Free Republic

President Trump on Tuesday incorrectly said his father was from Germany while expressing frustration about the country’s payments toward NATO. "Germany, honestly, is not paying their fair share," Trump said at the White House before noting that he has "great respect" for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and "great respect for the country." "My father is German, was German," he continued. "Born in a very wonderful place in Germany, so I have a great feeling for Germany." The Washington Post said it as least the third time Trump has made this particular claim about his father, Fred Trump, who was born...

Twitter is virtually enforcing Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law, contends an author who recently was informed by the social-media company of a complaint that his book analyzing the minds of Islamic terrorists violated the Muslim-majority nation’s notorious statute. “It’s just absolutely surreal and Kafkaesque that a social-media giant in the free world is trying to enforce blasphemy laws — or, for now, carrying the message,” said Jamie Glazov, the author of “Jihadist Psychopath.” It was a tweet promoting his book that drew the complaint. Twitter then informed Glazov of the complaint and suggested he hire a lawyer. Referring to the Pakistani...

Walking around Manhattan during the month of June, Rainbow Pride flags are on display everywhere. In the windows of large chain stores and banks, as well as small eateries and bars. Williams Sonoma had a display of dishes in their window that represented the Rainbow Pride flag colors. Zara clothing store was selling men's tank tops that look like they were specially designed to replicate the exact shades of each of the Rainbow Pride flag colors. They all hung from a rack in the designated order of colors, approximating the flag. Last night, Madison Square Garden was lit up in...

A Turkish newspaper close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party is urging 57 Islamic nations to build a joint army specifically to attack Israel, notes a new report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. The Middle East Media Research Institute reports the article appeared on the paper’s website under the title “What If an Army of Islam Was Formed against Israel?” It was published shortly ahead of a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 members, MEMRI reported. The article notes, MEMRI said, “that such a joint army will greatly exceed the Israeli army in...

On Nov. 8, 2011, President Obama met with then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Cannes after what had been a particularly rough week for US-Israeli relations. Modal Trigger The week prior, the UN agency UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member state. Congress responded by cutting off UNESCO’s funding, a move the Obama administration direly opposed. Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s US ambassador from 2009 to 2013, said the president, having opposed Palestine’s admission to the agency, “thought he had done enough . . . and did not need to punish them further.” President Obama responded to Congress’ act by admonishing Israel for...

President Obama’s re-election campaign announced last month the launch of “Rabbis for Obama,” a group whose stated goal is to rally grassroots support for the President in the Jewish community. The announcement came amid reports that Jewish support for Barack Obama, while still strong, is dwindling when compared to his numbers in 2008; as well as some hard-hitting ads for GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney targeting Jewish concerns, especially regarding support for Israel. [Picture] Rabbis for Obama: Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Rabbi Brant Rosen, with Ayatollah Bojnoordi from 2008 trip to Iran. Photo from Shalom Rav blog [Picture] Rabbis for Romney:...

"Can you clarify your end of the “hot mic” conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, as it involved Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?" asked MSNBC's Chuck Todd yesterday about Obama's embarassing moment last week. "With respect to the “hot mic” in France, I’m not going to comment on conversations that I have with individual leaders," said Obama, "But what I will say is this: The primary conversation I had with President Sarkozy in that meeting revolved around my significant disappointment that France had voted in favor of the Palestinians joining UNESCO, knowing full well that under our laws,

As part of damage control after US, French leaders overheard ridiculing Israeli premier, deputy national security advisor tells reporters 'Obama has taken security cooperation with Israel to unprecedented levels' WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama has a "very close working relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu. They speak very regularly," Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said Wednesday, days after Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were overheard ridiculing the Israeli leader during a private exchange at the G20 summit in Cannes. Briefing reporters at the White House, Rhodes said, "I think they've probably spent more time one on one than...

Well, I’ll say one thing for him: Obama certainly has been transformative when it comes putting the “personal” into personal diplomacy. According to reports coming from last week’s G20 meeting, Obama was caught by reporters on an open microphone commiserating with French president Nicholas Sarkozy over their disdain for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Although there are differing accounts of the conversation, Reuters has reported that the translation overheard by reporters had Sarkozy calling Netanyahu a liar: "I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters...

JERUSALEM — The president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, told President Obama that he could no longer bear Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and went on to call Mr. Netanyahu a “liar” in a private conversation overheard by several French journalists last week at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Cannes. “You are fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you,” Mr. Obama replied, according to reports that flooded the main Israeli news sites on Tuesday. The Israeli prime minister’s office refused to comment. An Israeli official, speaking on the...

On one level, none of this is surprising. Obama’s irritation with the Jewish state and personal distaste for Netanyahu have been apparent nearly from the start of his presidency. This is just as we would imagine Obama would sound in private. It’s nearly impossible to image Presidents George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan saying such a thing for the simple reason that neither held our democratic ally is such low esteem. They looked upon the democratically elected leader of our ally with respect and affection. Obama’s comment put liberal Jews once again in a tight spot. It seems like only...

The Israeli press was abuzz on Tuesday after a Monday night TV report stating that, in their meeting in Paris last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy had told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to “get rid of” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Although the French leader’s faux pas stunned Israel, it wasn’t his first aimed at leaders of democracies. Sarkozy has unleashed a mass of insults towards Western leaders that are way outside normal diplomatic protocol, while at the same time showing high regard and cutting sweet deals with some of the Middle East’s cruelest dictators. In this latest contretemps,...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "get rid" of hard-line Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Channel Two reported on Monday. The Foreign Ministry responded to the report by lambasting the French leader for his "intolerable intervention in internal Israeli affairs." Sarkozy spent a good portion of his meeting with Netanyahu last Wednesday discussing the composition of the Israeli official, according to the report. The presence of three other Israeli officials at the meeting did not deter the French leader from expressing his true opinion of the foreign minister, said Channel Two. The French president reportedly told...

Forcing myself to listen to Obama, getting a kick out of the cop sitting behind him barely putting up with the nonsense

O'Reilly claims the President Obama's failure to identify the terrorist threat facing America has allowed ISIS to run amok in the Middle East, a mistake he claims the Commander-in-chief will not acknowledge. 'There is no question the Obama administration's greatest failure is allowing the Islamic terror group ISIS to run wild, murdering thousands of innocent people all over the world, including many Muslims,' said O'Reilly. 'Mr. Obama has never, never acknowledged that mistake, nor does he define the ISIS threat accurately. 'That group is killing innocent people in order to impose a radical version of Islam on the world. The...

Obama: ‘We’ are to blame, not Islamic terrorism, for massacre Omar Mateen called the cops to pledge his fealty to ISIS as he was carrying out his mass murderer in Orlando early Sunday morning. Twelve hours later, the president of the United States declared that “we have no definitive assessment on the motivation” of Omar Mateen but that “we know he was a person filled with hate.”So I guess the president thinks Mateen didn’t mean it?Here again, and horribly, we have an unmistakable indication that Obama finds it astonishingly easy to divorce himself from a reality he doesn’t like — the...

The world’s first scientific renaissance took place not in Italy, but in the Arab world. The period between the 9th and 11th centuries AD, when Islam took hold of a band of territory strategy from Spain in the West through to what is now Pakistan, saw an extraordinary intellectual flowering. Scientists in the Arab world during this period made important advances in fields as varied as astronomy, mathematics, medicine and optics – advances that fed into and stimulated the later European Renaissance. Which makes it all the stranger that modern Islamic nations have such a lamentable record in science. Where...

video: President Obama took on the role of television critic in remarks today at the Islamic Society of Baltimore."Our television shows should have some Muslim characters that are unrelated to national security," the president said at the mosque, "because -- it's not that hard to do. There was a time when there were no black people on television. And you can tell good stories while still representing the reality of our communities."

Which is obvious to anyone not intentionally misreading it. The real news here is not that Antonin Scalia said this, but that it’s the slightest bit controversial. But that’s not something that happened overnight. The secular left and their media servants have spent decades pushing the idea that the establishment clause is about protecting the non-religious from maniacal Jesus freaks - especially the nightmare scenario in which the Jesus freaks get a job with any public entity and are guided in any decision by biblical principles. Scalia is a man who actually knows about the founding of the nation and...

Vatican City (AFP) - The Vatican's first accord with the Palestinians -- an agreement that Israel has attacked as counter-productive to the Middle East peace process -- has come into force, the Holy See announced Saturday. The accord was signed in June, just over two years after the Roman Catholic Church recognised the Palestinian territories as a sovereign state in February 2013. The accord covers the operation of the Church in areas of the Holy Land under Palestinian control but its significance has been seen in broader terms as a symbol of growing international backing for a Palestinian state. "With...