Free Republic

The United States returned to Iran a 2,700-year-old silver drinking cup, looted from a cave in Iran and seized by US Customs officials a decade ago, NBC news reported. The cup is valued at a million dollars at least. … The cup, cast in the shape of a winged griffin, has been stored in a New York warehouse, since authorities seized it from an art dealer who was arrested trying to sell it. For years, US officials have been saying they couldn’t return it to Iran until diplomatic ties with Tehran were normalized. …

Leon Panetta served in Washington with nine presidents, starting with Lyndon Johnson. He has been a member of Congress, Office of Management and Budget director, White House chief of staff, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and secretary of defense — the last two under President Obama. He is a man who knows Washington and knows how to choose his words. So Panetta’s implicit rebuke of the president’s hands-off approach to the budget crisis at a breakfast Monday was striking. Indeed, implicit may be an understatement. Asked repeatedly whether he was being correctly understood as critical of President Obama, Panetta...

WASHINGTON - President Obama says a tumultuous month as commander in chief, when his policy toward Syria took a number of unexpected turns, may not have looked "smooth and disciplined and linear," but it's working. "I'm less concerned about style points. I'm much more concerned with getting the policy right," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on "This Week." Obama said his surprise announcement on Aug. 31 that he would seek congressional authorization for U.S. military strikes against Syria, then the abrupt cancellation of a vote this week and pursuit of a diplomatic plan led by the...

The US will drop its insistence that a UN resolution on Syria must be backed by military force, officials say, after strong objections from Russia. US and Russian diplomats say the two sides are edging closer to a deal on Syria's chemical arsenal, as talks in Geneva enter a third day. They are thrashing out the technical details of the disarmament process.

Earlier today, I wrote a review of President Obama’s speech, which was hardly complimentary. Other reviews make it look positively warm in comparison. Take for instance this long and pointed criticism from John Harris at Politico, which frames the speech as coming from two different Obamas and then concludes with by calling the entire effort “disingenuous”:

President Barack Obama hinted Friday that he might not strike Syria if Congress rejects his authorization request. “I’m not itching for military action… and if there are good ideas that are worth pursuing, then I’m going to be open to them,” he told one reporter who asked if he was seeking alternatives to a missile strike. “Are we on a fast track to military action as soon as Congress renders its judgment one way or the other?” the reporter asked Obama, during his morning press conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

full title....Historians claim Obama's 'Door of No Return' which he visited to highlight the evils of slavery is a 'scam' and was actually used as a garbage dumpWhen President Barack Obama visited the 'Door of No Return' on a Senegalese island on Thursday, he believed he was looking at where Africans were shipped across the Atlantic into slavery. But not all may be as it first seemed. Historians claim that the entrance of Slave House on Goree Island where Obama posed for a photo opportunity was most likely only used for disposing of garbage. As reported by the Telegraph, Professor...

The president, it seems, committed a minor gaffe during this week's G-8 meetings in Northern Ireland. According to the Financial Times, the stumble came during a discussion of tax avoidance issues, when Barack Obama thrice interrupted the British chancellor of the exchequer in order to say he agreed with "Jeffrey." The chancellor's name is George Osborne. Obama later apologized, saying, "I'm sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favorite R&B singer." The U.S. leader was referring to Jeffrey Osborne, the soulful crooner responsible for "On the Wings of Love." But is Osborne really the favorite that Obama claims?...

Barack Obama has just taken his first baby steps into a war in Syria that may define and destroy his presidency. Thursday, while he was ringing in Gay Pride Month with LGBT revelers, a staffer, Ben Rhodes, informed the White House press that U.S. weapons will be going to the Syrian rebels. For two years Obama has stayed out of this sectarian-civil war that has consumed 90,000 lives. Why is he going in now? The White House claims it now has proof Bashar Assad used sarin gas to kill 100-150 people, thus crossing a “red line” Obama had set down...

Obama: If People 'Can't Trust' Government, 'We're Going to Have Some Problems Here' by Ben Shapiro 7 Jun 2013, 11:11 AM PDT 32 post a comment During his speech in San Jose, California on Friday, President Obama took one question from the press on national security monitoring of Americans. Without any sense of irony whatsoever in the aftermath of the IRS’ targeting of conservatives, the administration’s stonewalling on Benghazi, the Department of Justice’s targeting of reporters, the Department of Health and Human Services’ leveraging of private organizations for Obamacare public relations cash, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s secret email addresses,...

"We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked," Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously said during the Cuban missile crisis. Barack Obama has been doing a lot of blinking lately. On Syria especially. "There would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movements on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons," he said back in August 2012. Chemical weapons were a "red line." Presumably the president hoped that his statement would deter Bashar Assad's embattled regime from using chemical weapons. And presumably he hoped that his demand in 2011 for Assad to relinquish...

President Obama shared his thoughts on North Korea in an interview that aired this morning on NBC: (video)

This isn't merely a failure of nerve, it's a failure of intelligence and a failure to keep operational secrets. The White House had a "playbook," agreed to by O, Hagel, and John Kerry, on how to rattle its saber at North Korea during the next crisis without rattling it so much that NK would get spooked and do something rash. E.g., first comes some B-52 flights over South Korea, then the B-2s make a cameo, then the F-22s, and so forth. Problem one: Kim's gone further in his bellicosity than U.S. analysts expected and now they’re unsure if they know...

Since James Madison's 1815 Address, the 'linguistic standard' of the State of the Union speech has plunged. As The Guardian notes, the lowest on record was George H.W. Bush's 1992 address - only just beating Obama's 2011 address for 'dumbest' speech ever. Whether this is representative of the American people as a whole or the lowest common denominator is unclear but one thing in this evening's speech comes to mind; if you were the President, would you invite, as your personal guest, a CEO who 1) has overseen massive wealth destruction in the last six months, 2) refuses to spend...

President "Smart Power" at work.  Oops:   As Obama stood next to the world's most recognized democracy icon, he mispronounced her name repeatedly. Ever gracious, Suu Kyi did not correct her American guest for calling her Aung YAN Suu Kyi multiple times during his statement to reporters after their meeting. Proper pronunciation for the Nobel laureate's name is Ahng Sahn Soo Chee. The meeting came after Obama met with Myanmar's reformist new President Thein Sein - a name he also botched. As the two addressed the media, Obama called his counterpart "President Sein," an awkward, slightly affectionate reference that would...

When the histories of the 2012 campaign are written, much will be made of Bill Clinton’s re-emergence. His convention speech may well have marked the finest moment of President Obama’s re-election campaign, and his ads on the president’s behalf were memorable. But there is one crucial way in which the 42nd president may not have served the 44th quite as well. In these final weeks before the election, Mr. Clinton’s expert advice about how to beat Mitt Romney is starting to look suspect. You may recall that last spring, just after Mr. Romney locked up the Republican nomination, Mr. Obama’s...

This weekend is your last chance to get this yard sign, this customized shirt, these buttons, this magnet, and this mug before election night. All that and more is 30% off right now at the Obama 2012 store—get ’em before they’re gone!

Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show. The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

Almost immediately after pool reports indicated that President Barack Obama called the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi “not optimal” during the taping of “The Daily Show,” social media exploded with outrage over the president’s remarks. The backlash was almost instantaneous — and it was brutal. The clumsy phrase from Obama gave birth to the #NotOptimal hashtag on Twitter, which was trending nationwide as of 7:30 p.m. ET.

R-51%, O-45%