Free Republic

It’s been over a year and a half since Obama left office, but it still bothers me hearing him speak. Between his trying to take credit for the Trump economy and his claim that he, unlike Trump, didn’t “threaten the freedom of the press,” it's hard not to get angry when he speaks because virtually everything he says is a lie. His trying to take credit for Trump's economy was pathetic, but his claim that he was not an enemy of the free press deserves to be called out. “It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t...

There may have been a real White House briefing with real White House officials, but The New York Times couldn't be trusted to accurately summarize what the White House official said. And it wasn't on a minor point. On the path to the June 12 summit with North Korea, journalists claimed President Donald Trump would not be willing to walk away from the negotiating table because he was too desperate for a win. The Washington Post’s David Nakamura wrote that “critics fear that a president determined to declare victory where his predecessors failed will allow his desire for a legacy-making...

President Obama on Tuesday pardoned retired Gen. James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accused of lying to the FBI about his conversations with reporters regarding U.S. efforts to cripple Iran's nuclear program. Cartwright pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of making false statements during the FBI's investigation into leaks about the government's role in a highly classified operation known as Operation Olympic Games. The clandestine effort -- untaken with Israel -- deployed a computer virus known as Stuxnet that destroyed Iranian centrifuges. New York Times journalist David Sanger exposed the operation in...

Iran has tentatively agreed to ship much of its huge stockpile of uranium to Russia if it reaches a broader nuclear deal with the West, according to officials and diplomats involved in the negotiations, potentially a major breakthrough in talks that have until now been deadlocked. Under the proposed agreement, the Russians would convert the uranium into specialized fuel rods for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran’s only commercial reactor. Once the uranium is converted into fuel rods, it is extremely difficult to use them to make a nuclear weapon. That could go a long way toward alleviating Western concerns...

Vice President Joe Biden will not be throwing his annual beach party for journalists this summer, POLITICO has learned. Since 2010, Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden have invited top journalists to their home at the Naval Observatory for a beach bash that has included Super Soaker fights, face painting, and a moon bounce. Past guests have included then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Candy Crowley, MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, CBS's Bob Schieffer, ABC's Ann Compton, PBS's Gwen Ifill and New York Times reporter David Sanger, among many others. The Vice President's...

From those first moments five years ago when Secret Service agents burst into Vice President Dick Cheney’s office on Sept. 11, lifted him off his feet and propelled him to the underground Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the man who had returned to Washington that year to remake the powers of the presidency seemed unstoppable. Within minutes, Mr. Cheney was directing the government’s response to an attack that was still under way. Within weeks, he was overseeing the surveillance program that tracked suspected terrorist communications into and out of the United States without warrants. Within months, he and his staff, guided...

CRAWFORD, Texas — For six days, President Bush has stayed in nearly complete isolation on his ranch here — just mountain-biking and brush-clearing, the White House insisted daily, and seeing only one visitor, his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch. He never even ventured into this little town of 600, not even to the cheeseburger joint that he often uses as a political tool to show that he is in touch with his neighbors. But on New Year's Day, after a brief stop at an Army hospital in San Antonio to visit wounded soldiers, Bush is scheduled to return to the White House...

WASHINGTON, March 28 - The final report of a presidential commission studying American intelligence failures regarding illicit weapons includes a searing critique of how the C.I.A. and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapon stockpiles, according to officials who have seen the report's executive summary. The report also proposes broad changes in the sharing of information among intelligence agencies that go well beyond the legislation passed by Congress late last year that set up a director of national intelligence to coordinate action among all 15 agencies. Those recommendations are...