Free Republic

The New Republic has quietly dropped at least five prominent Jewish writers from its masthead in a move that may signal the publication’s continued drift away from a staunchly pro-Israel standpoint. The magazine has launched an aggressive new editorial direction under the ownership of wealthy socialite Chris Hughes, who is best known for sharing a room with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University. The names of several prominent Jewish writers from both the left and right of the political spectrum were dropped from TNR’s masthead in the latest issue. They include: Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, longtime TNR columnist...

As you may have heard, we’re now only four days away from the 2014 midterms and gubernatorial races mercifully coming to an end, save for a likely runoff in Louisiana. And as you’ve also heard lately, race–for all the wrong reasons–has become a central theme for the party in blue. Speaking of the Bayou State, its likely-to-be-unemployed-after-said-runoff and current senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) had this to say to Chuck Todd (a good get via hustle by the new MTP moderator, by the way) regarding the reason behind her not inviting President Obama for help on the campaign trail: “The South...

The president is upset. Very upset. Frustrated and angry. Seething about the government’s handling of Ebola, said the front-page headline in The New York Times last Saturday. There’s only one problem with this pose, so obligingly transcribed for him by the Times. It’s his government. He’s president. Has been for six years. Yet Barack Obama reflexively insists on playing the shocked outsider when something goes wrong within his own administration. Obama represents not just the party of government but a grandiose conception of government as the prime mover of social and economic life. The very theme of his presidency is...

Krauthammer On Obama's Foreign Policy: 'The Strategy Is To Do Absolutely Nothing' August 28 Charles Krauthammer ripped President Obama's foreign policy Thursday on "Special Report with Bret Baier," blasting the president for holding a news conference at which he said, "we don't have a strategy yet" for dealing with ISIS in Syria. "The president of the United States, in the middle of a real crisis, a few days after the beheading of an American...gets in front of the world and says, I don't have a strategy," the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said. "If that is true, don't say...

Krauthammer’s Take: On ISIS, ‘Enunciate a Policy’ By NRO Staff August 12, 2014 The president hasn’t “talked about ends, objectives, what we’re trying to do” with regard to the threat of the Islamic State, Charles Krauthammer argued on Tuesday’s Special Report. “The president talks only about tactics: no troops on the ground, air strikes here,” he said. “Enunciate a policy,” Krauthammer advised, even it’s just “containment” — “then you fit the means” to that end.

AUGUST 14, 2014 Missing the Big Picture The president’s foreign policy is defined by a total absence of strategic thinking. By Charles Krauthammer “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” – Hillary Clinton, The Atlantic, August 10 Leave it to Barack Obama’s own former secretary of state to acknowledge the fatal flaw of his foreign policy: a total absence of strategic thinking. Mind you, Obama does deploy grand words proclaiming grand ideas: the “new beginning” with Islam declared in Cairo, the reset with Russia announced in Geneva, global nuclear disarmament proclaimed in...

<p>John Kerry is upset by heavy criticism from Israelis — left, right and center — of his recent ceasefire diplomacy. But that’s only half the story. More significant is the consternation of America’s Arab partners, starting with the president of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas was stunned that Kerry would fly off to Paris to negotiate with Hamas allies Qatar and Turkey in talks that excluded the PA and Egypt.</p>

Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking. “Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.” Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone...

On Tuesday's broadcast of "The O'Reilly Factor," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer gave his solution to the crisis at the southern United States border: a fence. He argued that securing the border with a fence is a proven method and he pointed to other places where it has worked, including at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C. "Alright, here's what I've been on for years," Krauthammer said. "You start with a fence. It's very simple. People say, 'Oh, fences don't work. You make a ladder.' Well, then you build two fences, triple strand fences. San Diego did that in the...

One of my favorite Oscar-winning actors might have just destroyed his career in Hollywood. Gary Oldman did what is verboten amidst the Hollywood lovelies; namely, crap on liberal politicians, condemn political correctness and laud libertarian and conservative thought. In an interview with Playboy, Oldman wields a sledgehammer on the fetid idols that have kept most of the actors that work in Tinseltown at bay. Check it out. Regarding political correctness, Oldman said… “I just think political correctness is crap. That’s what I think about it. I think it’s like, take a f***ing joke. Get over it. … I don’t know...

On Wednesday, Charles Krauthammer came out in favor of the Bergdahl prisoner swap. Savage reax… "Charles “Sauerkraut” of Fox News– a man I’ve not been impressed with– I think he’s way overrated. Because of his sad demeanor, people think he’s intelligent. They confuse his dour looks for intelligence. They think somehow if you’re depressed-looking, you’re smart. "

The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US’s indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America’s most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades. As Gordon Chang noted at a symposium in Los Angeles last month hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, since President Barack Obama entered office in 2009, the Chinese have responded to his overtures of goodwill and appeasement with intensified aggression against the US’s Asian allies and against US warships. In 2012, China seized the Scarborough Shoal from the...

The discovery, over a year after the September 11, 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, of an e-mail from a White House political operative that shows him suggesting that former United Nations ambassador Susan Rice underscore that the attack was a reaction to an Internet video is, according to Charles Krauthammer, like the discovery of the Nixon tapes that blew open the Watergate scandal in 1973.

Charles Krauthammer is calling a newly released email “a smoking document” that the conservative columnist says shows the White House was involved in a coverup of the Benghazi attacks. GOP lawmakers on Tuesday seized on the documents, which contained an email from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes discussing “goals” for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearances on the Sunday shows following the attack. Appearing on Fox News on Tuesday evening, Krauthammer said the email shows that the Obama administration fabricated its contention that the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, were a reaction to a YouTube video because the revelation of...

Video linkGeorge Will, Ron Fournier, and Charles Krauthammer.

Video at link.

March 17, 2014 7:14 PM Krauthammer's Take: Obama Is Being 'Ridiculed by Russians' By NRO Staff President Obama has thus far responded tepidly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, targeting only several individuals in Russia for sanctions and providing Ukraine with rations as opposed to the arms it requested. Because of Obama’s rhetoric and policy, Charles Krauthammer said the president is being “ridiculed by Russians.” “If he thinks that sanctioning seven Russians out of a population of, what, 150 million is a sanction, he’s living in a different world,” Krauthammer said. Instead we should be sending Ukraine weapons, something the administration...

As reports are coming in that Russia has placed 2,000 troops in Crimea, within the borders of Ukraine, President Obama said that “the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.” Charles Krauthammer responded on Special Report tonight saying, “The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement. I find it rather staggering.” Krauthammer thinks Obama’s statement is about “three levels removed” from actual action. He explained: Obama said “we will stand with the international community — meaning we are going to...

KRAUTHAMMER: Remember how Democrats were complaining that when Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare, it was somehow unpatriotic because it was an attack on the law of the land. This law of the land doesn't even exist; it exists in Obama's head. It's whatever he thinks, he wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is going to be. That is an understatement, that's not the way it's supposed to work. And we had an editorial in The Washington Post of all places, not exactly a right-wing rag, saying that Obama has really overstepped the lines arbitrarily, changing...

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Well, listening to that excerpt from Ed Henry, you would think that's the campaign speech of someone running against Barack Obama. Obama is indicting the four years, the five years he's been president. He said the rich have done well, everybody else has stalled, inequality has increased. Well, the four years, the five years are his years. Essentially, he's saying my job now is to undo what I have done in the five years of my presidency. It's hardly sort of a ringing call to arms. I'm sure they now tested all of these words, inequality, opportunity, all...