Free Republic

The chances of him winning the presidency are, um, slim. But what if Hillary just keeps him around a bit longer?In the financial world, inflation is defined as “too much money chasing too few goods.” In the world of political journalism, inflation is “too many pundits chasing too few scenarios.” Like the editors of Cosmopolitan struggling each month to find new sexual positions, implements, and erogenous zones, scribes are already running out of ways to chronicle the strategies and prospects of presidential contenders: “How Marco Can Stop Jeb”; “How Paul Can Block Cruz and Huckabee”; “How A Fiorina-Santorum Alliance Can...

When Iraqi tribal leaders came to D.C. looking for help against ISIL, the White House refused. Then the former president made a call. Late in the evening of Sunday, January 18, an eleven-member delegation of tribal leaders from Iraq’s western Anbar Province arrived in Washington, D.C. Just as their plane was touching down, Islamic State units back in Iraq attacked the compound of one of the delegation’s senior leaders, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, killing nine Iraqi police officers and wounding 28 of the sheik’s guards. A nearby Iraqi military unit failed to respond to repeated calls for help. The brutal...

After announcing he will be skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”s speech to Congress for a trip abroad, US Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry both met on Saturday with Labor leader Isaac Herzog on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, Germany. The two sides insisted that the meetings were informal. But it reportedly revolved around security matters and the Zionist Union’s defense strategy, Israeli media reported. On Friday, Biden announced he’ll miss Netanyahu’s speech to Congress due to a pre-scheduled overseas trip, yet unnamed. Both Kerry and President Barack Obama said last month...

There are understandable differences of opinion between the American and Israel leaders on the issue of Islamist terrorism. It is wholly appropriate and desirable that they should be heard in the U.S. Congress. It is therefore painful that some honorable Democratic members of Congress should be so misguided as to declare that they will not attend the Israeli leader’s address. John Lewis (Georgia), a hero of the civil rights movement, G.K. Butterfield (North Carolina), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Eric Blumenauer (Oregon) are among those who are engaging in what is tantamount to a boycott of Israel. According...

Despite essentially boycotting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress by planning to be abroad when it takes place, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday met with another Israeli official. Biden and Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog, head of the Labor party, met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. The Likud party was incensed at the meeting between Herzog and Biden, which also came as leaders from the left, including Herzog himself, were busy attacking Netanyahu and blaming him for Biden’s boycott of the speech. “Buji’s behavior in Munich is an irresponsible crossing of red lines,” the party...

Joe Biden won’t be there to welcome Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress — or even shake his hand. The vice president will miss only his second address by a foreign leader to a joint session of Congress next month, when he’ll be out of the country while Netanyahu makes what’s become an increasingly controversial speech warning against the Iran nuclear deal. The vice president’s office on Friday confirmed the plans to skip the March 3 speech. “We are not ready to announce details of his trip yet, and normally our office wouldn’t announce this early, but the...

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said there is no decision yet as to whether Vice President Joe Biden will attend a joint session of Congress next month where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will give an address... The question immediately following the Netanyahu discussion pertained to President Obama's meeting with Muslim leaders Wednesday afternoon, which Earnest said that "the president is looking forward" to it.

AS we were reminded last summer when thousands of unaccompanied children showed up on our southwestern border, the security and prosperity of Central America are inextricably linked with our own. The economies of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras remain bogged down as the rest of the Americas surge forward. Inadequate education, institutional corruption, rampant crime and a lack of investment are holding these countries back. Six million young Central Americans are to enter the labor force in the next decade. If opportunity isn’t there for them, the entire Western Hemisphere will feel the consequences.

Have at it FReepers!

Vice President Joe Biden wrapped up his California visit on Friday by telling doctors that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, had “ended the debate” about whether health care is a privilege or a right, according to the Orange County Register. Biden was speaking to the Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit, congratulating doctors on a rapid reduction in the rate of hospital-borne infections in recent years. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also spoke to the meeting. There is no provision in the Constitution or in the text of the Obamacare bill that refers to health care as a...

President Obama hailed late Saudi King Abdullah, who died at age 90 after a battle with pneumonia, as leading the kingdom “through its emergence as a critical force within the global economy and a leader among Arab and Islamic nations.” “He took bold steps in advancing the Arab Peace Initiative, an endeavor that will outlive him as an enduring contribution to the search for peace in the region,” Obama said of the Saudi plan that would recognize Israel in exchange for concessions including pulling back to pre-1967 borders. “At home, King Abdullah’s vision was dedicated to the education of his...

Vice President Joe Biden claims he might enter the 2016 fray. Biden insisted Wednesday morning the contest is "wide open" for both Democrats and Republicans, despite polls showing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is by far the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. "Yes there's a chance," Biden replied on ABC's "Good Morning America" when directly pressed on whether he would challenge Clinton. "But I haven't made my mind up about that."

Shots were fired Saturday night outside the unoccupied home of Vice President Joe Biden in Delaware. Biden was not at home when the incident occurred, the Secret Service told reporters. Speaking to CNN, Secret Service spokesman Robert Hoback said “a vehicle drove by the vice president's residence at a high rate of speed and fired multiple gun shots. This occurred on a public road outside the established security perimeter. The shots were heard by Secret Service personnel posted at the residence and a vehicle was observed by an agent leaving the scene at a high rate of speed.” Biden and...

USSS: a vehicle drove near VP Biden's DE home last night and someone in it fired multiple gun shots. Bidens weren't home.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a bumbling (but certainly more competent than Joe Biden) vice president in HBO’s “Veep.” There’s an episode in season two where it’s January 6 and she is supposed to swear in senators but just can’t get her act together. She messes up small talk and doesn’t have her head in the game. Yesterday, January 6, was sort of a real-life version of this. While the man who in real life is a heartbeat away from the presidency also messed up small talk, he was almost too locked in. He was extremely attentive. Particularly to underage girls. And,...

In the vice presidential debates of 2008, Joe Biden mocked Sarah Palin for the supposedly mindless campaign mantra of "Drill, baby, drill." Biden intoned that, "It will take 10 years for one drop of oil to come out of any of the wells that are going to be drilled." The energy secretary-designate, the professorial Steven Chu, in 2008 had unwisely voiced a widely held but wisely unspoken progressive belief that, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" -- or about $9 a gallon.

Vice President Joe Biden demonstrated that he is slipping deeper into senility this week when he gave a speech swearing that he once violently ambushed an unsuspecting kid who allegedly kicked his sister off of her bicycle. The tale told by Biden bore a remarkable resemblance to a scene in “The Godfather,” in which Sonny Corleone pummels Carlo Rizzi for abusing Corleone’s pregnant sister, Connie.

The VP colorfully recalled the incident a women's rights charity event in New York City held to 'celebrate men who combat violence against women' 'I walked up behind him and smashed his head next to the counter' 'His father grabbed me, and I looked at his son and said, "If you ever touch my sister again, I’ll come back here again and I’ll kill your son" 'In his youth, Vice President Joe Biden once assaulted and threatened to kill a local bully who kept pushing his little sister off her bike. Biden colorfully recalled the incident at a recent women's...

The courageous ex-Muslim human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently recounted that at a speech in Washington not long ago, she met Vice President Joe Biden. Biden seized the opportunity to tell her that “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” Hirsi Ali politely disagreed, whereupon Biden began a lesson in the teachings of the Religion of Peace: “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam.” Unfortunately, Hirsi Ali didn’t hear much of Imam Joe’s Islamic wisdom: “I politely left the conversation at that. I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.” This wasn’t just Joe being Joe,...

In a speech Wednesday, the vice president recalled a moment from childhood when he ‘smashed [the] head’ of local bully—and then threatened to kill him. Vice President Joe Biden said he once chased down a bully on his bicycle, physically assaulted him, and threatened to “kill” him—all in the name of protecting the honor of his sister Valerie. ~snip~ “I remember coming back from Mass on Sunday,” Biden began. “Always the big treat was, we’d stop at the donut shop…We’d get donuts, and my dad would wait in the car. As I was coming out, my sister [Valerie] tugged on...