Free Republic

Illinois residents celebrated their first annual “Barack Obama Day” on Saturday after the state legislature voted in 2017 to make the day honoring former President Barack Obama a state holiday. The bill establishing Obama’s birthday as a state holiday unanimously passed the Illinois state legislature last year, and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the measure into law on August 6, 2017. The legislation declared August 4 “Barack Obama Day” in the state of Illinois, but did not make the holiday an official legal holiday over concerns the state could not afford the cost of giving state employees a paid holiday....

EXCERPT In the speech, he recalls a conversation with his mother about his slipping grades, how he hadn't started filling out college applications and how he was being "casual" about his future. He started to tell her he didn't need to hear that, but Obama says she cut him off, gave him a hard stare and asked if he remembered what it was like to put in a little effort. Obama says hearing that from his mother jolted him. "But eventually, her words had their intended effect," he says. "I got serious about my studies. I made an effort. And...

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry. This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but...

WASHINGTON — Inaugural organizers fielded a flurry of complaints on Wednesday from people who had tickets to see President Obama’s swearing-in, but who were left stranded in an underground traffic tunnel near the Capitol. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Congressional committee that handled the ticketing arrangements, said Wednesday that the Rules Committee would investigate the problems that kept thousands of ticket holders from seeing the event. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, in a statement on Wednesday, expressed regret that some ticket holders could not get to their sections, primarily in the standing-room area...