Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Later this month, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will escape for a family retreat to mourn his late son, Beau, but also to mull, as his dying son urged him to do, a campaign for president. Some of Mr. Biden’s friends and allies worry that he will decide it is a good idea. Those supporters, in the White House and the Senate, and within the political circles he has moved in for decades, fear that the legacy Mr. Biden has built as an effective partner who took on tough jobs for President Obama, not to mention the...

In his new memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, Joe Biden reveals he did not want to be vice president after he was asked by Obama The former VP also details how he and his family were confident he could win the 2016 presidency, but Obama 'was almost certain' Hillary would be the nominee Biden had wrestled with the idea of running before and after the death of son Beau, who had encouraged him to enter the race for years He writes how in early 2015, months before Beau's death, Hillary Clinton was already preparing...

Joe Biden is throwing some serious shade at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Hot off Hillary Clinton’s health debacle that showed her collapsing outside the Sept. 11 memorial in New York City, the Democrats are desperate to turn the tables.

Donald Trump promises he can help African-American voters, but ahead of his first-ever trip to a black church in Detroit, a new report paints a picture of a clearly nervous campaign. Meanwhile, Joe Biden says he thinks the Clinton Foundation has “found themselves in a position where things are changing.” NBC’s Hallie Jackson reports for TODAY from Trump Tower in New York City.

The sicker Hillary Clinton looks on the campaign trail, the more the Media Left tells us to deny the evidence of our eyes. Mrs. Clinton has suffered two strokes near, if not inside, her brain; but strokes are seldom localized affairs, and behind the scenes her doctors must be telling her to stop any physically demanding campaign activities. Hillary is in effect suspending her active campaigning to do almost exclusively fundraisers.

Last week’s shattering report by the State Department’s inspector general drew the conclusion that several of us at National Review have been urging for over a year: Hillary Clinton’s systematic conduct of government business over a homebrew e-mail system resulted in serious violations of federal law. Mrs. Clinton’s withheld tens of thousands of government records (the e-mails) for nearly two years after she departed the State Department. She failed to return all government-related e-mails upon demand. She destroyed (or at least attempted to destroy) tens of thousands of e-mails without consultation with the State Department. And she did it all...

White House hints that time for new Gaza policy is near. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Wednesday that it had warned Israel's government repeatedly to use "caution and restraint" with half a dozen aid boats bound for the Gaza Strip before Israeli commandos raided the flotilla this week in an operation that killed nine people. In an interview with Charlie Rose broadcast Wednesday night, Vice President Joe Biden agreed that Israel had a right to inspect the cargo. "You can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not ... but the truth of the matter...

February 25, 2016, 09:11 am Biden, Lady Gaga to team up for Oscars presentation By Rebecca Savransky Vice President Joe Biden and Lady Gaga are teaming up for a special presentation during Sunday's Academy Awards focused on sexual violence. Biden will introduce Lady Gaga to perform her song "Till It Happens to You," the Los Angeles Times reported. The song, about campus sexual assault, was written with songwriter Diane Warren for "The Hunting Ground," a documentary about incidents of sexual assault on college campuses. After the song, Biden, the main author for the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, will discuss...

The Iowa Democratic caucus which I've already described as akin to the Marxist Zimbabwe Farmers-workers confabs is over, and it appears -- as Mark Steyn ably notes -- "almost certain" that Hillary Clinton did not win it. If Iowa were one of those banana republics in which the president-for-life has been prevailed upon to hold an election and Jimmy Carter and a bunch of UN observers had flown in to certify it, none of the above would pass muster. But in the Democrat Party it does:[snip] In effect, Hillary and Bernie fought Iowa to a draw. But a miss is...

Joe Biden, who would for all intents and purposes be Obama’s proxy All the theoretical scenarios being bandied about regarding the 2016 Presidential race are based on the assumption that Hillary Clinton will be the Democrats' candidate for president. I believe this is a case of wishful thinking mixed with intellectual torpor, as I think Hillary Clinton will not be the Democrats’ candidate. First of all, her negatives and public personae are such that many voters would just as soon eat their ballots than vote for her. That, however, is the least of her worries. There's the small matter of...

Conservative and center-right columnists often have to do far more digging than their liberal counterparts, simply because overwhelmingly left-leaning beat journalists, aka "Democrats with bylines," provide such unbalanced reporting on current events on a daily basis. Fortunately, the Washington Post's Marc Thiessen did the entirely necessary work of rummaging through available information about federal court nominations in 1988 and 1992. Any beat reporter could have done the same thing, but either didn't, or decided not to report what was found. What Thiessen unearthed makes an argument-ending mockery of Vice President Joe Biden's claim, made in a Monday evening tweet, that when he...

I’ll give you the quote but you should really listen to the clip, as it’s short and oh so sweet. How often does this guy get caught by reporters with nothing coherent to say in his or his party’s defense? I thought he’d at least try arguing that Biden said what he said in June 1992 whereas Scalia’s vacancy opened up in February of this year and that makes all the difference somehow even though it actually makes no difference at all, but he doesn’t even fart out that excuse. All he can say to the fact that Obama, Biden,...

In 2005, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) spoke on the Senate floor and insisted he and his colleagues had no constitutional duty to approve President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominee. Fast forward to 2016, he’s changing his tune. In a Washington Post article, Reid writes, “The Senate’s constitutional duty to give a fair and timely hearing and a floor vote to the president’s Supreme Court nominees has remained inviolable.” “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd felt compelled to point out the senator's hypocrisy on Sunday:Meet The Press confronts Harry Reid with past hypocritical postures on Supreme Court nominations “I guess I’m confused....

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend said he disagreed with University of Notre Dame officials for honoring Vice President Joe Biden with the Laetare Medal for outstanding service to the Catholic Church and society. He said Biden's stance of not opposing abortion and his support of same-sex marriage make him ineligible to receive the award. Biden, along with former Speaker of the House John Boehner, will be honored May 15 during Notre Dame's 171st commencement ceremony. Both men are Catholic. While not calling upon Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, to reverse the decision, Bishop...

Vice President Biden delivered a passionate defense Sunday of President Obama’s policy toward Israel and took a direct shot at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s divisive and polarizing rhetoric. Biden, speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s policy conference in Washington, where Trump is expected to appear Monday, didn’t mention the billionaire businessman by name. But it was clear that he was speaking of Trump when he condemned those political candidates who seek to divide Americans. “As the Jewish people know better than any other people, any action that marginalizes one religious or ethnic group imperils us all,” Biden...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, pictured, rejected a peace initiative proposed by US Vice President Joe Biden. Photo: Wikipedia. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, pictured, rejected a peace initiative proposed by US Vice President Joe Biden. Photo: Wikipedia. JNS.org – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday rejected a peace initiative that was proposed by US Vice President Joe Biden during their two-hour meeting in Ramallah, according to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds. The initiative was described as having four main stipulations: requiring that eastern Jerusalem be the Palestinian capital, an end to Israeli settlement construction in Judea and Samaria as...

When Advisers Hate Israel The dark narrative in Hillary's emails. February 5, 2016 Joseph Klein Hillary Clinton has tried to portray herself as a steadfast friend of Israel. "I have stood with Israel my entire career," she wrote in an article appearing last November in The Forward. "As president, I will continue this fight." She promised that she would "invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office." Hillary Clinton's steadfast support for the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran calls into question her stated "personal commitment" to "fighting for Israel." Peace and security...

Bernie Sanders says it would be a "terrible idea" for Democrats to recruit Vice President Joe Biden to run for president if Hillary Clinton is forced out of the race. "I think that would be a terrible, terrible idea," Sanders said Friday in an interview with The Young Turks, a pro-Sanders online news show. "That would say to the millions of people who have supported us, that have worked with us, that would say all of your energy, all of your votes, all of your beliefs are irrelevant. We're going to bring in someone else," Sanders said. "I happen to...

Voters don't hate Joe Biden, 73, the genial vice president who openly agonized last year before deciding not to put himself and his family through the rigors of a presidential bid in the wake of the 2015 death of his son after a battle with brain cancer. Not most voters, anyway. In a nationwide poll conducted in March for Bloomberg Politics, only 35 percent of respondents had a negative view of Biden compared with 68 percent who had a negative view of Trump, 53 percent who viewed Clinton unfavorably and 41 percent with a negative impression of Vermont Sen. Bernie...

The State Department's report on Hillary Clinton's insouciant attitude toward cyber-security would finish any other American politician. She ignored the law, flouted it repeatedly, and didn't care; folks are in prison for less. The only thing that's holding her up at this point is her Amen Corner in the media, most of whom know her personally and who long for a Clinton Restoration in order to reclaim their places as house courtiers. But 2016 is not 1992 or even 2008, and the retinue of retainers is as long in the tooth as the former first lady herself. They can't protect...