Free Republic

JERUSALEM – In the latest “Arab Spring” uprising, the U.S. is backing protesters, many of whom, informed Middle Eastern security officials tell WND, are now pressing to openly announce an affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Syrian opposition has been plagued by infighting, with competing divisions sparring with each other even since the movement began in September of last year....

Did Trump recently state that Obama was "born in Kenya and raised in Idonesia" ? SAN DIEGO (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney isn't taking a position on supporter Donald Trump's return to the controversy over where President Barack Obama was born. Romney said Monday evening that while he doesn't agree with all the people who support him, he appreciates their help to get him at least 50.1 percent of the vote in November. Romney's comments come about 24 hours before appearing at fundraiser in Las Vegas that Trump is hosting. Earlier this week Trump again stated that Obama...

NEWTON, Mass. (WHDH) -- Democratic Representative Barney Frank raised eyebrows during his commencement speech at UMass Dartmouth when he referenced the Trayvon Martin case. Barney Frank, never at a loss for words, drew gasps from the commencement crowd at UMass Dartmouth where his good friend Hubie Jones was awarded an honorary doctorate -- complete with a degree and hood. "When they give you an honorary doctorate they give you one of these and Hubie, I think you now got a hoodie you can wear and no one will shoot at you," Frank said during his speech. The crowd was stunned...

Your parents spill a few secrets as they get older. One night at dinner with my mom, I ventured that the rhythm method had worked well for her, given that there were six years between my sister Peggy and my brother Kevin, and six more between Kevin and me. She arched an eyebrow. "Well, sometimes your father used something," she said. My parents were the most devout Catholics I've ever known. But my dad came from a family of 16 in County Clare in Ireland, and my mom's mother came from a family of 13 in County Mayo. So they...

Things have spun out of control in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case in Sanford, Fla. (“Zimmerman’s account of killing corroborated,” Web, Thursday). The police were instantly and unfairly blasted for failing to arrest Mr. Zimmerman, the Sanford police chief stepped down when he shouldn’t have, Mr. Zimmerman was already fingered as the guilty party before a thorough and fair investigation was completed, civil rights leaders descended upon the town pointing accusatory fingers, and a bounty was placed on Mr. Zimmerman’s head. In addition, media outlets and talking heads put their own spin on the story. The case has now devolved...

I just finished reading Brian Sullivan’s Reform battles rollback as Romney pledges to repeal Obama's financial regulations regarding the differences between Romney and Obama on the financial services regulations known as Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. Sullivan’s piece is mostly what you would expect from a mainstream media outlet. It’s a topical check list of “On the one hand Romney wants, on the other hand Obama says…” that is just a series of campaign infomercials disguised as balanced analysis. (Please see my personal plea at the end of this article for USA Cares this Memorial Day- and please... give generously)     And it illustrates what’s really...

The Obama campaign’s latest attack tells the story of workers at an Indiana office supply company who lost their jobs after a Bain-owned company named American Pad & Paper (Ampad) took over their company and drove it out of business. Here’s what the Obama Web video doesn’t mention: A top Obama donor and fundraiser had a much more direct tie to the controversy and actually served on the board of directors at Richardson, Texas-based Ampad, which makes office paper products. Jonathan Lavine is a long-time Bain Capital executive and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. He is also one of President...

Chris Hayes: I'm 'Uncomfortable' Calling Fallen Military 'Heroes' By Mark Finkelstein | May 27, 2012 | 09:21 ........................... In fairness, Hayes and the other panel members distinguished between their respect for the valor of the individual military members who had given their lives with the worthiness of the various causes in which they fought. Even so, what does it say about the liberal chattering class, which Hayes epitomizes, that it chokes on calling America's fallen what they rightly and surely are: heroes? Watch the hesitant Hayes in what almost seems a parody of the conflicted intellectual. CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today...

At the Associated Press aka the Administration's Press on Saturday, Andrew Taylor's "Fact Check" item on President Obama's stump speech claim in Iowa on Thursday dove into the trees without first looking at the forest. Distracted by ridiculousaurus Rex Nutting's write-up earlier in the week at MarketWatch ("Obama spending binge never happened"), which absurdly claimed that "government outlays (are) rising at slowest pace since 1950s," Taylor spent paragraph after paragraph going into the nuances of "the Wall Street bailout" (really TARP, which wasn't all about "Wall Street," unless GM and Chrysler have recently moved there) and the disputes over who should...

A search of the email cache that BigGovernment released last week reveals that the #Occupy movement is largely driven by socialists and anarchists who realize they need to conceal their actual message and goals in order to appeal to the political mainstream. The goal of #Occupy is to build large enough numbers where a ‘mob mentality’ takes over so they achieve their real aim of overthrow, as evidenced by a statement from one of the #Occupy movement’s earliest and strongest advocates: …when the numbers are big enough, they will feel their oats, get impatient, and start demanding more than you...

President Obama took an apparent racial swipe at Colin Powell in a 1994 NPR interview in which he implied the four-star general is acceptable to “white America.” In the same interview, Obama advocates that the government should provide jobs for every citizen and prenatal care for all women. Obama in 1994 was a community organizer and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. WND unearthed an Oct. 28, 1994, interview the future president gave to NPR in response to political scientist Charles Murray’s controversial book “The Bell Curve,” which argues that there are racial differences in intelligence. During the...

It’s amazing what a few competitive polls can do to concentrate the mind. Democrats had taken comfort for months in the Republican Party’s seeming inability to get behind Mitt Romney, Obama’s healthy lead in the polls, and equally healthy job growth. And for a few, fleeting, moments, Democrats thought the election might just be easy. But Republican division appears to have been merely an artifact of primary politics, and Mitt Romney has proved a consistent, if unglamorous campaigner… “There was this sense maybe a month or two ago that Obama was really riding high — that he had gotten his...

Though the Obama campaign has repeatedly attacked Mitt Romney for his career at Bain Capital, President Obama still accepted $7,500 in campaign contributions from three Bain executives. His campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt told The Politicker the president has no intention of giving the money back. “No one aside from Mitt Romney is running for President highlighting their tenure as a corporate buyout specialist as one of job creation, when in fact, his goal was profit maximization,” said Mr. LaBolt. ”The President has support from business leaders across industries who have seen him pull the economy back from the brink...

There will be changes.” It was broadcast upfront week, and amid the chaos and the talk of CBS’s schedule and the fate of “30 Rock,” the discussion had shifted to CNN. A media buyer for one of the top firms told me that in a conversation with a senior executive at Time Warner, there was an expectation that CNN would be tweaking its programming, an effort to combat ratings fatigue. In a terse statement earlier this month, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said that he and others at the company were “clearly not satisfied” with CNN’s situation, and promised that...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - At a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver tonight, President Obama set out to upend conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending. "I'm running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law," he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency. "My opponent won't admit it, but it's starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I've been president, federal spending has...

Elizabeth Warren, emerging from what many consider the roughest patch yet in her Senate campaign, has pulled into a virtual tie with US Senator Scott Brown, according to a new Suffolk University/7News poll. Warren, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has the support of 47 percent of likely voters in Massachusetts, compared to 48 percent for Brown, a dead heat in a poll with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Update: Will S.E. Cupp sue?Update 2: Commentary from The Blaze here (pictured obscured).Update 3: Sandra Fluke, Planned Parenthood condemn.Update 4: Hustler defends.I’m not going to provide a link, but along with the picture Hustler added this disclaimer: No such picture of S.E. Cupp actually exists. This composite fantasy picture was altered from the original for our imagination, does not depict reality and is not to be taken seriously for any purpose. But just imagine for a second if Rush Limbaugh had gone this far. The Left would have gone nuclear.I don’t expect S. E. Cupp will be hearing from...

This column originally appeared in THE DAILY BEAST. In looking ahead toward the November election, Republican strategists should take proactive steps to avoid a damaging, dangerous conclusion to the presidential race and to prevent the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama. The problem stems from the lopsided margins President Obama will surely pile up in a few uncontested states with big populations, including California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, will prevail by comparable margins in only relatively small states: Utah, Idaho, the...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree. As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.” Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true. But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower...

Mitt Romney now leads President Obama in the race for Florida's 29 electoral votes, a significant reversal from earlier this spring, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released early on Wednesday. Romney leads Obama overall, 47 percent to 41 percent, the poll shows. Two percent of voters prefer another candidate, 7 percent are undecided, and 3 percent said they would not vote. Three weeks ago, in another Quinnipiac poll, the two candidates were statistically tied, with Romney at 44 percent and Obama at 43 percent.

May 22, 2012 (HLIAmerica.org) - The May 11, 2012 editorial of the Toronto Star offers high praise for President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage. The editor credits the U.S. president with showing “rare courage,” while at the same time advancing the cause for “civil rights.” In approving the legalization of marriage between a man and a man, and a woman and a woman, according to the editorial, Obama is affirming the “full humanity of gays and lesbians.” He is “weighing in on the side of compassion, inclusion and equal rights for all.” How could millennia of diverse cultures, until recently,...

When Barack Obama two years ago joked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that potential suitors of his two daughters might have to deal with Predator drones (“But boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: Predator drones. You will never see it coming.”), the liberal crowd roared. That failed macabre joke would have earned George W. Bush a week of headline condemnation from the New York Times and the Washington Post. Obama, in fact, has increased those judge/jury/executioner targeted assassinations tenfold during his tenure. But apparently, the combination of Obama’s postracial “cool” and the video-game nature of such...

The evening news broadcasts all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom. The May 21 editions of ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News refused to report the fact that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Obama administration. CBS Evening News gave this historic news a mere 19 seconds of air time. This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that...

The Los Angeles Times refuses to disclose the contents of a video tape in its possession that reportedly shows Barack Obama lavishing praise on his friend Rashid Khalidi, a close associate of Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat, at a 2003 Chicago dinner party sponsored by the Arab American Action Network and attended by Bill Ayers. The Times does, however, have all kinds of time to vet Ann Romney, going so far as to dig into a lawsuit she was part of involving a horse: It was the end of a long day in a stuffy Simi Valley office building. Ann Romney...

In a blistering new ad, the Republican National Committee catches the Obama Campaign lying to the press about their influence in strong-arming Newark Mayor Cory Booker into taking back his criticism of President Obama's attack on Bain Capital.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 22, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Obama administration’s HHS mandate has united Christians of all stripes – evangelical, historical Protestant, and Roman Catholic – as they close ranks behind a flurry of lawsuits filed yesterday morning to overturn the controversial measure and stall government interference in religion. After 43 Catholic institutions – including the major archdioceses, dioceses, universities, and publishing houses affiliated with the Church in the United States – filed a dozen lawsuits to strike the measure down on First Amendment grounds, the Christian and conservative communities quickly applauded the move. President Obama with Secretary of Health...

"I'm a surrogate for the Obama campaign," said Newark Mayor Cory Booker during an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, "I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity ... I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of the record of Bain Capital, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses."Many a conservative commentator seized on Mayor Booker's pronouncement as a sign of weakness - that some within Obama's camp see the discussion of economic matters as a losing...

(video at link) NYT Reporter Goes To Romney's Church, Seeks Dirt From Worshipers

The Defense funding bill that will get a house vote later this week includes provisions that would protect conscience rights for military chaplains and prohibit same-sex marriage ceremonies from being performed on U.S. military bases. Amendments to the Fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act authored by House Armed Services Committee members Steve Palazzo (R-Miss.) and Todd Akin (R-Mo.) for that purpose were approved in committee last week, but not without a fight. The provisions continued to be a source of controversy as debate on the bill began on the House floor Wednesday. Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) said the amendment only...

Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson defended Monday controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying that it was a “source of pain” to see him criticized in the media. “I know it’s a source of pain for me to see him used as an object of degradation and manipulated the way he’s been used the media as if he’s some sort of enemy of the state. It’s not fair and it’s not true,” said Jackson on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown.” “It pains me to see him used as an object of degradation.” Jackson said that Wright had developed an influential ministry, one that...

ESPN's Grantland website jumped on the bash Manny Pacquiao bandwagon on Thursday by giving a platform to a homosexual activist, who predictably trashed the Catholic Church as she took the Filipino boxing sensation to task for defending traditional marriage. Writer Laurel Fantauzzo ripped the "the Church's cruel, untrue dictates about me," and promised if he didn't "evolve" like President Obama, "I'll simply have to sigh wearily and turn away from you, the way I've turned away from all of the idiotic bigots I've come across in my life, carrying a cross or a heavy book or a Constitution." In her...

If you have any doubts that Obama will be sent packing from the White House in November, then cast your eyes at this list of reasons Barack Obama will be a one-term president.

In the early 1970s, the most trusted man in America did a very untrustworthy thing. Unbeknownst to the millions who tuned in religiously to the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite cut a deal with Pan Am to fly his family to vacation spots around the world. Together with a handful of friends, they roamed from the South Pacific to Haiti, with Cronkite snorkeling, swimming, and drinking, thanks to a friend at the airline. According to Douglas Brinkley’s sweeping and masterful biography Cronkite, the news division president, Dick Salant, was upset at what he deemed a blatant conflict of interest, but...

As a general in the War on Women, Barack Obama might be best compared to one who inadvertently fires on his own positions. Team Obama has tried to exploit the usual gender gap in national elections by claiming to fight on behalf of women. Earlier this month the campaign rolled out the creepy “Life of Julia� campaign, and President Obama himself launched the same attacks at a recent commencement speech at all-female Barnard College. How effective has Obama been at this war? Former CNN and NBC anchor Campbell Brown wants Obama to surrender immediately, as she writes in yesterday’s New...

So it’s unanimous, then– Thomas Edsall was right: In the aftermath of Obama’s gay marriage flip, pundits seem to have concluded that Obama’s Democratic party has indeed given up on white working class voters. They’ve been dropped from the winning coalition, which is now composed of three main groups: “young people, college-educated whites (especially women), and minorities,” according to Ron Brownstein. Bill Galston agrees. Ruy Teixeira–who once wrote a book called America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters–agrees. Here’s Teixeira on how Obama can win Arizona: First, the share of Hispanic voters must grow and their support...

The violence in northern Nigeria is mistakenly viewed as a religious conflict rather than simply a tribal dispute over land, according to the Obama administration. Despite the ongoing Muslim destruction of churches and the slaughter of Christians – including many murdered during worship services – the U.S. Agency for International Development claims that the misunderstandings make it difficult to administer aid programs. USAID, therefore, has launched a program titled Project PEACE – an acronym for Programming Effectively Against Conflict and Extremism.

A prominent Georgetown University alumnus has announced plans for a canonical lawsuit in a bid to restore the school’s Catholic identity. William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, is asking Georgetown alumni, faculty, students, and friends to join in his canonical case, in which he will ask the Archdiocese of Washington and the Holy See to take action “up to including the possible removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic or Jesuit in its fundraising and representations to applicants.” In his plea for support of the canonical case, Blatty argues that Georgetown has failed to...

But there are many significant areas in which we agree: the need for lower taxes, smaller government, and a reduction in out-of-control spending. We certainly agree that abortion is wrong and marriage should be between one man and one woman. I am also comfortable with Governor Romney on foreign policy matters, and we share the belief that we can never allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons. And while I had concerns about Governor Romney making a case as a candidate about fighting against Obamacare, I have no doubt if elected he will work with a Republican Congress to repeal it...

The United States is worried that Shaul Mofaz and his Kadima party’s joining a unity government with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could result in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities at any given moment, according to a report on Channel 10 News on Thursday. U.S. government officials told Channel 10 News that they believe a Likud-Kadima joing government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran at any moment and perhaps even before the U.S. presidential elections in November. .....

President Obama sat down yesterday with a cadre of far-left foreign policy writers, several of whom regularly lambast the state of Israel, to get advice on a range of critical foreign policy issues, among them Afghanistan, Israel, and NATO, according to press accounts. The group of nine included several writers who promulgate fringe views about the state of Israel, advocate in favor of divestment from Israel, and describe the Jewish State as an “apartheid” state—views that are also endorsed by the most extreme anti-Israel advocates. Liberal author Peter Beinart—who has compared Israel to the segregated South and advocates boycotting areas

Michelle Obama made a remarkable claim when talking up her husband, President Barack Obama, at a campaign event earlier today in Nashville, Tennessee. "I am so in," Michelle Obama said toward the end of her remarks. "I am going to be working so hard. We have an amazing story to tell. This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light." The crowd of nearly 450 folks applauded as the first lady likened her husband to a Jesus-like figure. In the book of Matthew, we read, "the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light; and to them...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, commenting on the South Carolina primary results to Fox News on Saturday, had a bit of fun at the president's expense when asked for her analysis of the race. Palin said there's still a long way to go in the primary process, with 47 states left. "Or, if you’re Barack Obama, [we] still have 54 states to go," Palin said, referring to Obama's comment back on the 2008 campaign trail that the United States had 57 states."

Watch Obama flub again - short video at link

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Rick Perry. Let's do this. Let's go back October 20th on this show, and I said this. Number three, audio sound bite number three. Go back in order. RUSH ARCHIVE: Rick Perry -- and I mean this in a complimentary way. People are gonna find this not strange or not hard to believe, but you might be confused by this. Rick Perry makes me laugh. But not at him. I laugh with the guy. RUSH: I gotta tell you: Rick Perry, to me, is funny. During the debate when he decided to go after Mitt Romney for...

Even the White House press office isn't immune from making geography gaffes. Per CNN's Mark Walz, the credentials given to members of the press corps traveling with President Obama on his campaign swing out west this week included a map that mistakenly identified Wyoming as Colorado. The two rectangular states do look similar on the map, but it's a pretty embarrassing error, especially considering how important Colorado might be to President Obama's re-election chances next year.

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) –Mexico’s attorney general is demanding an explanation from the United States as evidence grows the Obama administration was more deeply involved in Operation Fast and Furious than top officials admitted in previous statements. Operation Fast and Furious was a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives effort to track more than 2,000 smuggled guns to Mexican drug cartels by allowing gang members to purchase them illegally from U.S. gun stores then take them back to their leaders. However, the federal agency lost track of many of the guns. Some later were traced to murders...

Canadian Commentator: The Press Gave America 'An Untried, Unknown,' 'Incompetent Figure As President' By Noel Sheppard Created 09/18/2011 - 9:09pm Maybe what America's press really need is a Canadian television commentator to explain how atrocious their coverage of Barack Obama has been since the moment he tossed his named into the presidential ring in February 2007. Although they may not be familiar with CBC's Rex Murphy, they should certainly heed the marvelous piece he wrote for the National Post Saturday entitled "The Media’s Love Affair With a Disastrous President": As the bad economic news continues to emanate from the United...

First of All,Is Obama actually going to speak at the 9/11 10th Anniversary? And what is he going to say? Obama being obsessed with the Muslim world,and even supporting a Mosque a few blocks away? This should be interesting to watch,let's see what Obama calls the Muslim Terrorists that killed 3000 people. Uhm, "Really Mean Arabs"? Extremely Angry Citizens of Iraq? Those Horrible & Extremely Upset Arab Folks Of One Of Those Arab Nations? The fact that we have an "Hussain Obama" speaking at the 9/11 event is An American Travesty !!!

President Obama told congressional leaders tonight that he is prepared to make the tough decisions on entitlement spending to reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling and cutting the deficit, a Democrat familiar with the negotiating process told ABC News. But if Republicans are not willing to do the same regarding taxes, the president asked them during a meeting at the White House, what is their alternative? After meeting for 75 minutes, congressional leaders will be back at the White House Monday afternoon to continue negotiations. Monday morning the president will hold a news conference on the matter, making...

President Obama met with Congressional leaders at the White House on Sunday night to try to revive chances for a $4 trillion deal to reduce the deficit and avert a default on the national debt, a day after Speaker John A. Boehner appeared to dash hopes for any far-reaching agreement that would repair the nation’s perilous finances. -snip- In the end, several officials briefed on the talks said, ideological differences over a tax overhaul bogged down the bigger deal. Mr. Boehner, they said, signaled a willingness to raise $1 trillion in revenue — much of which would have come from...