Free Republic

More dispiriting news, this time about the White House overturning the EPA’s proposed new rules on smog. That comes a few hours after the jobs report from Friday morning, one of the bleakest yet. And it comes a few days in advance of what everyone expects will be a small-thinking, modest, blah jobs speech by the president. It’s not only getting to the point where it’s getting hard to see him winning reelection. It’s getting to the point where it’s hard to imagine people taking him seriously for the remaining 14 months of his current term. The smog decision is...

Over at NRO, Jay Nordlinger makes an incredibly good point: Barack Obama should be urging calm in Wisconsin, no matter WHAT side of the underlying issue he is on. It is not just unpresidential of him, but despicable, for him in effect to be urging on the mass demonstrations. But as J. Christian Adams, Justice Department whistle-blower extraordinaire, reminded me in an email accompanying this post of his, these are not only the tactics always favored by the left in general, but specifically the sorts of tactics Obama himself was trained in -- AND exactly what I myself warned about...

HONOLULU -- A privacy law that blocks the release of birth certificates has prompted Hawaii's Democratic governor to end his efforts to dispel claims that President Obama was born outside of the state, his office said. State Attorney General David Louie told the governor that privacy laws bar him from disclosing an individual's birth documentation without the person's consent, Gov. Neil Abercrombie's spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Friday.

Obama is the world's biggest suck-up.

Narcissists dread the stigma of failure. Our self-admiring president is so fearful of ever being blameworthy that he reflexively shrinks from consequential decision making. Barack Obama’s aversion to making difficult decisions has left America effectively leaderless. Mr. Obama’s decision-making malfunction was no big secret before his election. Back in 2006, Mr. Obama himself had warned us in the opening pages of The Audacity of Hope that “I am new enough to the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to...

NOTE: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-proclamation-take-certain-actions-under-african-growth-and-opportunity Home • Briefing Room • Presidential Actions • Proclamations The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release December 23, 2009 Presidential Proclamation - To Take Certain Actions Under the African Growth and Opportunity Act A PROCLAMATION 1. Section 506A(a)(1) of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (the "1974 Act") (19 U.S.C. 2466a(a)(1)), as added by section 111(a) of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (title I of Public Law 106-200) (AGOA), authorizes the President to designate a country listed in section 107 of the AGOA (19 U.S.C. 3706)...