Free Republic

President Obama is standing by his decision to ramp up the admission of Syrian refugees to the United States even after three refugees from Islamic countries attacked people in Germany over the last week. The 10,000 Syrian refugees the president wants to admit by October are subjected to more thorough screening and vetting than anyone trying to enter the United States, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stressed Monday. "That's why the president has confidence ramping up the number of refugees admitted to the United States," Earnest told reporters during his daily briefing. "Obviously, almost all of them are innocent people...

A massive fire erupted near a NATO base in the Buca district, near Izmir, Turkey. The fire broke out on Sunday evening in western Turkey. The fire blew through the grassy wooded area and is now perilously near NATO’s military base pushed forward by strong winds. In odd twist, local authorities are investigating the fire as a possible act of anti-American sabotage. The fire erupted shortly after Erdogan's leading Islamist paper headline officially targeted a US commander as coup leader adding his name & picture...

In a taped interview with CBS's John Dickerson that aired Sunday on "Face the Nation," Obama said that fact "says something about what's happened to the Republican Party over the course of the last eight, 10, 15 years." Obama also reiterated what he said in a news conference on Friday: that he doesn't think the dark picture of America that Trump painted in his nomination speech is true, even in the wake of an attack on a Munich mall later that day that killed at least nine people.

As news reports of a gun massacre in Munich crossed the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, the President of the United States was cracking jokes. Barack Obama delivered a brief update to reporters... .... as cameras rolled on the somber moment, Obama grinned and chuckled – and drew laughs from his audience – about his elder daughter Malia leaving the nest and heading for college.