Free Republic

White House: National Debate Needed Before Obama Amnesty     President Barack Obama wants a national debate on immigration, says his spokesman Josh Earnest.The new call for a debate suggests that the president is abandoning — or at least delaying — his high-risk promise to Latino advocates that he would provide work permits to millions of illegal immigrants in the weeks before the election.The president “wants to have a debate about the status of our immigration system, and what the consequences are for allowing a broken immigration to persist [and] what Republicans have done, or in this case, have not...

Hundreds of immigration protestors were arrested in front of the White House on Thursday, calling for President Obama to bypass a “do-nothing Congress” and expand deferred action for illegal immigrants. “People in the Congress don’t want to pass any immigration reform,” said Esteban R., an illegal immigrant from northern Mexico, who has lived in the U.S. for 20 years. “People say that immigrants are taking jobs that Americans need. But that’s not true. It’s racism and hate against Latino people.” The protestors, many wearing “Casa de Maryland” T-shirts, shouted “Si se puede (Yes we can)”. The protest began at the...

On Aug. 24, 1814, the British started a fire — and ultimately kindled a capital’s future. The day began like so many days in Washington, with a painfully long meeting marked by confusion, misinformation and indecision. The British were coming. They were on the march in the general direction of Washington. The precise target of the invaders remained unclear, but their intentions were surely malign. James Madison, the fourth president of these young United States, had raced to a private home near the Navy Yard for an emergency war council with top generals and members of his Cabinet. The secretary...

British diplomats in the US have been forced to apologise after revealing they were hosting a party to celebrate the anniversary of the burning of the White House. The British Embassy in Washington held a ‘White House barbeque’ yesterday to mark the two hundredth anniversary of Britain capturing the US capital and setting fire to the President’s iconic address. The Embassy even sent a message on Twitter from its official account with a photograph of a White House cake, flanked by British and American flags and surrounded by sparkler fireworks.

The White House said over the weekend it was ready to "take action" against any threat to America as it indicated serious consideration of U.S. military strikes against the Islamic State (IS, formerly called ISIS) in Syria, AFP reports. The Pentagon has warned of the dangers of IS and said operations against it in Syria may be needed, after weeks of air strikes have slowed the advance of the Sunni group in Iraq. The White House also said late Friday that air strikes in Syria may be necessary, as deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes agreed that "any strategy to...

EDGARTOWN Mass. (Reuters) - President Barack Obama delivered a somber statement on the death of American journalist James Foley after a video emerged showing Foley's grisly execution by Islamic State militants. Then Obama proceeded directly to a golf course to play 18 holes. That juxtaposition of events on Wednesday drew Obama a fair amount of criticism as he tries to juggle the U.S. response to rapidly unfolding world crises while taking some time to relax during a two-week August vacation that has been frequently interrupted. "Bam's Golf War," blared the cover of the New York Daily News, showing a picture...

POLLY MOSENDZ, The WireAugust 22, 2014isis Vice News Abu Mosa, the press officer of ISIL (ISIS), has been killed in an attack on a Syrian airbase. ISIL is currently fighting against Syrian government forces, in addition to its campaign in Iraq, that has been met by United States airstrikes. He was killed by members of the Syrian army who are loyal to the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. Department of State confirmed Mosa's death in a tweet: (snip)

Let me begin by acknowledging that this inspirational title is lifted from a tweet by screen actor James Woods. And now I will explicate his tweet. Every sentient human being whose brain isn’t stuffed with ideological fairy dust can see that Obama is behind every major scandal of his administration from Benghazi to the I.R.S. disgrace. How can one know this? Because the culprits haven’t been fired. Moreover, if they are serial liars like Susan Rice, they’ve actually been promoted to posts where their loyalty to the criminal-in-chief can do America and its citizens even more damage, if that...

Appalled? That’s it? They should be appalled, because the Islamic State is Obama’s baby. It exists because he abandoned Iraq. James Foley is dead today because of Obama’s disastrous pro-jihad foreign policy.

Late yesterday news broke that the terrorist group ISIS beheaded American photojournalist James Wright Foley and issued a challenge directly to President Obama. ISIS has also threatened to execute American journalist Steven Sotloff, who is still in their custody. When news broke last night, President Obama was on his way back to Martha's Vineyard. In a statement this morning, the Obama administration has said that "if" Foley was killed then they are "appalled." More from the Washington Examiner: “If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family...

Washington (AFP) - Israel secured supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon last month without the approval of the White House or the State Department, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Since officials there were caught off guard as they tried to restrain Israel's campaign in Gaza, the administration of President Barack Obama has tightened controls on arms shipments to Israel, the newspaper said, quoting US and Israeli officials. But the case illustrated that the White House and the State Department have little influence over the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the paper said, quoting officials from both countries. ......

The Islamic militants reportedly expanded their drive near Iraqi Kurdistan Saturday despite two U.S. airstrikes aimed at mortar positions and a seven-vehicle convoy to stop the advance on Kurdish capital of Irbil. The Wall Street Journal reported that the militants appear to have their sights on connecting towns seized along the Kurdish-control territory. The most recent town to be seized was identified as Sheikhan… Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, said hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35 are being held in schools in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of...

There seems to be an effort afoot at the White House to demonstrate to the world that President Obama, who has now been getting flack even from the mainstream press for being disengaged – me and you have been wondering where he’s been for some time – in fact DOES SHOW UP FOR WORK. In the strangest “pool spray” I’ve ever seen, the pool reporters were escorted to the windows of the Oval Office to bear witness to the fact that the president is on the phone. From the pool report: At 11:18 am, the pool was brought to the...

The terror group President Barack Obama threatened to strike in Iraq Thursday evening is itself threatening to strike the American homeland. “I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established,” Abu Mosa, a spokesman for the terror group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), told VICE Media in a video interview posted online Thursday. “Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq.” R

A prominent Christian leader of the Chaldean community unveiled the "systematic beheading of children" and other horrendous crimes committed by ISIS. He said that the Sunni extremists are committing genocide against Christians in Iraq and with the aim to instill the Sharia Law as the law of the land. In the interview with CNN's Jonathan Mann, Chaldean-American businessman Mark Arabo said that the "world hasn't seen an evil like this for generations." "There is a park in Mosul, where [ISIS] they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park," he explained. "More...

"President Barack Obama drew the diplomatic line somewhere at the first ever U.S-Africa summit at the White House this week by not inviting Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator Robert Mugabe. But the guest list still included several other African leaders with only slightly better human rights records. The White House promoted the summit as the largest-ever gathering of African leaders in the United States, with more than 50 countries represented. The red carpet was rolled out for Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who shot or jailed virtually all his political opponents, Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, who threatened to ‘cut off the head’...

James Brady, who served as White House press secretary under President Ronald Reagan, has died, Fox News has learned. He was 73.

The United States said Thursday there was little doubt Israeli artillery was the source of a "totally indefensible" strike that killed 16 people at a UN school in Gaza. White House spokesman Josh Earnest noted that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had said all available evidence pointed to Israeli artillery and that the Israeli government had acknowledged its forces were firing in the area in response to Hamas fire near the school. “So while we underscore the importance of a full and prompt investigation of this tragic incident, as well as a shelling of other UN facilities and schools that have...

White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday called repeatedly for Republicans to stop talking about impeaching President Barack Obama — but said he wouldn’t do the same for Democrats who’ve been fundraising off it nonstop in recent days. “It is up to Democrats to make their own decisions,” Earnest said at the White House daily briefing. “I will leave it to Dem strategists who have a much better sense than I do about the best way to raise money for their campaign committees.” Earlier in the briefing, Earnest read through a list of Republican members of Congress who have...

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors. "You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. It was, to put mildly, a significant departure from the more traditional liberal stance that openness and transparency...