Free Republic

It's clear President Obama ---- despite the boos from Flyover Country -- doesn't plan to get off the national stage any time soon. Unlike most former presidents, he's not going to leave Washington next month and quietly live out the rest of his days in one of the many hoods he grew up in. He could buy a big home in beautiful Hawaii, where the golf season never ends and Washington is 4,700 miles away. Or at least move back to Chicago. That's where he made his political bones, where he worked and taught law, and where he became the...

Obamacare is in the crosshairs. We have known this for a while. Congressional Republicans have attempted dozens of times to pass legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act—all of which have been stopped by either Obama’s veto or Harry Reid when he was Senate Majority Leader. Now, the GOP controls Congress and they will soon control the White House, with a man who said he plans to repeal and replace Obamacare. Most of Obama’s legacy is regulatory. It can be rolled back—and he seems to know this because he plans to meet with Congressional Democrats next week to discuss ways...

I am not surprised at President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry's parting insults to Israel, but they are nonetheless unconscionable. Thank goodness Obama is on the way out and the restoration of our relationship will soon begin. It wasn't enough for Obama to betray Israel by abstaining from voting on, rather than vetoing, a Dec. 23 United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as illegal. Kerry delivered an extraordinarily condescending speech maligning Israel for the settlements, saying they have jeopardized peace in the Middle East. Amazingly, people still blindly...

Obama has been perceived for the better part of the past eight years by many of the world's leadership as a spineless and weak leader, never feeling comfortable or really knowing how to implement the art of statesmanship. Obama caved in to Putin, the leader of Russia, and caved in to Assad, the embattled leader of Syria. China, Iran, North Korea, and Libya have all exhibited nothing but contempt for Obama, who always backed down, stood down, and generally did nothing more than wag his presidential tail. And then there was Israel. The objective of the recent Obama-concocted Security Council...

A headline that would become famous appeared in the New York Daily News in October 1975 after then-President Gerald Ford denied federal assistance to spare the city from bankruptcy. It read: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." President Obama has told Israel much the same. By instructing his U.N. ambassador not to veto a resolution condemning Israel for building so-called settlements on disputed land, the president has aided and comforted that nation's enemies. The U.S. abstention will inevitably invite stepped-up attacks against Israelis, as well as calls for more boycotts by the European Union, whose ugly anti-Semitic past and present is...

Still shell-shocked from his party's Nov. 8 beating, President Barack Obama said, "I'm confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it" to win a third term. When the upstart New York Jets' Joe Namath of the old American Football League upset the 19-point favorite Baltimore Colts of the National Football League, stunned the-NFL-is-still-superior sports pundits said things like, well, the Colts would have beaten the Jets nine times out of 10. But the Super Bowl isn't the best nine out of 10, is...

A convicted crack dealer who left prison early as part of the Obama administration’s mass release of federal inmates has been indicted by a grand jury for fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend and her two kids in Columbus, Ohio. The gory crime drew national attention because the children, ages 7 and 10, were murdered to eliminate them as witnesses in the brutal massacre of their 32-year-old mother. This week a grand jury in Franklin County returned a 10-count, death-penalty indictment against the ex-con, 35-year-old Wendell Callahan, for the triple murders. Callahan broke into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and stabbed the three victims,...

For reasons beyond my comprehension, friends of the Jewish state both here and in Israel are shocked and dismayed over last Friday’s U.S. veto abstention at the UN. But hold the presses. If Israel’s claims, which they profess to be ironclad, are true, the passage of UNSC resolution 2334 is just the tip of the iceberg in the ever-widening breach of American/Israeli relations. The real story may be that the Obama administration orchestrated the resolution and colluded with New Zealand and such democratic stalwarts as Malaysia, Senegal, and Venezuela to present it to the Security Council. If this proves correct,...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is joining the chorus of bipartisan criticism against President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and whoever else had a hand in the U.S. abstaining from this week's anti-Israel UN resolution, condemning settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.By neglecting to stand with Israel, the administration, Rubio said, is catering to "the demands of freedom’s enemies." Furthermore, our abstaining from the vote "undermines our moral standing in the world."Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said more of the same in multiple statements on Wednesday."These acts are shameful," Cruz said. "They are designed to secure a legacy, and indeed they...

resident Barack Obama likes to see himself as a moral leader. "The arc of the moral universe is long," Obama likes to say, quoting Martin Luther King Jr, "but it bends toward justice." According to Obama, Obama is a genteel representative of decency and good grace, a man pointing America toward a broader vision, a fellow questing for social justice and contextual consideration. In reality, he's a narcissistic fool. And like Burgess Meredith's character in "The Twilight Zone," he will be left standing in the ruins, bewailing the fates that abandoned him, leaving no worshipful admirers upon whom to lean....

While the most arrogant President in modern American history pontificates that if only he had been permitted to run for a third term he would have been easily reelected, President-elect Donald Trump is methodically preparing to assume office as the first true reformer since Ronald Reagan. Media pundits love to speculate on what Trump’s “First 100 Days” will look like. However, the country’s 45th President-in-waiting likely will press an agenda that can accomplish more in his first month than most of his predecessors accomplished in their first year.After all, what is so magical about the “first 100 days”? It...

Linky only.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, folks, not only is Biden dumping on Hillary, Joe Biden's out there saying (paraphrasing), "Well, you know, she never really knew where she was running. You gotta cut her some slack. She didn't really know. Maybe wasn't even really sure she wanted to. She did it 'cause she thought she had to to break the glass ceiling." And they're trying to cover for her loss. They're starting to dump it on her now. This is only a matter of time. You can only blame the Russians for so long. Now they're starting to blame Hillary,...

Let's hop in the way-back machine for a minute, shall we? We don't need to go far … just a few months back to be exact. It was a different time. Hairstyles were different. Fashion was different. Kids were listening to a different type of music their parents couldn’t understand. It was a crazy time. It also was a time marked by the Democratic Party insisting that what made this country great was the "peaceful transition of power." Like I said, it was a different time. It was Oct. 19 when Donald Trump would not give in to Chris Wallace,...

resident Obama delivered a longwinded lecture to the press on Friday about its “unfair” treatment of Hillary Clinton during the campaign, drawing ire from mainstream journalists. The president, who was delivering his final 2016 news conference, implied the media’s “obsession” with Clinton’s leaked emails did more damage to the former secretary of state than the Russian cyber attacks against Democratic political networks. “This was an obsession that dominated the news coverage,” Obama said. “So I do think it is worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential election of such importance, of such moment, with so many big issues...

As President Barack Obama's White House days run out, it's time for his obsequious courtiers in the liberal media to announce his glorious "legacy." On Dec. 7, CNN devoted a two-hour prime-time special to the Obama legacy. It was hosted by Fareed Zakaria, a journalist whom Obama had invited to the White House so he could soak in Zakaria's wisdom and expertise -- in other words, so he could flatter a journalist into giving him softball coverage. Mission accomplished. Just as it began nine years ago, Zakaria started by celebrating the president's race, the gauzy references to Kenya and Kansas...

In his speech at MacDill Air Force Base, President Obama bragged that he has made America safer while preserving America's values. The incessant self-absorption is annoying enough, but the self-delusion puts it over the top. Whether he's talking the economy or national security, he always paints a picture of his performance that contradicts reality. Do Americans actually feel safer under his watch than they did under that of President George W. Bush? Has he inspired confidence that he is aggressively fighting terrorism at home and abroad and that he is administering a coherent foreign policy? Or does he come off...

In his 2016 State of the Union address, President Obama summarized his achievements. That same night, the White House issued a press release touting Obama's accomplishments. Now that he will be leaving, how well did these initiatives listed in the press release actually work out? "Securing the historic Paris climate agreement." The accord was never submitted to Congress as a treaty. It will be ignored by President-elect Trump. "Achieving the Iran nuclear deal." That "deal" was another effort to circumvent the treaty-ratifying authority of Congress. It has green-lighted Iranian aggression, and it probably ensured nuclear proliferation. Iran's violations will cause...

To watch Barack Obama's pathetic final non-victory lap around the world this past week, one can't help but recall his stomach-churning "Apologize for America Tour" at the start of his administration. You'll recall that in April 2009, he went to Europe, which we sacrificed tens of thousands of American lives to liberate 70-plus years ago, and informed Europeans that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" of Europe. Last week, Mr. Obama could not resist the urge to dis his country once again, telling the "global community," again from a foreign shore, that in the age of the...

Here is what eight years of President Obama's "post-racial" reign have wrought. The weekend before Election Day, Hillary Clinton grinned from ear to ear at a Cleveland rally while reciting a verse from Jay-Z's remix of Young Jeezy's "My President is Black." As the rapper and his Black Lives Matter-promoting wife, Beyonce, beamed on stage nearby, pandersuit-clad Clinton twanged with a stilted accent: "Remember, Jay memorably said: 'Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk, and Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run, and Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.'" This would be comical if not...