Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is getting a number of critical report cards about his foreign and domestic policies lately -- signs that America is tiring of his presidency. Here at home, Janet Yellen, in her first monetary policy address as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, said the labor markets were still weak, and that it will likely take two years or more before the U.S. fully recovers from its recession. Ouch. If Yellen's forecast proves right, this means it will have taken Obama's administration nearly eight years to lift our economy out of its long and painful lethargy....

This is the text of a speech given by Lord Alton of Liverpool at a Vigil for Syria held at Farm Street Jesuit Church on Tuesday, just a day after the murder of Fr van der Lugt in Homs. In a talk at the beginning of Lent at Brentwood Cathedral I cited the heroic and faithful work of a 75-ear-old Dutch Jesuit, Fr.Franz van der Lugt who, in the face of extraordinary danger and acute suffering, refused to desert the suffering people of Homs.Father Frans van der Lugt was born on April 10, 1938 in the Netherlands and entered the Society...

The empire of the Antichrist is very near, and it will be Turkey. Before we examine the issue of Turkey, we must first examine the monumental problems in much of what circulates the prophecy arena in the West. Perhaps the major problem with modern Bible Prophecy Analysts in the U.S. is that they are mostly ahistorical who also invest in a crowd that is also ahistorical. Another problem is that the Bible is mostly focused on the Middle East and most Western Prophecy writers have a scant understanding of the Middle East demography, sectarian rifts and religious aspirations in the...

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid? For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Impresario: Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-Macau casino mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion -- 8th richest man on the planet -- and who dumped $92 million into the election of 2012. Adelson kept Newt Gingrich alive with a $15 million infusion of ad money, gutting Romney, and then sank $30 million into Mitt's campaign. This time Sheldon wants to buy himself a winner. Ari Fleischer,...

Yosef Hamadani Cohen led Iran’s Jewish community since 1994Rabbi Yosef Hamadani Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of Iran, passed away this weekend at the age of 98, JTA reports. His death was announced by Siamak Moreh Sedgh, the representative of the Iranian Jews in parliament, and marked informally by Iranian Jews via their Facebook statuses. Hamadani, who had led Iran’s Jewish community since 1994, had been ill for many years. He reportedly had close ties with Iranian political leadership, and met Iranian President Mohammah Khatami in 2000, lating hosted him at his Yusef Abad Synagogue in 2003—the first-ever synagogue visit by...

Some 150 Israeli Arabic-speaking Christians on Sunday demonstrated outside the European Union mission in Tel Aviv, demanding that the international community stop nitpicking against Israel and start combatting the severe persecution of Christians everywhere else in the Middle East. “Nations, organizations and international missions are quick to raise an accusing finger against Israel at every opportunity,” said Father Gabriel Nadaf, spiritual father of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, which organized the rally. Those same nations and organizations “don’t life a finger against the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East,” the priest continued. Father Nadaf went on to explain...

College and universities have one thing in common with the federal government, along with the cash that flows from the latter to the former: They seem to be following Einstein’s definition of insanity. They keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Under the National Defense Authorization Act of 1958, the federal government gives colleges and universities $120 million a year to train students to study languages that might be useful to America’s national security: Not many students receive such training under the law. Sarah Stern of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) gave the...

Turkish armed forces shot down a Syrian plane on Sunday that Ankara said had crossed into its air space in an area where Syrian rebels have been battling President Bashar al-Assad's forces for control of a border crossing. "A Syrian plane violated our airspace," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told an election rally in northwest Turkey. "Our F-16s took off and hit this plane. Why? Because if you violate my airspace, our slap after this will be hard."

i>This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. The former President of Lebanon, Amine Gemayel, is a Maronite Christian. He recently warned of “an exodus approaching biblical proportions.” Gemayel told a gathering in Zurich of Christian Solidarity International (CSI) and other human rights activists that the current wave of church burnings, murders, and riots against Christians in the Mideast is the work of radical Islamists. The former Lebanese leader’s own brother had been assassinated in Beirut by these same jihadists. President Gemayel’s warnings echo those issued two years ago by Vienna’s Catholic prelate. Christoph Cardinal Schönborn in 2012 told a religious...

While the event was largely overshadowed by the latest developments in Ukraine, U.S. President Barack Obama held a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday. Obama was expected to use the meeting to urge Abbas to sign onto a framework to extend peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis beyond an April deadline. "I believe that now is the time for not just the leaders of both sides but also the peoples of both sides to embrace this opportunity for peace," Obama said in remarks ahead of the meeting.

Among the academic set from which President Barack Obama springs, everyone agrees that wars are the result of "arrogance" and bullying by the United States. So concerned was then-Sen. Obama about the potential for U.S. aggression that he declined to vote for 2007 legislation that would have designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. The IRGC had been involved in training and arming terrorists worldwide, particularly in Lebanon (Hezbollah) but also in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. But Obama worried that such a vote would be "saber rattling." Our standing in the "world community" (an oxymoron to...

Like in horror movies, swarms of bats attacked a Saudi village and caused panic among its residents, who said they were even more frightened by the birds’ screams. Residents of the village in the southern Saudi province of Jazan near the border with Yemen said some of the birds attacked children and other people outside their homes. “The residents said they are frightened to leave their homes after the bats attacked some of them,” Sabq Arabic language daily said. “They said they were even more frightened by the bats’ screams, which they described as horrifying. They called on authorities to...

Russia, flush with new-found wealth from oil exports, expands its military reach and political influence abroad. A war-weary America slashes defense spending and retreats from the world. The president embarks on a massive government-subsidized program to develop alternative energy to replace fossil fuels. Pundits cluck about America in retreat, and point to the rise of an Asian economic superpower. That’s the world circa 1976, but it sounds like quotes ripped from today’s headlines. History has a way of repeating itself, or to quote the great Yogi Bera, it’s déjà vu all over again. The Obama administration is looking a lot...

BEIRUT: Tarif Khalidi is a big, bearded bear of a man, the kind you would always choose to play Father Christmas, or perhaps a Cossack leader sweeping across the Russian steppe, reins in one hand, sword in the other. But Tarif — or Uncle Tarif as I invariably call him — is an Islamic scholar, the most recent translator of the Quran and author of a wonderful book of Muslim stories about Jesus. I am thus surprised — but after a few seconds not at all surprised — to hear how well this Palestinian from Jerusalem got on with the...

Gaza (CNN) -- When Jwdat Abu Ghrb spotted a dark shape last summer in the waters off Gaza, where he was diving for fish, he initially thought it was a corpse. "I was afraid," he told CNN. "I put on my goggles, dove underneath and still couldn't tell what it was. I resurfaced and got some help from other people and family members and came back, and after full four hours of trying we managed to get it out of the water and I was shocked by what I found." It was a life-size bronze statue, believed to be a...

Controversial Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been described as the savior of the Islamic world and as a new Ottoman sultan. But likening him to the wizard Saruman from The Lord of the Rings is novel—as was done earlier this week by a leader in the Turkish opposition party: “[Turkey has become] a country where headlines and program flows can change with one phone call as if it were Middle-Earth in Lord of the Rings. The [person] who does it is like a Saruman the White who has lost all sense of shame,” Republican People’s Party’s [CHP] deputy...

In the Arab countries they are fewer and fewer, driven to exodus by growing hostility. An up-to-date map of how many and who they are, three months before the pope's voyage to the Holy Land by Sandro Magister ROME, February 11, 2014 – Behind the scenes preparations are in full swing for the voyage of Pope Francis to the Holy Land, scheduled for May 24-26. When half a century ago Pope VI went to Jerusalem - the first pope in history to do do so - almost all of the holy places of the city were within the boundaries of...

Less than a year after President Obama left Israel to the sound of loud cheering after he assured Israelis in Hebrew that they “are not alone,” a new poll has found that 70% of Jewish Israelis do not trust Obama to safeguard their nation’s vital interests in negotiations with the Palestinians. The survey, published Friday in the Israeli weekly Sov Hashavua, is the latest in a string of recent polls demonstrating a precipitous fall in the confidence

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kERy_1r2LxQ]   I noticed that Roger Waters, formerly of the iconic rock band Pink Floyd, has been publicly scolding a few fellow celebrities in the field of music and film for not sharing his fanatical anti-Israel political views. Specifically, Scarlett Johansson drew Waters' ire for filming some ads for the Israeli beverage maker SodaStream and classic rocker Neil Young, who ignored Waters' directive to not book concerts in Israel. Waters has chugged the kool aid of the 'Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment', (BDS) movement, which is in reality a political movement whose underlying mission is to portray Palestinians as victims of...

...[Ma]ny observers across the political spectrum argue that there’s no coherent American Middle East policy at all....[C]olumnist Charles Krauthammer argues that Obama is simply presiding over a decline in American influence, while Democratic[s]...like Sen. Robert Menendez apparently can’t make heads or tails of the White House’s Iran policy. If sanctions got the Iranians to the negotiating table...then why is the White House fighting against a further round of sanctions that would give Washington more leverage? Because it’s part of the Administration’s grand strategy. As Obama explained to David Remnick in a recent New Yorker interview, the goal is to create...