Free Republic

A deputy press secretary for Barack Obama's reelection campaign married an ABC reporter over the weekend. The ABC reporter, Matthew Jaffe, "covering the 2012 presidential campaign," according to his biography on the website of ABC News. "For the past year he traveled around the country covering the Republican primary, from the Iowa Straw Poll to the various debates to this year's primaries and caucuses." The deputy press secretary Jaffe married is Katie Hogan. Many members of Obama's reelection team and the press celebrated the wedding together Saturday. Mike Allen of Politico reports on the wedding: MARRIED SATURDAY EVENING at Lake...

Out: Kate Bedingfield as White House Communications Director. In: Ben LaBolt, a veteran press adviser to former President Barack Obama. When White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced that Bedingfield would leave the White House at the end of February and be replaced by Ben LaBolt, she made a point of saying this is a history-making move.According to KJP, it is important for everyone to know that Ben LaBolt is an openly gay man. The Biden administration is all about “representation”, you see, and LaBolt is further proof of that.Jean-Pierre: "Ben [LaBolt] is making history. Here at the Biden White...

Zuckerberg’s recent donation of $400 million has been thrown into greater controversy with the revelation that his foundation’s lead in policy and advocacy formerly worked as the campaign manager and senior advisor to former President Obama. David Plouffe was hired in 2017 to lead policy and advocacy work at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a charity founded in 2015 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan “to accelerate progress in Education, Justice & Opportunity and Science.” Plouffe’s background includes extensive involvement as a policy leader in the Obama campaigns and organizations like Uber, CZI, and most recently...

The National Salvation Front, a coalition of pro-democratic and secular parties in Egypt, set out its objections to remarks made by President Barack Obama Thursday on the escalating violence in Egypt. Led by Ahmed Said of the Free Egyptians Party, the group issued the following letter: "Like most Egyptians, we listened with attention to your statement on Egypt's latest developments. As representatives of the non-Islamic political forces in Egypt, we believe in the same fundamental values on which the U.S. was founded. Be we also have 7,000 years of civilization and history that give us a special identity that we...

Carter: Stop favoring Fatah over Hamas By ASSOCIATED PRESS DUBLIN, Ireland http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813074587&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull The United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements, former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday. Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was addressing a conference of Irish human rights officials, said the Bush administration's refusal to accept the 2006 election victory of Hamas was "criminal." Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian...

When asked by the media for his thoughts on the Hamas triumph in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, former President Jimmy Carter replied that while they have a terrorist past, at least they're not corrupt. One of the complaints by many in the Middle East was the corruption within the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat's Fatah Party. Arafat himself squirreled away millions of dollars from aid packages that were intended to help the Palestinian people. However, Carter's comment appears to dismiss the years of death and destruction perpetrated by Hamas on the Jewish State. And now the fundamental-Islamic group Hamas triumphed...

Further evidence is surfacing that, far from having enhanced its reputation in the eyes of the people of Gaza, Hamas has been shown up as brutal thugs to their own people but cowards who run away when confronted by a proper army. The Jerusalem Post reports: From the perspective of the people of Gaza, Hamas simply abandoned the arena and fled into the crowded neighborhoods. Once there, since the second day of the campaign, Hamas fighters have hurriedly shed their uniforms. Many of them simply deserted and returned to their families, taking their guns with them. In some locations, Hamas...

When asked by the media for his thoughts on the Hamas triumph in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, former President Jimmy Carter replied that while they have a terrorist past, at least they're not corrupt. One of the complaints by many in the Middle East was the corruption within the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat's Fatah Party. Arafat himself squirreled away millions of dollars from aid packages that were intended to help the Palestinian people. However, Carter's comment appears to dismiss the years of death and destruction perpetrated by Hamas on the Jewish State. One of the first statements made by...

RAMALLAH: After nearly two weeks of showing a united front in the face of Israel’s war in Gaza, some Palestinians are starting to slam Hamas for dragging its feet on a truce as the death toll mounts. With Hamas maintaining a tight grip on the Gaza Strip, most of the critical voices are coming from the rival Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, whose forces the Islamists routed from the coastal enclave in June 2007. Those close to the Fatah party of moderate president Mahmoud Abbas accuse Hamas of trying to extract political gains from the Gaza offensive all the...

A gun battle between Hamas and an Al Qaeda-inspired group that left about 30 dead last week is a sign of a growing movement inside the impoverished territory. RAFAH, GAZA STRIP - Two years after its takeover of the Gaza strip, Hamas has faced down its greatest challenger: A militant, Al Qaeda-inspired organization that says Hamas is not Islamic enough. Last Friday, Hamas forces and the Jund Ansar Allah (Soldier of God) movement fought a day-long gun and artillery battle that killed about 30 in the southern Gaza town of Rafah after the group's spiritual leader, Sheikh Abdel Latif Moussa,...

Barack Obama sacks adviser over talks with Hamas Barack Obama had criticised former President Jimmy Carter for holding direct talks with Hamas Tom Baldwin in Washington One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed today that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas - prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him. Robert Malley told The Times he had regularly been in contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza but is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution...

Robert Malley, a top Middle East advisor that US President-elect Barack Obama promised months ago would play no role in his administration due to ties to Hamas, has reportedly been sent out on the next administration's first diplomatic mission. According to a report in Middle East Newsline, Obama dispatched Malley to Egypt and Syria late last week with a message that the he intends to mend and bolster relations with both nations, and to give greater weight to their concerns regarding regional conflicts than did President George W. Bush. During the Democratic Party primaries, Obama was lashed by critics for...

A reader points out that President Barack Obama's new typeface is Revolution Gothic, a style inspired by retro Cuban propaganda posters. Who vets the fonts? (Obama press secretary Ben LaBolt emails: “Your GOP operative should have had the courtesy to stay sober before noon, and BuzzFeed should go back to labeling cat slideshows.”)

New documents shed new light on his ties to a leftist party in the 1990s. On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as today’s headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward...

Two American brothers of a Mexican casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States and has been seeking a pardon enabling him to return have emerged as major fund-raisers and donors for President Obama’s re-election campaign. The casino owner, Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, known as Pepe, jumped bail in Iowa in 1994 and disappeared, and has since been linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. A State Department cable in 2009 said he was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business rival and making illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials. When The New York Times...