Free Republic

His West Point speech and his policy of retreat are characterized by smallness. It is fitting that the day before President Obama gives his grand West Point address defending the wisdom and prudence of his foreign policy, his government should be urging Americans to evacuate Libya. Libya, of course, was once the model Obama intervention — the exquisitely calibrated military engagement wrapped in the rhetorical extravagance of a nationally televised address proclaiming his newest foreign-policy doctrine (they change to fit the latest ad hoc decision): the responsibility to protect, or R2P. (snip) For the same reason, perhaps, that the Afghan...

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I think what it is, it's an epidemic of incompetence and neglect because --precisely because as every one of these other scandals unfolded the administration mouths words about accountability, talks about responsibility, some people like the Secretary of State, even the president, say the buck stops here, but the buck stops nowhere because no one pays, no one is fired, no one is demoted.

Time after time, President Obama has reportedly learned of a number of big administration scandals in the media, from the IRS to Fast & Furious and now the VA scandal over wait times and veterans dying before receiving proper treatment (Jay Carney said today the president learned about this scandal through media reports). All this apparent unawareness before the fact led Charles Krauthammer to argue on Special Report today that Obama acts like he “stumbled upon the presidency” only to be shocked by how much wrong there really is. He lightly mocked the idea that Obama is “madder than hell”...

On Fox News Sunday, George Will was asked about the significance of the Benghazi memo. Specifically, host (Chris) Wallace asked about remarks by Charles Krauthammer comparing the discovery of the Rhodes email to discovery of the Nixon tapes. […] “Rather less (significant) than the Watergate tapes, which showed a President at the heart of a crime wave suborning perjury and raising hush money and all the rest. …”

Columnist Charles Krauthammer contended, on Thursday’s Special Report with Bret Baier, that the release of the Ben Rhodes memo has changed the media dynamic in interest toward the Benghazi scandal because journalists are now “embarrassed” over being “rolled” by the White House: “What’s changed now, and we saw it in the briefing room, is I think the other media are somewhat embarrassed by the fact that, unlike Fox, they allowed themselves to be stoned and spun and rolled for a year and a half and now the memo appears and it’s obvious that they missed the story.”

Charles Krauthammer is calling a newly released email “a smoking document” that the conservative columnist says shows the White House was involved in a coverup of the Benghazi attacks. GOP lawmakers on Tuesday seized on the documents, which contained an email from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes discussing “goals” for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearances on the Sunday shows following the attack. Appearing on Fox News on Tuesday evening, Krauthammer said the email shows that the Obama administration fabricated its contention that the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, were a reaction to a YouTube video because the revelation of...

<p>The debate over campaign contributions is never-ending for a simple reason: Both sides of the argument have merit.</p> <p>On the one hand, of course money is speech. For most citizens, contributing to politicians or causes is the most effective way to augment and amplify speech with which they agree. The most disdainful dismissers of this argument are editorialists and incumbent politicians who — surprise! — already enjoy access to vast audiences and don’t particularly like their monopoly being invaded by the unwashed masses or the self-made plutocrat.</p>

The Special Report All-Star Panel weighed in after President Obama touted the success of ObamaCare in remarks at the White House, lashing out at Republican critics. “We now know that the number of Americans who’ve signed up for private insurance in the marketplaces has grown to eight million people. ... They said nobody would sign up. They were wrong about that. They said it would be unaffordable for the country. They were wrong about that," Obama said.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer told Special Report with Bret Baier Wednesday night that the window had passed on prosecuting the Obama administration Benghazi, and that the GOP’s disorganzed approach to congressional hearings had let Benghazi as an issue “slip away.” “Politically speaking the administration has won,” Krauthammer said. “They ran out the clock. If we had had a select committee from the beginning, really had coherent hearings — unlike what we’ve had, which were disjointed hearings, that let all things sort of slip away —we really would have been somewhere. We would have gotten to the bottom of this. But...

Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer discussed the so-called 7.1 million Affordable Care Act enrollee number President Barack Obama announced earlier...

March 17, 2014 7:14 PM Krauthammer's Take: Obama Is Being 'Ridiculed by Russians' By NRO Staff President Obama has thus far responded tepidly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, targeting only several individuals in Russia for sanctions and providing Ukraine with rations as opposed to the arms it requested. Because of Obama’s rhetoric and policy, Charles Krauthammer said the president is being “ridiculed by Russians.” “If he thinks that sanctioning seven Russians out of a population of, what, 150 million is a sanction, he’s living in a different world,” Krauthammer said. Instead we should be sending Ukraine weapons, something the administration...

As reports are coming in that Russia has placed 2,000 troops in Crimea, within the borders of Ukraine, President Obama said that “the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.” Charles Krauthammer responded on Special Report tonight saying, “The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement. I find it rather staggering.” Krauthammer thinks Obama’s statement is about “three levels removed” from actual action. He explained: Obama said “we will stand with the international community — meaning we are going to...

As reports are coming in that Russia has placed 2,000 troops in Crimea, within the borders of Ukraine, President Obama said that “the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.” Charles Krauthammer responded on Special Report tonight saying, “The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement. I find it rather staggering.” [snip] “What he’s saying is we’re not really going to do anything and we’re telling the world,” Krauthammer said.

Charles Krauthammer says it right up front in his Washington Post column: “I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.” He does, however, challenge the notion that the science on climate change is settled and says those who insist otherwise are engaged in “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.” How ironic, then, that some environmental activists launched a petition urging the Post not to publish Krauthammer’s column on Friday. Their response to opinions they disagree with is to suppress the speech. Brad Johnson (@ClimateBrad), the editor of HillHeat.com and a former Think Progress...

I repeat: I’m not a global-warming believer. I’m not a global-warming denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30, or 50 years are white-coated propagandists. “The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist-in-chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It...

Count Charles Krauthammer out of the Hillary-inevitability caucus. While the Washington Post columnist and Fox analyst concedes that Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner, he argues that the 2016 primary won’t be a coronation, despite the media’s assumption that she’ll waltz to the nomination. If any Democrat who wants to challenge her asks just one question, that status may change quickly, Krauthammer told Hugh Hewitt last night — just one: What did you accomplish in four years as Secretary of State?Besides antagonizing the phlegmatic Canadians, literally our closest ally, that is (via Truth Revolt):CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO HH: That’s...

KRAUTHAMMER: Remember how Democrats were complaining that when Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare, it was somehow unpatriotic because it was an attack on the law of the land. This law of the land doesn't even exist; it exists in Obama's head. It's whatever he thinks, he wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is going to be. That is an understatement, that's not the way it's supposed to work. And we had an editorial in The Washington Post of all places, not exactly a right-wing rag, saying that Obama has really overstepped the lines arbitrarily, changing...

Krauthammer says that delaying the employer mandate simply to ease political pain before an election is the kind of stuff they do in banana republics: But generally speaking you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law lawlessly. This is stuff you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants, and any provision. It’s now reached a point where it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains. I...

They have a whole heap of regulations still left to write (at least $1.4 billion in annual compliance costs’ worth, by one estimate), but the employer mandate was part of the actual text of the law. Where is it written that they can just make at-will changes ad infinitum? Watch it at RCP: Generally speaking, you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law, lawlessly. I mean, this is stuff that you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which...

Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports — polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor — we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance. Last week, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s foreign minister calmly but pointedly complained that the United States owes Canada a response on the Keystone XL pipeline. “We can’t continue in this state of limbo,” he sort of complained, in what for a placid, imperturbable Canadian passes for an explosion of volcanic rage.