Free Republic

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama on Wednesday offered best wishes to Muslims in the United States and around the world as they observe the holy fasting month of Ramadan. "All of us must remember that the world we want to build -- and the changes that we want to make -- must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. The US president said he looked forward to hosting a White House Iftar dinner, the meal that breaks the daily fast.

FRESNO, Calif.—U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is distancing herself from a California business owner who called President Barack Obama a "narcissistic Marxist" after one of her campaign appearances.

[These remarks were delivered at the Lincoln Reagan Dinner held this past Saturday night, June 5th, 2010 in Virginia City, Montana.] The Declaration of Independence states: “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”...

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans have started using the legislative process to step up their opposition to the Obama administration's nuclear nonproliferation agenda (see GSN, May 20). Members of the House Armed Services Committee last week successfully attached two amendments to the panel's $760 billion fiscal 2011 defense authorization bill. One addition would require the White House to conduct a rigorous analysis before cutting the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal beyond the amount proscribed by a recent arms control deal with Russia, while the other expresses grave concerns about the administration's recent nuclear strategy document. The authorization bill encompasses U.S....

In what some observers, including this one, see as a return to the national security strategy of the Jimmy Carter administration President Obama, in a commencement address at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, told the graduates that he believes America must rely on its allies, expressing faith in "cooperation and partnerships to confront economic, military and environmental challenges of the future according to the Washington Post report on the speech. "Countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves...

WASHINGTON — An Army flight surgeon could face reprimand or dismissal from the service after stating in an online video that he’ll refuse deployment to Afghanistan because of concerns he has about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, chief of primary care for the Pentagon’s health clinic, released a statement through the American Patriot Foundation saying his decision is based on “pursuit of the truth about the president’s eligibility under the constitution to hold office.” Army officials said Lakin has not yet violated any direct orders, but his statements have been brought to commanders’ attention for review....

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times’s “Top of the Ticket” blog — one of the best, fairest and most readable MSM blogs in the country — comes this lesson in, shall we say, contrast. First this photo, released by the White House: And now this one, also an official White House photo:

President Obama has named four members to his bipartisan deficit-reduction commission, including Andy Stern, the influential president of the Service Employees International Union. Obama has already appointed former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Senate Republican White Alan Simpson to co-chair the commission; House and Senate Democratic leaders will name the rest of the spots, each appointing three of their own members.

What is peculiar about this particular right-wing rebirth is the speed with which it is happening. We had the crash last year, as in 1929. The financial gods were duly dethroned, the banks started to fail, and the mighty were humbled, as per the time-honored script. A market-worshiping Republican Party went down in an avalanche of obloquy. A scary new populism made the cover of Newsweek back in March. But then we skipped a step. Some new version of the Bonus Army never marched on Washington. No Huey Long materialized to haunt the wealthy and we have endured no wave...

Most Americans don’t realize we have elected a president whom we know very little about. Researchers have discovered that Obama’s autobiographical books are little more than PR stunts, as they have little to do with the actual events of his life. The fact is we know less about President Obama than perhaps any other president in American history and much of this is due to actual efforts to hide his record. This should concern all Americans. A nation-wide network of researchers has sprung up to attempt to fill in the blanks, but at every opportunity Obama’s high-priced lawyers have built...

The message was clear. The sign carried by a 51-year-old man last week outside a raucous town hall meeting on healthcare in Hagerstown, Maryland, read "Death to Obama". Just to emphasise his point, a second message was also scrawled on the cardboard placard. "Death to Obama, Michelle and 2 stupid kids," it stated. Welcome to the disturbing new face of the radical right in America. Across the country, extremism is surging, inflamed by conservative talkshow hosts, encouraged by Republican leaders and propagating a series of wild conspiracy theories. Many fear it might end in tragedy. Obama has been labelled as...

Just how long was the New York Times sitting on this article? Click here to read the whole thing The Corner: During the campaign, I wrote a piece called “Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.” So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, “Breaking the War...

<p>The Obama administration worked in recent days to prevent President Manuel Zelaya's ouster, said a senior U.S. official. The State Department, in particular, communicated to Honduran officials on the ground that President Barack Obama wouldn't support any nondemocratic transfer of power in the Central American country.</p>

A new video posted on the Internet featuring inebriated American Jewish youth in a Jerusalem bar spouting hate-filled sentiments has garnered massive exposure and caused a firestorm in the media and the Jewish world. In the video, filmed on June 3 and titled "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem on the Eve of Obama's Cairo Address," the visitors to Israel are asked their opinions on President Barack Obama and his relationship to the Jewish state. "You're all about talking to the Arabs," says one. "You're going to Cairo making a speech to the Muslim world trying to get them to love...

CARACAS, June 2 (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp. During one of Chavez's customary lectures on the "curse" of capitalism and the bonanzas of socialism, the Venezuelan leader made reference to GM's bankruptcy filing, which is expected to give the U.S. government a 60 percent stake in the 100-year-old former symbol of American might. "Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful...

President Obama would eliminate new funding for advanced-generation equipment to detect nuclear weapons and radiological materials at U.S. borders and ports and around New York City in his 2010 budget, homeland security officials said. The decisions, outlined in Homeland Security Department budget documents and briefings Thursday, mark a turn away from a priority of the administration of former president George W. Bush, who with former vice president Dick Cheney championed development of new technologies that could lead to a ring of domestic sensors of weapons of mass destruction.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama White House doesn't "subscribe to the legitimacy" of the 100-day metric for presidential progress, but is still mighty satisfied and well-versed it the new president's accomplishments. "This isn't Biblical," a senior White House adviser said of the 100-day marker. "You don't do 100 days and rest." Even so, this senior official, a long-time adviser to the president who spoke on the condition he not be quoted by name, said "you would be hard-pressed to find another administration that's done so much in such a short period of time. It's been a very productive 100 days." For...

(snip) Q: I want to ask you about the interrogation memos that you released last week; two questions. You were clear about not wanting to prosecute those who carried out the instructions under this legal advice. Can you be that clear about those who devised the policy? And then quickly on a second matter, how do you feel about investigations, whether special -- a special commission or something of that nature on the Hill to go back and really look at the issue? THE PRESIDENT: Well, the -- look, as I said before, this has been a difficult chapter in...

RUSH: Now, as we mentioned, Hugo Chavez gave our president, Barack Obama, an American-bashing book, blaming America for all of the problems from colonialism to the CIA to all the economic problems, all the political problems of the Western Hemisphere. He gave Obama the book. There's a picture of Obama smiling, accepting the book, looking at the cover of the book. And, of course, the book shot up the Amazon list. I think he looked at the cover of the book because he had a copy. He probably had a copy of the book already, says, "Jeez, how do I...?...

A laid-back President Obama brushed off the anti-U.S. bombast of several Latin American leaders and joked about Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez's camera crush. "I think it's just that President Chavez is better at positioning the cameras," Obama said at the end of the three-day Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday. Chavez, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Bolivia's Evo Morales launched into standard tirades against U.S. imperialism, but Obama let them vent without retort.