Free Republic

PM’s hostility to president is ‘endangering Israel’s security,’ claims Labor’s Isaac Herzog, in rare confirmation of long-rumored strained ties between ‘Bibi’ and ‘Barack’Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “loathes” Barack Obama, and his hostile attitude to the US president constitutes a danger to Israel’s well-being, the head of the Israeli opposition charged on Friday night, in a highly unusual acknowledgement of the long-rumored strained personal ties between the two leaders. In a bitter verbal assault on the prime minister, Labor party chairman Isaac Herzog slammed Netanyahu for failing to listen to the international community, failing to present peace proposals of his own...

This is how stupid we've become: Does Obama do one stupid thing to cover for the other stupid thing? Does he do the stupid prisoner exchange to make up for the stupid carbon plan? Or is all the stupidity organic? Getting past the fact that none of this makes anybody in United States look very good, I think these are legitimate questions. Because it seems to me that Obama has waved the red meat, and the conservative lions have attacked. The red meat in this case being the exchange of prisoner Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban terrorists. CNN...

WASHINGTON - Federal spending is exploding under Barack Obama, shattering every record for budget deficits, public debt and annual expenditures. So much so that a term like "Big Government" fails to adequately define the fiscal wreckage that has occurred under his presidency. Like the endlessly anemic economy his jobless policies have spawned, you don't hear much, if anything, about wasteful, ineffective federal spending on the nightly news. Nor from Obama and his party -- ever. Yet the evidence of skyrocketing spending is there for all to see, growing grotesquely higher with each passing year, leaving behind mountains of economy-crushing...

Historians may have a tough time trying to determine certain aspects of the Obama presidency. There is no doubt that he is the first black president. School is still out as to whether Obama is the worst president, but Jimmy Carter has been a lot happier lately. The real question about Barack Obama that may be debated for decades is when did the teleprompter break? Watching the president do his best to explain away the latest scandal involving the Veteran’s Administration was a classic case of hubris in action. Barack Obama does not resemble a Greek tragedy, he is one....

WASHINGTON - President Obama reluctantly went to the White House press room Wednesday to deal with yet another scandal that has hit his dysfunctional presidency. This one is as bad as scandals get: our veterans were dying because they weren't getting timely care at the VA hospitals that would have saved their lives. And there were leaked memos suggesting the long delayed appointments were rewritten to make the wait time seem shorter. Making matters worse, the president took his sweet time to publicly address the life-or-death issues that have been festering in the VA for a number of years. The...

resident Obama is “madder than hell” about the scandal at the Veterans Administration. How do we know? Dennis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, told us so. Between fundraisers and golf outings, the president took time from his “busy” schedule to inform his chief of staff aside how angry he was that his administration was, in effect, issuing death sentences to veterans by hiding them on secret wait lists so as not to endanger performance bonuses bureaucrats receive for ensuring those vets did not, in fact, die. The president must be so angry he’s lost the ability to speak – at...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to pick up with one subject we left off yesterday. Obama, as you know, appeared with a whole bunch of TV meteorologists about climate change, about the new White House report on global warming. By the way, there's a new term now. Global warming is out. Climate change is out. The new one is climate disruption. Well, climate change, they can't get anywhere near a majority of people caring about this. The economy remains everybody's number one concern. So climate disruption is the next catchphrase that they're gonna use in trying to persuade people. We...

Have you heard? Barack Obama’s brother-in-law was just fired after six seasons as head basketball coach at Oregon State. It’s wonderful to hear the words “fired” and “Obama” in the same sentence. Unfortunately for America, the wrong member of the Obama family was canned after six failing years. If ever there was a case to fire a CEO, it’s Barack Obama. Why should running an economy be any different than running a sports team? Both are about results. Winning. In sports, if you’re not winning, there are no excuses. Obama’s brother-in-law could not use the excuse that after six seasons,...

In March 2011, Reuters announced a secret order signed by Barack Obama to provide covert support for Libyan rebel forces. The operation became known as Zero Footprint, but after Obama finished with it, Big Foot was identified. For about 18 months before the attacks on our Benghazi Special Mission, intelligence had successfully identified terrorist factions inside the rebel factions. Those terrorists included the Muslim Brotherhood as well as al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, Senator John McCain said the rebels were his heroes. Qadhafi made a fatal mistake, literally, by working toward one currency for Africa, which threatened the West. The idea of a...

Another major derailment of a train carrying oil through a town in the U.S. has caused the evacuation of 300 people, with oil washing into the James River in Virginia, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.

You can blame it on the weather. Or no wait: you can blame it on Obama's tax increases. Or perhaps you can blame it on sequestration. Or the Fukushima nuclear disaster, war in Libya, the rich, or Donald Sterling and the NBA. But whatever you do don't blame it on “their” fiscal policy or lack therof. Or monetary policy. Because they are blameless. Once again first-quarter GDP came out and disappointed. Instead of growing at a Wall Street consensus estimate of 1.2% annually, first-quarter GDP came in at an anemic 0.1% annual growth. That's the worst number since the fourth...

As an Illinois legislator, a U.S. senator and a presidential candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly criticized our excessively punitive criminal justice system. But after he was elected to the White House in 2008, the Obama who worried about nonviolent offenders serving outrageously long prison terms seemed to disappear, replaced by a president with one of the weakest clemency records in U.S. history. Once he had the unilateral power to free people who do not belong in prison, Obama showed almost no interest in exercising it, shortening just one sentence during his first term. But judging from clemency criteria unveiled by the...

WASHINGTON - President Obama's approval rating in a closely- watched poll has sunk to a new low that will likely further damage his party's dimming prospects in this fall's midterm elections. As he returns from a week long, four-nation Asian tour, overshadowed by his mishandling of Russian aggression in Ukraine, he faces a Washington Post-ABC News survey showing his job approval score has sunk to 41 percent. More ominous for Democrats, who now fear they could lose control of the Senate this fall, a majority of voters say "they prefer a Congress in Republican hands to check the president's agenda,"...

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. – Jonathan Swift Even Illinoisans are ashamed. The wickedness has become so obvious, so entrenched and so brazen, that the state that used to take pride in their corruption, because it “worked,” now understands the Faustian bargain they've made. A Gallup poll reveals that by a wide margin Illinoisans trust their government less than any other state in the union. According to Gallup only 28% of people from Illinois have a great deal of trust in their government. The Land of Lincoln is followed...

When you allow unlawful acts to go unpunished, you're moving toward a government of men rather than a government of law; you're moving toward anarchy. And that's exactly what we're doing. -- John Wayne All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. -- George Orwell Tell me why any American should respect the law? Because it's moral? Not necessarily. Slavery was once the law of the land. Abortion is the law of the land today. Even in a nation like America, it's not unusual for laws to be unfair, unjust, and even immoral. Is it...

In the Washington Post last week E.J. Dionne penned an Op-Ed piece noting the “changing” historical image of former President Lyndon Johnson and feted this development by labeling it as “…a thoroughly justified revival of Lyndon B. Johnson’s standing.” This work is not, however, a simple nostalgic tribute to the 1960s. Dionne argues that this supposed LBJ revival shows that America is experiencing what he calls a “leftward tilt” and he hopes that our current President will, like Johnson, strike while the iron is hot to force irrevocable liberal change on the USA. In his piece Dionne sings the praises...

Politico reported something interesting before President Barack Obama met with Pope Francis: "The visit is a rare chance for Obama to associate himself with a world leader whose cool factor far outweighs his own." It's rare for pundits to admit that someone else might top their revered Barack in the coolness category. They're equating coolness and popularity, and the pope certainly polls much better than the president, which is no surprise these days. Liberals have developed a collective man crush on Pope Francis, even though he hasn't budged an inch on the church's teachings. The Catholic Church is just as...

In a fistfight between the leader of the free world and the leader of the not-so-free world, who would win? Let’s examine both President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin’s exercise routines, sheer manliness, athletic prowess, celebrity friends, alcohol consumption and friendliness toward animals to determine who would win.

Oliver North is a former United States Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel and, currently, a political commentator on Fox News and author. His latest book, “American Heroes,” looks at the individuals working to fight Islamic terrorists. “The profession of arms in the United States arm force has to be the most challenging vocation in the world — for those who serve, and for those who love the service member,” North writes. “There is no other calling I know of that places so many challenges on familial relationships, so much stress on loved ones, as military service.” North joins POLITICO for the...

We could just as easily start a "Broken Promises" List, but, I, for one, am glad he hasn't kept many of his promises.