Free Republic

As did most of us, I first heard of Theresa Cao when she made her now famous (some say infamous) statement in the House of Representatives’ chamber on 6 January 2011 during a formal reading of the US Constitution. As Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) read the Constitutional requirements for a United States president, Theresa called out from the gallery, “Except Obama, except Obama, help us, Jesus! My name is Theresa.” Unlike what had occurred previously with the Marxist-Leninist Left-wing group Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan merely being escorted out of the chamber when they severely disrupted sessions in the House...

Two lawmakers said Sunday they'll pack heat back home after the deadly attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The decision by Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) raises new questions about whether lawmakers should carry guns for self defense - or need to. "After the elections, I let my guard down," Shuler, an ex-NFL player, told Politico. "Now I know I need to have [my gun] on me." Shuler and Chaffetz won't be the first lawmakers to be strapped. The U.S. Marshals Service can deputize a member of Congress as a special deputy marshal if a threat assessment...

Full Headline - "David Cameron spent £66,000 on TV coaching by Obama's body language expert during election campaign": - "David Cameron spent more than £66,000 flying in Barack Obama’s body language expert to help prepare for the televised election debates, it emerged yesterday." "Detailed receipts show the Tories spent £66,333 hiring the Washington firm SKDKnickerbocker to prepare Mr Cameron for the debates, in which he was widely considered to have been bested by Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg." "Consultant Anita Dunn, who advised President Obama on body language, was part of the team flown to London four times to prepare...

Like Orwell’s farm animals, we have awakened to see the new commandments on the barnyard wall.Californians have been experiencing ten days of the wettest, snowiest weather in recent memory. In the usually arid San Joaquin Valley, flooding is ubiquitous. The high Sierra passes are locked in snow well before the first of the year. If the United Kingdom is dealing with the irony of its elites’ recently warning of an end to snow on a now snowy island, out here our version of that embarrassment is water everywhere after Energy Secretary Chu warned us that our farms would blow away...

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit noted over the weekend that buried deep on the HHS website is a list of over 100 companies/organizations that have been granted waivers from the new health care law. Some of the companies on the list are well know, e.g. Olive Garden and Cracker Barrel restaurants and CIGNA health insurance. Others on the list seem conspicuous because of their small size. For instance, how did a company called Captain Elliot’s Party Boats get a waiver for their 10 employees? It turns out Captain Elliot’s Party Boats is the name of a company in Freeport, Texas...

Radio host and author Paul A. Ibbetson's fictional version of Animal Farm with a conservative twist. The delightful tale of Oliver the Squirrel unfolds on this departure from the conservative political discussions found previously in Ibbetson's books. Oliver's Tale is a thinker's piece and while written in the same spirit as George Orwell's Animal Farm it has its own unique social, political, and religious message to be discovered by readers. Surrounded by a colorful cast of animal characters, Oliver experiences a spiritual growth in his relationship with God as he becomes privy to the secret plan of the Gray Skunk,...

The United Federation of Teachers -- one of President Obama's key political backers -- is the biggest beneficiary of a White House sweetheart deal that will exempt certain outfits from complying with new health-care rules, officials revealed yesterday. The quietly approved federal waivers for 30 companies, health insurers, unions and other groups across the country means the UFT doesn't have to gradually phase out caps on annual health coverage like everyone else. The UFT was concerned that could have been a major financial hit on the union. The one-year waiver, approved last month by the Department of Health and Human...

Regulation: Thirty companies and organizations get waivers from the new health care overhaul because otherwise they'd have to raise rates or drop coverage. The president said neither would happen. Hey, where's our waiver? When McDonald's told federal regulators in a recent memo that it would be "economically prohibitive" for its insurance carrier to continue to cover its 30,000 hourly workers unless it received a waiver from the ObamaCare requirement that 80% of premiums for such minimed plans be spent on medical care, alarm bells went off in the White House. Suddenly the "affordable health care for Americans" that House Speaker...

They might not be dangerous, but they're armed. Seeking an added layer of protection, more high-profile celebrities are seeking permits to carry guns in New York City, according to New York's Daily News. Among the big names licensed to pack heat: Marc Anthony, Robert De Niro, Donald Trump, and his son, Donald Jr., Mets third baseman David Wright, and Martha Stewart's daughter, radio host Alexis Stewart. Anthony, 42, has a special permit that allows him to carry a loaded weapon in the city, and has a similar permit for Nassau County, where he and Jennifer Lopez have a $2 million...

The concept of an Elite was described by George Orwell in his book 1984: his portrayal was so graphic it seems our current Socialists borrow as heavily from Orwell as they do from Alynsky. Orwell condemned and ridiculed the Elite: Alynsky described how to use the concept to achieve power and confuse the opposition. Both the authors have been extremely useful in defining the mission for the Elite wannabe, the Rules for Radicals is an effective guide that capitalizes on the absurdity that is the image of the Elite: an image that is still useful in the audacity of...

Recently circulated news stories charging that federal employees are grossly overpaid — allegedly earning more than twice their private industry counterparts — are based on “a flawed reading of statistical data,” according to Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.). In a Sept. 15 speech, Kaufman disputed a USA Today article purporting that federal workers’ pay dramatically outstrips that of their private-sector counterparts. The newspaper’s analysis, which was based on Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data, concluded that, in 2009, federal employees received an average total compensation in pay and benefits of $123,049, while private sector workers made $61,051. The newspaper’s analysis did...

Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't work down in that former swamp. Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest. They're correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it's always seemed to those Americans who don't feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations. We...

For years, researchers such as Gerald Celente have been warning that the coming economic collapse is going to spark mob scenes and riots that are unprecedented in U.S. history. Many have scoffed at these predictions and have refused to believe that anything like that could ever happen in America. But if what happened on Wednesday near Atlanta is any indication, we could be on the verge of something really bad. 30,000 people turned out to pick up only 13,000 applications for government-subsidized housing. Some people had waited for over two days just to get their hands on an application. The...

After the U.S. Government took action against several sites connected to movie streaming recently, nerves are jangling over the possibility that this is just the beginning of a wider crackdown. Now it appears that a free blogging platform has been taken down by its hosting provider on orders from the U.S. authorities on grounds of “a history of abuse”. More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result. Hot on the heels of recent threats from Vice President Joe Biden and Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel directed at sites offering unauthorized movies and music, last month U.S....

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which...

I’m not sure how relevant the CEO of ACORN is anymore, but at least she’s not hiding her stripes. She attended a Young Democratic Socialists meeting in late March and said we are living in a time -- referring to the TEA party movement -- that will dwarf the era of Jim Crow and segregation. Watch the video...

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves. * * * But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.” “My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”...

...Beaverton Middle School teacher Jason Levin's group wants to infiltrate the Tea Party to discredit the organization. But since Levin's name has been associated with the "Crash the Tea Party" Web site, he has been harassed by people who say they belong to that group. Levin told KATU-TV that his phone has been ringing around the clock and his answering machine is recording threats...

Chicago Breaking News reported late last night that former Chicago schools chief and current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan manipulated a system to favor powerful political allies by placing their children in the schools of their choice. The discovery of a list, the existence of which had been long denied by the city, and its composition of mainly high-powered political figures calls into question the appeals system used to reconsider applications that had been denied by the top Chicago-area schools: While many Chicago parents took formal routes to land their children in the best schools, the well-connected also sought help...

As the Massachusetts blame game unfolds, the president’s unpopular health bill leads the list. But the substantive provisions of the bill were just part of the problem. Perhaps more important, voters were appalled by how the deal unfolded. Consider the pre-election giveaway to the labor unions. Negotiators agreed to exempt union contracts until 2018 from the tax on so-called Cadillac health-insurance plans. That backroom bargain not only outraged the voters, it also violated the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, requiring the federal government to extend equal protection of the laws to all U.S. persons. Of course, not all voters...