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During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump accused Barack Obama of treating Americas adversaries with tender love and care while our allies were snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity.

Weve picked fights with our oldest friends, Trump declared in his April 2016 foreign policy speech, adding Weve had a president who dislikes our friends and bows to our enemies.

Trump was absolutely right. From Iran to Cuba, Obama bent over backwards to court our adversaries. At the same time, he mistreated our closest allies allowing Israel to get bullied by the U.N. Security Council and canceling missile defense deals with Poland and the Czech Republic in a misguided effort to curry favor with Moscow.

So why, less than two weeks into his presidency, is Trump doing precisely what he criticized Obama for doing picking fights with one of our oldest friends, Australia, while treating our adversary, Russia, with tender love and care?

When Fox News Bill OReilly challenged Trump on his praise for Vladimir Putin this weekend, declaring, Putins a killer, Trump responded, There are a lot of killers, adding, Weve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our countrys so innocent?

Had Obama said these words, every conservative in America would have erupted with outrage. Equating U.S. actions with those of our enemies is a tried-and-true tactic of the left. Remember how appalled we were when Obama declared that America should get off its high horse in criticizing Islamic terrorists because of the terrible deeds committed in the name of Christ during the Crusades? Or when he drew a moral equivalence between Irans decades of terrorist murder and the role the CIA played in the 1950s overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government in his infamous Cairo speech? Why would Trump follow Obamas model, and draw the same false moral equivalence between the United States and Russia?

At the very moment Trump was speaking with OReilly, Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza lay fighting for his life in a Moscow hospital, after being poisoned under mysterious circumstances. He was similarly poisoned in 2015, and barely survived. His crime? Lobbying Congress to impose economic sanctions against Russia under the Magnistky Act, a law that itself was named for a Russian human rights lawyer who was beaten to death in Putins jails. Kara-Murza and Magnitsky are not alone. In 2015, opposition activist Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by gunmen on a bridge within sight of the Kremlin. And in 2016, a British judge found that Putin was likely behind the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy turned Putin critic, who was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210.

Trump says he wants to get along with Putin. Theres nothing wrong with trying. But getting along with Putin does not require excusing this campaign of political murder, or suggesting that the U.S. acts similarly. As William F. Buckley once famously put it, To say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.

Worse still, Trumps defense of Putin came just days after he scolded Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an agreement he had reached with President Obama to take in 1,250 refugees held at Australian detention centers from Iran, Iraq, Somalia and other countries. Yes, it was poor form for Turnbull and Obama to make this deal after Trump was elected. Yes, Australia was stupid to press Trump to take in a group refugees that they themselves refuse to let into their country many of whom hailed from the very nations for which Trump had just temporarily suspended immigration. But Australia is also one of our closest allies a nation that has fought beside us in every war we have fought in the last century from World War I to Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no reason for Trump to tell Turnbull that theirs was the worst call by far he has had with any world leader including, apparently, Vladimir Putin. The leader of Americas closest ally deserved at least the same kind of deference that Trump seems to be willing to extend to the leader of one of our greatest adversaries.

Trump told the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington that we have to get tough because the world is in trouble. Hes correct. For eight years, the Obama administration projected weakness in the world, and the consequences have been devastating from the rise of the Islamic State, to Syrias brutal use of chemical weapons on its own people, to the spread of Iranian hegemony in the Middle East, North Koreas nuclear and missile tests, and Chinas cyberattacks on America and building of military bases on disputed islands in the South China Sea.

We do need to get tough, and Trump is doing so. He has imposed new sanctions on Iran for its illegal ballistic missile tests a sea change from Obama, who delivered pallets of unmarked foreign currency to Tehran on secret planes. And instead of just droning terrorists, like Obama did, Trump put boots on the ground, sending a special operations team to Yemen to take out al-Qaeda leaders and capturing intelligence that Obama would have vaporized.

This is all to the good. But as Trump jettisons Obamas policies of weakness, he should also banish Obamas troubling habit of treating our allies worse than our enemies and of drawing a moral equivalence between our actions and theirs.

Marc A. Thiessen writes a weekly column for The Washington Post on foreign and domestic policy.

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Trump is doing precisely what he criticized Obama for doing on foreign policy - The Denver Post

The Illinois Legislature is considering creating a state holiday for former President Barack Obama. View Full Caption

Facebook/President Obama

CHICAGO If some state lawmakers have their way, former President Barack Obamas birthdaysoon will be aholiday in Illinois.

Three bills arebeing debated in the Illinois House and Senate that would honor Obama'sAug. 4 birthday.

The two House bills would create a legal holiday, which would close state offices and schools the Monday after the former president's birthday. Businesses would have the option of closing. The Senate bill lays out plans for acommemorative day that would not require any offices to close.

The House bills would create the first new state holiday in 40 years and would be the first time a living president was ever honored with a legal holiday in the state.

In his call for the holiday state Rep. Andr Thapedi (D-Ashburn) said other states honor presidents. Texas honors Lyndon B. Johnson and California honors Ronald Reagan. He said Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and part of Illinois history.

I thought those distinctions meant he should be honored hes basically an Illinoisan, Thapedi said Monday.

He introduced a similar bill last year, but it failed to move forward because Obama was still in office and the costs of closing state offices was estimated to be $3.2 million.

Thapedi said he thinks the bill has a better chance now that Obamas out of office, and he'sasked that the cost estimates be reassessed.

Recognizing fiscal constraints were under now, it would not be unreasonable to take those things into consideration, Thapedi said.

Gov. Bruce Rauner's office did notimmediately respond to questions about whether Rauner would support the proposal.

State Rep. Sonya Harper (D-Back of the Yards) has introduced a bill that copies Thapedis bill word for word.

She said she believed Obama was one of the greatest presidents of her lifetime and should be afforded the full honor of a state holiday.

Harper said she was unaware of any similarities ot Thapedi's bill and said she suspected they were both written by the same staffer at the Legislative Reference Bureau, which helps draft legislation for lawmakers.

She said the bills will be combined in the committee review process or one will move forward.

Illinois was the first state in the country to adopt Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1973.

Casmir Pulaski Day was instituted by the Legislature in 1977. Chicago closes city offices in recognition of the birthday of the Revolutionary War cavalry officer, but state offices do not close.

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'Obama Day' Could Be Illinois' First New Holiday In 40 Years - DNAinfo

TPM

Trump blames 'Obama people' for leaking details of calls with foreign leaders New York Post President Trump is blaming Obama people for the embarrassing leaks of contentious private phone calls he's had with the leaders of Australia and Mexico. It's a disgrace that they leaked because it's very much against our country, Trump told Fox ... Trump Accuses 'Obama People' Of Leaking Details Of His Calls With LeadersTPM Trump Says White House Leaks Coming From Obama Admin HoldoversDaily Caller Amid gush of White House leaks, Trump points his finger at 'Obama people'The Week Magazine Fox News -Western Journalism all 15 news articles »

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Trump blames 'Obama people' for leaking details of calls with foreign leaders - New York Post

I am somewhat amazed to see Woodmont Country Club in the news the national news, and possibly international news. This is a club outside Washington, D.C. I know it rather well. Barack Obama has been offered a membership there.

He likes his golf, Obama does. Thats one of the things I like about him. Early in his first term, I wrote a piece called Hail to the Golfer-in-Chief. (Ahem: It appears in this new collection, Digging In.) Obama was taking a lot of grief for his golf. He was taking it from Left and Right.

The Left didnt like it because golf, in their view, was a Republican thing, or a white thing. Why should this cool black Democratic president be playing this Ozzie-and-Harriet game?

The Right didnt like it because, they said, it was taking up too much of Obamas time. He was neglecting his duties. (That was fine with me, I tell you.)

So, I wrote an essay defending both golf and Obamas particular habit.

When it was bruited about that he was looking to join Woodmont, there was grumbling at the club. Woodmont is mainly a Jewish club, and some members objected to Obamas treatment of Israel. They were especially hot about Obamas treatment of Israel at the U.N. Obama left that country vulnerable, they thought.

Other members were high on Obama, and appalled at the grumbling. One member, a Democratic activist, went so far as to resign, splashily. He wrote a letter saying,

I can no longer belong to a community:

Where Intolerance is accepted,

Where History is forgotten,

Where Freedom of Speech is denied,

And where the nations first black president is disrespected.

He signed his letter, Stay Woke. Woke, in the current parlance, means awake to racial injustice.

Woodmont has offered Obama the missus, too a special membership, meaning they would not have to pay an initiation fee. They would have to pay merely dues and assessments.

I would like to say something about this first black president business. The letter-writer, the resigner, said that Woodmont was a place where the nations first black president is disrespected.

It could be that the anti-Obama members regard Obama as a president, and, moreover, a man: a man with certain views, a man with a record. It could be that they think his stance on Israel is lousy and disqualifying, quite apart from skin color.

And I think Obama would appreciate this: being considered a president, and a man, rather than a racial totem or symbol.

I have always had an advantage in my journalism, and in life, I think: and that is that I am absolutely un-intimidatable un-cowable on the subject of race. A big reason, I think, is that I grew up around black people. They were part and parcel of life. They were not exotic. They were you know, people.

Good and bad. Smart and dumb. Talented and untalented. Good-looking and ugly. Honest and dishonest. Tall and short.

You know, like people. People.

For many white people, black people are not quite people: They are symbols, or victims, or saints automatic racial saints. They are the Other. Clarence Thomas once complained that white people, too many of them, treat black people like dogs and cats.

If I were black, it would drive me absolutely nuts. It does anyway.

Last week, I was thinking about two of my colleagues, who are two of my favorite writers: Kevin Williamson and David French. One advantage they have is that they are absolutely un-intimidatable on the subject of poverty. They cannot be cowed.

One trick of the populist-nationalist Right is to say, Elitist! You have no idea how the other half lives. You have no idea about the poor and struggling. You live in a bubble. You go to your cocktail parties. Elitist!

Kevin is from Lubbock; David is from Georgetown not the neighborhood in Washington, D.C., but the town in Kentucky. (My ancestors, some of them, lived in Georgetown, D.C. It was a slum then. They couldnt wait to move out, and did.)

If you try that Elitist! stuff on them, they will laugh in your face, or worse.

We cannot go through life without generalizing. We cant think, talk, or write without generalizing, nor should we. But happy is he who regards people, basically, as individuals.

Received a note from a Democratic friend of mine a superb lawyer in D.C. She addressed the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court: If politics worked right, Democrats wouldnt fight this one (and Obamas nominee should have gotten a hearing and a vote). Poisonous place, federal Washington.

I sort of feel for the Democrats on this one. They want revenge for the inaction on Merrick Garland. At the same time, Neil Gorsuch is damn near unimpeachable. What glove can you lay on him?

Of course, you could have said that about Bork, and many did

Care for a little music? Here is my New York Chronicle, published in the just-issued New Criterion. I take up Robert Muczynski, Christian Gerhaher, William Bolcom, Wynton Marsalis, Vittorio Grigolo, and more.

A little language? To the passengers sitting in exit rows, a flight attendant ne stewardess gives a little speech. She ends with, Are you able and willing to assist in the event of an emergency? She then says, to each passenger, I need a verbal yes.

Its interesting, this word verbal. It used to mean related to speech written, oral, whatever. Now it seems to mean only oral. The flight attendant means, You cant nod your head or something. You have to say the word yes. Why doesnt she say I need an oral yes? Probably because the word oral has a vulgar connotation.

Im reminded of the word diction. It used to mean and surely still means, formally word choice. Somewhere along the line, it got equated to elocution or enunciation. In olden days, young ladies walked around with books on their heads, practicing their e-nun-ci-a-tion

On a plane the other day, I heard the chief flight attendant a senior woman say, The girls are getting ready to come through with a water walk.

Whoa. Girls. Age and sex have their privileges

Shall we have a correction? A correction of me? In a column the other week, I called Key West the southernmost point of the United States. Several readers wrote to say, Dont forget Hawaii! Dont forget Ka Lae!

I had. (Hawaii and Alaska always screwin us up )

Last week, I did a podcast with David French. For some reason, I mentioned Some Kind of Wonderful, the movie from 1987. A listener wrote to say, Out of all the important topics you guys discussed, I was most impressed by your knowing the movie Some Kind of Wonderful!

In a blogpost, I said, Oh, please: Every male my age has thought about Lea Thompson, Mary Stuart Masterson, or both for lo these 30 years. Trust me.

Then I did a tweet, about this blogpost and I mentioned Lea Thompson, using her Twitter handle. (Mary Stuart Masterson doesnt have one, apparently.)

After a few minutes, Lea tweeted me yes, she did. She said, Why, thank you.

You know how, years ago, when you met a personage Babe Ruth, Albert Schweitzer, Angie Dickinson you said, Im never going to wash my hand again? There must be a Twitter equivalent of that

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Obama at play, &c. - National Review

Katie Grovatt, KCEN 4:25 PM. CST February 05, 2017

US President Barack Obama speaks during his farewell address in Chicago, Illinois on January 10, 2017. / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

SAN ANTONIO - A San Antonio man whose life prison sentence was reduced by President Obama is now back in jail after authorities say he crashed his car into another vehicle while fleeing officers from another drug deal.

68-year-old Robert Gill was ordered by a federal magistrate to be held without bail on Friday pending a hearing later this month.

Gill was arrested in 1990 and sentenced to life for a cocaine and heroin distribution conspiracy. While he was in prison he studied law and petitioned the president for a second chance. Gill's sentence was commuted by President Obama in 2015.

According to a report by the San Antonio Express Newshe has been working as a paralegal at a San Antonio law firm.

He is now charged with possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine.

( 2017 KCEN)

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Man freed early by Obama now back in jail on another drug charge - KVUE.com