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Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine: Red in the Face The State Department is pushing back against allegations that it, in essence, apologized to China over potential human rights violations here in the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner told reporters Friday in a discussion about human rights, the U.S. delegation brought up Arizona's new immigration law, calling it a "troubling trend in our society." Both of Arizona's Republican senators demanded a retraction and apology from Posner, calling his remarks particularly offensive. And Indiana Republican Congressman Dan Burton slammed the comments made to what he called "one...

William Faulkner once mused that the past is never dead, in fact it’s not even past. The story of the coup that toppled Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953 may not be dead, but it is unhinged from history. Tall tales by a scion of the American establishment—former CIA agent and presidential grandson Kermit Roosevelt—and reams of studies by left-wing professors have sustained the myth that the Eisenhower administration ousted Mossadeq. The Iranians are mere bystanders in this story, watching helplessly as a malevolent America manipulates their nation’s destiny. Most academic speculations remain cloistered in college campuses, but the...

JERUSALEM – In a series of highly unusual actions, the U.S. State Department and world leaders waded into the bitterly contentious domestic dispute over Friday's Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion. "As Secretary of State, I usually avoid commenting on Supreme Court rulings," America’s top diplomat Antony Blinken announced in a statement. "But today’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade has raised understandable questions and concerns across the world and within our [the Department of State’s] workforce." Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also took the Supreme Court to task for its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health...

President Biden on Monday apologized for the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, saying doing so set the world back in the fight against climate change. “I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact the United States in the last administration pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit,” Biden said during a session on “action and solidarity” at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow. Biden, who rejoined the Paris climate deal upon taking office in January, said that...

WASHINGTON -- According to the mighty Wurlitzer in the White House press office, this week's penitent presidential venture to the Middle East has been "historic" and a "new beginning" for our relationship with Islam. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama -- and his campaign promise to make a major speech in a Muslim capital -- Osama bin Laden didn't play along. That's the trouble with homicidal megalomaniacs; they very often don't abide by the rules of "acceptable behavior." As the Grand Apology Tour swept into Saudi Arabia, the al-Qaida terror chieftain released yet another diatribe on audiotape, condemning "U.S. aggression" in Afghanistan...

Michael Bloomberg on Sunday apologized for his longstanding support of the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police strategy ahead of a potential Democratic presidential run, a practice that he embraced as New York’s mayor and continued to defend despite its disproportionate impact on people of color. Addressing a black church in Brooklyn, Bloomberg said he was “sorry” and acknowledged it often led to the detention of blacks and Latinos. “I can’t change history,” Bloomberg told the congregation. “However today, I want you to know that I realize back then I was wrong.” Bloomberg’s reversal is notable for someone who is often reluctant to...

Former NASA astronaut and Navy veteran Scott Kelly apologized Sunday after facing backlash for a tweet praising Winston Churchill. “One of the greatest leaders of modern times, Sir Winston Churchill said, ‘in victory, magnanimity.’ I guess those days are over,” Mr. Kelly, a veteran of four space flights, tweeted to his 5.76 million followers Sunday afternoon. Seven hours later, Mr. Kelly apologized for the quote, saying he would work on educating himself on Churchill’s purported misdeeds. "Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill. My apologies. I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I...

Now we know one reason why Obama bowed to the Saudi monarch. The Saudi Kingdom gave the Obama team suitcases of jewels during their infamous Apology Tour.

During Donald Trump’s first visit to Saudi Arabia since taking office, many noticed that President Trump didn’t bow to the Saudi King like Obama did. In 2009, then President Obama made a point to bow to Saudi King Salman. However, as President Trump shook hands with the Saudi King after arriving Saturday morning, he broke from Obama by not bowing:

French presidential frontrunner Emmanuel Macron has drawn a storm of criticism from his rivals after calling France’s colonization of Algeria a “crime against humanity”. In a TV interview in Algiers this week, the centrist said French actions in Algeria, which achieved independence in 1962 after eight years of war, were “genuinely barbaric, and constitute a part of our past that we have to confront by apologizing”. His visit also included a stop at the Martyrs’ Memorial in Algiers, saying he wanted to promote a “reconciliation of memories” between the two countries. The violent history between France and Algeria is still...

President Obama, who has done less for Europe than any American President since Calvin Coolidge, cannot stop telling Europeans what to do. As Obama sets out on his final European tour as President, with his political party back home in a state of near collapse, and with Putin inflicting yet another painful humiliation on the least successful American President in the history of the modern Middle East, nothing seems able to shake his serene confidence that he knows more than other people, sees farther than they do, and that other people are eager to gather up his pearls of insight......

President Barack Obama continued his international apology tour for American deeds overseas, traveling to the Asian country of Laos to deliver a speech. Obama acknowledged that the United States dropped more than two million tons of bombs in the country, intervening in the country’s civil war. He sorrowfully noted that “villages and entire valleys were obliterated” as a result of the bombing, including the “ancient Plain of Jars.” “That conflict was another reminder that, whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a terrible toll, especially on innocent men, women and children,” Obama said. “Today, I stand with you in...

Every satire has a ring of truth... If not for Jamaican Usain Bolt, the United States would've walked home with every gold medal that wasn't nailed down in Rio. USA doubled the score against the rest of the world in nearly every event save for ping-pong. Isn't that great, Mr. President? We've trounced them fair and square. USA doubled the score against the rest of the world in nearly every event save for ping-pong (and that's not satire). "Micro aggression is the term we use in Liberal circles. Now I have no choice except to beg the world to forgive...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan isn’t the only loser in last Sunday’s elections. President Obama had made Erdogan a focus of his policy. The voters in that troubled NATO country voted against Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and in so doing, slapped President Obama. President Obama went to Ankara in April, 2009, for an early edition of his Apology Tours. He spoke to the Turkish Parliament assuring deputies there that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” Every challenge that we face is more easily met if we tend to our own democratic...

President Barack Obama should have gone to Pearl Harbor first. That way, when he got to Hiroshima, he could have told the world how Hiroshima would never have happened had not the Japanese provoked a war with the United States. He could also have added that Hiroshima would not have happened had Japan, having lost the war, surrendered. But the fanatic Japanese leaders refused, and vowed to fight a scorched earth final battle on Japanese soil. This meant a potential U.S. invasion of the Japanese homeland, an invasion that would have led to an horrific battle. That battle would have...

Does President Obama ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost. #MDW— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2016

It’s an incontrovertible fact that millions of lives were saved because President Harry Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I know because I’m one of them. My father enlisted in the U.S. Navy the day he turned 18 in 1945. He finished his basic training as the Allies were preparing for “Operation Downfall” – the code name for the invasion of the Japanese mainland. Experts predicted it would be ten times bloodier than Iwo Jima. Casualty estimates ran into the millions – for both sides. Lest we forget, Imperial Japan was a ruthless warrior culture whose war crimes rivaled the...

MSNBC breaking news host and ex-NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was allowed out on MSNBC’s airwaves early Friday afternoon to discuss President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima so he could resurrect a taped report that aired in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bomb’s dropping on the Japanese city. In the course of discussing the event afterward, though, Williams threw some shade in the direction of the U.S. military and then-President Harry Truman by complaining that “we’re the only nation to have used them in anger” against the horrifying Axis Powers member.

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) -- Every gesture. Every word uttered or avoided. Every person Barack Obama speaks with, listens to and stands beside in Hiroshima. All of it will help determine the success of a trip with huge potential political and diplomatic pitfalls, both in America and Asia. The leader of the United States is already one of the world's most watched people. But that daily scrutiny will be magnified exponentially when Obama makes the first presidential journey to the place where the first atomic bomb attack killed tens of thousands 71 years ago.

Look for President Donald Trump to begin his presidency with an apology tour. But it will not be like the embarrassing apology tour taken by President Barack Obama. He began his presidency by visiting foreign countries in order to bow and scrape before Saudi kings, English queens and Japanese emperors. Nor will it be like Obama, hat in hand, traveling the world to apologize for America and accuse his country of being arrogant, dismissive and derisive toward Europe and the Muslim world. No, it will not be like tha