Free Republic

Obama is not just the enemy of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He is the enemy of the people The good news as 2015 debuts is that President Obama has managed to very nearly decimate the Democratic Party, leaving it weaker in Congress and throughout the nation than it has been in memory. The bad news is that he has weakened the nation in the eyes of the world. He is not trusted by world leaders and his next two years in office will only encourage our enemies. “Checking Obama’s misuse of his foreign-affairs powers should be a top...

As the calendar turns toward the final two years of the Obama Presidency, this is a moment to consider the world it has produced. There is no formal Obama Doctrine that serves as the 44th President’s blueprint for America’s engagement with the world. But it is fair to say that Barack Obama brought into office a set of ideas associated with the progressive, or left-leaning, wing of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment. “Leading from behind” was the phrase coined in 2011 by an Obama foreign-policy adviser to describe the President’s approach to the insurrection in Libya against Moammar Gaddafi. That phrase...

Now where have we previously heard Senator Rand Paul’s cliché-fest that constitutes his rebuttal to Senator Marco Rubio on Cuba sanctions? Well, from The Council on Foreign Relations to the New York Times and from Hillary Clinton to The Congressional Black Caucus—and that’s for starters. And oh, we also heard it repeatedly from every single one of the KGB-trained Cuban spies convicted by U.S. juries recently. “The embargo is Castro’s best friend,” Clinton chanted to an extremely friendly audience at the Council on Foreign Relations back in June while citing and promoting her book Hard Choices. The sanctions give “Castro...

Shhh — Don’t tell anybody, because it’s a big secret: The Cheneys of Wyoming, father and daughter, were largely right about Iraq back in 2003, and they are correct now as well. Former vice president Dick Cheney and former high-ranking State Department official Liz Cheney kicked up a predictable firestorm last week when they wrote a Wall Street Journal column blasting President Obama’s foreign and defense policies. Concurrently, they announced a new 501(c)(4) grassroots organization called The Alliance for a Strong America. This group is sure to become a target for lefty loonies and Rand Paul, who doubtless hope to...

President Obama will unilaterally remove most of the embargo on Cuba, according to John Kavulich of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council and White House officials. According to Mr. Kavulich, by himself, President Obama will remove nearly all restrictions on Cuba and will forgo Congress. The “embargo” will still exist, but it will be in name only. “The embargo is a container — it’s been that way since President Eisenhower — that’s had regulations and laws put into it and taken out of it and mixed about,” Mr. Kavulich said. “President Obama is saying, ‘I’m going to leave a shell,...

resident Obama announced plans to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba today, including opening an embassy in Cuba."We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests," Obama claimed, "And instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries."Specifically, the White House took three major steps today as part of their "New Course on Cuba": Initiating discussions to reestablish diplomatic relations, including a U.S. embassy in Havana, and a Cuban embassy in the United States.A review, by the State Department, of Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.Relaxing of regulations to facilitate the...

The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom is delighted to welcome Senator Ted Cruz to deliver the 9th Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture. Previous speakers in the Thatcher Freedom Lecture series have included former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, journalist and author Charles Krauthammer, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, free market economist Hernando De Soto, historian Victor Davis Hanson, and human rights champion Natan Sharansky. In his address, Senator Cruz will outline his vision for restoring American leadership on the world stage and rebuilding partnerships with key U.S. allies at a time of increasing global threats to the...

Americans who couldn’t get enough of six years of appeasement and pandering to our enemies can get eight more years of the same in 2016.All they have to do is vote Hillary. Who is Ready for Hillary? Iran, North Korea and Al Qaeda. Hillary Clinton is taking heat for saying America should “empathize” and show “respect” for its enemies.The former secretary of State, who is considered a likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, made the remarks during a speech Wednesday at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.Touting an approach she calls “smart power,” Clinton urged America to use “every possible tool and...

It’s difficult to know where to start with this nonsense from a recent speech given by Hillary Clinton, in which the presumed Democratic front-runner finally defines what she sees as “smart power,” and what she claims is a 21st-century approach to diplomacy. In large part, the former Secretary of State says it means psychoanalyzing enemies to understand them better, which … is exactly what nations have been doing for centuries, if not millenia. That’s why, for instance, our nations turned out experts in Sovietology like Condoleezza Rice, so that they could rise to positions of policymaking importance and apply their...

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed in a vote of 52-42 to make a producer of “The Bold and The Beautiful” the United States’ new ambassador to Hungary. Colleen Bell also contributed almost one million dollars to the President’s reelection campaign, a fact that Senator John McCain repeatedly brought up in a fiery speech on the Senate floor denouncing the President’s nominee. “We’re about to vote on a totally unqualified individual to be ambassador to a nation which is very important to our national security interest,” he said. “Her qualifications are as a producer of the television soap opera ‘The Bold and...

It isn’t often that left, right and center agree about the Obama White House. But the firing of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this week produced a near-unanimous reaction: President Obama’s foreign policy team is dysfunctional and in need of a stronger tonic than the exit of a low-profile cabinet member with a light policy footprint. Both Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and The New York Times editorial page agreed that, in the words of the Times, Hagel “was not the core of the Obama administration’s military problem. That lies with the president and a national security policy that has too often...

President Obama will announce the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday in the first high-profile personnel move since Democrats suffered significant losses in this month's midterm elections. "In October, Secretary Hagel began speaking with the President about departing the administration given the natural post-midterms transition time," a senior administration official said. Obama will make the announcement with Hagel at 11:00 a.m. According to the White House, a successor will be named "in short order," but Hagel will remain in the post until that person is confirmed by the Senate. A senior administration official praised Hagel as "a steady...

President Barack Obama is a liar. That’s the takeaway from Massachusetts Institute for Technology professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s video oeuvre of narcissistic honesty. “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies,” Gruber said in one of several videos recently uncovered of him explaining at forums and panels over the last several years how Obamacare was dishonestly sold to the public. “In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are...

"........It may be argued that Truman “saved” Western Europe when he dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan a few weeks later – hitting Hiroshima on August 7 and Nagasaki on August 9. That brought the war against Japan to an abrupt end; it also extended a protective nuclear umbrella over Britain, France, and other U.S. allies in Western Europe. All of a sudden, Stalin faced the reality that the U.S. had a new weapon that could destroy whole cities and armies. He would risk his own annihilation if he started a third world war hard on the heels of...

Former President Bill Clinton delivered a foreign policy address in Beverly Hills Monday, a day after advising several thousands of youth on financial literacy and receiving an award for his support of jazz. Clinton delivered the inaugural address in the Los Angeles World Affairs Council’s new series, “America’s Role in the world” at a sold-out luncheon at The Beverly Hilton.

This is liberalism at its finest. Get really angry with someone who holds views different from your own, and then berate that person with hyper-emotional drivel. In this case, the victim was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who received sexually explicit questions from Dartmouth's student body regarding anal sex during a visit to the college. Perry is a social conservative. According to the Dartmouth, the student newspaper, Perry was there to discuss the midterms, border security, energy initiatives and foreign policy. There was a Q&A session–and that’s when things devolved. Both presidents of the College Democrats and Republicans condemned the actions of...

Seeing its gold-spangled blue flag flown on the barricades of Kiev thrilled the European Union, reviving its self-image as a beacon of democracy at a time of growing doubt and economic gloom. But nearly a year on from the first "EuroMaidan" protests that would topple the pro-Moscow president who had spurned an EU trade deal, some in Brussels are disillusioned by the experience of helping Ukraine. EU generosity in waiving import duties and funding gas supplies from Russia may be being abused, they say.

The Republicans did not have a national campaign except to send back Obama's words to haunt him. It was a nationally silent campaign and whoever came up with it was a genius. As long as the Republican spoke out about any national issue, the Lamestream Media would speak out against it. Whether it was abortion, healthcare, racial bating; it did not matter, the media would take the side of the Democratic party. By avoiding speaking on these issues and focusing like a laser on Obama's misstatements and obvious mistakes (Ebola and ISIL), they avoided the Democrats and the Lamestream Media's...

A mouthpiece of the Chinese Government has described President Obama as 'insipid' and claims U.S. voters are sick of his 'banality'. The state-run Global Times has published an editorial deriding the leader a few days ahead of his visit to the growing economic and military powerhouse. It stated: 'Obama always utters "Yes, we can," which led to the high expectations people had for him. But he has done an insipid job, offering nearly nothing to his supporters. 'U.S. society has grown tired of his banality.' The criticism comes in the wake of a crushing defeat in the Midterm elections worse...

This White House’s relationship with Israel, and particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has always been strained, but it is fair to assume today that American relations with the West’s closest ally in the Middle East are downright hostile. The White House is making it clear for all interested observers that they do not believe close relations with the Israeli government are a priority. AllahPundit’s dissection of an interview an administration official gave The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, in which Netanyahu was ungraciously described as “recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and ‘Aspergery,’” is a must-read. AllahPundit observed that the unnamed...