Free Republic

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden is getting the old gang back together. Increasingly deep into the process of selecting Cabinet members and other senior staff, the incoming Biden administration has a distinctly Obama feel. There’s Denis McDonough, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff who Biden announced on Thursday would be nominated as the secretary of veterans affairs. Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser, was named the director of Biden’s White House Domestic Policy Council. That’s on top of Biden already tapping Obama’s agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, to head the department once again, former Secretary of State John Kerry...

NEW YORK - Former President Barack Obama, already a million-selling author, is also a prize-winning author. PEN America announced Wednesday that Obama will receive its second annual Voice of Influence Award in recognition of how his writings “have traversed political, social, and ideological bounds and framed a self-reflective humanism that has marked his influence on public life.” During the ceremony, Obama and historian Ron Chernow, a former PEN board president, will discuss freedom of expression and the importance of truth in a world of misinformation. “As an organization of writers, we have always seen President Obama not just as a...

Officials in Honolulu have granted the developers of a luxury, oceanfront estate tied to Barack Obama a major exemption from environmental laws designed to protect Hawaii’s beaches. The shoreline permit, issued by Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting on Monday, clears the way for the controversial multimillion dollar renovation of a century-old seawall in the heavily Native Hawaiian community of Waimanalo. Under state and county laws, such projects are typically banned. Scientists and environmental experts say seawalls are the primary cause of beach loss throughout the state, and officials expect older ones to fall into obsolescence. But the property owners,...

Former President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail Tuesday to drum up support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, urging voters in the crucial battleground state of Florida to support his former vice president and casting President Trump as an attention-seeker who has turned the White House into a coronavirus hot-spot. Mr. Obama held a drive-in rally in Orlando, during which he urged Florida voters to come up with a plan to cast their ballots early. "This election requires every single one of us, and what we do this week will matter for decades to come," Mr. Obama said...

Barack Obama waves after his speech as he campaigns on behalf of Joe Biden in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 21, 2020. Supporters watch at a drive-in rally as Barack Obama campaigns on behalf of Joe Biden in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 21, 2020.

PRESIDENT Trump unleashed on Barack Obama during a campaign rally on Wednesday, claiming the former president couldn't help Hillary win as he repeated his middle name, Hussein. His comments to supporters in North Carolina came the same day that former president Obama slammed Trump as he hit the trails to campaign for Joe Biden. "Obama's now campaigning, even though he refused to support Biden," Trump claimed as he spoke to his supporters in Gastonia. "Even after Biden sort of semi-won. He wouldn't do it. It took forever." "But now he's campaigning for him." Trump said he questioned if Obama hitting...

A federal court has ruled that the US intelligence’s surveillance program exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden was unlawful, and possibly unconstitutional. A US federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the controversial National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden was illegal. The ruling stopped short of calling the program unconstitutional. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that the program, under which the NSA collected and analyzed bulk data provided by telecommunications companies, was in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and could have been unconstitutional. "Seven years ago, as the news...

Devout Shiite pilgrims were left covered in blood as they struck themselves with swords and chains during the mourning procession to mark the day of Ashura in the holy city of Najaf. Ashura, on the 10th day of the mourning month of Muharram, commemorates the killing of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD - the defining moment of Islam's confessional schism. Typically, millions of Shiites from around the world flock to the golden-domed shrine where Hussein's remains are buried, to pray and cry, shoulder-to-shoulder. But with coronavirus numbers spiking across the globe, this...

**SNIP** “I think private insurers should be able to compete. “They do it all the time. “I mean, if you think about, if you think about it, um, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. Right? “The, uh, no they are. “I mean, it’s the post office that’s always having problems.”

Although Hawaii has laws meant to preserve disappearing shorelines, beachfront property owners have been able to bypass them. ThatÂ’s what happened at an expansive coastal estate officials say the Obamas will live in. As Barack Obama entered the home stretch of his presidency, his close friend Marty Nesbitt was scouting an oceanfront property on Oahu, the Hawaiian island where the two regularly vacationed together with their families. A home in the nearby neighborhood of Kailua had served as the winter White House for the Obama family every Christmas, and photographers often captured shots of Obama and Nesbitt strolling on the...

More than any other group in Lebanon, the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah bears responsibility for the conditions that led to the blast. ... Lebanon is a mafia state governed entirely through criminality and institutionalized corruption. The .. Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. If there’s one group that bears primary responsibility for the state of affairs in Lebanon that led to the explosion in Beirut, it’s Hezbollah. ... Tony Badran.. Hezbollah’s role in governing Lebanon. .. the terrorist group isn’t a parallel structure to the government, it is the government. ... Hezbollah has long used the port for massive commercial scams and...

Joe Biden still may be undecided about who to pick for a running mate, but Donald Trump’s team knows exactly who they want: Susan Rice. Trump’s aides and allies accuse Rice - without delving too deeply into the evidence - of helping cover up crimes for two of the president’s favorite foils, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, making her just the kind of deep-state villain who could fire up his MAGA base. “She is absolutely our No. 1 draft pick,” a Trump campaign official said. Rice, the former ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser for Obama, is...

Remember the constant speculation about what the world would look like if President Trump won in 2016? It was a mix of the “Handmaid’s Tale” and “War of the Worlds.” In fact, The Boston Globe, a trailblazer in the fake news industry, even printed an entire hypothetical, apocalyptic cover. Why spend time on real news when you can fear-monger AND play Carnac the Magnificent at the same time? But there are fewer crystal ball predictions for the world post-Joe Biden. Besides a handful of Trump campaign ads, no one is painting a picture of Uncle Joe’s America. To be fair,...

There is an end in sight for a pair of years-long federal reviews of the Obama Presidential Center, and based on a Thursday briefing we now know City Hall will not insist on replacement land outside of Jackson Park to make up for the 19.3 acres the complex will occupy. **SNIP** It now looks like the reviews by multiple federal agencies mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act - known as NEPA - and the National Historic Preservation Act could be done - and agreements signed by the parties - by the end of 2020. The first meeting of the...

A top House Republican urged the chairman of the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee to use Attorney General William Barr’s planned July testimony as a chance to carry out oversight on the “weaponization” of the Obama Justice Department to target now-President Trump. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio sent a four-page letter to Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York on Friday, telling him he should take advantage of Barr’s appearance to look into the alleged misdeeds conducted during the Trump-Russia investigation. “The Attorney General’s appearance is also an opportunity for the Committee to conduct oversight of the Obama-Biden Administration’s weaponization of the...

He’s old. He worked with Barack Obama. He’s generally seen as a decent guy. If you know more than that about Joe Biden, you know more than many voters. Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, or having to move because his father lost his job? Writing the Violence Against Women Act? The tragedies he’s lived through, his years as a single father, how he rode the train back to Delaware each night when he was a senator? Even his supposed vulnerabilities, like helping to write the 1994 crime bill, running the Anita Hill hearings, protecting Delaware’s financial industry, or blundering on...

On a Wednesday afternoon livestream, President Obama delivered an optimistic message about the protests gripping the nation in response to police violence: “There is a change in mindset that’s taking place,” he said. .@BarackObama: "There is something different here." We're witnessing “a far more representative cross-section of America out on the streets, peacefully protesting…That didn't exist in the 1960s." In a town hall, organized through My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative he launched as president, Obama acknowledged that while the last few weeks have been “difficult, uncertain, and scary,” we are also living through “an incredible opportunity for people to be...

I'm not going to say, "At least one positive thing has come out of the coronavirus pandemic." Because there's nothing positive to say about a tragic, deadly health crisis and economic catastrophe like this. There is no "bright side." But we did learn something important. Obama lied. Again. Barack Obama was the biggest liar in the history of the U.S. presidency. First, he lied about transparency. His administration was the most corrupt and secretive in history. See Hillary Clinton's 33,000 deleted emails. See Anthony Weiner's laptop. See the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on Donald Trump and his...

**SNIP** Thanks to the pandemic, this hearing, before a three-judge federal appeals court panel, took place in part via telephone. It was recorded, which means you can still listen in, on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit website. If you do, you’ll catch University of Chicago (and NYU) law professor Richard Epstein asking for a reversal of last year’s decision by District Court judge John Robert Blakey to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the activist group Protect Our Parks that sought to keep the Obama Presidential Center out of Jackson Park. And you’ll hear city attorney Benna Ruth...

In pursuit of surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, the FBI consistently ignored exculpatory evidence In its pursuit of establishing surveillance on the Trump campaign, the FBI turned its attention to Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the spring of 2016, culminating in the issuance of a FISA warrant—which allows for some of the most intrusive spying methods on an American citizen. As part of this process, the FBI relied extensively on the flawed Steele dossier, leading an FBI legal counsel to note that this was “essentially a single source FISA.”