Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama should stick to his guns in pressuring Israel to stop building settlements on Palestinian land. The Israeli land grabs that result in more settlements on the West Bank and the forced eviction of Palestinians in East Jerusalem are clearly violations of international law. The Israeli leadership knows what it is doing and hopes it still has a green light and open-ended support from U.S. policy makers, just as it did in the administration of President George W. Bush. Bush was totally sympathetic with all Israeli military moves, including the catastrophic bombing of Gaza. His administration...

WASHINGTON -- Strong support for health care reform comes from Americans from all walks of life. Thousands of doctors and nurses are on board in support of broad-ranging reform that would bring the security of health coverage to millions of people who lack it. A new Gallup Poll released Wednesday shows that 44 percent of Americans believe a new reform law would improve medical care in the U.S., while 26 percent said it would improve their personal medical care. The insurance industry and some of the medical moguls continue to demonize health care reform as "socialism." The broadcast wing of...

WASHINGTON -- Secrecy is endemic in all governments. It goes with the turf, especially if their leaders hope to hide illegal or immoral behavior, such as torture of foreign prisoners. Many Americans heaved a sigh of relief last January when President Barack Obama banned the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Image-wise, it made the administration look more humane than the Bush-Cheney team. But that is not the whole story. Obama left unaddressed the possibility of torture in secret foreign prisons under our control as in Abu Ghraib in Iraq or Bagram in Afghanistan, not to mention the "black...

WASHINGTON -- I had an historical flashback recently when I read a Washington Post news story about how the U.S. commander in Afghanistan thinks he may need many thousands more troops to win the war. Shades of Vietnam. Do we ever learn? It brought back memories of the late Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Southeast Asia, who kept escalating the troop numbers after the 1967 Tet offensive in Vietnam. His strategy produced a debacle for us. When the besieged Westmoreland requested 240,000 more troops, President Lyndon B. Johnson was shocked. The command in Vietnam had been giving...

WASHINGTON -- It’s not news when the White House tries to manage the news. That has always been the case. But it is news when Obama administration officials -- the folks who proclaimed that they would bring unprecedented openness and transparency to government -- fall all over themselves trying to manipulate news briefings and attempting amateurish stagecraft at public meetings. The president relies on a list of handpicked reporters to call on at his formal news conferences -- and the fortunate few are not necessarily accredited reporters but include new age self-appointed journalists or anyone with a laptop. The White...

You Obama supporters, be honest now. Read the following and tell me how you would have reacted: If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved? If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved? If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky? If George W. Bush had bowed...

CBS' Chip Reid and Helen Thomas double teamed Robert Gibbs today at the daily press briefing on the "tightly controlled" town hall meeting President Obama will hold on health care. Gibbs kept saying lets have this discussion AFTER the meeting. Helen Thomas accused the White House of "controlling the press." She said almost all White House/Obama events are "prepackaged." She accused the White House of not "having any answers."

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama had been playing his cards cautiously on the political turmoil in Iran -- until conservatives goaded him to escalate his rhetorical condemnation of the uprising. Obama had tried to steer clear of any public comment about the disputed reelection of Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the massive protests by supporters of the opposition candidate and the government crackdown on the protesters. At a news conference Tuesday, Obama caved in to those right-wing columnists and political hawks who wanted him to hit the Iranian mullahs harder. These are the same critics who pushed the American people into...

WASHINGTON -- A universal health-care system based on the single-payer model appears to be a bridge too far for politically attuned President Barack Obama. A single-payer system -- such as Medicare for everyone -- would solve the problem of out-of-control costs and would provide health care for all. President Lyndon B. Johnson had the courage to weigh in with all his political clout to win passage of Medicare and Medicaid, star accomplishments of the Great Society. President Franklin D. Roosevelt put all his chips on the table to win passage of the Social Security Act that makes the elderly more...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama scored big with his eloquent speech to the Muslim world last week. Now he has to put up or shut up. That’s the price of raising hopes that solutions can be found to tough issues, including the long festering Israeli-Palestinian crisis. His task there is complicated by the new hard-line Israeli leadership personified by Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, Obama also has several critical foreign policy problems bequeathed by his predecessor. Among them are the deteriorating Pakistani-Afghanistan turmoil and nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea. Obama’s uplifting rhetoric has raised expectations that he is a...

Karl Rove takes on Maureen Dowd.

WASHINGTON -- Is Supreme Court justice-designate Sonia Sotomayor going to have to eat her words and forget her past to win a seat on the high bench? That would apparently appease some of her right-wing critics, who are grasping at straws in their campaign to try to derail the Hispanic woman’s nomination -- or, at least, try to rough her up a bit. Does she have to be a narrow constructionist and interpret the law their way? Let’s hope not -- conservative jurists have had their way for too long on the high court. If she wins Senate confirmation, Sotomayor...

WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney is tossing verbal grenades at his successors. Maybe he just can’t stand the loss of power. Pitiful. He is acting like a man who is one step ahead of the sheriff. Actually, that could be the case. The true story of Cheney’s manipulations and deceptions during his eight years in the White House is yet to be told. Right now he sees that his best defense is offense. He has accused President Barack Obama of "recklessness" and weakening national security. Cheney should be grateful to Obama for not throwing the book at him...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got together officially this week for the first time, but their talks failed to win agreement on how to solve perennial Middle East problems. They managed to agree on a common concern that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons. In meeting with the hawkish Netanyahu, Obama agreed that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. He warned that the diplomatic talks he was initiating to halt Iran’s program would not continue forever, and he roughly set a one-year deadline for the dialogue. The president also said he wouldn’t foreclose "a range...

It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left. They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists. Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama should appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David Souter. And she should be a liberal. The high court is top heavy with conservative justices. And there is only one woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on the high bench. Obama’s choice will say a lot because Supreme Court’s decisions are the ultimate in our national life. Republicans are itching for a fight over the nominee, despite the fact that they had their way for too many years and worked to tip the court to the...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama’s 100 days in office have not shaken the world, but he has been compelled to focus on the legacy bequeathed by former President George W. Bush: the worst economic slump since the Great Depression and two wars. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, avoiding any credibility-destroying urge to praise his boss with ridiculous extravagance, gives the president a "B-plus" on his report card. "What the president has achieved is something we’re proud of," Gibbs said, adding: "There is room for improvement." Probably the biggest change Obama has brought about is the country’s new hopeful spirit,...

Shock and shame is the only way to react to the latest revelations of the Bush administration's brutal interrogation of suspected terrorists. As the world now knows, torture techniques -- approved by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- were exposed in four memos released by the Justice Department under a court order obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. Much as President Obama wants to move on and to forget the unsavory history of the preceding administration, he has to face up to its ugly reality. The Bush administration's legal memos...

WASHINGTON -- White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and President Barack Obama share the same trait: They both are very cautious when speaking with reporters. Gibbs measures his words hesitantly between some "ums" and "ahs," before voicing carefully selected words in response to a reporter’s question. As White House press secretary he is in the bull’s eye every day at televised news briefings, which may explain why he appears most comfortable with the reporters for wire services and TV networks he schmoozed with on the campaign trail. In a position where many predecessors have blown their tops out of frustration or...