Free Republic

President Obama's aides are preparing to a mount a media broadside to mark his first milestone in office As the White House prepares to reach the 100 days milestone since President Obama’s inauguration, it is being true to the form shown over the preceding 99: to exploit ruthlessly American politics while simultaneously asking that the President be judged by a different standard. The strategy is to swat aside any effort to reach an early verdict, on the ground that the Administration has faced unprecedented challenges, but to acknowledge nonetheless that Wednesday — on which the 100th day falls — may...

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, will on Monday offer proposals to slash spending on major military projects in what aides called a "fundamental shift in direction". Mr Gates, who spent the weekend finalising his budget plans for 2010, is expected to take aim at several major weapons conventional warfare programmes, in favour of spending on technologies more useful to the "asymmetrical" wars that US forces are embroiled in. After eight years in which the defence budget doubled, and with the economy in deep recession, Mr Gates is targeting systems that have gone way over both budget and schedule. The...

President Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice. Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets -...

Nicolas Sarkozy displays a cartoon in his office that helps to explain why he is picking quarrels with Barack Obama. It shows Super Sarko standing between George W. Bush and Mr Obama. The caption reads: “I’ve prepped to be interim master of the world.” The French President played stand-in statesman during a dynamic turn in the EU’s rotating chair last year. He saw himself giving a paternal hand to the new superpower leader but was then wounded by Mr Obama’s failure to grant his wish of a new Washington-Paris axis. The new antagonism is personal and strategic. Mr Sarkozy’s alpha-male...

President Obama has been in power for just over 50 days, but already critics believe his plans to save America from disaster are doomed Even in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, New York knows how to throw a party. For most of yesterday hundreds of thousands of people made a sea of green that paraded up Fifth Avenue to mark St Patrick’s Day. Tens of thousands lined the street to watch them. The all-day party, fuelled by imports of Guinness and whiskey, seemed the more intensely engaged upon as an escape from omnipresent financial gloom. Away from the...

The Taliban continues its menacing advance on the Pakistani capital. The Iranian president reiterates his hateful anti-Israeli rhetoric, while Israel's newly elected Right-wing prime minister makes veiled threats about launching military action to prevent a second Holocaust. Yet the only subject that appears to concern Barack Obama is whether or not senior officials from the previous administration should face prosecution for the harsh interrogation techniques used against terror suspects in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. (snip) In another age, putting off an inevitable confrontation to keep the peace was called appeasement: a charge that will soon be levelled...