Free Republic

The time is drawing near for a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. Here is the White House proposal (courtesy of Zach Goldfarb at the Washington Post). ACCORDING TO REPUBLICAN AIDES. THIS IS A SUMMARY ONLY AND NOT AN OFFICIAL DOCUMENT. White House Proposal November 29, 2012 STAGE ONE: Taxes Immediate increase in both top marginal rates, as well as capital gains and dividends: +$960 Billion Additional taxes: +$600 Billion 2009-level estate tax AMT and business tax extenders: -$236 Billion Payroll tax extension or alternative policy: -$110B Bonus depreciation extension Spending/Extras $50 billion stimulus package in FY13 Mass refi mortgage...

A Maine fisherman's wife said he is trying to find a plastic tub of scallop organs he placed in a car he mistakenly thought belonged to a graduate student. Michelle Mays of Southwest Harbor said her husband, Andy, spent six months collecting scallops and he stored the organs from the sea creatures in formaldehyde as part of a research project through Darling Marine Center, the University of Maine's research facility in Walpole, the Bangor (Maine) Daily News reported Thursday. Mays said her husband was on his way to hand the tub of scallop guts over to a graduate student when...

<p>Last week I was told by very knowledgeable sources in the State Capitol that Obama Care was a lock to be implemented in Michigan because of the heavy handed pressure by Governerd Rick " Jennifer" Snyder, his bought and paid for minion Speaker of the House Jase Bolger and the Godzilla of health care insurance companies, Blue Cross/ Blue Shield of Michigan. I was told they were demanding the passage of Health Care Exchanges so Obama Care can be implemented ASAP.</p>

When the word "God" becomes inappropriate in public schools, America really has ceased to exist. Consider the story of a first-grade girl in West Marion, North Carolina, who had the word "God" stripped from a poem she wrote and was going to read at her school's Veterans Day assembly earlier this month. The poem honored her two grandfathers who served during the Vietnam War. “He prayed to God for peace," she wrote of one of them. "He prayed to God for strength.” Unfortunately, a parent found out about this, and complained to the school district. At a McDowell County Board...

We are used to Democrats who use campaigns and government jobs as their private piggy banks. A Republican campaign would be the last place you would expect to see wild spending on questionable projects. Yet in the Romney campaign that seems to have happened and this might have cost him the election. What is going on?

The White House has been hyping its #My2K Twitter hashtag in an attempt to galvanize supporters to contact their Congressional representatives to demand action to avert the fiscal cliff.  The administration estimates that unless Congress moves, the average family's tax bill will jump by more than $2,000, starting on the first of January.  The implication, of course, is that Republicans are once again standing in the way of resolving this problem.  Show of hands -- as the media breathlessly follows every minor twist and turn of these negotiations, how many of you have seen this fact reported?   .@barackobama's #My2K shenanigans ignore...

270 FReepers with $10 or 27 FReepers with a $100 and we are over the top. How about it FReepers. Any takers? Let's Put This Baby To Bed!

Mike Medvid once commented that liberal websites are most likey to ban conservatives that express their viewpoint then a consevative website like this one to ban a liberal that expresses theirs, simply because conservatives are much more tolerent and less hateful then liberals. I found this to be very true. I was a member of an audiophile website called 'Audio Asylum'. I too am an audiophile. They had one branch that was called 'Outside Asylum', where members could express themselve out side the realm on audio, which is often politics. Since these members are very liberal, very liberal viewpoints were...

At the United Nations we are witnessing the creation ex nihilo of a foreign country, which never existed, and accepting the claims of the “Palestinian Arabs”, by giving them the land whose memory kept the Jews together as a people and brought them back to Jerusalem after the Holocaust. The Western community at the United Nations, including my miserable Italy, just adopted the Nazis' strateg. Cunning in wickedness, the Germans dangled before their victims the possibility of saving themselves at the expense of other Jews. In this case, the Jews to be sacrified are all of those living in Judea...

For the first time since their campaign of roving city-to-city terrorism began in Seattle several years ago, Communist/anarchist, America-hating 'anti-globalization' protesters were met by citizens determined to stand up against their violence and intimidation. Led by the D.C. Chapter of Free Republic, a total of about two hundred Americans drew a 'line in the sand' at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. today, where nine months earlier the Communist/anarchists had assaulted the memorial by trying to tear down the flags and signals on the masts there during the inaugural parade of President George W. Bush. With America...

Same-sex marriage not only undermines real marriage, it redefines the human person. Dorry and Earl Dahl, members of St. John the Evangelist Church in Streamwood, Ill., kiss after renewing their vows at the annual golden wedding anniversary Mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago Sept. 9. The Mass honored more than 600 Catholic couples married for 50 years. Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George presided over the celebration. (CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World) It is imperative for Catholics to develop rational arguments to defend the institution of marriage in the public square. We live in a pluralistic society and, therefore,...

In yet another example of the United Nations’ bias against Israel, the international body’s “Division for Palestinian Rights” (DPR) sent a letter to its pass office yesterday asking that it withdraw passes issued to a prominent Jewish organization, while it “pack[ed] the Assembly” with so-called “Palestine” supporters, Breitbart.com reported. Upon receiving the request, UN security officials revoked the passes, which had already been printed and handed to 23 pro-Israel Jewish young adults, who were part of an educational program associated with the Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni community. “The Jewish group had requested passes for November 29, 2012 to attend separate events:...

You raise them, you educate them and you expect them to go out into the world. But they keep coming back. ... between 2007 and 2011 there was a steady increase in the percentage of adults living in someone else’s house – and that increase has mostly been driven by adult children moving in with mom and dad. In 2011, Census Bureau researchers found that 17.9 percent of people 18 and older, or 41.2 million people, lived in a house in which they weren’t the head of the household or that person’s spouse or significant other. That’s up from 16...

Glenn Beck, art critic, is back. The conservative commentator posted an online video Tuesday in which he addressed at length the subject of "obscene" art and the 1st Amendment. In an homage to Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," Beck concluded by dunking a likeness of President Obama in a mason jar filled with a clear yellow liquid. Beck offered to sell the work, titled "Obama in Pee Pee," for $25,000. "It's all protected by this document," he said, pointing to a copy of the Constitution. "So whether you're offended by this one or by this one," Beck said, pointing to various...

<p>SAN DIEGO (AP) — An effort to build the Western Hemisphere's largest seawater desalination plant faced a key test Thursday, as San Diego's regional water agency considered whether to buy all its output despite criticism that cheaper alternatives could be overlooked.</p>

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (CBSDC) — Afghan police arrest two men for allegedly beheading a 15-year-old girl after her father turned down a marriage proposal. According to BBC News, the two men who proposed the arranged marriage and attacked her are relatives of the girl. “Our investigation shows those who killed her were people who wanted to marry her,” a Kunduz province police official told the BBC. The father did not want his daughter to get married because she was “too young to be engaged.” CNN reports the girl was killed near her family’s home while bringing back water. According to The...

Angus T. Jones continues with his bizarre behavior by changing his tune completely and making a public apology for bashing “Two and a Half Men.” Now he feels blessed to be able to sign on for another season with a paycheck of $8 million.

In 1765, Parliament added its North American colonists to those subject to the Stamp Tax. It seemed innocuous enough. Thought to raise about 60,000 pounds/year, it would amount to twenty percent or so of the cost to garrison a vast new country won from France in the war that concluded only two years earlier. It was the wrong tax at the wrong time. It was wrong because direct taxes had been left to the individual colonies since 1607. Parliament’s timing was horrible because instead of prosperity with the conclusion of war, the colonies slipped into hard economic times. Regarded as...

Yesterday Charles Krauthammer said that Republicans have leverage right now with the president on this fiscal cliff deal because if tax rates go up on all Americans, Obama’s second term will begin in a recession as the higher tax rates will slow growth even more, and Krauthammer contends that Obama doesn’t want that. But Rush passionately disagrees noting that analysis disregards Obama’s entire first term. Rush believes that Obama doesn’t care about having a successful economy in his second term, that it’s all part of his push to transform this country into a welfare state because that’s what is fair...

St. Louis, Mo., Nov 29, 2012 / 11:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal appeals court on Nov. 28 granted a Catholic business owner in Missouri an injunction against the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that he says violates his religious freedom by forcing him to provide insurance coverage for morally objectionable drugs and procedures. “The order sends a message that the religious beliefs of employers must be respected by the government,” said Francis Manion, Senior Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. The center is representing Frank O’Brien and his St. Louis-based business O’Brien Industrial Holdings,...