Free Republic

ix Thanksgivings ago, as a junior White House speechwriter, I wrote a video script for President Obama. While not exactly destined for the history books, I thought it was a warm, generous celebration of the holiday. I was proud of my work. That is, until Fox News got ahold of it. It turned out I had forgotten to include a reference to God in the remarks. “President Obama has caused outrage with his Thanksgiving speech,” declared Fox Nation, not mentioning that George W. Bush also frequently omitted the almighty from Thanksgiving. Not to be outdone, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted...

He was just 24, but speechwriter David Litt had already become President Barack Obama’s go-to guy for anything considered “kishke-related.” In Litt’s parlance, that meant he wrote the president’s speeches aiming to connect with Jewish Americans on a gut level — things like holiday and anniversary commemorations, but not, say, Israel or foreign policy. That explains Litt’s presence one Friday night in the White House library in April 2012. A jet-lagged Obama had just returned from a trip to Asia and the last thing on his schedule was to record a video greeting for Passover. “All right,” Obama said grumpily...

Charlie Rose and three of Barack Obama’s former speechwriters had a good laugh Monday night while joking about the president’s infamous, oft-repeated false promise that under Obamacare, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Obama said dozens of times in the run-up to the Affordable Care Act’s signing and enactment that no Americans who liked the insurance plan they had would lose it under the Affordable Care Act. In reality, millions of policies were canceled because of the law’s regulations, and Obama was forced to apologize to the American people. The infamous remark...

Charlie Rose and a trio of former Obama speechwriters laughed it up this week as they discussed the president's infamous promise that that under the Affordable Care Act, "if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkqn6wsrUfs

The Vanity Fair–Bloomberg cocktail reception that follows the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, held at the franco-swank residence of the French ambassador, is the kind of party where Katie Couric can kick off her shoes and spend much of the party in bare feet. It’s the kind of party where Charlie Rose and Ashley Judd stand by one of several bars and engage in a lot of intense close-talking. It’s the kind of party where one waits in line to use the loo, just as one has done at every normal, far less glitzy house party since the 1990s. But then...

REBUILDING PLAN AGREED Free Iraqis have drawn up a 13-point plan to rebuild their country following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. The plan was agreed at US-hosted talks at Ur, the birthplace of the biblical prophet Abraham. The delegates also voted to meet again in 10 days' time. In a statement they said a future Iraqi government must be democratic, no leader must be imposed from outside, and the Baath party must be dissolved. As the meeting began, hundreds marched through the streets of nearby Nasiriyah protesting about US involvement in their country's future. They were concerned that the...