Free Republic

In sending warplanes back into the skies over Iraq, President Obama on Thursday night found himself exactly where he did not want to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition.... Obama made a point of reassuring a war-weary public that the president who pulled American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 had no intention of fighting another full-scale war there.

President Obama Talks to Thomas L. Friedman About Iraq, Putin and Israel ... Asked whether he should be more vigorous in pressing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to reach a land-for-peace deal, the president said, it has to start with them. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “poll numbers are a lot higher than mine” and “were greatly boosted by the war in Gaza,” Obama said. “And so if he doesn’t feel some internal pressure, then it’s hard to see him being able to make some very difficult compromises, including taking...

U.S. President Barack Obama opined in a New York Times interview that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is too popular at the moment to make territorial compromises with the Palestinian Authority. Asked whether he should be more vigorous in pressing Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to reach a land-for-peace deal, Obama said that this has to start with them. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “poll numbers are a lot higher than mine” and “were greatly boosted by the war in Gaza,” Obama said. “And so if he doesn’t feel some internal pressure, then it’s hard...

From Thomas Friedman's interview with President Obama published August 8, 2014: TOM FRIEDMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Are you worried about Israel's long-term survivability? I've been there for the last week watching the war. What does it feel like to you? PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it is amazing to see what Israel has become over the last several decades. I mean, you think about the dream of the early Zionists to have scratched out of rock this incredibly vibrant, incredibly successful and wealthy and powerful country is a testament to the ingenuity and the energy and vision of the Jewish people. And...

Today's New York Times op-ed page includes a wide-ranging interview on foreign policy that Thomas Friedman conducted with President Obama. Let's break down some of the low-lights. Excerpts from interview in italics, with my comments following. And sure, when President Obama said "I don't worry about Israel's survival," he explained his insouciance in terms of Israel's military might. But was he telling a deeper truth? Obama made clear that he is only going to involve America more deeply in places like the Middle East to the extent that the different communities there agree to an inclusive politics of no victor/no...

On Wednesday evening, moments after finishing a summit meeting with African leaders at the State Department, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a stark message to President Obama as they rode back to the White House in Mr. Obama’s limousine. The Kurdish capital, Erbil, once an island of pro-American tranquillity, was in the path of rampaging Sunni militants, the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the president. And to the west, the militants had trapped thousands of members of Iraqi minority groups on a barren mountaintop, with dwindling supplies, raising concerns about a potential genocide. With American...

The blatant partiality of the United States in favor of Israel has already turned the words “peace process” into a bitter joke. Over many decades, American indulgence of Israel has blighted prospects of any resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. Consequently, occupation has been entrenched and Israeli colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem has metastasized, going from under 200,000 illegal settlers in 1991 to over 600,000 today. This partiality only increases when Israel goes to war. By guaranteeing Israel impunity in its military actions, the United States has contributed massively to the bloodshed in Gaza in recent...

Children at St. Lucy’s School in the Bronx attended a summer program in July. St. Lucy’s will offer six publicly funded pre-k classes in the fall. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times The biblical story of Noah’s Ark will be taught, without mention of who told Noah to build it. Challah, the Jewish bread eaten on the Sabbath, will be baked, but no blessings said over it. Some crucifixes will be removed, but others left hanging.These are the kinds of church-state gymnastics that New York City and some religious schools are performing as Mayor Bill de Blasio expands government-funded prekindergarten....

Stasi: Al Sharpton now has fake ID to go with fake leadership role, but NYPD keeps giving him reasons to fussAl Sharpton, who is about as believable as “Sharknado” (parts one and two), now has the fake credentials to go along with his fake leadership role because the cops have made a fake ID with him as the NYPD Commissioner. This, after he humiliated the real police commissioner last week. Thing is, the cops should stop giving Sharpton reason to show up, but they don’t. Tuesday, they gave him another reason to stage a protest. A Daily News exclusive revealed...

<p>Like most progressives, Bill de Blasio is a champion of public financing for political campaigns. And with good reason.</p> <p>For all his railing against the evil of big money in politics, he’s been quick to take advantage of big fat donations to fuel his agenda — provided they come in a way that doesn’t require him to leave his fingerprints on them.</p>

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — The pastor came one afternoon to survey his church, or what was left of it: remnants of a “welcome” sign and a strip of Christmas garland still tacked to the wall. The gang took the chairs. They took the light fixtures. They took the doors. They had given his family 24 hours to get out and so they did, abandoning their home and the small evangelical church he led. “There was no other way,” Pastor Jorge Rivas said the other day, on the porch of a house in another part of this violent city, where...

Tonawanda Island is overrun with forgotten felines.They might not have a council or a conch, but cats have completely taken over an island in the middle of the Niagara River in New York. Locals estimate that Tonawanda Island now has hundreds of abandoned and feral cats roaming its shores. People don't live on the 85-acre island year-round, but the cats now do. Word about the cat population has apparently spread because people will come to the island specifically to drop off their unwanted feline friends. "They're throughout the whole island," Mike Charnock, the owner of the Shores Waterfront Restaurant &...

Twelve states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Friday seeking to block an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate coal-fired power plants in an effort to stem climate change. The plaintiffs are led by West Virginia and include states that are home to some of the largest producers of coal and consumers of coal-fired electricity. The suit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The other plaintiffs are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The E.P.A. rule, announced by President Obama on June...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the weekÂ’s top news, including the struggle on Capitol Hill to find a resolution to the political division on the border crisis before Congress leaves for August recess, as well as how these events will affect the November election, plus the outlook for ending the war between Israel and Hamas. (AUDIO-AT-LINK)TRANSCRIPT JUDY WOODRUFF: In Washington, House Republicans were racing to pass something on the border crisis after a day of confusion and chaos on Capitol Hill Thursday. For a taste of what went on...

A suspected child molester whose case was recently featured on CNN's The Hunt With John Walsh was killed in a New York City shootout on Monday. Sexual-assault suspect Charles Richard Mozdir exchanged fire with a fugitive task force Monday in Greenwich Village, leaving the suspect dead and two federal marshals and a police detective wounded, authorities said. Mozdir was arrested in California after the now-7-year-old son of two close friends told his parents that Mozdir touched his private parts while the suspect was taking care of him, CNN reported. A $1 million warrant was issued for Mozdir’s arrest after he...

'In July 2010, amid the gargantuan rebuilding effort at the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, construction workers halted the backhoes when they uncovered something unexpected just south of where the Twin Towers once stood. At 22 feet (6.7 meters) below today's street level, in a pit that would become an underground security and parking complex, excavators found the mangled skeleton of a long-forgotten wooden ship. Now, a new report finds that tree rings in those waterlogged ribs show the vessel was likely built in 1773, or soon after, in a small shipyard near Philadelphia. What's more,...

James David Manning's congregation, "ATLAH Worldwide Missionary Church" is the former Bethelite Missionary Baptist Church. The church is also the site of the ATLAH Theological Seminary, which offers classes on preaching and prophecy. Through the ATLAH church, Manning hosts an online series called The Manning Report, which features criticism on such topics as the negative influence of black celebrities, homosexuality and the alleged criminal acts of current U.S. President Barack Obama......Click Here for YOUTUBE critique of Pres. Obama....I think it is funny"

The Cupcake Crew food truck in New York City proved it’s not so sweet after all. The company inexplicably took to Twitter on Wednesday evening to spew some hate for Israel.

Over the weekend, New York City, defying those who think such a move is insulting to the poor, approved a move by the developer Extell to build a separate entrance at an Upper West Side condominium for its affordable housing tenants.

A holiday weekend video treat: How cable music channel VH1 turned booing of Senator Hillary Clinton into cheering. Senator Clinton was booed when she walked on stage last October at a rock concert in Madison Square Garden to benefit 9/11 victims. It was shown live by VH1 but, as ABC's John Stossel illustrated in a July 20/20 special on media distortions, when the Viacom-owned cable channel replayed it sound technicians replaced the booing with cheering and applause. And that version is the permanent record VH1 put onto its DVD of the event. During his July 12 20/20 look at media...