEW ORLEANS — Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for bribery, money laundering and other corruption that spanned his two terms as mayor — including the chaotic years after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Nagin was convicted Feb. 12 of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin’s support for various projects. The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business. The 58-year-old Democrat had defiantly denied any wrongdoing after his 2013 indictment and...

Robert Redford has signed on to play Dan Rather in Truth, a film based on the 2005 memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. The book, written by Rather's producer Mary Mapes, centers on the firestorm that erupted in September of 2004 after Rather reported that George W. Bush had received special treatment while serving in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, a report that was based on documents that turned out to be forgeries. - See more at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/robert-redford-play-dan-rather-717476#sthash.Y0QB620e.dpuf

RINO boneheads like Jeb Bush are happy to tell you how we need to get past 'nostalgia' for the (toweringly successful) Reagan era and move-on... but the same ossified Gee-Oh-Pee fossils now think it's a good idea to bring up the (unpopular) Bush era when we're already doing well in the polls? Although 'dissatisfied', I'm not one of those rabid Bush-haters-- not any more than any other RINO, anyway. I think he's a decent guy, loves the country, and in his heart he meant well. Of Bush family, he's easily the most likable guy. Spent way too much money and...

Hardball host Chris Matthews made some bizarre comments about the potential Republican candidates for president in 2016 on Tuesday night. Speaking to Jeanne Cummings of Bloomberg News and Republican strategist John Feehery, Matthews took a swipe at Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and suggested “he's the Republicans' John Edwards.” [See video below.](VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Hardball host never explained why in the world he would compare a man who cheated on his wife while pursuing the presidency to Senator Marco Rubio, but nevertheless the snide remark took his panelists by surprise. While Republican John Feehery didn’t directly condemn Matthews’ unusual comparison of Edwards and...

Former U.S. president George W. Bush recently opened the doors to his gorgeous Texas ranch to reveal rooms where he once hosted world leaders and where he now bides his time painting them. Bush gave a tour of the Crawford home he completed just after becoming the nation's 43rd president in 2001 to Architectural Digest for the magazine's August cover story. It's a rare glimpse at the sprawling property where Vladimir Putin once rode shotgun in Bush's pickup and where the younger of W.'s twins, Jenna, held her intimate 2008 wedding. George and Laura Bush have retired to Dallas, Texas...

Despite Sarah Palin's calls, the president won't be impeached. But here's how her demand normalizes other lunacy. “By the Grace of God,” the English used to say, when asked by what authority their monarch ruled. “Divine right” was the answer, and that was that – you didn’t have to like the queen, but God did, and that’s why she was in charge. Simpler times, those were. Today, former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin announced her belief that President Obama should be impeached. Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced his intention to launch the first congressional lawsuit against...

Mitt Romney has said time and time again that he has no interest in running for president a third time. But, on Sunday morning, CBS' Bob Schieffer said not to write off the idea of a 2016 campaign by Romney so quickly. "I have a source that told me that if Jeb Bush decides not to run, that Mitt Romney may actually try it again," Schieffer said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a clear lead in the Democratic primary, topping her potential challengers by an almost 50 percentage point margin, yet fails to hit the 50% mark against any of her potential Republican opponents, a Quinnipiac University National Poll, published Tuesday, shows. Hillary leads the Democratic primary with 58 percent, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts with 11 percent, Vice President Joseph Biden with 9 percent and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo with 4 percent. No other candidate tops 1 percent, the poll found. On the contrary, the Republican presidential primary is wide open....

Some of Texas' moderate Republicans say the state's far-right turn since Sen. Ted Cruz's political ascendancy could have unintended consequences.At a breakfast in Washington’s St. Regis Hotel in June, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, took a moment to gather his thoughts before he was ready to answer a question about how junior Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had changed his home state. “Texas is pretty big and pretty diverse,” Perry said peering intently through his black horn-rimmed glasses. “I’m not sure one person has the ability to change all of that.” A few seconds later, he clarified exactly where he think...

Impressed by the ill-informed hysterical reaction that my “real me” Facebook friends had to the Hobby Lobby decision, I explained to them that the decision is very narrow and will not (a) ban contraceptives across America and (b) lead to anti-gay lynch mobs. Here’s a slightly revised version of my Facebook post, which still failed to satisfy their paranoia and inability to understand the law. I’ve also added a little hypothetical that might open their minds. (No, don’t say it. It’s improbable, but not impossible, that a DemProg mind can open). The Hobby Lobby decision addresses one thing only: whether...

ISIS marching through Iraq has smashed the media’s taboo against criticizing Obama’s foreign policy. Substantive discussions are taking place about why his foreign policy is such a miserable failure. And they mostly miss the point. Liberal journalists still proceed from the fallacy that there was a foreign policy debate between neo-conservative interventionists and liberal non-interventionists. These are a series of digested Bush era talking points that have no relationship to reality since Bush’s foreign policy on Iraq carried over from Bill Clinton. It’s why Hillary gets so uncomfortable when she has to discuss her vote on Iraq. The liberals weren’t...

George W. Bush’s 68th birthday is today. In honor of the 43rd President of the United States, here are fifteen of his most classic and classiest moments:

[...]If Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush were to become president of the United States it would mean the power and influence of the presidency remained in the hands of the Clinton family for possibly sixteen years, and that’s not even counting the princess in waiting, Chelsea; and in the case of the Bush family, possibly twenty years, and that’s not counting the heir apparent, George Prescott Bush. Have we devolved into a nation of bleating sheep, or screaming teenagers at an episode of American Idol? Can it be true that there are no other citizens in this great nation worthy of...

A look at the frontrunners currently making waves.Mitt Romney hasn’t disappeared from the political scene the way many people thought he would after coming up on the losing end in the 2012 presidential race. But that doesn’t mean he’s running for president — or even thinking about running for president — in 2016. Talk of a possible third presidential bid for Romney has surfaced of late, with poll numbers showing that he is well regarded by Republican voters and a growing sense within the GOP smart set that no candidate has really emerged from the pack as yet. Romney has,...