Free Republic

As President Donald Trump prepares to pardon those unfairly targeted by James Comey, the president should include Martha Stewart on the list.In 2018, news broke that President Donald Trump was considering commuting the sentence of disgraced former Illinois Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and a pardon for Martha Stewart after granting one to conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza.Two years later, D’Souza was exonerated, the governor’s sentence was commuted, and Stewart remains the only one out of the three to have secured no form of clemency. Yet reasons remain abundant for why Stewart, released from federal prison 15 years ago, remains even more...

Though we have not over the years accused Barack Obama of anti-Semitism, we did feel even prior to his election in 2008 that Obama was uncomfortable with the idea of Jewish sovereignty, as well as Jewish rights in and of themselves, disconnected from intersectionality. In his recent book, Promised Land, it is crystal clear that Obama is uncomfortable, perhaps even hostile to a specific Jewish state in the Land of Israel and used his tenure as president to undermine the proud and glorious history of Zionism. He spent excessive zeal and capital to reshape American and world policy so as...

The prospect of a potential Biden presidency and a radical left Democratic administration running the country fills me with dread. But I believe it is instructive to compare my dread to what I felt 12 years ago when I contemplated the imminent Obama administration. According to his own words, Obama planned to bring about radical changes to American society. Here’s a partial list of his intentions: Nationalization of health care.Massive tax increases, sharply indexed.Cap & Trade and other crippling societal maneuvers aimed to avert or ameliorate imminent and severe – but unsubstantiated – climate change calamities.Drastic reduction of the military,...

When a Democrat is in the White House, journalists spend more time sucking up to the administration than doing anything that could even loosely be defined as reporting. It’s embarrassing to watch. It was only a matter of time before the media reverted to the lazy, drooling, throne-sniffing sycophants they were from 2009 to 2017. And they’re back, already, still wearing their ready-to-be-clutched pearls should President Trump say anything in the next two months, but the storage space for their fainting couches has already been rented and shelf space is being cleared for “fluffer” awards they will give each other...

How permanent an impact a Joe Biden presidency will have comes down almost entirely to what happens in the state of Georgia on Jan. 5, 2021.There’s no doubt a Joe Biden administration is going to have a massive impact on the United States. How permanent an impact it will have, however, comes down almost entirely to what happens in the state of Georgia on Jan. 5, 2021. Like all modern presidents, President Barack Obama used the power of the executive to his benefit, signing orders that ranged from granting amnesty to illegal immigrants to joining the Paris climate agreement. President...

Joe Biden came out with his first Cabinet picks before Thanksgiving, and the media were falling all over themselves with compliments. Oh, they are all so thoroughly professional, deeply experienced and manifestly competent. The media even tried to suggest with a straight face that this warmed-over pile of Obama administration appointees is "not going to be political." How ridiculous. Elected people -- and their appointees -- have to be political. At least they're not demanding Joe Biden be inaugurated early. In 2008, they were so deeply enchanted with then-President-elect Barack Obama that they wanted to slash the transition period in...

Obama's 'memorable songs' seem more like a list work-shopped by his publicity team, curated to fit the former president's 'I’m whatever you want me to be' image.Former President Barack Obama shared a playlist on Twitter Monday “featuring some memorable songs from my administration.” At the request of my boss, I listened to all of them.Music has always played an important role in my life—and that was especially true during my presidency. In honor of my book hitting shelves tomorrow, I put together this playlist featuring some memorable songs from my administration. Hope you enjoy it. pic.twitter.com/xWiNQiZzN0— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November...

The first question the fawning Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes asked former president Barack Obama during their interview this past Sunday was this: “What is your advice in this moment for President Trump?” Pelley was referring specifically to Trump’s continued challenge to the posted results of the November 3rd election. “When your time is up, then it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego and your own interests and your own disappointments,” Obama pontificated. “My advice to President Trump is if you want, at this late stage in the game to be remembered...

Someone might survey the current media landscape and lecture us conservative media watchdogs that our game is over. Is anyone in America so remarkably naive to believe that the news media are "objective" and nonpartisan, fair and balanced? This old claim seems to have been obliterated under President Donald Trump, but it was also deeply eroded in the media's incessant and aerobic adoration of former President Barack Obama. Obviously, conservatives believe that the job of holding the news media accountable is ineluctably connected to the media's alleged watchdog role. As long as the "objective" press sounds like tinny echoes of...

I don’t doubt for a moment that we still have race issues to address in America. And I don’t believe that, to date, we have fully overcome the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery and segregation in our history. At the same time, I do not accept former President Obama’s claim that the 2016 election of Donald Trump was, in part, a reaction to having a Black man in the White House. In a widely reported excerpt from his forthcoming book Promised Land, Obama claims that “millions of Americans” were “spooked by a Black man in the White House.”...

Interviewer Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes supplied the ignorance. He appears to have no more knowledge of what transpired during the past four years than does, say, a Whoopi Goldberg or a Kathy Griffin. Barack Obama supplied the scare. His solution to make the right half of America as ignorant as the left would do Trotsky proud. Pelley’s ignorance flared throughout the embarrassingly sycophantic interview, but it reached something of a crescendo with his and Obama’s elaborate discussion on the etiquette of presidential transitions. While images played of the Obamas welcoming the Trumps to the White House, Obama blathered...

Harry HamburgRising Republican star, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Thursday skewered former president and current condescending-know-it-all Barack Obama over a passage from O’s soon-to-be-released memoir, titled “A Promised Land.” GO KRISTI GO!!! YEAH!!!https://t.co/WHxYTrskbP— Wireless Customer (@WirelessCustom2) November 13, 2020 As reported by The Blaze, the memoir, to be released November 17, is scheduled to be the first of a two-part series released by Penguin Random House, which paid a $65 million advance to Barack and Michelle Obama for the rights to publish both their memoirs. [Rolling-eyes emoji]Hmm. I wonder how much of that $65 million Mr. and Mrs. Martha’s...

"For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House," writes Barack Obama in his new memoir, A Promised Land, "Donald Trump promised an elixir for their racial anxiety." Rather than speak for the millions of Americans whom Barack Obama casually defamed, I am going to speak for the 130,000 or so residents of Chautauqua County, New York, a semi-rural "rust belt" county tucked away in the far southwest corner of western New York. I know the county well. I spend a good chunk of each year there and set my first published novel, 2006: A Chautauqua...

Donald J. Trump’s improbable presidency has been the most consequential presidency in modern times and his influence on American politics is ongoing and permanent. From the time he rode down that escalator in July 2015 to announce his candidacy for the office, nothing has been the same. Unlike small-minded liberals who outwardly cheered for the failure of Trump’s tenure -- negative consequences to the country be damned -- should there be a Biden administration, there is no desire here for it to “fail.” If the Senate stays safely in Republican hands, thus assuring a split government, there will be no...

I know I should be writing about the election, but I think we could all use some comic relief. The New Yorker has published an excerpt of Obama’s much delayed memoir, A Promised Land, and one particular passage cries out for deconstruction. The passage concerns Obama’s efforts to get the Affordable Care Act through Congress, both houses of which the Democrats controlled. Despite having grown up in Hawaii, I have never learned to sail a boat; it wasn’t a pastime my family could afford. Still, for the next three and a half months, I felt the way I imagine sailors...

A new book by Dr. Walid Phares, titled The Choice: Trump vs Obama Biden in US Foreign Policy is getting attention in Washington, D.C. and around the world. Released in late September, it stands alone as a definitive discussion and analysis of foreign policy and national security within a loud and crucial presidential election season which seems determined to focus only on domestic issues, personas, and inflammatory accusations. In The Choice, Phares examines the shifts in foreign policy that occurred during the Obama-Biden administration between 2009 and 2016, analyzes these shifts in strategy, and highlights the domestic and geopolitical consequences....

It was Obamacare-mania over the past few weeks. The Senate hearings over the nomination of now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett were dominated by President Barack ObamaÂ’s signature domestic achievement. Now, itÂ’s not totally out of the left field as the Supreme Court will hear arguments that could gut the law a week after the election, but it goes to the whole notion that Democrats think the judiciary is a separate legislative wing. They wanted to hear what ACB thought about health care, abortion, and gun rights as if sheÂ’ll legislate from the bench. ThatÂ’s what left-wingers do. Right now, Joe Biden...

Young Cuban Americans' embrace of the Republican Party and GOP candidates is one of the most underreported stories in this election cycle. We are within days of the 2020 election, and winning the Latino vote is extremely important for both parties because, with 32 million eligible voters, Latinos will be the largest ethnic minority in the electorate this year. The Cuban American community is one of the most influential subgroups within the diverse Latino community. Corporate media commonly repeat the narrative that there is a “generational divide” among Cuban Americans: While the older generation that escaped the terror of Fidel...

Back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, before being woke was a thing, the quintessential middle-finger expression to those who controlled us was “Up the Establishment’s Arse.” Well not exactly arse (the British slightly more polite word), but you get the drift. The Establishment is a term describing a dominant group or elite that controls a polity. It may comprise a closed social group that selects or attracts its own members, or an entrenched business or political élite. The Obama Establishment embraces all of these. America’s “Establishment” often reflects the values of the sitting two-term U.S. president. Against all...

It makes altogether perfect sense for Barack Obama to make his first in-person campaign stop for Joe Biden in Philadelphia, PA. On at least three occasions, Philadelphia helped save Obama’s own political bacon. The first time came in March 2008 after the racist, anti-American speeches of Obama’s wild-eyed pastor, Jeremiah Wright, first surfaced. To neutralize the fallout Obama chose Philadelphia as the site for a speech, immodestly titled “A More Perfect Union.” Obama began the speech by reminding those few registered voters who might somehow have forgotten, “I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white...