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The Obama administration appears to be conducting an organized campaign of public pressure to stop Israel from attacking Iran's well-developed nuclear-weapons program. So intense is this effort, and so determined is President Obama to succeed, that administration officials are now leaking highly sensitive information about Israel's intentions and capabilities into the news media. ------ Indeed, the only conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Obama's actions and rhetoric is that he fears an Israeli military strike more than he fears Iran achieving nuclear-weapons capability.

WASHINGTON — Passover and Easter — intrinsically linked in the Jewish and Christian traditions — are being celebrated this weekend. For observant Jews, Passover commemorates the Hebrews' liberation from slavery under Egypt's Pharaoh. For faithful Christians, Easter is a celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the grave and the fulfillment of a new covenant between God and man. Biblical passages in Exodus 12, Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20 describe these historical events and the reasons for festivities among people of faith. But this year, these holidays are a time of extraordinary anxiety for Christians and Jews...

The Founding Fathers, authors of the Constitution, were obsessed with any form of government that could become too powerful, too willing to use force to oppress citizens. They had cause. They had fought a long war against the greatest power of their age, ruled by a king with nearly absolute power. They fashioned an instrument designed to ensure that the President could not rule by edict and defused power among three branches of government. We have a President currently running for reelection against Congress, Wall Street, Republicans, and the right of citizens to be free of an overly intrusive government....

(Visiting DC)The Obama Administration announced its objection to including President Roosevelt’s prayer on the World War II Memorial in Washington DC. The Obama White House said the prayer would dilute the message of the memorial.Todd Starnes reported: Republican lawmakers and conservative activists are expressing outrage after the Obama administration announced its objection to adding President Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.The objection was noted during a congressional hearing on Rep. Bill Johnson’s (R-OH) bill – the “World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011.”“It is unconscionable that the Obama administration would stand...

An influential Muslim adviser to the White House who has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in canceling a meeting between President Obama and the leader of the persecuted Maronite church in Lebanon, according to the Beirut news agency el Nashra The Arabic-language report cited an unnamed U.S. source who said Dahlia Mogahed, "the highest adviser on Arab and Islamic Affairs in the State Department," sought to block a White House meeting with Patriarch Beshara Rahi, according to a translation by blogger El Cid at BigPeace.com. The report said the move heeded a request by top leadership of the...

Timing is everything. Qaddafi was not killed in retaliation for his attacks on American servicemen in Berlin in 1986, or the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1989. He was not killed for his central role in the USSR's terror networks going back to the 1960s and 1970s. He was killed after coming over to our side of George Bush's "war on terror" in the final phase of a civil war in Libya in which his regime fought al Qaeda affiliates. Horrific as it sounds, Qaddafi was killed because we and our NATO allies joined the other side...

...as it stands right now, Obama’s failing to connect and Garrett cited his so-called Twitter town hall meeting as an attempt almost in desperation to resurrect the messaging success the president in his prior election. “[I]f people aren’t listening to you on that core message, it doesn’t matter what you say anymore,” he said.

Barack Obama is set to reject the advice of the Pentagon by announcing on Wednesday night the withdrawal of up to 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by November next year, in time for the US presidential election. The move comes despite warnings from his military commanders that recent security gains are fragile. They have been urging him to keep troop numbers high until 2013. The withdrawal has created deep divisions in Washington. The defence secretary, Robert Gates, argued for a modest reduction – at one point as low as 2,000 – citing the advice of US commanders in Afghanistan that they...

Charlie Savage has the amazing story that President Obama “rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization.” The Acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Caroline Krass, and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Jeh Johnson, advised the President that military activities in Libya constituted “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution and thus Section 5(b) of the WPR required him to terminate or scale back the mission after May...

Provoked by renewed daylight NATO bombing of his capital, Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy raged against the alliance yesterday, screaming his message and daring Western forces to keep it up. Khadafy spoke in a telephone call that was piped through loudspeakers to a few thousand people demonstrating in Tripoli’s Green Square at the end of a day when NATO intensified bombing runs across the capital. State television carried the Khadafy message live, then repeated it a few minutes later. “NATO will be defeated,’’ he yelled in a hoarse, agitated voice. “They will pull out in defeat.’’ The sound of automatic weapons...

President Barack Obama decided he could continue the air war in Libya without congressional approval despite rulings to the contrary from Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers, according to published reports.

ISLAMABAD: The US has established contacts with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar to negotiate an end to the conflict in Afghanistan, a media report said on Tuesday. Abdul Haqiq, a former Afghan Taliban spokesman who used the alias Mohammad Hanif, played a key role in helping Washington reach out to Mullah Omar, The Express Tribune newspaper quoted a source as saying. Haqiq was arrested by US and Afghan intelligence agents in Afghanistan in June 2007. He was one of the high profile Afghan Taliban spokesmen along with Yousuf Ahmadi, appointed after chief spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi was arrested in...

On Thursday, President Obama will "reach out" yet again to what he insists on calling "the Muslim world." Think of it as the 2.0 version of his much-ballyhooed, but seriously deficient, 2009 speech at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. His message this time, we are told, will be that the death of Osama bin Laden and the outpouring of support for democratic change across the Middle East and North Africa opens a new dawn for Muslims - and even greater opportunities for expanded relations with the United States than he promised two years ago. But will they? The answer would appear...

How would you feel if you knew the president regularly sought the advice of a magazine editor/columnist and TV host? It’s true. According to CNN, Obama has made a habit of seeking “wisdom and advice” from host Fareed Zakaria. In an interview with fellow CNN host Elliot Spitzer, Zakaria admitted Obama and he talk regularly about the Middle East and international policy, a point that Spitzer said makes his heart “warm:”

As Muslims prepare to erect a mega-mosque near the site of the 9/11 atrocities, it is well to reflect that the sort of tolerance, or indifference, that allows them to do so, is far from reciprocated to churches in the Muslim world. I speak not of Islamist attacks against churches—such as the New Year attack in Egypt that killed 21 Christians; or when jihadists stormed a church in Iraq, butchering over 50 Christians; or Christmas Eve attacks on churches in Nigeria and the Philippines. Nor am I referring to state-sanctioned hostility by avowedly Islamist regimes, such as Iran's recent "round...

Now that Barack Obama has given a green light to Muslim Brotherhood participation in a new Egyptian government, it is unlikely that the organization will be kept out of power. And since the Brotherhood is the largest and most ideologically committed group in Egyptian politics, most likely it will end up in the driver’s seat in any new regime, and set the nation on course toward becoming an Islamic state. Obama almost certainly knows all this, and yet approved of Brotherhood involvement anyway. A look at some of his appointments, associations and activities shows that this should come as no...

Freedom: Egypt's revolution has rattled dictators everywhere. Some are responding by moving toward reform, others by cracking down. Yes, there's a difference between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Judging by the chain reaction of responses from as far away as Belarus, Venezuela and Thailand, it's as if an invisible activating agent detectable only by dictators sounded an alarm. Seems no one wants to be "the next Egypt." But they haven't all acted alike, which calls to mind the distinction made by former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick in a 1978 essay titled "Dictatorship and Double Standards." In the context of the Cold...

Wednesday, Feb. 2, President Barack Obama delivered an ultimatum to Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman and the army and security chiefs: Mubarak must be removed in the coming hours or else US aid to Egypt will be cut off, debkafile's Washington sources exclusively report. Pressure on the Egyptian armed forces to oust the president forthwith was further applied by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who called Vice President Omar Suleiman, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates who called Egyptian defense minister Mohamed Tantawi, and US armed forces chief Adm. Mike Mullen in a telephone call to the Egyptian chief of staff...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says the passion and dignity demonstrated by the people of Egypt has been an inspiration. He says young protesters will reach their destiny. In brief remarks at the White House Tuesday evening, the president said, "We hear your voices."