Free Republic

Whether or not George or others agree with it, the president has done his best to enact the program the voters approved when they elected him. He has appointed judges who believe they should carry out the law and not the current political reinterpretation of what that great paragon of modern liberal jurisprudence Eliot Spitzer described as “a flexible constitution.” . . . snip The Iran agreement was insane: It gave Iran ten years to become a nuclear power, if it chooses to honor the porous and ineffectual monitoring program the treaty provides. But the agreement covers only fissile material,...

The State Department has opened a formal inquiry into whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information while she was the nation’s top diplomat, Fox News has learned. Despite being under investigation, Clinton and her staffers still have security clearances to access sensitive government information. The department’s investigation aims to determine whether Clinton and her closest aides violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents. The department declined to say when its inquiry began, but it follows the conclusion of the FBI’s probe into the...

United States secretary of state John Kerry has mocked the notion that Syrian rebels were responsible for last month's chemical weapons attack near Damascus. He has called on all United Nations member nations to "stand up and speak out" on Syria's chemical weapons at the upcoming General Assembly. "The world can decide whether it was used by the regime which has used chemical weapons before, or whether the opposition secretly went unnoticed into territory they don't control, to fire rockets that they don't have, containing Sarin that they don't possess, to kill their own people," he said. "I would say...

Later this summer, Russia will join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the culmination of a process that began nearly two decades ago. This is good news for American companies and workers, because it will improve our access to one of the world's fastest-growing markets and support new jobs here at home. U.S.-Russian bilateral trade isn't reaching anything close to its full potential today. While that trade has increased over the past few years, America's exports to Russia still represent less than 1% of our global exports. Given the potential for expanding these links, Russia's WTO membership will be a...

On Nov. 16, 2014, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) took the unusual step of designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Muslim American Society (MAS) – as terrorist organizations.They were among 83 groups named for their connections to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.This outraged CAIR officials, who immediately began efforts to get their organization removed from the list. They found a powerful ally in Secretary of State John Kerry, who authorized State Department officials to meet regularly with UAE officials to lobbying on behalf of CAIR and MAS .CAIR already had a sympathetic ear in the Obama administration, including...

Secretary of State John Kerry won't be attending President-elect Trump's inauguration on Friday, according to the State Department. "The secretary will not attend the inauguration," a State Department official told the Washington Examiner. The official had no comment on why Kerry wouldn't attend.

Add Secretary of State John Kerry to list of those skipping the inauguration Friday. A State Department official confirmed to Fox News that the outgoing chief diplomat “will not attend the inauguration.” The official did not give a reason.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Geneva on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that he does not believe that president-elect Donald Trump will repeal everything he says he will when his administration comes into power on Friday, but if he does it could cause significant damage for "a year, two years, whatever, while the [Trump] administration is there."(continued)

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday said that it was the fault of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) that a peace deal was not agreed upon during the Obama administration. Speaking to Christiane Amanpour on CNN, Kerry rejected Amanpour’s assertion that the administration failed to broker a peace deal. “The leaders of the two countries involved — one country and one entity, the Palestinian Authority — have failed to come to the table and reach agreement. You know the old saying — you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink. Now, we...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday it was "inappropriate" for Donald Trump to brand German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy "a catastrophic mistake". "I thought frankly it was inappropriate for a president-elect of the United States to be stepping into the politics of other countries in a quite direct manner," Kerry told CNN's Christiane Amanpour during a one-day visit to London in the last week of the Obama administration. "He will have to speak to that. As of Friday, he is responsible for that relationship." Trump, who will be sworn in as president on Friday, had said...

Monday on CNN International’s “Amanpour,” commenting on President-elect Donald Trump’s first UK interview with The Times of London, which covered several international issues, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “I thought frankly it was an inappropriate for a president-elect of the United States to be stepping into the politics of other country in a quite direct manner.” KERRY: He’ll have to speak to that as of Friday. You know he’s responsible for that relationship. AMANPOUR: You're talking about Angela Merkel's refugee policy which he did call catastrophic. KERRY: He did call it that and I think that she was extremely...

Viet Cong veteran Vo Ban Tam remembers the first time he crossed paths with John Kerry on the banks on the Bay Hap river, a day that ended in bloodshed. Almost a half-century later, the now 70-year-old Mekong Delta shrimp farmer locked eyes with the US Secretary of State on Saturday and they warmly grasped hands in mutual respect. Kerry returned to the Vietnam waterway at the end of a visit to the Communist nation, less than a week before he was to leave office, searching for the spot where he won a Silver Star for bravery as a young...

Secretary of State John Kerry is participating in a French-hosted conference on Mideast peace less than a week before the end of the administration to ensure U.S. views are heard, but with no “intent to in any way box in the incoming administration,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Thursday. At the same time, however, Toner declined to say whether Kerry would act to ensure that a communique coming out of Sunday’s conference does not call on the Trump administration to reconsider a campaign pledge to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. French officials have suggested that the...

US Secretary of State John Kerry called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday from the Paris peace conference, promising to prevent any followup action to a resolution set to be drawn up on Sunday, either at the confab itself or at the United Nations Security Council. After a month of chilly ties between Washington and Jerusalem, Kerry updated Netanyahu about the steps he was taking to “soften” the text of the final communique, which is expected to be issued by the conference participants later Sunday.

CA MAU, Vietnam — It could have been 1969 again as Secretary of State John F. Kerry stood on the bow of the small boat chugging up the Bay Hap River on Saturday, the wind billowing his sleeves and his eyes darting left and right toward banks shrouded in dark foliage. As a young Navy lieutenant, Kerry commanded a Swift boat along this stretch of churning brown waters in the middle of a free-fire zone. Here, he earned a Silver Star for his heroics when he leapt ashore after an ambush to pursue a fleeing Viet Cong with a grenade...

TEL AVIV – In a shameful display of rogue diplomacy, 72 countries – minus Israel – are set to attend a Middle East “peace” conference in Paris on Sunday widely expected to set the parameters for a future Palestinian state. Fresh from his 70-minute speech two weeks ago largely singling out Israel for condemnation, lame-duck Secretary of State John Kerry will represent the U.S. at the Mideast confab. There, Kerry is slated to represent the Obama administration in crafting a “consensus” document on an Israeli-Palestinian deal. This after a U.S. abstention last month allowed the passage of a United Nations...

U.S. Secretary of State’s John Kerry’s closing memo to President Barack Obama painted a rosy picture of the U.S. role in the world since Obama took office in 2008. Kerry claimed Obama made the best of a bad situation, citing Obama’s inheritance of wars not his own in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a grave economic crisis. Talking points seeking to validate Obama’s supposed success by blaming the past are a frequent and familiar direction for the Obama administration. “The United States is more secure, more respected, and more engaged in the world,” the glowing memo states, adding that,...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Secretary of State John Kerry was clearly exasperated, not least at his own government. Over and over again, he complained to a small group of Syrian civilians that his diplomacy had not been backed by a serious threat of military force, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. The 40-minute discussion, on the sidelines of last week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York, provides a glimpse of Mr. Kerry’s frustration with his inability to end the Syrian crisis. He veered between voicing sympathy for the Syrians’ frustration with United...

John Kerry doesn’t come late to the betrayal of friends. He has had considerable practice. In 1971, when he was a young lieutenant just back from Vietnam, where he was a decorated skipper of a Swift Boat patrolling the Mekong River, he appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pay his “respects” to the American soldiers, sailors and Marines he fought a war with. Representing all those veterans, he told the senators, he wanted to talk about war crimes he said “were committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”...

When Secretary of State John Kerry delivered his comprehensive statement on the Arab-Israel conflict in front of a safe audience at the State Department, he took over an hour to defend the decision of the United States to in essence allow passage of the recent UN anti-Israel resolution by abstaining from it, rather than adhering to the longstanding policy of the U.S. to veto such resolutions. The general thrust of his message was to chastise Israel for building “settlements” on land defined as “occupied Palestinian territory,” as the main obstacle preventing a two-state solution. In addition to focusing attention on...