Free Republic

Our allies hate him. Our enemies are laughing at him. Nearly two years after Obama’s World Tour in which he did his best to convince voters that he understood global challenges with a high profile tour of a lot of foreign countries (a approach that if it worked should convincingly make every internationally famous rock star a foreign policy expert), his biggest global accomplishment is still his ability to travel around the world to high profile destinations on the taxpayer’s shrinking dime. His attempts at diplomacy consisted of delivering vicious slaps across the faces of longtime allies, from England...

President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the US national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

RUSSIA HAS warned that it could withdraw from a new nuclear arms reduction pact with the United States if it feels threatened by Washington’s planned missile defence system in central Europe. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov issued the warning as his president, Dmitry Medvedev, and US counterpart Barack Obama prepared to head to the Czech Republic for tomorrow’s signing of a long-awaited treaty to cut their countries’ arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads by about a third. As Prague ramped up security for the visit of the two leaders, Mr Obama’s administration yesterday unveiled a new policy renouncing the development of new...

Gitmo Lawyer "Completely Shocked" His Terrorist Client Returned to Terrorism BY John McCormack March 26, 2010 11:34 AM Newsweek follows up on Tom Joscelyn and Bill Roggio's story on the Gitmo detainee who's returned to the battlefield after being released by the Obama administration: A Guantánamo detainee released last December has now returned to the battlefield to fight with Taliban insurgents, according to three U.S. counterterrorism officials who have reviewed intelligence reports on the matter. If the reports are accurate, the detainee, known as Abdul Hafiz, would be the first Guantánamo inmate released by the Obama administration to have returned...

EMAIL FRIEND | PRINT ARTICLE | 45 COMMENTS | SHARE March 24, 2010 Amish, Muslims to be excused from Obamacare mandate? WordWayze The Senate health care bill just signed contains some exemptions to the "pay-or-play" mandate requiring purchase of Obamacare-approved health insurance or payment of a penalty fine. As Fox News has pointed out, for instance, the Amish are excused from the mandate: So while most Americans would be required to sign up with insurance companies or government insurance plans, the church would serve as something of an informal insurance plan for the Amish. Law experts say that kind of...

America's brotherly love for Israel has turned into more than just a siblings spat. It is a down and out casting off of a family member, thanks to President Barack Obama. There has been much questioning of Mr. Obama’s true feelings and commitment for the security of the State of Israel, the longtime ally of the United States. There are those who think that because Mr. Obama spent a crucial part of his childhood in a Muslim country that his sympathies lie with Islam. There are others who say that because of his African-American heritage, he has an aversion to...

Two weeks after a conservative group disparaged Justice Department lawyers who previously represented terror suspects, Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday weighed in for the first time, calling such lawyers "patriots." “Those who reaffirm our nation’s most essential and enduring values do not deserve to have their own values questioned,” Holder told a group of lawyers who offer "pro bono," or voluntary, legal services. "Let me be clear about this: Lawyers who provide counsel for the unpopular are, and should be treated as what they are: patriots." The crowd, gathered to honor Holder with an award from the Washington-based Pro...

The US government is stalling on one of the few remaining mechanisms for peacefully resolving the impasse with the Islamic Republic. In today’s Washington, it’s rare for any legislation to pass with bipartisan support, even rarer for such a bill to pass with massive bipartisan backing, and rarer still for such legislation to lie around gathering dust. But not when it comes to Israel and Iran. Unfortunately, congressional leaders have bottled up a hugely popular Iran sanctions bill that passed both houses with overwhelming support. At precisely the moment that the Islamic Republic is expanding and perfecting its nuclear capabilities,...

A day after Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were "deeply concerned" over news that, during his confirmation process, Attorney General Eric Holder failed to disclose work on a terrorism-related legal brief, the Justice Department revealed Friday that the problem was wider than previously known. "It has come to our attention that some but not all briefs submitted to the Supreme Court by or on behalf of Attorney General Holder … [were supplied] in the course of his confirmation process last year," Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets judicial nominees....

During his confirmation last year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. failed to notify the Senate that he had signed several briefs urging courts to reject President George W. Bush’s claim that he had the power to imprison an American citizen as an “enemy combatant,” the Justice Department acknowledged Thursday. The briefs should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process,” said Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman. “In preparing thousands of pages for submission, it was unfortunately and inadvertently missed. In any event, the attorney general has publicly discussed his positions on detention policy on many occasions, including...

A Muslim leader who has tried to portray the founder of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus in Washington as an extremist "hatemonger" was himself exposed as an extremist on a popular radio program. For years, Jibril Hough has represented himself and his North Carolina mosque as "moderate," while putting Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., on the defensive as an anti-Muslim fanatic who "shoots from the hip" when sounding the alarm about homegrown Islamic terrorism. Myrick, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, co-founded the Capitol Hill caucus after 9/11 to educate Americans about the growing threat from jihadists. But during an in-studio...

Jennifer Daskal is a radical far left American lawyer who serves as senior counsel for Human Rights Watch, and focuses on issues of terrorism, criminal law and immigration. She is also currently a political hire at Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, which is seeking to prosecute terror suspects through the criminal justice system instead of through military tribunals. In 2008, Daskal claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was tortured and recommended that his guilty plea be thrown out of court. Now this radical is working for the Obama Administration. It figures.Human Rights Watch reported: ---Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others announced...

Last summer, the Obama administration announced that, as a replacement for the Bush administration's secret CIA terrorist detention and interrogation program, it would create a SWAT-style team of interrogation experts to travel the world squeezing terrorist suspects for vital information. Administration officials say that the interrogation unit, known as the HIG (for High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group) is now operational. But for reasons that are unclear, the administration has not deployed HIG personnel to question Afghan Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arguably the most important terrorist suspect captured since the detention of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in spring...

Senate Republicans pressed Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday afternoon over political appointees who'd previously defended suspects in terrorism cases. All seven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote Holder, asking for more details about political appointees within the Department of Justice, who, Republicans say, may have conflicts of interest in the government's prosecution in terrorism cases. The GOP senators wrote Holder to complain that a response to an original request for information on those Justice Department personnel was "at best nonresponsive and, at worst, intentionally evasive." "It appears the Department has chosen to go another direction and refuse to...

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is rightly unhappy that the Justice Department won't divulge the names of the nine Justice Department lawyers who directly represented suspected-terrorist detainees, or their cases. Grassley identified two himself, Neal Katyal (an aside: Katyal is a very impressive guy and very charming and level-headed) and Jennifer Daskal. Well, we've identified two more of them: Deputy AG counsel Eric Columbus and Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Jonathan Cedarbaum. (With reference to: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/25/identifying-the-gitmo-nine/)

The Obama administration bluntly urged the Congress Thursday to steer clear of directing where terrorism suspects should be prosecuted, pushing back against efforts to require military rather than civilian trials. A bipartisan group of senators has offered legislation aimed at forcing the administration to prosecute terrorism suspects, like the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in special military commission trials instead of traditional criminal courts. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators to be tried in a criminal court in Manhattan. But concerns by some lawmakers about security costs and granting full...

A radical Muslim group that was an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas has an extensive relationship with the Obama administration, WND has learned. Last week, President Obama's top adviser on counter-terrorism, John Brennan, came under fire for controversial remarks he made in a speech to Muslim law students at New York University. The event was sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA. ISNA is known for its enforcement of Saudi-style Islam in mosques throughout the U.S. It was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in its case against the...

War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on? From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser. We may now have a clue as...

War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on? From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser. We may now have a clue as...

WASHINGTON -- A year ago, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick was appointed to the House Intelligence Committee, a prestigious post she had long sought. There, top-secret briefings unveiled truths about homegrown terrorism she had only suspected. And won't reveal. "I can't tell you. I'm not being coy," Myrick said in an interview. "There's a threat out there to our security. ... It's worse than I thought." Myrick, a Charlotte Republican and former mayor of the city, contends that extremists are working their way into U.S. Muslim communities, infiltrating government institutions and influencing American citizens to attack their own country. Her activism...