Free Republic

Barack Obama formally ended his presidency the way he came in, talking to adoring fans about how lucky we are to have him in our lives. Indeed, given the hand-wringing over how Obama's successor is all about entertainment and theatrics, it was somewhere between ironic and absurd to watch the outgoing president hold a campaign rally for his "farewell address." And yet, we've become so inured to this kind of self-serving pomp and circumstance that no one seems to care. From what I can tell, no liberal commentators minded at all, and most conservative reviewers went straight to the substance...

Will President Obama pardon Hillary Clinton before he leaves office? A question curiously non-discussed in the media. However, when you accept that CNN’s broadcasted narratives, ie. the preferred positions of the U.S. Department of State, are generally good predictors of the political forecast, all signs point to yes.

Institutional problems within the Chicago Police Department have led to serious civil rights violations for years, including racial bias against blacks and a tendency to use excessive force, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report released Friday. The Justice Department launched its investigation of the 12,000-officer force — one of the nation’s largest — in December 2015 following the release of dashcam video showing a white police officer shoot a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, 16 times as he walked away holding a small, folded knife. The video of the 2014 shooting, which the city fought to keep from being...

The Radical-in-Chief kills hope for Cubans fleeing their totalitarian hellhole As a final sop to his friends and fans in Communist Cuba, President Obama yesterday abruptly ended the two decade-old compassionate immigration policy that allowed any Cuban who made it to U.S. soil to remain in this country and become a legal resident. This middle finger to the Cuban community is likely part of a series of last-minute policy changes Obama makes on his way out of office. In addition to an expected avalanche of eleventh-hour executive orders and regulations, media reports indicate the White House is seriously considering commuting...

But will the new policy have a shelf life of more than a week? I guess we’re now just down to total d*** moves on the part of the Earth Scorcher in Chief. Ever since Fidel Castro turned Cuba into a Soviet outpost in the 1950s, the United States has had a policy of welcoming Cuban refugees, assuming they could make it to our shores, even if they don’t have a visa. (Since, after all, how could they have a visa?) And since the mid-1990s, this has been formalized the wet-foot-dry-foot policy, and it establishes that if land on U.S....

Will President Obama pardon Hillary Clinton before he leaves office?  A question curiously non-discussed in the media. However, when you accept that CNN’s broadcasted narratives, ie. the preferred positions of the U.S. Department of State, are generally good predictors of the political forecast, all signs point to yes.

Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, on Wednesday stressed the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and condemned the outgoing Obama administration’s decision not to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criticized Israeli construction in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Speaking at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tillerson said the resolution was “not helpful” and “undermines” the conditions for peace talks to continue, reported The Washington Post. The former ExxonMobil chief also described Secretary of State John Kerry’s subsequent speech criticizing Israel as “quite troubling.” …

OSTERHOLZ-SCHARMBECK , Germany, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army plans to deploy about 4,000 troops to Poland in early 2017 in a demonstration of strength aimed at Russia, a senior U.S. military official said. Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, said Tuesday the personnel would arrive in Germany and then be transferred to Poland. He made his remarks Tuesday at an army logistics school in Osterholz-Scharmbeck in northern Germany. He said northern Germany would be a logistics hub for U.S. troops deploying to Central and Eastern European countries. The placement of troops in Poland, part of...

A judge has ordered federal regulators to quickly evaluate how many power plant and coal mining jobs are lost because of air pollution regulations. U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in Wheeling made the ruling after reviewing a response from outgoing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy. McCarthy had responded to the judge’s previous order in a lawsuit brought against her by Murray Energy Corp. that the EPA must start doing an analysis that it hadn’t done in decades. […] The judge said the EPA is required by law to analyze the economic impact on a continuing basis when...

President Obama said Thursday that he was terminating the 22-year-old policy that has allowed Cubans who arrived on United States soil without visas to remain in the country and gain legal residency, an unexpected move long sought by the Cuban government. “Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries.” The move places a...

Barack Obama is a president we all will miss. As Obama departs office, his wit, his charisma, his oratory skills, his optimism are all qualities we will remember him by. He was a great Commander-in-Chief, but he was also a great dad and a great husband and these photos will surely give you some #familygoals. {Pictures at source]

Obama Should Be Charged With High Treason! American Soldiers Were Killed But He Denied Strikes On Iran Because Of Secret Nuke Deal

Biden told reporters Thursday that he and President Obama did not ask the intelligence community to corroborate the claims because they didn’t take them seriously. “As a matter of fact, the president was like, ‘What does this have anything to do with anything?'” The VP said he didn’t think the unverified information was worth a second glance.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday accused Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV of illegally using hidden software to allow excess diesel emissions to go undetected, the result of a probe that stemmed from regulators' investigation of rival Volkswagen AG. FCA shares plummeted as the maximum fine is about $4.6 billion. The EPA action affects 104,000 U.S. trucks and SUVs sold since 2014, about one-sixth the vehicles in the Volkswagen case. The EPA and California Air Resources Board told Fiat Chrysler it believes its undeclared auxiliary emissions control software allowed vehicles to generate excess pollution in violation of the law and...

President Barack Obama announced Thursday he is ending a longstanding immigration policy that allows any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil to stay and become a legal resident. The repeal of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy is effective immediately. The decision follows months of negotiations focused in part on getting Cuba to agree to take back people who had arrived in the U.S. "Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities," Obama said in a...

Update: President Obama has awarded Vice President Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The end of Obama presidency and Martin Luther King Day day provide an opportunity to analyze race relations after eight years of the first (half) black president. From one perspective, it hasn’t been successful. That racial tension has increased since 2008 is undeniable. One poll finds that 55% of Americans believe race relations have deteriorated under Obama, while only 8% feel they have improved. The New York Times writes 60% of Americans (including the majority of blacks and whites) feel that race relations are generally bad, much higher than 2008. Riots have recently rocked communities like Ferguson, Milwaukee and Charlotte....

The Obama administration is ending the "wet foot, dry foot" policy that granted residency to Cubans who arrived in the United States without visas. That's according to a senior administration official, who said the policy change was effective immediately.

Comedienne Rosie O’Donnell continues her Twitter crusade to stop President-elect Donald Trump from ever taking the oath of office. O’Donnell and Trump’s decades-long feud is known across the country. Over the years, the two have had countless public spats; Trump went so far as to criticize O’Donnell during the first presidential debate of the 2016 election season. O’Donnell has devoted almost her entire social media presence to ripping into Trump. On Wednesday, she called for martial law to be invoked. “I FULLY SUPPORT IMPOSING MARTIAL LAW – DELAYING THE INAUGURATION – UNTIL TRUMP IS “CLEARED” OF ALL CHARGES,” O’Donnell wrote...

The Obama administration, in its waning days, is busily destroying public records to protect its image, charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “Past administrations of both Democrat and Republican players have engaged in mass destruction of records as they left office,” Assange said in a livestreamed press conference Monday. “We are told that destruction of records is occurring now in different parts of the Obama administration in different departments or agencies.” “One understands the political motivation for it,” he explained, “but to eliminate small political risks by destroying major elements of history is, frankly, an obscenity.” One needn’t go far back...