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Former President Barack Obama was honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award at a gala in midtown Manhattan Wednesday evening. "I'm not sure if you've heard, but I've been on this hope kick for a while now. Even ran a couple of campaigns on it. Thank you for officially validating my hope credentials," Obama said during his remarks. The organization's president, Kerry Kennedy, presented the award, which celebrates leaders "who have demonstrated a commitment to social change." Past recipients include Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Bono, George Clooneyand Robert De Niro. "If we summon our best selves, we can...

Barack Obama pushed gun control for “Trayvon” and “those congregants in Thousand Oaks,” among others, during a December 13 acceptance speech for the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in self-defense on February 26, 2012, after attacking a neighborhood watchman, and 12 people were killed in Thousand Oaks’ Borderline Bar & Grill on November 7, 2018. During his acceptance speech, IJR magazine quoted Obama saying: “The horror of gun violence continues to plague our nation, a pain that many in this room know too well,” he said. “The bullets that took Bobby, JFK,...

Barack Obama took to social media Saturday to urge people to sign up for health care on the final day of Affordable Care Act enrollment. His appeal came a day after a Texas judge struck down the former president’s signature legislation as unconstitutional. Besides reminding people that Saturday would be the final day to enroll for affordable health care for 2019, Obama appeared to play down the significance of the ruling. “You might have heard about a federal court decision on a Republican lawsuit trying to strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety,” he said in Facebook post....

Former President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he was “very confident” he would have won a third term had the Constitution and his wife allowed him to run again. Speaking to his former top adviser David Axelrod at a live recording of the “The Axe Files” podcast at the University of Chicago, Obama said he believes voters felt that he had “taken the job seriously, worked hard, been true to my oath, observed and hopefully strengthened the norms and the rules and the values of our democracy.” “I feel very confident that I was in a position—had it not...

The midterms weren't a blue wave, but they weren't shark fin soup for Republicans either, given that they lost the House by a small margin. That said, the big loser who stands out here is hard-campaigning President Obama, the guy who thought he was the star of the Democratic Party and who, throwing the tradition of former presidents staying aloof from politics out the window, campaigned hard, long, and loud, for Democrats in this midterm. Turns out the ones he fought the hardest for lost. Now he stands exposed as politically irrelevant, powerless, an embarrassment. Sorry 'bout that legacy thing,...

The Trump administration on Friday announced the reimposition of all U.S. sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal. The sanctions will take effect Monday and cover Iran's shipping, financial and energy sectors. It's the second batch of penalties that the administration has reimposed since President Donald Trump withdrew from the landmark deal in May. With limited exceptions, the sanctions will penalize countries that don't stop importing Iranian oil and foreign companies that do business with blacklisted Iranian entities, including Iran's central bank, a number of private financial institutions and state-run port and shipping companies.

Donald Trump is inside Obama's head, and Barack just can't handle it. At one time in our nation’s history, there was an unwritten tenet that former presidents should remain quiet during their successor’s term. It was considered discourteous, even boorish, to criticize the man who took your place. But the political equivalent of, “I’ve had my turn. Now it’s yours,” is something Barack Obama cannot abide. On the campaign trail this week, he exhibited behavior not in keeping with a former president or an erudite Harvard man – but a crude vulgarian. Couple this with his other gift of segregating...