Free Republic

Iran is still getting the final say. Not the United States, not Israel…… but Iran. When did the greatest super power in the world let a terrorist regime dictate a nuclear deal? When? 2009 When Barack Hussein Obama took office. Bowing down to diplomats worldwide. Apologizing to countries for no reason at all and making us the laughing stock of the world. This president and his administration are doing exactly what they said they would do “fundamentally transforming” the greatest and freest nation on the globe.

Multiple reports that House Speaker John Boehner has cut a deal to pass a long-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security without ties to rolling back President Obama’s executive action on immigration has reignited rumblings about a Boehner coup.

The Obama administration’s negotiations over nuclear matters are a disaster. The administration’s defenders are vigorously rebutting allegations that President Obama has made too many concessions in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Their defense is a simple statement of fact: There is no agreement yet, so how can the critics be right? They assert that we must wait until the outcome is agreed upon before we can assess it. The concern, however, is both bipartisan and international — with many Democrats voicing alarm and with Israel and the Arab states alike frustrated that a seemingly desperate administration has placed Iran’s...

Celebrated conservative radio talker Mark Levin has cut a long-term extension with Westwood One-Cumulus, meaning one of the nation’s most influential talk show hosts will be on the air for another five years, well past the upcoming 2016 presidential election. Westwood One announced the contract extension for “The Mark Levin Show” through 2020 Thursday morning. They called Levin, a legal scholar who also runs Landmark Legal Foundation, “one of the most trusted voices in radio.” Five-year contracts are rare in the media. Levin started on radio in 2002 and his current show was launched on WABC in New York. He...

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Pence is moving ahead to extend Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers under the federal health law after securing a key concession from the Obama administration. The deal, to be announced Tuesday, could pave the way for half a dozen more states to seek similar deals, boosting Medicaid expansion proposals in Republican-led states including Florida, North Carolina and Wyoming. Indiana and Washington officials had been locked for months in negotiations over an issue that could shape the future of Medicaid, the 50-year-old federal-state health program that covers more than 60 million low-income Americans. Mr....

House Speaker John Boehner warned that President Barack Obama was waging a "crusade" against affordable energy after the United States and China reached agreement Wednesday on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. "This announcement is yet another sign that the president intends to double down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact for America's heartland and the country as a whole," Boehner said after Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping inked a landmark agreement at a summit in Beijing. "It is the latest example of the president's crusade against affordable, reliable energy that is already hurting jobs and...

Was Bergdahl Addicted to Heroin? Why is he Being Sequestered? Detox? While serving at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an Army Captain, and the ranking U.S. Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, in February 2002, I was aware of a detainee we called “Wild Bill” who came to us from Afghanistan a drug addicted schizophrenic. It took us a while to figure out what his problems were. We were distracted by his bizarre behavior: eating his flip flops, hanging objects from his genitals, making strange, random sounds, and, like many other...

I want you to go over to The Weekly Standard for John McCormack’s and Mike Warren’s work on this, but here’s a taste: “You know, I think, um, let me hold off on that,” said Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “All I’ve heard is what I’ve read in the press,” said Vermont’s senior senator Pat Leahy. Sen. Claire McCaskill, who crowed about the deal on the Sunday shows, is now very interested in the intel briefing she’s to receive tomorrow. That’d be the briefing she should have gotten some 32 days before she went on the Sunday shows to make grand...

Incumbent Republican Nathan Deal trails Democratic challenger Jason Carter by seven points in Rasmussen Reports’ first look at the Georgia gubernatorial race. A new statewide telephone survey of Likely Georgia Voters finds Carter with 48% support to Deal’s 41%. Three percent (3%) like another candidate in the race, while seven percent (7%) are undecided.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) this week called on President Obama to release the text of the Iran nuclear agreement. That agreement, which took effect in January, requires Iran to reduce its uranium enrichment activities in return for a loosening of international sanctions. But Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, said Congress has no way to judge its implementation, unless it has a copy of the agreement. "In order for Congress to properly perform its oversight functions and for the American people and our allies to have a full and open debate...

The White House has been exploring ways to circumvent Congress and unilaterally lift sanctions on Iran once a final nuclear agreement is reached, according to sources with knowledge of White House conversations and congressional insiders familiar with its strategy. The issue of sanctions relief has become one of the key sticking points in the Iran debate, with lawmakers pushing for increased economic penalties and the White House fighting to roll back regulations. While many in Congress insist that only the legislative branch can legally repeal sanctions, senior White House officials have been examining strategies to skirt Congress, according to those...

Iran will receive the first $550 million installment of a total of $4.2 billion in previously blocked overseas funds on or about February 1, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Sunday. The money will be transferred to Iran as part of the implementation of the nuclear deal reached with it in Geneva on November 24. Earlier Sunday, President Barack Obama confirmed that the agreement would be implemented starting January 20. Under the agreement, six major powers agreed to give Iran access to $4.2 billion in revenues blocked overseas if it carries out the deal, which offers sanctions relief in...

US Secretary of State John Kerry will offer Israeli and Palestinian negotiators a political trade-off: Israeli recognition of the 1967 lines as a basis for the future Palestinian state, in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, Palestinian sources told the Saudi daily Al-Watan on Sunday. According to the sources, the mutual recognition will constitute the core of a framework agreement to be signed by the end of January, and negotiated in greater detail during the following months. "The coming weeks will be difficult for the Palestinian and Israeli sides, since they will need...

y life’s work is devoted to cutting the federal government in half. In fact, I have published detailed plans regarding how to do that (it’s called entitlement reform), in far too many places already (just a start on what needs to be done), including in my 2011 book, America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb (HarperCollins), in this column, and with every free market think tank tuned in to the real world. In fact, I’m probably the only person in Washington who thinks the legislation that would have that effect over the long run can and quite possibly will be enacted within the...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday pushed back on criticism to the budget agreement reached with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), saying he wants Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to "read the deal and get back to me." In a post on Breitbart.com on Wednesday, Rubio wrote that the deal would continue to “make it harder for Americans to achieve the American dream.” Ryan was asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”on Thursday what he would say to Rubio. “Read the deal and get back to me,” Ryan said. Rubio was one of the first lawmakers to express opposition to the budget, even before...

The White House says that an Iranian ballistic missile test would not invalidate a recently signed nuclear accord meant to temporarily halt some of Iran’s most controversial nuclear work. The White House clarified its stance just days before Iran is scheduled to launch another ballistic missile some 75 miles into the atmosphere. The statement contradicts recent remarks indicating that such a test would in fact violate and nullify the weeks-old agreement, which provides Iran with some $7 billion in relief from economic sanctions in exchange for a partial six-month freeze of its uranium enrichment program.

The budget deal announced Tuesday by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) would boost federal spending by around $65 billion over the next two years. This new spending is offset by increasing user fees, boosting pension contributions by federal employees and the military, and other minor changes. Ryan and Murray also say that the deal will reduce the deficit by $23 billion over the next 10 years. This reduction, however, doesn't start until 2022. According to a 4-page summary document of the deal obtained by Breitbart News, "[t]he budget proposal saves $28 billion over ten years by...

The Democrats hated the sequester, and have been trying to bust it ever since it went into effect. Today, they succeeded. The Ryan/Murray deal pegs FY 2014 spending at $1.012 trillion, which Ryan’s press release described as “about halfway between the Senate budget level of $1.058 trillion and the House budget level of $967 billion.” What Ryan didn’t say is that $967 billion isn’t just the House proposal, it is the discretionary spending limit under current law. The sequester is now out the window. Republicans did get something in exchange for increasing spending: notably, federal employees will have to increase...

The actual text of the Ryan-Murray budget deal came out late last night, so it’s only now possible to really consider the particulars and see how it looks. It seems to me that the details look a fair bit better than the general outline that had been reported in the press over the past week or so, particularly on the question of whether the entitlement cuts that would replace some discretionary sequester cuts could be expected to actually materialize. As it stands, this strikes me as more or less a very small-scale version of the sort of thing that Republicans...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday defended the nuclear deal signed in Geneva between the West and Iran. Speaking at the Saban Forum in Washington, Kerry said his country would “not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Not now, not ever.” .....