Free Republic

CANNES, France (AP) — Conceding a fragile global recovery and plodding job growth back home, President Barack Obama said Friday he is confident European leaders are fixing their ominous debt crisis, which threatens to undermine the United States and his own shot at a second term. A year shy of the election, Obama said the American economy is growing, but "way too slow." The president capped his role at a brisk G-20 summit essentially where he started it, offering solidarity to his European peers with none-too-subtle signals it was their responsibility to clean up the economic mess in their own...

NYT MONDAY: Dem strategists believe Obama faces 'tougher-than-anticipated' re-election...developing

In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan. The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself. The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government...

PRESIDENT Barack Obama and his glamorous wife Michelle are living a life of luxury at the taxpayers’ expense, according to a bombshell new report. American tabloid the National Enquirer says Barack has spent a fortune on parties, vacations and expensive designer clothes. “It’s outrageous Obama and his family are spending money like water when the rest of America is frantically tightening their belts in a desperate bid not to drown in their financial woes,” said one political insider. “How can he pull this kind of stunt during what amounts to a modern day depression? “Obama and his wife are acting...

The Federal Reserve is undertaking a "dangerous gamble" by keeping rates at near zero for so long, and must start raising rates or risk damaging the nascent U.S. recovery, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday. "To be clear, I am not advocating a tight monetary policy," Kansas City Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig said in the text of a speech to the Lincoln, Nebraska, Chamber of Commerce. "I am advocating a policy that remains accommodative but slowly firms as the economy itself expands and moves toward more balance." Hoenig has been the lone dissenter on the Fed's policy-setting...

If Ronald Reagan was the classic Teflon president, Barack Obama is made of Velcro. Through two terms, Reagan eluded much of the responsibility for recession and foreign policy scandal. In less than two years, Obama has become ensnared in blame. Hoping to better insulate Obama, White House aides have sought to give other Cabinet officials a higher profile and additional public exposure. They are also crafting new ways to explain the president's policies to a skeptical public. But Obama remains the colossus of his administration — to a point where trouble anywhere in the world is often his to solve....

This past Sunday marked the first time President Barack Obama graced a Washington, D.C., church with his presence since Oct. 11, but apparently it was not to sit in a pew and worship. Instead, he was doing the sermonizing and politicking -- gloriously intermingling church and state as only liberals are allowed to do in this country. Don't get me wrong; I'm no scold when it comes to the church-state separation mania, which I think has been grossly expanded by liberals not to preserve the constitutional protection of religious liberty, but to selectively suppress it. But here I am digressing...

BERLIN – A court has ordered psychiatric care for a man who staged a short-lived protest before Barack Obama's speech in Berlin during his campaign for the U.S. presidency.