Free Republic

The mediasphere is boiling after the New York Times ran a piece on Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy guru, a failed writer who openly boasted about manipulating the media. It was full of quotes like this... Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we...

Over the weekend, top White House aide Ben Rhodes issued something of a mea culpa to the mainstream press for calling them know-nothings and depicting them as little more than propaganda amplifiers. It’s not clear why Rhodes felt the need to apologize, since reporters weren’t complaining all that much.

Richard Hoagland, the acting U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, discussed with Code Pink and anti-Israel activists what he said was classified information, during an October 3 meeting with the groups in Islamabad. Code Pink, a liberal anti-war organization known for disrupting Republican and conservative public events, uploaded a video of the meeting to an Internet video sharing website on Oct. 5. Realizing what he had said, Hoagland told the activist gathering: “I probably just, you know, got into big trouble with what I just said.”

Sen. Tom Cotton accepted the challenge, but President Obama’s speechwriter and high-ranking foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes ducked out of a hearing Tuesday where he was to explain whether he misled the country in pushing the Iran nuclear deal. Members of Congress had been eager to prod Mr. Rhodes over misrepresentations, but the White House had seemed skeptical, saying lawmakers should poke one of their own, Mr. Cotton, an Arkansas Republican that Mr. Obama’s aides say has been misleading.

Two wars today are being waged against Jewish students on American university campuses. One is substantive, the other is institutional. The plight of the Jews at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is emblematic of both. The purpose of the substantive war is to deny Jews their freedom as Jews. As the guarantor of Jewish freedom, Israel is the subject of a systematic, multidimensional assault, carried out everywhere on campuses. On a growing number of campuses in the United States, the only Jews who can safely express their views on Israel are those who champion Israel’s destruction. Those who support...

Perhaps the Carter administration was comparably hostile to Israel, but the passive-aggressive, honor-deficient Obama administration has both caused and acceded to greater danger to the Jewish State than any other U.S. administration since 1948.Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he would not be attending the Mideast conference to be held in Paris on May 30, which was organized by France's socialist President Francois Hollande.According to State, Kerry is simply too busy.As a result, Hollande has postponed the conference and no alternative date has been set.Eager to force Israel towards negotiations with the bifurcated, terror-supporting Palestinian leadership, Hollande had...

White House Spokesman Josh Earnest repeatedly ducked questions about whether presidential national security adviser Ben Rhodes should testify before a Congressional committee hearing exploring the controversial Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, instead asserting that Rhodes is the one who told the truth about the agreement, whereas multiple Republicans repeatedly issued false statements on the subject. Rhodes has come under fire after the New York Times published a profile piece in which President Obama's 39-year-old "mind meld" confidante on foreign affairs -- an "aspiring novelist" who holds academic degrees in political science, English and creative writing -- boasts of actively manipulating America's...

A senior Iranian missile force commander claimed that U.S. officials are secretly instructing the Islamic Republic to keep its ballistic missile tests secret so as not to alarm the region, according to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace and Missile Force, said in an address to students in Qom on May 14 that the Obama administration is anxious that the missile tests remain clandestine so as not to raise questions about whether Iran is adhering to the nuclear deal. “At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about...

I can’t say that the possibility of Secret Agent Kim ever crossed my mind, but the world is wide and full of wonders. Vanity Fair reports that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp, “an agency tasked with policing domestic culture and heading off the influence of other nations, is concerned about the social-media popularity of Kim Kardashian.” In fact, their concern runs so deep that they have accused her of purposeful corruption. Mostafa Alizadeh, spokesman for the Revolutionary Guard’s Organized Cyberspace Crime Unit, explains to Iran Wire that their surveillance of Kardashian and other models with significant social media platforms, falls...

Preacher says GOP delaying 2nd coming Monday, October 09, 2006 Becky Gaylord Plain Dealer Reporter Voters should oust congressional Republican leaders because U.S. foreign policy is delaying the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to a evangelical preacher trying to influence closely contested political races. K.A. Paul railed against the war in Iraq on Sunday before a crowd of 1,000 at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, his first stop on what he hopes is a 30-city campaign. The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has...

A Gazan fisherman arrested by Israeli security services has revealed how Hamas regularly uses fishermen to smuggle weapons and other military equipment into Gaza. The Shin Bet security service (Israel Security Agency), Israeli navy and Israel Police released for publication Monday afternoon the arrest of 39-year-old fisherman Salim Jamal Hasan Na’aman back in April. Na’aman, a resident of the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, was initially detained by Israeli naval forces after straying beyond the zone permitted for fishing, as part of the Israeli military’s blockade aimed at containing the Hamas terrorist group. Under Shin Bet interrogation, the...

The White House told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Monday that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes won't be testifying on Tuesday about his controversial comments on the Iran deal. In a letter to Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, Neil Eggleston, counsel to President Obama, said it would raise "constitutional concerns" if Rhodes were to testify. He also said Congress has been consulted enough. "While the administration will continue to consult closely with Congress on this important matter, testimony by one of the most senior advisers to the president raises significant constitutional concerns rooted in the separation of...

Leading members of Congress are calling on President Barack Obama to fire one of his top advisers amid a deepening scandal over accusations the White House intentionally misled lawmakers and the American public about the contents of last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran, according to a letter sent Monday to Obama and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The lawmakers are pressing Obama to fire deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes following revelations he and other officials “spearheaded the charge to mislead elected lawmakers and the American people about the Iran nuclear deal and the negotiations that led to...

remarks Published May 16, 2016 FoxNews.com Facebook117 Twitter335 livefyre1070 Email Print Now Playing White House defends Iran deal in wake of Rhodes profile Never autoplay videos The White House confirmed Monday that Obama adviser Ben Rhodes will not be allowed to testify before House lawmakers on the Iran nuclear deal, after a last-ditch attempt by Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz to pry the controversial aide loose for the hearing. Chaffetz and the White House have been engaged in an escalating feud, all on the heels of a New York Times Magazine piece where Rhodes was quoted boasting about the administration’s success...

Iranian lawmakers are moving closer to approving a lawsuit against the United States to seek compensation for damage inflicted by Washington’s “hostile moves over the past 63 years”. On Wednesday, 181 of the 290 Iranian lawmakers voted in favor of a bill that would pave the way for the government to take legal action against the U.S. in an international court for actins dating back to the 1953 coup in Iran. The move comes just a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nearly $2 billion of Iran’s frozen assets be given to American families of the victims...

A member of the House Armed Services Committee says America has only gotten part of the story on Iran's kidnapping of a group of U.S. sailors earlier this year. Ten U.S. Navy sailors were taken into custody by the Islamic Republic on January 12, 2016, after the group strayed into Iranian waters off Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. The group were held by the Iranians for 15 hours and subsequently released. In a move to embarrass the sailors, the Iranian government also released videos showing the men and one woman being taken into custody. Another video shows one of...

They have absolutely no fear of America under Obama’s leadership. In a recent TV interview, IRGC Navy Commander Ali Fadavi said: “The Americans are aware that if they make even the slightest mistake, their naval vessels will be sunk in the Persian Gulf, the Hormuz Strait, and the Sea of Oman.” He further claimed that Iran’s vessels would emerge from “undersea tunnels,” in which “no force will be able to harm our naval vessels.” In the interview, which aired on IRINN TV on May 10, Fadavi maintained that the crew of U.S. vessels is now obliged to speak Farsi in...

A senior Iranian military commander claimed that U.S. officials are quietly encouraging the Islamic Republic to keep its illicit ballistic missile tests a secret so as not to raise concerns in the region, according to Persian language comments. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace and Missile Force, said in recent remarks that the Obama administration does not want Iran to publicize its ongoing missile tests, which have raised questions about the Islamic Republic’s commitment to last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement. “At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about missile affairs, and if...

they are considering arming and training the new unity government in Libya so it can fight the spread of terrorist groups in the country and counter the smuggling of migrants to Europe. In a joint communique following a lengthy meeting on ways to rein in chaos in Libya, the diplomats said they would support Libya’s request to be exempted from a United Nations embargo that was put in place five years ago to keep arms out of the hands of Islamist militants and rival militias locked in a power struggle. Other parts of the embargo would be reinforced, the communique...

The Inuit reportedly have some 15 or so words for snow—and it turns out English speakers do, too, since the Inuit terms correlate roughly to phrases such as “snow bank” and “snow drift” that make perfect sense. Generally speaking, though, I say the more terms—and the more precise terms—we have for taking apart messy bundles of similar phenomena, the better. The sleaziest people in politics tend to disagree with this. After all, who wins from glomming onto an already-established word and trying to invest it with some new, not at first discernible implication? Usually people up to no good or...