Free Republic

Just after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a present this morning of a book that criticizes the role of the United States in Latin America -- "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano -- its Amazon sales rank was No. 54,295. Just a few minutes ago it was No. 20. - Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller UPDATE: At 4:54 pm EDT - rank is #17. UPDATE: At 5:42 pm EST - rank is #14.

uthorities are looking at an investment firm co-founded by the head of President Barack Obama's auto task force as part of an investigation into an alleged "pay to play" scheme to secure New York state pension business, but the White House is standing by its man. Steve Rattner, the head of the auto task force, co-founded the investment firm Quadrangle Group in 2000. According to documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission, in January 2005 Quadrangle paid a fee of more than $1 million after receiving an investment from the New York State Common Retirement Fund. As part of the...

BY MOST people’s standards Barack Obama has had an excellent week. He enjoyed a counter-Carter moment when navy commandos rescued an American hostage, leaving three kidnappers dead. He gave a measured speech on the economy. And, to cap it all, he gave his daughters a Portuguese water dog named “Bo”. What’s not to like? Plenty, according to some people. Mr Obama may be widely admired both at home and abroad. But there are millions of Americans who do not like the cut of his jib—and a few whose dislike boils over into white-hot hatred. The American Spectator, which came of...

How's this for hope and change: U.S. officials flying to Cuba, not to interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay but to meet with the Castro brothers in order to ease the 50-year tensions between the two nations. The aging, ailing, cigar-smoking icon Fidel Castro had three members of Congress visit with him today in Havana, which resulted in the bearded one asking, "How can we help President Obama?" In an effort to improve the relationship between Cuba and the U.S., Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) and Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) were the first U.S. officials to meet with...

Prague - The anti-missile shield project would be unnecessary if Iran gave up its military nuclear programme, U.S. President Barack Obama said in his address in Prague today. "If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security and the driving force for missile defence construction in Europe will be removed," Obama said. However, he pointed out that Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat not just to the United States but to Iran's neighbours and to U.S. allies. "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defence...

Five minutes of explanation to James Madison, and he’ll have a pretty good idea what a motorcar is (basically a steamboat on wheels; the internal combustion engine might take a few minutes more). Then try to explain to Madison how the Constitution he fathered allows the president to unilaterally guarantee the repair or replacement of every component of millions of such contraptions sold in the several states, and you will leave him slack-jawed. In fact, we are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside. The last Treasury secretary brought the nine largest banks into...

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the goverment's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), is now calling for the firing of the nation's top bank executives if the economy is to have any chance of recovery. Warren says that letting banking leaders off the hook for the mess their companies are in will plunge the country into an even deeper hole. In an interview last week, Warren said: "The management of the institutions receiving subsidies from the government must be replaced."

US President Barack Obama on Friday announced he would push for a nuclear-free world at Sunday's summit with the European Union (EU) leaders. "The spread of nuclear weapons, or the theft of nuclear material, could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," Obama told an audience of young people at a town hall meeting in Strasbourg. "This weekend in Prague, I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama said ahead of a summit of NATO leaders in the French city and in Baden-Baden, Germany. The comments came two...

Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, pulled in more than $2.7 million in speaking fees paid by firms at the heart of the financial crisis, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America Corp. and the now-defunct Lehman Brothers. He pulled in another $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund for which he served as managing director from October 2006 until joining the administration. Thomas E. Donilon, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, was paid $3.9 million by the power law firm O’Melveny & Myers to represent clients including two firms that receieved federal...

President Barack Obama's unprecedented critique of past American behaviour towards Europe aroused predictable ire among his conservative foes and praise from liberals in the US. Phone lines to Right-wing talk radio shows were buzzing with angry attacks on the commander-in-chief for alleged "treachery". Mr Obama may be rebuilding some frayed alliances abroad but his comments are the latest blow to his erstwhile aspirations of developing a post-partisan political atmosphere at home. His references to American "arrogance" and its "dismissive" attitude were viewed by some commentators as an unwarranted attack on his homeland while travelling abroad. In a speech in France,...

As President Barack Obama works to sell the American people on a sweeping agenda of domestic spending and policy changes, he’s relying on three men who have gone through neither Senate confirmation nor cable news spin cycles. Data from pollsters Joel Benenson and Paul Harstad has become increasingly important to shaping the White House’s message as the crucial battle over the president’s budget intensifies. “The pace [of polling] is picking up,” said one source familiar with the data. In addition, David Binder, a San Francisco-based focus group expert, also has been traveling the country taking the national temperature on issues...

Barack Obama showed the world a profoundly new style of American leadership yesterday. Obama emerged from the G-20 summit in London, where the leaders of the world's largest economies agreed to what he called "an unprecedented set of comprehensive and coordinated actions," talking about his commitment "to respecting different points of view and to forging a consensus instead of dictating our terms." His approach struck a very different note from his predecessor, the would-be Texas cowboy whose "with us or against us" attitude led to unilateral foreign adventurism and a diminishing of America's standing in the world.

The White House said that US President Obama and Saudi King Abdullah first talked face to face in G-20 summit and they discussed cooperation regarding global economic crises, regional political and security issues and cooperation against terrorism. White House stated that "The leaders reaffirmed the long-standing, strong relationship between the two countries". Obama also reiterated his support for Saudi Peace Initiative which was first came to agenda in 2002. The initiative calls Israel to withdraw from all territories occupied in Six Day War including Jerusalem.

GRANTS PASS, Ore.—The Obama administration has notified a federal court that it will not defend the Bush administration's decision to cut back protections for the northern spotted owl. In a motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., lawyers for the Department of Interior said they based the decision on an inspector general's report finding political interference in owl protections by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald. If the spotted owl measures developed by the Bush administration are withdrawn, it would become difficult for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to go forward with plans to...

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama strongly supports legislation that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate cigarettes, the White House said on Wednesday. The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote later Wednesday on the bill, which would authorize the FDA to oversee the multibillion-dollar tobacco industry, including its advertisements and product designs. The measure will "yield major benefits to the public health," the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. (Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration has indeed abandoned the term "global war on terror." Clinton says that while she hasn't seen any specific orders, the new administration in Washington simply isn't using the phrase. The term was a rallying cry for President George Bush after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. But the use of the term "global war on terror" is widely disliked overseas.

The American International Group, more commonly known as AIG, has become the poster child for the financial bailout. The company has received $170 billion from the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve since September 2008, and recently landed in a world of hurt when it was revealed that some $165 million of that money was given as bonuses to its employees — many of whom worked in the insurance giant’s financial arm. As AIG CEO Edward Liddy told a House Financial Services subcommittee earlier this month, “The payment of large bonuses to people in the very unit that caused so much...

Walking a tightrope between keeping its environmental pledges and trying to help struggling U.S. automakers, the Obama administration announced today the first increase in fuel economy standards for cars in more than 25 years. But to the dismay of environmentalists, the new standard doesn't go as far as a proposal that the Bush administration offered in 2008 but quickly abandoned. The move increases fuel economy standards for light vehicles in 2011 to 27.3 miles per gallon, or 8 percent over the 2010-model-year requirement. New cars will have to meet a standard of 30.2 miles per gallon. The standards will save...

In a country long divided by race, Barack Obama argues that Americans generally have been colorblind in judging him. Yet old racial stereotypes and Internet-fueled falsehoods flourish about the first black president. In Obama's first two months in office, a New York tabloid took heat over a cartoon appearing to portray the president as a monkey; a California mayor resigned after distributing a picture of watermelons on the White House lawn; and an e-mail making the rounds refers to Obama as "the magic mulatto," with exaggerated ears and nose. Disproved and disputed claims about his religion and citizenship, namely untruths...

Mr. Junk Science Goes to Washington... North Dakota is experiencing record cold temperatures this year. In fact North Dakota is experiencing a one state deep freeze: But, that didn't stop Barack Obama from blaming global warming for the massive floods in North Dakota this week. The Scientific American reported: President Obama says potentially historic flood levels in North Dakota are a clear example of why steps need to be taken to stop global warming. Heavy rain and blizzards have caused eight rivers in the state to swell to flood levels and emergency management officials are warily watching the Red River,...