Free Republic

Donald Berwick, the rationing advocate President Barack Obama nominated to head the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid programs in the face of opposition from pro-life advocates, has quite his post in the Obama administration. Because he is unable to get enough votes in the Senate to approve his nomination, his recess appointment will end and Berwick has decided to stop down from his position as the chief implementor of Obamacare, the health care law pro-life groups opposed because its prompts concerns about abortion funding, rationing, and fails to protect the conscience rights of medical workers.

The Daily Caller has learned the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has hired Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, an Obama administration official who has been key in implementing parts of Obamacare thus far and a large donor to Democrats and liberal groups, to work in its Health and Human Resources (HHR) Office. As CBO’s deputy assistant director of HHR, Buntin is expected to assist with the Office’s prime directive, providing “objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget.” It may be difficult for Buntin to provide such “objective”...

A vocal and visible Twin Cities advocate for immigrant rights and immigration reform is himself facing deportation -- to the surprise of those who have worked with him for years. Mariano Perez Espinoza, 41, executive director of the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network, is in jail awaiting deportation for allegedly being in the country illegally after a previous deportation. Espinoza, a native of Mexico, has advocated openly on immigration issues for years. Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office, on Wednesday confirmed that Espinoza is in custody. As of Wednesday afternoon, he had not...

Black Pro-Life Advocates Upset Abortion Billboard Axed in NYC New York, NY -- Leading black pro-life advocates are not happy that Lamar advertising company took down a billboard a pro-life group put up in the SoHo district of New York City raising awareness about the high rates of abortions on black children. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/02/25/black-pro-life-advocates-upset-abortion-billboard-axed-in-nyc/

As Obama and Pelosi assault the center-right citizenry, even folks with a casual interests politics are asking what they can do to change the course of this government. I've got some ideas and I'm looking to join or start a group on the internet that help organize and this energy. Many of the things to be done involve a bit of internet effort, similar to FREEP THIS POLL. I'm not looking for any money -- anyone who wants to donate already knows how to do that. This will be for people who would like to give their time.

NEW YORK — A three-legged pitbull mix that played in a game of doggie baseball has won "Best in Show" at a talent competition held by one of New York City's largest animal shelters. Nine dogs competed in Friday's contest at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. But it was Prince who impressed the judging panel the most with his feat of catching three baseballs.

About two months ago, I heard from an old friend with whom I had lost touch. Most of what he had to say revolved around his relationship with a man with whom he is now living. (snip) He said he and his boyfriend needed a church that is more tolerant. I’m going to recommend that he give The Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Carrboro, North Carolina a try. Until a couple of days ago, the Advocate website (www.ouradvocate.org) had a list of the members of its vestry, which included Frank Lombard. But after Lombard was arrested for allegedly trying...

The controversial and colorful advocate for the disabled, Harriet McBryde Johnson, died earlier this week at her Charleston home. Johnson first came to national prominence when she publicly challenged Princeton’s Peter Singer on the ethics of euthanizing profoundly disabled infants, and dedicated her life to improving the quality of life for those in institutions she called the “gulag”:Harriet McBryde Johnson, a feisty champion of the rights of the disabled who came to prominence after she challenged a Princeton professor’s contention that severely disabled newborns could ethically be euthanized, died on Wednesday at her home in Charleston, S.C. She was 50....

WASHINGTON - In Jack Abramoff's world, prominent Washington tax-cut advocate Grover Norquist was a godsend. Moving money from a casino-operating Indian tribe to Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition founder and professed gambling opponent, was a problem. Lobbyist Abramoff turned to his longtime friend Norquist, apparently to provide a buffer for Reed. The result, according to evidence gathered by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, was that Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform became a conduit for more than a million dollars from the Mississippi Choctaw to Reed's operation, while Norquist, a close White House ally, took a cut. Without citing any specific...

The taxpayer advocate at the Internal Revenue Service told Congress last week that since 2001, the I.R.S. has labeled as fraudulent the tax returns of 1.6 million people and has frozen their refunds without notice, although most appear to have done nothing wrong. Overwhelmingly, the taxpayers are poor and are simply applying for a break created for them.

CNSNews.com) - The Chicago chapter of the Service Employees International Union is apparently using hardball tactics to convince two regional hospital chains to allow its workers to unionize. The union is urging uninsured Chicagoans to seek free medical care at the 16 hospitals belonging to the Advocate and Resurrection health care networks in a campaign that could financially squeeze the chains and place patients at risk, according to a hospital association. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) launched its Care for All campaign in September, but the union began targeting Advocate Health Care in 2003. That is when the SEIU...

Gov. John Baldacci's re-election campaign on Monday tapped Jesse Connolly of Portland to manage the governor's bid to reclaim the Blaine House in 2006. Connolly most recently helped engineer the defeat of Question 1, the high-profile effort to overturn the state's new gay rights law last November. Baldacci was a driving force behind the law during its trip through the Legislature. "He has done of lot of good things in his four years, and I believe he deserves a second term. We will communicate that to the people of Maine," said Connolly, who will begin his new position on Jan....

Bill Hallin continues to be a straight shooter -- even at the age of 97. When he can get a ride from his Roseburg apartment out to the Roseburg Rod and Gun Club in Winchester, he shoots his Thompson Center Encore 6 mm benchrest pistol. At 100 yards, his three-shot grouping is usually one-quarter inch. When he shoots five times, he admits there might be one shot out to one-half inch. "I still shoot well enough," Hallin said with a smile. "Other people think I'm a good shot." Fred Dayton, a past president of the Rod and Gun Club who...

The New York Times has run a story on how CNN is trying to battle Fox News in the cable television news ratings wars. The paper says that one new attempt to boost CNN's overall ratings is for Larry King, the network's most popular host, to more frequently mention the host, Aaron Brown, who comes after him. CNN figures that King's popularity will rub off on Brown, and that Brown's ratings will increase. But a more effective way to boost ratings is to get hosts more in tune with the beliefs and attitudes of the public. As Howard Kurtz of...

Chairwoman Haigh, committee members, good morning. My name is Jason Mercier and I am a budget analyst for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. I'd like to thank Rep. Nixon for the invitation to testify today on HB 1134, creating a public records advocate and records clearinghouse. My duties at EFF include requesting public records, and I am also frequently contacted by the public with questions on how to make public records requests. These experiences and the research I have conducted on public records laws from other states have led me to conclude that creating a public records advocate and public records...

SACRAMENTO — Television ads supporting a constitutional amendment that would allow Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other foreign-born citizens to run for president will begin appearing next week on cable stations across California, a newly formed group based in Silicon Valley announced Friday. The ads feature Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, a mutual fund manager from the Bay Area and major donor to Schwarzenegger's campaign, telling viewers: "You cannot choose the land of your birth. You can choose the land you love." It's the first large-scale effort to generate public support for allowing Schwarzenegger to run for president. The Republican governor, who was born...

IF PRESIDENT BUSH is reelected, it's a good bet that the bloodiest fight of his fifth year in office will have nothing to do with the war or the economy. It will be over the filling of one or more vacancies on the Supreme Court.If Sen. John Kerry is elected, suspense will quickly drain away from the future of the court. This is true even if the court's nine members, eight of them now 65 or older, confound expectations by staying where they are for another year or two. Because even without turnover, at least five members of the present...

A former PLO terrorist who is now pro-Israel was not allowed to enter Canada - but he spoke to his scheduled audience anyway, via live video link. A former PLO terrorist who is now pro-Israel was not allowed to enter Canada - but he spoke to his scheduled audience anyway, via live video link. Walid Shoebat, formerly of a village near Bethlehem and now a resident of northern California, was scheduled to speak in Vancouver yesterday against terrorism - but was turned away by Canadian immigration officials at a California airport. Organizers held the event anyway, arranging a live video...

When officials from the Seattle Monorail Project pay homage to the monorail movement's grass-roots heritage, they're talking about citizens like Bobby Inshetski. "I simply love the monorail," he says. Driving under the city's old one-mile monorail on Fifth Avenue, he would cheer when a train passed above the sunroof. He voted yes on the 2002 initiative to build a new 14-mile monorail from West Seattle to Ballard. Then he volunteered for the project, answering questions at Bumbershoot and neighborhood festivals. Inshetski bought a second-floor condominium along the route on California Avenue Southwest in West Seattle last June — at a...

<p>Wesley Clark wants to overturn the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and allow open homosexuals to serve in the armed forces, the Democratic presidential candidate says in an exclusive interview with the Advocate.</p> <p>"The armed forces are the last institution in America that discriminates against people. It ought to be the first that doesn't. They ought to have the right to be who they are. They shouldn't have to conceal their identities," Mr. Clark, a retired Army general, told the magazine.</p>

Tariq Aziz asks 'Devil's Advocate' for help at trial By Colin Freeman in Baghdad and Kim Willsher (Filed: 14/12/2003) The family of Tariq Aziz has approached a celebrated French defence lawyer nicknamed the Devil's Advocate to defend the former Iraqi deputy prime minister at the forthcoming war crimes tribunal in Baghdad. Tariq Aziz: 'victim of Saddam' Mr Aziz's daughter, Zeinab, wants Jacques Verges, who has defended the international terrorist Carlos the Jackal and the Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, to represent her father when he is tried over his role in Saddam Hussein's regime. Her move follows last week's announcement that...

The Yellow By Rosie O’Donnell From The Advocate, May 27, 2003 So Michael Moore and Eminem won Oscars because the art they make is pure yellow. None better, more real, or true. Those in the audience voted for these two men—these outcasts—because they knew that if they didn’t, they would be cursed. See, no one knows where yellow comes from. How to make it has become a business but not a science. There is no surefire way to create it. And if you have ever been lucky enough to do so—the reason always somehow eludes. It’s magic. It’s real, true,...

Posted for educational purposes only. Of all the causes we invest in to try to make honorable citizens of our rotten kids, abstinence is our moralistic Enron. Utter the word to your average teenager, and your stock drops to nothing. It's a notion as old-fashioned as "The Patty Duke Show" or Peter Pan collars. Worse, it underestimates young people. I recently raised the issue to a 17-year-old girl, telling her that President Bush had asked Congress for $135 million to encourage teens to make abstinence their only birth control. Her gust of disgust could have blown me to Bremerton. "Nobody...