Free Republic

Attorney General Eric Holder once again played the race card -- this time on national television, in an interview on ABC's "This Week," claiming that he and President Obama have been targets of "a racial animus" by some of the administration's political opponents. "There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me (and) directed at the president," said Holder. "You know, people talk about taking their country back. ... There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don't think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some, there's...

Could the flood of underage, would-be immigrants over the southern border be "Obama's Katrina" as Susan Page of USA Today warned? No, it's worse. Even the most virulent George W. Bush denigrator would not suggest that the former president actually created the hurricane. This president, by contrast, bears a heavy responsibility for creating the deluge of unaccompanied minors who have recently crashed ashore. To say President Barack Obama is largely responsible is not to say that he intended this result. If this episode serves to remind people about the law of unintended consequences, we'll learn far more valuable lessons than...

MSNBC host Chuck Todd assembled a panel of liberal-media veterans on his morning show "The Daily Rundown" Monday and joked that the assembled heavyweights presented "a nightmare scenario for Brent Bozell." But what these journalists proceeded to issue was a devastating indictment of the Obama presidency and a real nightmare for this president. Carolyn Ryan, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, brought up "the national funk we're in, the sort of national malaise." The word "malaise" is never a good word to be around if you're the president. But for President Barack Obama, who is now...

In January, President Barack Obama outlined his strategy for 2014. "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone," he said. The president planned on using his pen to sign executive and administrative orders and his phone to call outside groups -- not Congress -- to rally behind his pet programs. Obama forgot to mention his third favorite instrument -- the teleprompter. Rather than working with Congress, Obama's second term is all about blaming Congress for whatever goes wrong. In that can't-do spirit, Obama mocked House Speaker John Boehner's threat to take legal action against the White House's imperial ways....

Two weeks later the letters and blogs are still rolling in, reacting to my June 23 column, “Disparaging the president is Uncalled for.” Many echoed Terry Maher of Chicago (the letters are edited for space): “Seeing that you’re so agitated by ‘disparaging’ criticism of the president, could you please forward me all of the columns (there must be dozens, I’m sure) that you wrote decrying the vicious, vile and despicable things that were written and said about President Bush? Thanks, I’ll be over here turning blue from holding my breath.” Others added to the vitriol: “Yes, Ms. Washington, ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T’ is...

Do you remember what President Obama initially said about the Internal Revenue Service scandal? Do you recall his professed outrage? Obama wanted us to know how furious he was. He said, "The misconduct that (the inspector general's report) uncovered is inexcusable." "It's inexcusable," he repeated, "and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency — but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives." He declared that the "responsible parties"...

(CNSNews.com) – At an event to celebrate the “pride” of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people at the White House on Monday, President Barack Obama credited a homosexual professor who “helped shaped” his thinking on the LGBT rights agenda. “I just wanted to acknowledge him, because he helped shape how I think about so many of these issues, and those sort of quiet heroes that sometimes don’t get acknowledged,” Obama said of Lawrence Goldyn, one of his college professors at Occidental College.

The surprising thing about the Supreme Court's decision on police searches of cellphones was its unanimity. Aligned on the same side of a major law enforcement issue were liberal and conservative justices who normally fight like cats and dogs. All agreed that it's intolerable to let cops ransack the voluminous contents of mobile phones. Who could disagree? Well, cops, of course. And the Obama administration. Barack Obama led Americans to believe that he would be far more sensitive to privacy and civil liberties than George W. Bush. But more often than not, he reflexively indulges the demands of law enforcement...

1) In 2011, President Barack Obama pronounced Iraq "self-reliant and democratic," and "a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process." In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden called Iraq "one of the great achievements of this administration." Obama ignored pleas by top generals who advised against pulling out without leaving a residual force. 2) Nearly everybody assumed Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Of the newspaper editorials that opposed the war, not one challenged the assumption that Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD. President George W. Bush...

‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” the song goes. It is easy enough to spell, but for some vocal critics of President Barack Obama, it seems exceedingly hard to do. As the president moves toward the land of the lame ducks, his political enemies are calling for blood. That’s no shocker at this stage of a presidency. In this case, the cuts go deeper. For some, it is not enough to disagree. Some high-status public figures seem determined to demean, denigrate and ridicule the president of the United States. On June 12 the Speaker of the U.S. House stepped to a podium and insulted Obama...

Two and a half years ago, the U.S. pulled every soldier out of a mostly quiet Iraq. In the void, formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists calling themselves "The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" are now tearing apart the country, leaving medieval savagery in their wake. Obama partisans are blaming the Bush administration for going into Iraq in the first place. But critics counter that Obama wanted out of Iraq before the 2012 election at all costs. The result of that reckless skedaddle is that we have thrown away the hard work of the 2007-2008 surge that finally broke the back...

President Barack Obama, on Dec. 12, 2011, called Iraq "self-reliant and democratic." He praised that country, calling it a "new Iraq that's determining its own destiny -- a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process." Obama said, "I have no doubt that Iraq can succeed." He campaigned to end the war in Iraq. He did -- at least he ended America's military involvement in the war. He pulled out all the troops, without leaving a residual force behind as we did, for example, in South Korea, where we...

WASHINGTON - While al-Qaeda renegade armies were seizing Iraqi territory over the weekend and closing in on Baghdad, President Obama was jetting into Palm Springs, Calif. for 18 holes of golf. The blood-soaked, terrorist rampage across Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was drawing close enough to the Iraqi capital to force the administration to begin withdrawing some of our U.S. embassy staff there. While Obama was lining up his shot on the green, our country was in a full blown, foreign policy-national security crisis, one of many that confronts his failed presidency. Russian tanks, ordered...

resident Barack Obama has flouted the law again and again -- unilaterally rewriting the health law at least 18 times since passage; changing immigration law by executive fiat (after having explained that to do so would be beyond the scope of his constitutional authority); dictating that union claims should trump creditors in the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts; altering the welfare laws by regulation; making recess appointments when Congress was not, in fact, in recess; and many more. After each arrogation of power, critics have protested, "He can't do that!" Yes, he can -- because there is nothing to stop...

"Remember, it’s not only the questions you ask, but the questions you fail to ask, that shape your destiny." – Tony Robbins Believing that America will continue to be strong, prosperous and free no matter what we do is just as foolish as believing that a human being will continue to be healthy, happy and free if he consumes nothing but vodka, crack and doughnuts. Just as the richest, healthiest, happiest man can be undone if he stops doing what made him successful, America can be undone if we stop asking the crucial questions that guided previous generations. 1) Is...

Five teacher hiring and firing laws bit the dust in California this week. In a major blow to teachers unions, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu’s ruling struck down teacher tenure, while freeing districts from spending hundreds of thousands to fire teachers and from having to fire newly-hired teachers first during layoffs. The ruling is being applauded as a major civil rights victory, with Judge Treu comparing it with historic desegregation battle Brown v. Board of Education. Treu said both cases addressed “a student’s fundamental right to equality of the educational experience.” The data could not be clearer...

Considering how easy it would be for the Iranian regime to get everything it wants from the current administration, it's a little startling to see the "supreme leader" brazenly poking his finger into the president's eye. President Barack Obama's fond hopes -- nurtured since before his first inauguration -- to forge a new, better relationship with the "Islamic Republic" have come to this: Speaking to a large crowd assembled to mark the 25th anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death, "Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei declared his continuing belief that America is the Great Satan. "Battle and jihad are endless," he...

I have four colossal disagreements with how President Barack Obama cut the deal for the prisoner swap of five senior Taliban leaders for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl; the former, the White House itself admits, could "absolutely" rejoin terrorist cells. Sure, I have far more than four issues with how it all went down -- for example, the absolute avoidance and disregard of constitutional submission and congressional consent. But this administration seems to have little regard for proper protocol with anything, so I'm going to focus here on a few different angles of argument. No one is overlooking or minimizing...

resident Obama's recent foreign policy speech, delivered at this year's West Point graduation ceremony, was a disappointment to anyone who hoped the president might be changing course. The failure of each U.S. intervention thus far in the 21st century might have inspired at least a bit of reflection. However, the president made it clear that interventionism and American exceptionalism would continue to guide his administration in its final two years. The president said, "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being," adding the dubious claim that "because of American diplomacy and foreign assistance, as well as the...

As the news media cranked up the heat on the White House’s disastrous handling of the Veterans Affairs scandal, President Barack Obama decided it was time to change the subject and make the news about him again. So what does he do? Obama finalizes the release of five top Taliban commanders from Guantanamo in exchange for the Taliban’s release of one American soldier. Not just any soldier but “a high value” soldier Sargent Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted his duty in 2009 when he walked off his base in Afghanistan right into the enemy hands of the Taliban. And Bergdahl caused...