Free Republic

The militant group called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria seemed to surprise many American and Iraqi officials with the recent gains it made in its violent campaign to create a new religious state. But the victories achieved in the past few weeks were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which define a region known as the cradle of civilization.

They don't make a Hallmark card for this -- as far as we know -- but for nine days starting Saturday, a small but persistent group of activists will flock to overpasses and street corners across the country for "National Impeach Obama Week." The Coalition to Impeach Obama Now! organizers, coordinated by San Diego activist Roger Ogden, have no national endorsements from Tea Party groups or Republican politicians. Instead, impeachobamaweek.net has a small list of regional and local Tea Party, libertarian, and otherwise anti-Obama activist groups backing them.

In April, the House Ways and Means Committee referred Lois Lerner to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. Nothing has come of it. Given the politicization and lawlessness of the DOJ under Attorney General Eric Holder, nothing likely will. The House should move to impeach Lerner instead, and other IRS officials who have broken the law. Federal bureaucrats need to be sent a message that lawbreaking is not part of their job descriptions, and that notwithstanding our recalcitrant Justice Department, our constitutional system provides this remedy against executive branch officials gone rogue under the law. More importantly, Americans deserve...

A Texas judge opted Monday not to issue an arrest warrant against Gov. Rick Perry, but the Republican still faces the unflattering prospect of being booked, fingerprinted and having his mug shot taken — and has assembled a team of high-powered attorneys to fight the two felony counts of abuse of power against him. "This is nothing more than banana republic politics," Tony Buzbee a Houston-based defense attorney who will head a cadre of four lawyers from Texas and Washington defending Perry, said at a news conference. A grand jury in Austin, a liberal bastion in otherwise largely conservative Texas,...

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — A senior White House official said on Wednesday that the United States would consider using American ground troops to assist Iraqis in rescuing Yazidi refugees if recommended by military advisers assessing the situation. Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Martha’s Vineyard that President Obama would probably receive recommendations in the next several days about how to mount a rescue operation to help the refugees, who are stranded on a mountaintop surrounded by Sunni militants. He said those recommendations could include the use of American ground troops. But he drew a distinction between...

Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute Doha Center and working in the Middle East is reporting credible sources have declared ISIS' battle for Baghdad has begun. Lister is working to confirm source statements.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama on Friday announced that virtually all U.S. troops will come home from Iraq by the end of the year -- at which point he can declare an end to America's long and costly war in that Middle Eastern nation. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has said that Iraq wouldn't be able to defend its borders if U.S. troops pulled out and also questioned Iraqi forces ability to defend its airspace. But Panetta, en route to Indonesia, said history shows that Iraq will be ready.

BAGHDAD — Vice President Joe Biden said after a three-day trip to Baghdad that the American people will see President Barack Obama’s Iraq policy as a success when the “combat mission” ends on schedule Aug. 31. Biden said the administration “will be able to point to it and say, ‘We told you what we’re going to do, and we did it.’” “I think America wins,” Biden told POLITICO in an end-of-trip interview at the ambassador’s residence in the sprawling U.S. Embassy complex.

President Obama said Thursday that United States military aircraft had dropped food and water to thousands of Iraqis besieged by Islamic militants on a mountaintop in northern Iraq. Speaking from the State Dining Room at the White House, the president said he had directed the United States military forces to conduct targeted airstrikes on the militants if they moved to take Erbil, threatening the American citizens and military personnel there.

BLUEFIELD — Back in 1933, the struggling United Mine Workers of America union got a shot in the arm from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” legislation that allowed workers to organize into unions. That commitment from a Democratic administration tipped the playing field in the union’s direction, and within a short time, almost all coal mines in the two Virginias were organized. From that time forward, most Democratic Party candidates could count on loyal UMWA support. That may not change in the future, but six years of more stringent environmental regulations governing coal-fired power generation emissions has put the...

President Obama thumped Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, but now their political standings seem reversed. During a summer in which Democratic candidates are keeping their distance from an unpopular president, Romney is emerging as one of the Republican Party’s most in-demand campaign surrogates. Over three days in mid-August, Romney will campaign for GOP Senate and gubernatorial candidates in West Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas, aides said. In September, he is planning visits to the presidential swing states of Colorado and Virginia. Romney is filling up his October schedule, as well. “Democrats don’t want to be associated with Barack Obama...

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a state law requiring voters to have photo identification to cast a ballot, although the law remains blocked by an earlier ruling by a federal judge that it is unconstitutional. The court wrote in its decision that providing a photo identification at the ballot box does not create a substantial burden to the voter, as claimed by the plaintiffs in the case. "Photo identification is a condition of our times where more and more personal interactions are being modernized to require proof of identity," the court wrote.

MSNBC host Chuck Todd said the American people are “fatigued” from President Barack Obama Monday on Morning Joe, in the wake of a poll showing Republican Mitt Romney would trounce him in a rematch of the 2012 election. Co-host Thomas Roberts called the poll evidence of “voter’s remorse” for sending Obama back to the White House. Todd pointed out Obama’s average job rating in states with competitive 2014 Senate races was 38 percent.

Americans are so down on President Obama at the moment that, if they could do the 2012 election all over again, they'd overwhelmingly back the former Massachusetts governor's bid. That's just one finding in a brutal CNN poll, released Sunday, which shows Romney topping Obama in a re-election rematch by a whopping nine-point margin, 53 percent to 44 percent. That's an even larger spread than CNN found in November, when a survey had Romney winning a redo 49 percent to 45 percent.

Dawoud Bey’s photograph of the man who would soon be president was taken on a Sunday afternoon in early 2007, at Barack and Michelle Obama’s Hyde Park home in Chicago. The portrait is at once stately and informal. Mr. Obama’s hands are folded gracefully in his lap. He wears an elegant suit and white shirt, but no tie. He stares intensely into the camera. The photographer and his subject were comfortable with each other. Mr. Bey recalls that he asked Mr. Obama, who intended to be photographed in shirt sleeves, to put on a jacket. The photograph depicts its famously...

Has the Obama administration competently and effectively managed the government? A Fox News poll released Wednesday finds a majority of American voters says no -- including about a third of Democrats. A 58-percent majority says the White House has not been competent at managing the federal government. Some 32 percent of Democrats join 67 percent of independents and 84 percent of Republicans in holding that view.

The head of the IRS confirmed Wednesday that investigators looking into missing emails from ex-agency official Lois Lerner have found and are reviewing "backup tapes" -- despite earlier IRS claims that the tapes had been recycled. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, testifying before a House oversight subcommittee, stressed that he does not know "how they found them" or "whether there's anything on them or not." But he said the inspector general's office advised him the investigators are reviewing tapes to see if they contain any "recoverable" material. The revelation is significant because the IRS claimed, when the agency first told Congress...

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer who raised campaign money for him in the 2008 and 2012 elections as ambassador to Finland. The lawyer, Charles C. Adams Jr., is the managing partner at the Geneva office of the international law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. He was among a group of Obama fundraisers in 2008 that raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the campaign. In 2012, he was among Obama's top fundraisers, bringing a minimum of $500,000 to the president's re-election effort.

A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veterans Affairs hospital cafeteria, 500 yards from the emergency room, died after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance, officials confirmed Thursday. Officials at the hospital said it took a half an hour for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five minute walk. VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived. She says staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday. "Our policy is under expedited review," Brown...

The Quinnipiac poll getting buzz this week may be worthless, but the general topic of evaluating Barack Obama is another opportunity to make an important point: almost everything about Obama's presidency can be explained by saying he’s a Democratic president. He’s an interesting man, but as president he’s become about as generic as possible. By saying he’s a generic Democratic president, I’m not arguing that he’s performed perfectly; I’m saying that his performance is neither significantly above or below par. Let's hear it, Obama critics or Obama supporters. Where have his particular skills, preferences or personality produced anything that sets...