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The firestorm of controversy over the January 20th HHS mandate requiring Catholic and other religious organizations to pay for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs for their employees shows no sign of abating. This is notwithstanding the Obama administration's "accommodation," announced last Friday, that will permit insurance companies to pass the cost of contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs along to Catholic and other religious employers - as long as they do so surreptitiously, of course. Catholics bishops and countless others have characterized this regulation as direct government interference with the free exercise of religion and thus unconstitutional. In this, they are...

President Obama heads west today for a three-day, three-state swing aimed largely at filling the coffers of his re-election campaign and honing his message to supporters in key states. Obama will headline eight fundraisers across California and Washington through Friday night. The events are expected to net at least $8.6 million for the Obama Victory Fund. Much of Obama’s focus will be on mingling with some of his wealthiest – and most famous – supporters in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who will play a key role in underwriting his bid for a second term. Later he’ll dine with 80...

President Obama released his FY 2013 budget [Monday] morning. By his own numbers, his budget raises net taxes over the next decade by $1.56 trillion (Table S-9, page 225). As a percentage of the economy, tax revenues would rise all the way to 20.1% of GDP in 2022, far higher than the historical tax revenue average of 18.3% of GDP (Table S-1, page 205). Here are some of the tax lowlights: All 20 of the new or higher taxes in Obamacare are assumed to take place. That means that there will be a 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income....

President Obama's proposed 2013 budget contains a decade-long surge of tax hikes that, if approved, would affect everything from income to investment to inheritance. The budget blueprint contains roughly $2 trillion in new taxes and fees. When other tax cuts and credits are counted, the net impact from the proposals is still about $1.5 trillion. Though Republicans already are mounting a vigorous campaign against the proposal, many of the tax provisions still could become law unless Congress takes action to stop them. ,,,, But the budget also imposes various fees, such as a hike in the airline "security fee," as...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum -- in a neck-and-neck race with Mitt Romney in Michigan -- joined his rival in releasing new TV ad footage on Tuesday aimed at the state's voters. Santorum's spots tout him as a "trusted conservative" and the choice of supporters of the "tea party" movement, social conservatives and evangelical Christians, all important elements of the Feb. 28 primary in Romney's home state. One of the ads uses mainly written words -- praise in the form of quasi-endorsements and favorable quotes -- from Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, among others -- over an urgent sounding symphonic...

Desperate to win re-election, President Obama is taking inspiration from a tactic used by China’s Chairman Mao during so-called "Cultural Revolution."In order to spread his ideology, he creates his own army of brainwashed propagandists who are supposed to popularize talking points sent to them directly from the White House. Modern days hongweibings (Chinese for red guards) are called the Truth Team, and if everything goes as planned, the president will have an army of over two million Americans on his side.The Obama administration unveiled on Monday a campaign created to crush the GOP competition come November, a mission that...

RUSH: This is from Rayford, North Carolina. Carolina Journal. I'm gonna read it to you exactly as it printed out here: "A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet US Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day." Again, let me read this to you again: "The...

RUSH: I want to move on to this Dick Morris business and the attack on the Catholic Church last week by Obama. I want to ask you, if you remember back in January there was a presidential debate, a Republican debate in Manchester. Do you remember -- 'cause this is a setup for what's coming -- do you remember, we were all perplexed here. George Stephanopoulos kept hounding Romney on contraception. It had not come up, nobody had said anything about it, and we were all confused, as was Romney, what the deal was. Well, it is Dick Morris' theorem...

Barrack Obama: F- Ron Paul : D- Newt Gingrich: D Mitt Romney: C+ Rick Santorum: A-Excerpts about Rick's grades STOPPING AMNESTIES Sen. Santorum earned an A+ on stopping amnesties while in Congress. And he has challenged his own Catholic Church leaders as well as other candidates for supporting the legalization of millions of people who have broken immigration laws. MANDATE E-VERIFY. In 1996, Sen. Santorum voted against creating the program that became E-Verify. But on the campaign trail 15 years later, he has promised to push mandatory verification. He misses an EXCELLENT rating because he continues to talk about there...

Sarah Palin is weighing in on the GOP nomination race. She appears to have something to say about everyone and has little positive to say. It's almost embarrassing for the Republican Party to have her voice an opinion. Palin comes across less like an expert on campaigning and more like a washed-up booth babe trying to show she does have something useful to say. Of particular note are her recent jabs at Mitt Romney. She's calling him out for not being far enough to the political right. The former vice-presidential candidate might be suggesting Romney adopt a stance more like...

In my previous post on the alleged ballot access and delegate count issues of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, I went into great detail on the exact number of delegates that Gingrich wouldn’t have access to because of his ballot qualification issues. After Santorum’s 3 victories Tuesday, I think that his candidacy now merits the same level of detailed analysis. State by state in order of their dates of voting, here are the states that Santorum will not have the ability to win all of the delegates from.

When Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), spoke at CPAC on February 10th, he predicted that if Barack Obama wins a second term it will usher in an all-out attack on the Second Amendment. In so many words, he said the same people who brought us Fast and Furious, “a criminal enterprise” for which there has yet to be prosecutions, will use four more years to gut constitutional protections on the right to keep and bear arms. And anyone who wonders what this assault on the Second Amendment might look like need look no further...

Santorum’s contraception boom — “We’re all Catholics now,” said Mike Huckabee — won’t hold up. Because we’re not. This race could well go to a brokered convention. If Jeb Bush is proposed, so Sarah Palin should be minutes later. She is now and always has been the singular Jacksonian voice in the original Tea Party phenomenon; the only one who can bring it to the mainstream. Her absence from the primary race has left a vacuum and no substitute has been found. Every other possible or potential leadership hopeful has risen and receded in this long Republican primary season. [....]...

President Obama's re-election team on Monday rolled out a campaign to recruit two million supporters to help debunk attacks on the president's record and hit back at his Republican rivals. Called the "Truth Team," the new effort will engage Obama supporters online and in person, encouraging them to communicate with undecided voters about the president's record. "People don't just want to hear from campaign statements or ads -- they want to hear from the family and friends they trust," Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama's deputy campaign manager, wrote in an email to supporters. Obama for America, the president's re-election team, will...

A couple of polls came out from Public Policy Polling this weekend showing that Santorum seems to be replacing Newt Gingrich as the main "not Romney" candidate in Minnesota and Colorado. There seems to be a desire to "give another conservative a chance" as well as to potentially field a candidate without as much baggage as Newt so that Mitt Romney's negative ad carpet bombing will not be as effective. I think though that this reasoning is fallacious and switching support from Newt to Santorum at this point would be a major mistake. Let's just look at what I believe...

Twenty-five Notre Dame faculty members--led by the university’s top ethics expert, and including some of the school’s most eminent scholars--have signed a statement declaring that President Barack Obama’s latest version of his administration’s mandate that all health insurance plans in the United States must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, is “a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand." The statement—put out on the letterhead of the University of Notre Dame Law School--is also signed by leading scholars from other major American colleges and universities, including Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Brigham Young, Yeshiva and...

The Obama campaign is today beginning a new effort to enlist and educate at least 2 million supporters for a "grassroots communications team" they're calling the Truth Team. "The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama's record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives," the campaign said in a statement. The teams will be first launched in 13 "swing states," including Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.

She has the ability to speak about issues that profoundly bother the audience in common ways and words that listeners instantly recognize and wish they had thought to say just that way. Watch in the video below of her full CPAC speech for how this church-going mother of five mocks Obama's Winning the Future program with an almost off-color aside. And prompts shared laughter, not shock. [....] Instead, instinctively Palin doesn't speak at or to audiences. She speaks for them. She tells them what they've already accomplished through the tea party, for instance, and what they can accomplish this year...

As I uncovered long buried interviews from your contemporaries in the late 80’s, and then interviews with Paul Weyrich and Pete DuPont, I rediscovered the enormity of what you had accomplished as a young Congressman. I became shocked and angry I didn’t know this and that current conservative leaders didn’t seem to care. Until someone puts themselves back in the era of what was considered a “permanent” minority position, no one today can not comprehend the mental, financial, political and cultural challenge to reversing 40 years of Democrat domination. And you were planning it as a hippy-looking, first term Congressman...

We’ve all heard the axiom, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”. In fact, no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio. And for this year’s GOP presidential primary, Ohio is the top prize in what is turning out to be a critical Super Tuesday on March 6th. In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention. So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to...

Despite a hard-charging speech over the weekend that suggested dissatisfaction with the Republican presidential primary frontrunner, Sarah Palin said Sunday that Mitt Romney "is a great candidate." But the 2008 vice presidential candidate and Tea Party darling isn't yet convinced Romney is "instinctively" a constitutional conservative. "I am not convinced and I don't think that the majority of GOP and independent voters are convinced," Palin told "Fox News Sunday." "And that is why you don't see Romney get over the hump. He's still in the 30-percentile mark when it comes to approval and primary wins and caucus wins. He still...

Her CPAC speech today was a barn-burner, hitting every conservative, small-government point and pumping out soundbites that will no doubt resonate in the public dialogue for days to come. Some of my favorites: “Drain the Jacuzzi!” “This government isn’t too big to fail, it’s too big to succeed.” “We don’t want an economy built to last, we want an economy built to grow.” “This is Obama’s Washington.” Her signature line in this speech was “The door is open.” She meant that political conditions are becoming conducive to a renewed commitment to small government and liberty. People’s mindsets are changing. We...

And on a day when Palin reportedly generated more enthusiasm than every presidential candidate combined who spoke at CPAC and owned the room and conference, one could not wonder how many who were listening to the speech were coming to the realization that Palin should be the GOP nominee for president much in the same way the majority in attendance at Kemper Arena in Kansas City in 1976 at the Republican National Convention, in their hearts, knew that Ronald Reagan -- and not Gerald Ford -- was the rightful standard-bearer of bold conservatism. 

Look in comments for full videos on Sarah's speech. This is for those that missed it and shouldn't. Admins,...leave this thread so all the freepers see it! : )

While I understand that only a fraction of the population of this nation is directly affected by what you are about to read, I would never-the-less like to remind you that the remainder of the population is affected coincidentally. While the majority of the American population probably never even considered the Armed Forces as a possible career objective, there are those who never considered life without serving their country, in uniform, on a field of combat. Most of these young men and women never take the time to internalize some idealized vision of charging death for God and Country,

Created for OMG! For America

And we're the ones, the old-fashioned conservatives, we want to deny people a good time, we want to deny people fun, we want to deny people all these things in life. So we have yet another example of life in America under the thumb of an ever-expanding state with central planning, otherwise known as "well-intentioned liberalism." From violating religious rights where there is no power permitted to do so, to mandating the purchase of products, to now mandating insurance companies sell certain products at a price that's also mandated, from czars, to denying the right to travel, it's all here....

A top official with the National Rifle Association said Friday that President Obama will move to "destroy" gun rights and "erase" the Second Amendment if he is re-elected in November. While delivering one of the liveliest and best-received speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said the president's low-key approach to gun rights during his first term was "a "conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep." "All that first term, lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his...

Since she was plucked from relative obscurity by John McCain to be his vice presidential candidate, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been at the top of the American political scene. Recently, however, the ebb and flow of the primary season has called into question whether her political star has faded. During the heat of the primary battles, all of the air in the Republican-conservative-Tea Party balloon has been sucked up -- appropriately, by the candidates. Since 2008 that air was the oxygen that fueled the Palin super nova. The prospect of going from Momma Grizzly to political also-ran has...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to move on to Rick Santorum. You talk about being perfectly positioned? Rick Santorum is a practicing Catholic, a pro-lifer. You talk about a candidate who is perfectly positioned to draw the most distinct contrast to Obama and the Democrats and what's going on right now. Santorum speak at CPAC this morning, the Conservative Political Action Conference. We have five excerpts from Santorum's speech which fired up CPAC. Here's the first of them... SANTORUM: "We have to learn our lesson that we need to compromise, do what's politically reasonable, and go out and push someone...

If Rep. Allen West’s speech doesn’t get you out of your seat in applause, the ending sure will. I think my reply to this speech on twitter was “HOLY CRAP! That was absolutely incredible!!!!!!” Must Watch:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm realizing some of you might not a-heard it if the local EIB affiliates cut away to cover the president who also appeared shortly after this program began. And one of the themes my opening comments was reacting to everywhere I'm seeing in the media that Obama finally backed down. "Obama caved. Yes, he did! We talked him back down. He no longer... He can't tell the Catholic Church what to do. Obama got the message. Obama, he's slinking away in shame." I said, "No, he's not," and no, he did not cave in any way, shape,...

First lady Michelle Obama was in Dallas Friday to judge a Top Chef cooking competition as part of her three-day Let's Move national tour. Obama joined White House chef Sam Kass and "Top Chef" host Tom Colicchio as judges in a televised competition that paired child sous-chefs with professional chef — all former contestants on the Bravo television show. Fabio Viviani, Jennifer Carroll and Spike Mendelsohn were the celebrity chef contestants. "Are you guys fired up?" Obama asked the kids before the event started. "The whole point of this is making sure you're healthy." At the end of the 30...

The candidate goes to eleven on the culture amplifier.Up until this week we had been faced with a few different possibilities in terms of potential challengers to President Obama in November, none of which seemed overly pleasing to clucking tongues in conservative sewing circles. It always had the appearance of a choice between Mitt “Mr. Inevitable” Romney and any one of a series of cracked, flawed, or otherwise questionable alternatives. Even the latest in this series, Newt Two Point Oh, brought with him worries as to whether his airport caravan sized train of “baggage” might allow Barack Obama’s reelection team...

Santorum gave a very inspirational speech today at CPAC, putting into focus what this election is really about. He says that while this election is about jobs, it’s really about something even bigger – the country we will leave behind for our children and grandchildren. Here’s the full speech:

In April 2009, antiwar activists who helped elect Obama accused him of using the same “off the books” funding as his predecessor George W. Bush when Obama requested an additional $83.4 billion from Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – a provision which Obama had voted against when he was a Senator. In May 2010, it was reported that the Obama administration had selected KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, for a no-bid contract worth as much as $568 million through 2011 for military support services in Iraq, just hours after the Justice Department had said it would...

Oh my gosh! I am so very mad I am still shaking. I called the RNC today to get the definitive answer on the Florida delegate count. I was transferred to a young man named Josh and what ensued was the most infuriating, while enlightening, conversation that I have had in a long while. I first asked my question about the delegates. His convoluted answer was basically that they couldn't impose two punishments, so the one punishment imposed was taking away half of their delegates. I asked him about that rule, was that in writing somewhere. He then proceeded to...

At last year's CPAC gathering, the mere sight of a Sarah Palin impersonator was enough to throw some attendees into a star-struck frenzy. Such was Palin's clout among conservative activists in February 2011, just a few months after she played a critical role in the 2010 midterms and when she was stoking speculation about her own presidential ambitions. This year, CPAC attendees won’t have to settle on a doppelganger, as the former Alaska governor is slated to deliver the event’s keynote address on Saturday. But, with the Michigan and Arizona primaries looming at the end of the month and Super...

If you are a Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum supporter, be concerned, be very concerned about the prospects of a brokered convention. While it’s still too early to see where the delegate math will fall once all the voting concludes in June, some things are beginning to take form. For one, the Gingrich team has finally come to the realization that they need Rick Santorum to stay in the race after all. This is because they are NOT confident that were Santorum to drop out, that Gingrich would receive an absolute majority of Santorum’s earned soft delegates. Hence, you see...

“I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved. It already happens, of course, with the camaraderie of men in combat, but I think it would be even more unique if women were in combat,” Santorum added. “And I think that’s not in the best interests of men, women or the mission.” Such remarks may please some social conservatives who were never that keen on women serving in the military, but this may not sit...

A great speech from Rick Perry on what America is about that’s sure to spawn some of you to think “what might have been”. He even has a great line on the Chrysler ad “it’s halftime in America”: “If it’s halftime in America, I’m fearful of what the final score’s gonna be if we let this president start the second half as the quarterback!”

- Vice President Joe Biden ramped up his criticism of GOP presidential candidates on Monday, telling a crowd at a fundraiser in Florida that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were woefully out of touch with economic reality. "Mitt Romney says the best way to deal with foreclosures is to let everything hit the bottom," Biden said at a fundraiser in Tallahassee. "No, no, no, no - by the way, from purely a dollars and cents standpoint, he could get ready to argue that, that's right out of the business school manual. But guess what? We're not reorganizing and purchasing companies,...

Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster told The Associated Press that Romney is expected to speak Friday evening at a rally at Portland Yacht Services.

...the 2012 election is looking more like a replay of 2008 than a do-over. The latest WND/Wenzel Poll shows...one in five GOP voters leaning toward support of Obama in November.... Obama also has made tremendous inroads on enemy territory against each of the four Republicans, winning roughly 20 percent support among conservatives and even those who consider themselves to be very conservative.

This image says it all. A Dogs Against Romney Pack Member was stopped by the Littleton, Colorado police yesterday for having a dog crate on the roof of his car. The Pack Member , identified only as "Oredigger," was on his way to protest at a Mitt Romney event yesterday with the crate atop his car carrying a stuffed toy dog when the police officer, believing he was actually transporting a live dog on the roof of his car, stopped him. Says Oredigger, "I was pulled over for suspected animal abuse."

President Obama last week brandished new jobs numbers as proof that his policies were having an effect on the unemployment rate, which the report said declined to 8.3 percent in January. The president is right about one thing: his big government agenda and class warfare tactics are having an effect -- but it's not the one he claims. In truth, last month's drop in the unemployment statistic was due largely to the evaporation of 1.2 million people from the labor force number. When people become so discouraged they stop actively looking for work, they are no longer counted as unemployed...

<p>As searches dragged on, many just stopped looking. Now they aren’t even counted among the jobless.</p> <p>Jackson Julien looked for a fun job, then for anything. Finally, demoralization set in.</p> <p>Millions of Americans have vanished from the US labor force in the past three years, many of them so discouraged by long, fruitless job searches that they have given up looking for work, convinced that no employer wants them, according to a new study.</p>

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation. The conservative think tank's annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were "traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families." The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show. The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an...

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are entering negotiations over — or seeking ratification of — five treaties that could radically limit our national sovereignty and the reach of our democratic institutions. Particularly scary is that the treaties, once signed and ratified, have the same status as constitutional law and cannot be altered or eclipsed by Congress or state legislatures. And their provisions must be enforced by U.S. courts. Those who wish to preserve our sovereignty and democratic control over our future must rally to block these treaties, either by pressing Obama and

Last Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to answer questions about his role in the deadly “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal. However, instead of answers, Congress got more defiance, more arrogance, and more wasted time with an attorney general who clearly feels no sense of obligation to the American people or our rule of law. But for all the stonewalling, there was at least one telling moment at this hearing, and it should concern law-abiding gun owners and all Americans who expect accountability from our government. In a rash attempt to...