Free Republic

If you can't beat members of the "birther" movement, join 'em. That's the approach President Obama took on Saturday night in Kenya, his father's homeland, when he made a wisecrack about his birthplace — which suspicious critics have harped on for years. "Some of my critics back home might be suggesting I'm here to look for my birth certificate," Obama said while making a toast at a state dinner hosted by President Uhuru Kenyatta. "That's not the case." In 2011, Obama made his birth certificate public after so-called birthers questioned his eligibility to be president, claiming he was not a...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced Monday that a new ship will be named the USS Kansas City. The ship will be the next Independence variant littoral combat ship, a type designed for a variety of missions that include mine warfare, surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare. It will be 419 feet long and can travel up to 40 knots. It will be built in Mobile, Alabama. A similar ship, the USS Independence, is shown above. Mabus made the announcement at Kauffman Stadium before the Royals game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. A Navy replenishment oiler was also named after...

At his press conference last Wednesday, our president of self-regard again linked himself with Ronald Reagan, seeking to equate his supposed success in gaining a deal with Iran not to build a nuclear weapon for 10 years to Reagan's arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. There is at least one major difference, which causes Obama's analogy to collapse. Reagan regarded the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and vowed to defeat it. He said not just the Soviet Union, but communism itself, would wind up "on the ash heap of history." Obama hears, sees and speaks no evil against...

Obama has brought racism to a whole new level in our government. It’s breathtaking in scope and breadth. He is solidifying his legacy before leaving office with the unprecedented gathering of information on all of us and how we live to be used in racial databases. Not only does the government already have such databases on police departments, they have created monster ones for almost every area of our lives to be used to forward “racial and economic justice” as we have never seen before as a nation. Enforced diversity is racism. Obama is already using the databases against institutions...

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.” Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites. This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already...

The U.S. Navy's newest combat ship, the USS Little Rock, slid into the waters of Marinette Marine Shipyard in Wisconsin on Saturday morning. .. the 378-foot-long, 3,000-ton littoral combat ship with only a 13-foot draft is ideal for the missions the Navy faces in shallow waters around Pacific Rim, where the Navy is increasing presence as it keeps an eye on China, which is expanding its naval forces and its presence in the South China Sea. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the launching of the Little Rock is emblematic of the Navy's commitment to have a fleet of 304 ships...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Marine Corps' top aviator flew to an Arizona air base this week as part of a final effort to certify the combat-readiness of an initial squadron of 10 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35B fighter jets, their pilots and technicians. Marine Corps officials were due to brief Lieutenant General Jon Davis, deputy commandant for aviation, on a week-long review which included operational and simulator flights in five core mission areas, an inspection of the maintenance department, and academics for both pilots and technicians. If Davis is satisfied, he will brief Marine Corps Commandant General Joseph Dunford, who...

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=34138 Barack Obama smirked and laughed as a reporter at his Wednesday briefing after getting a critical question about the nuclear deal with Iran. CBS News’s Major Garrett pressed the president on the imprisonment of Americans in Iran. “As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran—three held on trumped-up charges, according to your administration, one whereabouts unknown. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content, with all the fanfare around this deal, to leave the conscience of this nation, this strength of this nation, unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?” Garrett asked. “I’ve gotta...

The 24-year-old named by the FBI as the killer of four U.S. Marines today in Chattanooga, Tenn. today so far does not appear to have been on law enforcement’s radar, two U.S. officials told ABC News. “They’ve run an initial check on him. Right now, there is nothing popping early in the system on him, but that could change,” a senior U.S. official briefed on the incident said. “They are still checking multiple other databases on him.” Authorities are investigating the life of Abdulazeez in an attempt to determine what may have prompted him to carry out the deadly attack.

Delays in the construction of the first two of three next-generation Zumwalt-class (DDG-1000) guided missile destroyers at the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard are partially to blame for slowing work on two Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) destroyers being built at the Maine yard, USNI News has learned. Several sources told USNI News that due to myriad reasons — including the size of the yard, the composition of the workforce at BIW and continued setbacks in the delivery of the first two next-generation Zumwalts — production of the future Burkes Rafael Peralta (DDG-115) and Thomas Hudner (DDG-116) have been delayed by...

Three years behind schedule and some $200 billion over its original budget, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is finally set to become operational this month. The fighter jet has been in development for nearly 15 years, weathered half a dozen years of testing and experienced myriad hardware malfunctions and software glitches along the way. Once it's declared ready for combat, it will be the most expensive weapons system in world history. It will also be the most advanced in the sky. The F-35, also referred to as the Joint Strike Fighter, is touted as the most lethal and versatile...

Barack Obama scolded a reporter at his Wednesday briefing after getting a critical question about the nuclear deal with Iran. CBS News's Major Garrett pressed the president on the imprisonment of Americans in Iran. "As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran—three held on trumped-up charges, according to your administration, one whereabouts unknown. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content, with all the fanfare around this deal, to leave the conscience of this nation, this strength of this nation, unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?" Garrett asked. "I've gotta give you credit, Major,...

When Kate Steinle was gunned down by an illegal alien in San Francisco, America received a shocking reminder of just how broken our system is. This wasn't just a failure of local policy. It was a failure of national policy, and the incident has garnered national attention. But where is Barack Obama? Question: What do Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray have in common? Their deaths all brought about responses from Obama and his team. Obama spoke out during the Trayvon Martin proceedings, saying Martin "looked like him." As it turned out, Trayvon Martin was the one to blame...

US Secretary of State John Kerry dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's criticism of the nuclear deal reached with Iran as “comments that are way over the top" Tuesday. "What the critics of this plan never offer... is a realistic alternative," Kerry told MSNBC. "It's wrong for people to think this doesn't have long-term accountability." "Israel is safer" as a result of Tuesday's accord, Kerry insisted. "This is under attack by people who really don't know the terms of the agreement." Kerry said that if Iran fails to meet the requirements of the deal, all options remain on the table....

It’s the most expensive weapon in history, but the F-35 stealth jet has been outperformed by a 40-year-old F-16 jet in a dogfight. A mock air battle was held over the Pacific Ocean, between the cutting-edge F-35, the most sophisticated jet ever, and an F-16, which was designed in the 1970s. But according to the test pilot, the F-35, which has cost the US military more than $350billion, is still too slow to hit an enemy plane or dodge gunfire. The dogfight, staged in January near Edwards Air Force Base, California, was designed to test the F-35’s ability in close-range...

President Barack Obama leads mourners in singing "Amazing Grace" as he delivers a eulogy in honor of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney during funeral services in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 26.

A choked-up Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apologized in court Wednesday to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, then was formally sentenced to die for the attack. "You told us just how unbearable it was, this thing I put you through," Tsarnaev said at a hearing in Boston. "Now, I am sorry for the lives that I have taken." "I ask Allah for his mercy for me and my brother and my family," he said. Tsarnaev stood as he spoke, and the courtroom was extraordinarily quiet. He paused at each sentence and appeared to tremble. Some victims had gathered in court to...

President Obama will tout his healthcare law Tuesday to a Catholic group that has consistently supported the law despite deep divides over its birth control requirement. In a speech to the Catholic Health Association — which represents hundreds of hospitals and nursing homes across the U.S. — the president will talk about the law's major tenets and make his case that it has improved health plans for virtually everyone, in addition to expanding coverage to millions. The address comes just days before the Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling that could halt the healthcare law's insurance subsidies to...

Michelle Obama gave a candid view Saturday of the challenges and emotional toll of being the country’s first black first lady. Obama, speaking to graduates at Tuskegee University in Alabama, described insensitive media questions and derogatory remarks from political pundits that she said have kept her up at night. “You might remember the on-stage celebratory fist bump between me and my husband after a primary win that was referred to as a ‘terrorist fist jab,’ ” she said.

Even though the deadline for any type of support for Windows XP was up last April, many organisations are still using the venerable operating system to power their PCs and the applications that run on them. But XP was never a truly secure OS to begin with and despite numerous patches over the years, new vulnerabilities have been found. Of course, since April 2014, no more updates have been provided by Microsoft on general release and this has left anyone still running XP very much exposed to hacking and security breaches. According to figures from IT security firm Secunia taken...