Free Republic

Drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance will close 200 stores as part of a plan to cut $1.5 billion in expenses over the next three years.... Walgreens is closing some U.S. stores at a time when the company is reporting stronger results for its domestic retail pharmacy business. That division, which includes Walgreens and Duane Reade stores, posted second-quarter sales of $21 billion, up 7.4% from a year ago. Same-store sales climbed 6.9%....

It is becoming clear that there was ample warning that there was ample warning that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a threat and that he needed to be deported.Russian authorities alerted the US government not once but “multiple’’ times over their concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev — including a second time nearly a year after he was first interviewed by FBI agents in Boston — raising new questions about whether the FBI should have focused more attention on the suspected Boston Marathon bomber, according to US senators briefed on the probe Tuesday. The FBI has previously said it interviewed Tsarnaev in early 2011...

By a margin of 4-1 or higher, voters in three critical swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, prefer a negotiated settlement to reduce Iran's nuclear program rather than military intervention, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released today..... Barack Obama remains deep in the hole, with negative job approval ratings: 41 - 55 percent in Florida; 42 - 54 percent in Ohio; 40 - 56 percent in Pennsylvania.

Talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers are likely to extend beyond President Barack Obama’s self-imposed deadline of midnight Tuesday night, the Associated Press reported. Quoting anonymous sources, AP said that marathon talks have produced “mixed results” but that both sides will issue a general statement to continue negotiations, exactly what President Obama said would not happen.

The Floridian National Golf Club in Palm City, President Barack Obama’s weekend hangout (via Facebook) FORT PIERCE — While Republicans are belly-aching again about President Barack Obama coming to South Florida to play a few rounds of golf, they failed to pick up the irony of Obama flying to one of the area’s poorest and blackest cities before heading to a club open only to 1 percent of the 1 percent.When Obama’s Air Force One touches down at the St. Lucie County “International” Airport tomorrow morning for a weekend at The Floridian National Golf Club that could end up...

During a joint press conference at the White House with the President of Afghanistan that was intended to demonstrate the close cooperation between the two nations, President Barack Obama accidentally called his counterpart by the wrong name. Obama met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani earlier in the day to discuss U.S. troop withdrawals in the war-torn country. But at the press conference, Obama referred to him as “Karzai...

WASHINGTON — President Obama said he has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Israeli leader’s remarks in the closing days of his re-election campaign had upended the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and ran counter to the very nature of Israeli democracy, an unusually forceful and public condemnation of the top official of a vital United States ally. In his first public comments on the matter since Mr. Netanyahu’s victory in Tuesday’s elections, Mr. Obama said the prime minister’s pre-election statement that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch had all but foreclosed the chance for negotiations to resolve...

On CNN this morning, White House aide David Simas avoided congratulating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Israeli elections. Instead, he would only congratulate the Israeli people on having an election. "We want to congratulate the Israeli people for the democratic process for the election that they just engaged in with all the parties that engaged in that election.

....pushing back against those saying that there was no tactical alternative in his speech, Netanyahu said that he did indeed present a practical alternative that would extend Iran's break out time by adding new restrictions. He also said that he presented a case for not lifting sanctions until the Iranians stop its hostile actions against neighboring countries and stop threatening to annihilate Israel. Netanyahu said that the responses he heard from both Republicans and Democrats were encouraging and that his impression was that they both understand why this is a bad deal. On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama on Tuesday...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Marines handed over their remaining weapons to Yemenis at the airport in the capital, Sanaa, on Wednesday before boarding commercial aircraft to leave the country following the closure of the U.S. embassy, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon said the Marines destroyed heavy weapons in their embassy arsenal, including machine guns, before leaving for the airport but remained armed with smaller weapons until the end to ensure a safe exit from the country. "The movement from the embassy to the aircraft required armed Marines," Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a briefing. The U.S....

A court decision upholding Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s conviction on sodomy charges raises “serious concerns about rule of law and the fairness of the judicial system in Malaysia,” the White House said Tuesday. The relatively rare public rebuke over a foreign criminal conviction came despite warming relations between the U.S. and the Malaysian government. President Obama visited the country last year, the first sitting president to do so in nearly half a century.

....Obama will host Jordan's King Abdullah II later Tuesday in a hastily arranged meeting just hours after a video emerged of a caged Jordanian pilot being burned alive by the Islamic State group. The White House said Obama would welcome the king to the Oval Office at 6:00 pm (2300 GMT) as Islamic State militants drew international condemnation for killing the 26-year-old Maaz al-Kassasbeh.

ISIS murdered a Jordanian pilot today. They torched Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh alive in a cage.Barack Obama responded to the horrific murder by pushing Obamacare. “Should, in fact, this video be authentic, it’s just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this organization. And I think we’ll redouble the vigilance and determination of the a global coalition to make sure they are degraded and ultimately defeated. And it also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology they’re operating off of is bankrupt. We’re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better. And...

Once you see what he is trying to accomplish, it all makes sense..... The Obama team — with its foreign policy formulated by President Obama himself...Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry — is not in fact befuddled by the existing world. Instead, it is intent on changing it into something quite different from what it is.... ... current U.S. foreign policy is consistent, logical, and based on four pillars of belief. 1. Readjustments in the global order are long overdue.... 2. All nations and interests act rationally — if given a chance..... 3. Do abroad as we try to...

....there are secret "talks about talks" taking place behind the scenes between the two countries, according to a new report. "The United States and North Korea have been actively discussing the possibility of returning to denuclearization talks, raising the prospect of a new round of diplomacy even as Washington takes a tougher line against Pyongyang.

....Obama weighed into the ‘deflategate’ controversy by cracking a few jokes ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl. Speaking at the annual House Democratic retreat in Philadelphia on Thursday, Obama called on any supporters of the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks to keep it clean.....

North Korea may be attempting to restart its main nuclear bomb fuel reactor after a five-month shutdown, a U.S. research institute said Thursday. If true, the finding, which is based on recent commercial satellite imagery, will be an added worry for the United States and the North's neighbors at a time of increasing animosity over recent U.S. sanctions against the North and Pyongyang's fury about a U.N. push to punish its alleged human rights abuses.

...."when I came into office, the world was divided and Iran was in the driver's seat. Now the world's united because of the actions we've taken, and Iran's the one that's isolated,” he said. Before his Presidency, Iran was well on its way to achieving the tools necessary to make a nuclear weapon. Now, he says to CNN's Candy Crowley, “you look at an example like Iran, over the last year and a half, since we began negotiations with them, that's probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last...

.....it is clear that millions are struggling to hang on to accouterments that most experts consider essential to a middle-class life..... Lisa Land, 49, is one of those who have dropped through the hatch. She gets by on her father’s $1,300 monthly Social Security checks and by having her adult daughter pitch in for groceries. Her circumstances are a stark change from just a few years ago, when she considered herself firmly in the middle class. Despite a relatively modest salary, her pay and other resources went a long way in tiny Eden, N.C., where she worked for 13 years...

[When] Obama delivered his first State of the Union address in 2009, 53% of Americans considered themselves middle class. Six years later, just 44% of Americans define themselves that way..... The middle class itself, however, has changed notably during the relatively short time Obama has been in office, as the chart below shows. The portion of Americans who consider themselves middle class has dropped (as has the portion considering themselves upper class), while the ranks who call themselves lower class have swelled.