Free Republic

On Friday’s broadcast of CBS’ “Late Show,” White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that people who have been vaccinated shouldn’t “hit the clubs until we get the level of virus down so low that there’s no threat to hit the clubs.” And that he thinks performances like late-night shows can have audiences back, “not necessarily full capacity, as we get into the early fall” if the “overwhelming majority” of people are vaccinated by that time. Host Stephen Colbert asked, “If I get the vaccine, can I hit the clubs two weeks after I get the shot?” Fauci...

A dizzying succession of major world events is bombarding a president who insists on controlling his own time, emotions and political message. With Japan’s nuclear crisis teetering on the verge of catastrophe, with Libya and Bahrain in violent turmoil, and with financial markets crashing in response, President Barack Obama has been adamantly sticking to his own political and policy playbook. That has meant muscling past the red-siren headlines to hammer away at the jobs-and-education message that will be the centerpiece of his 2012 campaign, the kind of discipline that is a hallmark of his new senior adviser, David Plouffe. And...

President Barack Obama will take his first official trip to Brazil this weekend where he will speak in the popular Cinelandia Square in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Access, of course, will be tightly restricted and security measures so secretive that not even the Embassy or US Consulate in Rio know exactly how it’s all going to go down. Obama’s speech will be free and open to the public and take place around 15:00 local time (14:00 EST). Access to the square will begin at 11:30, and is sure to draw a crowd. Obama is popular in Brazil. One politician seeking...