Free Republic

I was thinking about writing a novel about what might happen if a man who hates America and wants to bring it down is somehow elected president. What would he do? I sketched out a few plot elements, and you can decide whether this will fly. First, the Trojan Horse president would initiate unprecedented spending, driving the debt up by more than $4 trillion just in the first three years. Much of the money would go into the pockets of political supporters and people who donate heavily to his campaigns. He would ram through an unreadable law allowing the federal...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama plans to make a statement to reporters Monday after the deficit-cutting supercommittee announced that it had failed to reach an agreement.

Leadership: The president is at it again, bad-mouthing the U.S. abroad. Last week he told Australians that our kids are "behind" in education and that the solution is —what else? —more government spending. Let's unpack that.To start, normal presidents don't go around to other countries telling the locals that their country's schoolchildren are underachievers. Not Obama. "A lot of poor children don't get the support they need when they're very young," Obama told a roomful of inquiring students down under. "So by the time they get to grammar school, they're behind."From that, Australians can only take home the message that...

Sixty percent of people arrested for Islamic terrorist activities between January 2009 and April 2011 were American citizens, according to a new report from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The study of 104 people who were arrested included U.S. and non-U.S. citizens living in America or abroad. The report, "Analyzing the Islamic Extremist Phenomenon in the United States: A Study of Recent Activity," was authored by Joan Neuhaus Schaan, fellow in homeland security at the Baker Institute. Jessica Phillips, an intern with the Baker Institute's homeland security and terrorism program, provided research support for the study. Using data...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed Thursday that he will not preside over deep Pentagon budget cuts that "hollow out" the military's combat power. If the special congressional deficit panel fails to agree on $1.2 trillion in federal spending cuts by Thanksgiving, the Pentagon and other security agencies would face around $600 billion in automatic cuts. Officials say the Defense Department would take about half that cut, on top of the bulk of another $350 billion funding reduction over a decade mandated in the August debt deal. If the $600 billion trigger is enacted by a supercommittee failure, it "guarantees that...

Apparently he is. And it’s not just me saying it. From across the political spectrum, there has been widespread condemnation of the way the White House is using Social Security checks as a weapon in President Obama’s budget battles with the congressional Republicans. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue [increasing the debt ceiling]. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," President Obama said in a recent interview with Scott Pelley of CBS News. “When I heard that, I took him at his...

Now the President is outraged because the GOP House leadership called his bluff and ended discussions with him because they deemed him an obstruction to any real solution to the debt crisis. He has been deemed a lame duck president. And he is angry now because he is being treated as such. His foreign policy strategy has been described as “leading from behind.” Well, that’s his domestic policy strategy as well. Why should he be surprised that he’s been left behind in the negotiations when he’s been leading from behind on this debt crisis? Thank you, GOP House leaders. Please...

President Obama and his national security team worked behind the scenes Sunday to try to shore up support within the Arab world for the military mission in Libya, with top White House aides reaching out to officials of the Arab League to insist the bombing does not exceed the scope of a U.N. mandate, according to senior administration officials. The senior officials described the Obama team's phone calls as making clear to the Arab League that bombing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's air defenses falls within the U.N. Security Council resolution's scope of imposing a no-fly zone and taking "all necessary...

Mr Obama has refused to scrap a five-day trip to Latin America that will take him to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador. Resisting demands that he should remain at home in the White House to deal with the international response to Japan’s nuclear crisis and Colonel Gaddafi’s crackdown on anti-government rebels, the president insists he can stay on top of the fast-moving developments while on the road. Some Republican critics have complained the sunshine trip symbolises Mr Obama’s lack of leadership at a time of international chaos. But White House press secretary Jay Carney said Mr Obama felt the visit...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was in Houston this weekend talking with oil executives who are eager to start drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico. That may sound like progress, but after the meeting Salazar said that nothing had changed. He was not ready to approve any new drilling. Despite everything that energy companies have done to devise advanced containment systems, Salazar is unwilling to issue a single new permit. Systems constructed by the nonprofit Marine Well Containment Company and other entities are now able to handle a flow equal or greater than that experienced during the Deepwater Horizon accident...