Free Republic

PARIS -- The good news is that the Obama administration plans to create a lot of new jobs. The bad news is that those jobs will mostly be in Asia. President Obama's recent trip to Asia revived debate about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the cornerstone of this administration's so-called pivot to Asia. The controversial agreement -- not likely to be finalized anytime soon -- currently involves the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea. Other countries expressing interest include China, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Colombia, Cambodia, Bangladesh and the Philippines....

"Dude, this was, like, two years ago." Thus spake former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor on Thursday after Fox News Channel anchorman Bret Baier asked him whether he had been involved in changing talking points to prepare then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for Sunday talk shows in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi, Libya, attacks that left four Americans dead. Vietor explained that he should not be expected to remember something as "mundane" as "the process of editing talking points." It would be easier to believe Vietor if the Obama White House had not...

Don't trouble yourself trying to figure out whether President Obama is more political than ideological. He's an expert at straddling both and getting his way without compromise. Analysts have long debated whether partisan Obama would prevail over ideological Obama in his decision to approve or reject the Keystone XL pipeline, but in the end, it may be a false choice, as both could win under the overarching dominance of Saul Alinsky-Obama. Keystone XL is intended to carry crude oil from Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists have long opposed construction of the pipeline, arguing it would do...

To say that California is in better fiscal condition than Illinois is like saying the captain of the Exxon Valdez grades out higher than the guy at the helm of the Titanic. Disasters come in different doses. One study found that California ranks 46th in the health of its state government finances, with Illinois limping in at 48th place. So imagine the surprise in the Land of Lincoln to learn that California Gov. Jerry Brown plans to create a rainy-day fund for future downturns. He's expecting large budget surpluses, which he wants to use to restore long-term fiscal health rather...

em>"Probably for the next decade, the most dominate technology around the world will be coal..." -Jeff Immelt The fastest growing source of energy in the world last year was coal, and it is going to stay that way for a very long time. With that in mind, one has to wonder why President Obama has insisted on the gut-wrenching destruction of the coal industry that has costs thousands of jobs, and has sent electricity costs to all-time highs. This, combined with last month's report from the International Energy Agency, state that reaching the goal of carbon emission reduction would cost...

Editor's note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. The world has watched in dismay as Russia’s ruler, Vladimir Putin, has gobbled up Crimea. Now, he seems bent on dismembering Ukraine. Much of our attention has been focused on Putin and his next targets. Perhaps Taiwan is next. In the East, China’s Communist leaders are watching, too. They pay close attention to the actions of this former KGB agent. Putin is increasingly popular in Russia as he seeks to restore some of the power and prestige of the old USSR. For its part, China has been rattling a saber over...

WASHINGTON - The Obama economy nearly stopped breathing in the first quarter, giving the Republicans new political ammunition for a full takeover of Congress in the November elections. No sooner did the Commerce Department announce that the economy barely grew by one-tenth of one percent in the first three months of this year, than the news media was searching for the toughest words to describe the U.S. economy's demise under President Obama's anti- growth, anti-job policies. "U.S. Economic Growth Slows to a Crawl," was the way the Reuters news agency put it Wednesday, and even that was being generous. Some...

After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, members of the American left found one thing they could all agree on: America's Our First Amendment rights were in peril. The American Prospect insisted on Sept. 12, when the rubble was still burning and the dead had not yet been retrieved, that "a number of government agencies and their cheerleaders would be clearly tempted to lock the Bill of Rights away in some basement dustbin of the National Archives." Two weeks later, novelist Barbara Kingsolver warned, "Patriotism threatens free speech with death." She bravely attacked the claim that "free speech is un-American."...

For a president who hasn't enjoyed many foreign policy successes lately, Barack Obama did pretty well on his just completed trip to Asia. In Japan, he reiterated in no uncertain terms the American defense commitment, including on the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which China also claims and calls the Diaoyus. "Historically, they have been administered by Japan, and we do not believe they should be subject to change unilaterally," Obama said. "What is a consistent part of the alliance is that the treaty covers all territories administered by Japan." In the Philippines, Obama signed a new agreement...

You know things are bad when you can't wait for the return of a TV character to demonstrate what resolve and leadership really look like. Yes, after a four-year hiatus, the show "24," featuring Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland), returns May 5 to the Fox network. Bauer displays many of the traits once found in, or at least expected of, American presidents and top military leaders. He doesn't waffle or wiggle; neither does he negotiate. He wins. If you think I am about to draw a contrast between Bauer and the current president of the United States you are...

One of the many ironies surrounding President Obama is that for all his harping on income inequality -- his most recent obsession designed to stir Americans against one another -- his policies have exacerbated it. Obama, the self-professed bipartisan uniter, is never content to seek remedies to improve opportunity for all Americans. He has to have villains. His community organizing training and his disposition compel him to pit us against one another. No matter what the stated reason for his latest policy craze, almost everything he does is in service to his quest to fundamentally transform America from a society...

When President Obama decided sometime during his first term that he wanted to be able to use unmanned aerial drones in foreign lands to kill people -- including Americans -- he instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to find a way to make it legal -- despite the absolute prohibition on governmental extra-judicial killing in federal and state laws and in the Constitution itself. "Judicial killing" connotes a lawful execution after an indictment, a jury trial, an appeal and all of the due process protections that the Constitution guarantees defendants. "Extra-judicial killing" is a targeted killing of a victim by someone...

Listening to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama address Al Sharpton’s National Action Network 16th annual convention last week, one would think Americans were living in the year 1964 not 2014. Holder pulled the race card blaming Republicans for criticizing him and Obama, merely because they’re black. Speaking prior to Obama, Holder suggested to the all black crowd that both he and the president had been treated badly by Republicans because they are black. “It has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president...

There’s a damning number regarding our economy that Obama doesn’t want to talk about. It’s a number, but for him, would be lower. And, lower, in this case would be a good thing for the economy. “Although estimates vary,” says Joel Kurtzman, a senior fellow at the Milliken Institute, “American companies have between $4 and $5 trillion in liquid assets, a sum greater than the size of the German economy.” How is it that companies can now have more cash than anytime in history, while unemployment remains so high, inflation in many goods so low, and national income grows so...

Under the administration of President Barack Obama, as never before in my lifetime, there is reason to be a bit afraid of the federal government. I have written two books documenting Obama's abuses of power, his assaults on the Constitution, his wars against business and energy, his abominably reckless spending, his divisiveness, his renegade Justice Department, his regulatory expansion, his executive orders, his overall lawlessness, and more. Obama's conduct concerning Obamacare alone would be enough to get the impeachment wheels rolling for any other president. His flagrant, deliberate lies regarding almost every aspect of that horrible law and his defiant...

I have created a new species designation for the female Democrats who play hypocritical gender politics on behalf of Barack Obama. They're genderhawks. You remember the term "chickenhawk," don't you? During the Bush years, anti-war activists and journalists hurled the ad hominem epithet at anyone who supported military action against our enemies but hadn't personally served. I say let's give 'em a dose of their own tactical medicine. Genderhawks are feminist chickenhawks. They demand "equal pay" for women, practice militant identity politics based on chromosomes and purport to wage an all-out government war on gender inequity. Yet, they personally refuse...

Since the Internet now permeates our lives in every possible way, it is disturbing that Obama has relinquished U.S. control over its underlying structure. Control will be turned over to a global panel, which will include totalitarian countries that do not value our First Amendment protection of free speech. Since 1998, through a contract with the U.S. government, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit corporation, has administered the IP numbering network and domain name system (DNS) worldwide, controlling .com, .gov, etc. ICANN has done a fairly respectable job administering the rules and standards. Its board...

resident Obama was doing his favorite thing this week: talking to crowds of adoring young people who already agree with him while acting like he persuaded them about something. They also seemed to give Obama the impression that he's a really funny guy. On Wednesday, he told a crowd of 1,400 at the University of Michigan that he visited a local deli, Zingerman's. He proceeded to tell a long story about ordering the small Reuben sandwich, which he said was "killer." That description got a good laugh. Then he explained how he thought the sandwich was too big, so he...

“We have got to win back the trust not just of governments, but, more importantly, of ordinary citizens,” President Obama said recently at a press conference at the Hague, “And that’s not going to happen overnight, because there’s a tendency to be skeptical of government and to be skeptical of the US intelligence services.” Nearly a year after Edward Snowden’s revelations, President Obama announced last Tuesday that his administration will be pushing legislation to curb the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of phone records. The proposed law would mark a turning point in mass surveillance but is still a...

If you take an economics course, you may learn about the different events that can cause an increase in workers' pay. The demand for the product a worker makes may rise, causing the demand for workers to go up. The supply of workers may decline, causing employers to bid up wages to keep the ones they have. But there's one event the textbooks don't cover: The president of the United States gives you a raise. Many workers will get news to the effect that he has done just that. But it's not as simple as it sounds. Barack Obama thinks...