Free Republic

Same guy who had Churchill’s bust removed from Oval Office. Via Beltway Confidential: President Obama, speaking at a million-dollar fundraiser yesterday, told supporters that he believes Americans “will do the right thing” by supporting his reelection bid and second term agenda. “I think it was Churchill who said that the Americans always end up doing the right thing after they’ve tried every other alternative,” Obama said, to laughter, after summarizing the policies discussed in his State of the Union speech. “And that’s true.

Four years ago today, I joined my Uncle Teddy and thousands of excited students at American University to endorse Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Barack Obama had stirred something in young people and the young at heart. I saw the passion in my own teenage children, and I heard it from a different generation of people who said they felt like they did when my father ran for president. We felt strongly that we needed to elect a president who urged us to believe in ourselves, who could tie that belief to our highest ideals,...

STRONGEST CASE AGAINST ROMNEY A FEW SHEETS SHORT OF A REAM January 18, 2012Mitt Romney has spent more than 20 years in private enterprise, making thousands of business decisions affecting hundreds of companies that led to more than 100,000 new jobs and billions of dollars for employees and investors. So you can see why the left despises him. Among Romney's thousands of business decisions, the one I gather his opponents consider his absolute worst was the decision to close a paper plant in Marion, Ind. Which wasn't his decision at all. It was labor trouble at the Marion plant of...

HONOLULU — President Barack Obama paid his respects at Pearl Harbor on Thursday, offering a solemn tribute to the thousands of Americans killed on the “date which will live in infamy.” The president swapped his casual vacation outfit for a dark suit as he and the first lady toured the memorial on his first visit to the site since he came here in late 2008 as president-elect.

Some virtues are by accidents of history associated with utopianism, hostility to private property, anti-clericalism, and other core beliefs of the Left. I can scandalize a yoga instructor anywhere in the world by declaring myself an avid admirer of Margaret Thatcher, though I challenge you to read the yoga sutras and conclude from them that devotees must favor an overregulated financial sector. Concern for the welfare and dignity of animals is such an issue, associated with nihilist leftists such as Peter Singer and local totalitarians who seek to regulate pets out of existence. But one need not believe that animals...

Those organizing the 50th anniversary event — many of whom, like Longford, are not from Dallas or were born after 1963 — say they are not capitalizing on memories of Camelot. They want to show the world how far "Big D," the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country, has come from its days as a conservative outpost of big-haired socialites, oil tycoons and cowboys. "People arrive and expect to see people walking down the street in cowboy hats," said Phillip Jones, head of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Instead, they find a city with the sixth-largest gay and lesbian...

Yesterday's global-warming debate between John Kerry and Newt Gingrich was, as the moderator put it, "advertised as a smack-down and a prizefight." But those labels were too modest for Kerry. "Welcome to our environmental version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates," the former Democratic presidential nominee told the crowd in the Russell Caucus Room. "We flipped a coin, and I picked Lincoln." But something funny happened on the way to 1858. Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker, refused to play Douglas to Kerry's Lincoln, instead positioning himself as a tree-hugging green. Before Kerry got a word in, Gingrich conceded that global warming...

US teachers unions and Hispanic activists said Wednesday that an Arizona-style immigration law upheld by a federal judge last week is creating a "humanitarian crisis" as thousands of parents keep their children home, fearing that teachers will act as immigration agents. Alabama's first Republican supermajority since Reconstruction approved this summer what many consider America's toughest immigration law. And last week, federal Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn surprised many Americans when she upheld key parts of the law – including a portion that says schools must check the immigration status of children when they enroll, as well as the status of their...

Obama Re-election campaign ploy

These days, Republicans have the desperate aura of an endangered species. They lost Congress, then the White House; more recently, they lost a slam-dunk House election in a conservative New York district, then Senator Arlen Specter. Polls suggest only one-fourth of the electorate considers itself Republican, independents are trending Democratic and as few as five states have solid Republican pluralities. And the electorate is getting less white, less rural, less Christian — in short, less demographically Republican. GOP

(CNN) -- When President Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago and the powers that be were ignoring the voice of the people, he and others would lead the regular folks to the streets to show their dissatisfaction with the status quo. Now that House Speaker John Boehner has tried to trump the president in his request to speak before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, citing "security" concerns, Obama should ignore them and make his major jobs bill announcement before real Americans who, unlike Congress, don't have regular jobs, don't earn a taxpayer-funded six-figure check, didn't take...

Seventeen-year-old Claire Thomas has found the silver lining in Minnesota's government shutdown: she gets to spend more time with her two mothers on her summer vacation. Toby McAdams and her partner, Wendy Crowell, were both included in the mass layoff that left more than 20,000 state workers jobless. "It's actually a little bit nice to have my mothers home for a teency bit," said the soon-to-be high school senior. "But if it's (going to last) months, I can't imagine. I mean already my mom is wandering around a little lost, because she wants to work. ... Both of my moms'...

An employee of Bed, Bath & Beyond in St. Davids Square shopping center reported to Radnor Township Police on June 5 a package containing human vomit was left in the parking lot there. He estimated that about 35 pounds of vomit was in the package discovered June 5 and stated that a similar package was left in the same spot the week before. According to the employee, the package was concealed in a white kitchen trash bag and placed about 10 parking rows from the store behind a tree. Radnor Police redacted information that describes what the hidden package was...

An employee of Bed, Bath & Beyond in St. Davids Square shopping center reported to Radnor Township Police on June 5 a package containing human vomit was left in the parking lot there.

Update:A 30-year-old Pasadena woman charged with raping her son's 12-year-old friend was arrested Wednesday, according to the Galveston County Sheriff's Office.Brandi Fuller is being held at the Galveston County jail on a $35,000 bond for an out-of-county warrant from Harris County. Previous reporting:Police are searching for a 30-year-old Pasadena woman charged with raping her son's 12-year-old friend. Officials said the victim's mother arrived at the Pasadena Police Department on May 10, saying she believed her son, now 14, fathered a child with the suspect, Brandi Fuller. The boy's mother said she had been friends with Fuller for three years....

It doesn't get more locavore than this. Ice cream made from human breast milk. Or what about mom's milk cheese? It's the most natural of foods and yet, human breast milk is lumped in with bizarre and controversial foods, unless, of course, it's a suckling baby drinking it. The latest human breast milk product is Baby Gaga ice cream, sold in London, England, in a shop called The Icecreamists. The restaurant buys milk from mamas to make into ice cream flavoured with vanilla and lemon zest that it serves in a martini glass for about $22.50. "The Baby Gaga tastes...

WASHINGTON – Here's Michelle Obama's advice for couples this Valentine's Day: Laugh with your partner. She says it's what she and President Barack Obama do, and it seems to be working. Their marriage, although tested throughout the years by his political ambitions — for the Illinois Senate, the U.S. Senate and later president — is going on 19 years. "I think a lot of laughing," the first lady said Tuesday at a White House luncheon with reporters who asked about the Obamas' union. "I think in our house we don't take ourselves too seriously, and laughter is the best form...

Rep. Raul Labrador, a newcomer to Washington, reminded the crowds at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) of the current context: “We weren’t elected because the American people love Republicans. We were elected because the American people love Republican principles.” Not to throw cold water on a sentiment whose intent I can only applaud, still, it’s hard not to offer a challenge: What principles? Craven accommodation to the military-industrial complex? Empty “limited government” windbaggery? Inertia? The American people do respect many of the principles that have become commonly bandied-about in American politics, associated with the Republicans since Reagan or before....

Free Republic favorite Bill O'Reilly will be conducting Dear Leader Barack Obama's traditional Super Bowl pre-game interview live on Fox broadcast at 4:45 p.m. EST.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sarah Palin is honoring one Reagan and offending another with the same speech. The former Alaska governor is scheduled to speak in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Friday at a tribute to former President Ronald Reagan — just one of the celebrations marking the centennial of the 40th president's birth on Feb. 6. But his son, Ron Reagan, tells The Associated Press he doesn't see anything in common between his dad and the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, who was invited to speak by the event's sponsor, the conservative Young America's Foundation. "Sarah Palin is a soap...

Cultists now in charge Gene Lyons Some years ago, I reported on a self-defense/gun-safety class mainly for women at Rice University. There had been several forcible rapes on the Houston, Texas, campus. Students had armed themselves. The instructor was an Army ROTC officer. A Vietnam combat veteran, he found the prospect of undergraduates packing heat unsettling, but reasoned that if they were arming themselves anyway, some training was better than none. Unlike many entrepreneurs teaching concealed-carry classes from sea to shining sea, he urged students to leave their guns at home. He stressed that he couldn’t turn them into infantry...

Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the...

Run-of-the-mill violence Gene Lyons Probably every decent American had the same emotional reaction as former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the appalling events in her home state of Arizona. “It sounds like something that might happen in some place like Afghanistan,” she told The New York Times. “It shouldn’t happen in Tucson.” We keep saying that, but political assassinations and assassination attempts are more common in the United States than just about anywhere. During my adult life, lunatics with guns or bombs have changed American history more than any election: President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert Kennedy, Rev....

Iowa leads the presidential race with a star poll this year and the first caucus vote of the 2012 Republican presidential primary early next year. A new poll conducted by a GOP firm, Neighborhood Research, shows pro-life former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee leading the pack with the support of 24 percent of Republicans. Last time around, Huckabee finished in first place with a surprising victory over his better-funded and better recognized opponents. Should he run again, he now enjoys a 99% name recognition in the state and will likely have a better fundraising apparatus in place to make himself a...

Barack Obama would easily take Nevada if he had to stand for reelection today...unless the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney. Obama has early double digit advantages against Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin in the state but has just a single point edge over Romney. Nevada is one of the few swing states we've polled in the last couple months where more voters approve (50%) than disapprove (46%) of Obama. Like everywhere else in the country Democrats are largely happy with him and Republicans are most unhappy- what sets apart his numbers in Nevada is his popularity with independents, 55%...

Professional event planners choose Michelle Obama as their top choice to walk the red carpet at an event in 2011 in an exclusive reader survey conducted by BizBash, the leading trade media for the event industry. Twenty-five percent of readers chose Michelle Obama over a list of celebrities that included Lady Gaga, Sarah Palin, Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian, the Jonas Brothers, and the cast of Jersey Shore.

While recently watching the Coen brothers' new movie, "True Grit," I thought of how the story of a 14-year-old girl functioning in a world of rough and ruthless men conforms to the longstanding American myth of the pioneer woman - a myth that is especially relevant today, in the wake of congressional legislation that would have perished without a woman's strong leadership. American women were central to pushing the country westward and managing frontier towns of men who would've been happy drinking, shooting and killing each other if the female desire for order and tranquility had not been imposed upon...

The Nigerian government on Tuesday charged former Vice President Dick Cheney with bribery for his alleged involvement in a corruption scandal. The African country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is pursuing Cheney in connection with an investigation of bribes totaling $180 million believed to have been paid to Nigerian officials by Halliburton, the company Cheney headed from 1995 to 2000. “The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated that joint venture extensively and found no suggestion of any impropriety by Dick Cheney in his role of CEO of Halliburton,” Cheney’s attorney, Terrence O’Donnell, said in a statement...

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's anti-corruption police said on Thursday they planned to file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in a $180 million bribery case involving a former unit of oil services firm Halliburton. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday summoned the country chief of Halliburton and last week detained 10 Nigerian and expatriate Halliburton staff for questioning after raiding its Lagos office. "We are filing charges against Cheney," EFCC spokesman Femi Babafemi told Reuters, but declined to give any further details on what the charges were, or where they would be filed.

The latest controversy over Transportation Security Administration body scans and enhanced body pat-downs leaves no doubt: America truly is a nation of whiners. A CBS News poll found that 81 percent of Americans support full-body airport scanning. That reasonable view is being drowned out by elements on the left and the right who love nothing better than to proclaim that they are victims. First exhibit: Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who introduced the "American Traveler Dignity Act" to "protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse." Abuse? Have Americans become such babies that a pat-down designed to prevent another 9/11 causes adults...

WASHINGTON (Nov. 18) -- As the baby boomers who gave us the term "generation gap" turn 65, a new divide is opening between young and old over everything from health care to gay rights to the right to get high. Republicans and Democrats alike insist it's time to stop piling debt onto future generations, yet political observers say the electoral clout of seniors may prove the biggest obstacle to reining in government spending. And just as in the 1960s, when many older Americans stood on the sidelines of the civil rights and women's movements, polls show seniors are the least...

As the number of ballots left to count dwindles toward zero, staffers for U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's historic write-in campaign are looking forward to the moment they can declare victory over Joe Miller. "By the end of the day today anyone with simple arithmetic skills can draw some conclusions," said Murkowski campaign manager Kevin Sweeney. "By the end of the day tomorrow the count will actually be done so the campaign can make a declaration." The Miller campaign continues to insist that the race is "far from over." In a Tuesday morning press release Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto compared the...

ANCHORAGE — One-hundred and twenty-three people voted in the eroding, Southwest Alaska village of Newtok on Tuesday. Not one chose Republican senate nominee Joe Miller. One ballot went to Democrat Scott McAdams. Two people chose the Libertarian candidate. The rest? All write-ins -- which this year likely means Sen. Lisa Murkowski. "I was kind of scared (that) Miller might win," said Newtok tribal administrator Stanley Tom, whose job is similar to being a mayor in other towns. "We made a public announcement over the VHF radio to vote for Lisa Murkowski," he said. If the hand count of write-in ballots...

President Obama allowed Republicans to define the terms of the nation's political argument for the past two years and permitted them to draw battle lines the way they wanted. Neither he nor his party can let that happen again. Democrats would be foolish to turn in on themselves in a fruitless battle over whether their troubles owe to a failure to mobilize and excite their base or to win support from the political center. In fact, Democrats held onto moderate voters while losing independents. What hurt them most was this brute fact: Voters younger than 30 made up 18 percent...

Talk show host Jon Stewart was crowned the most influential man of 2010 on Tuesday, heading a list of 49 men who all swayed public opinion and were described as rule-breakers to some degree in a time of recession. Stewart, who will host President Barack Obama on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" this week before holding a "Rally to Restore Sanity" at the weekend, claimed the No. 1 spot in an annual survey of about 500,000 readers of AskMen (http://www.askmen.com), a men's lifestyle website. He was followed by Microsoft's Bill Gates while Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of social networking...

Carl Sagan, faculty from 1971 to 1996, is considered one of greatest popularizers of science. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 papers and 20 books. He won a Pulitzer Prize, and he was even nominated for a Grammy. In the 1980s, he co-wrote and narrated the award winning television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, about the origin of life on Earth and humanity’s place in the universe. His novel, Contact, was made into a film with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey

A state grant from the Arkansas Minority Health Commission (AMHC) received a bit of unfavorable attention in Legislative Joint Audit Committee on Friday morning. The Division of Legislative Audit presenting their findings that revealed issues with the grant’s finances but many are questioning whether the grant should have been awarded in the first place. The Tolbert Report obtained a copy of the grant application late Friday which reveals startling details. A non-profit organization called “Brotha’s and Sistah’s Inc.” (B&S) applied for and received a $50,000 grant as part of an overall $340,419 in grant awarded by the AMHC for HIV/AIDS...

I just got back. I had TIVO'ed  Diane Sawyer and ABC 's crack team's report on Islam. Forgive me for suggesting you watch it. What crap. Dangerous garbage. I hope America sees through this proselytizing for Islam. I am a half hour into this surrender stupidity and I wish to offer my apology for even posting about it. Sawyer spent the first half hour completely whitewashing Islam and advancing a fallacious Islamic supremacist narrative, da'wah. She got nothing right on Islam. Nothing.This is da'wah -- invitation to Islam. Sawyer and co. have tossed concretes and history out the window...

One of the guiding principles of the tea-party movement is based on a myth Wouldn't it be splendid if the solutions to America’s problems could be written down in a slim book no bigger than a passport that you could slip into your breast pocket? That, more or less, is the big idea of the tea-party movement, the grassroots mutiny against big government that has mounted an internal takeover of the Republican Party and changed the face of American politics. Listen to Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota and tea-party heroine, as she addressed the conservative Value Voters’ Summit in...

The recent event put on by Glenn Beck this past weekend, showed me a lot about that portion of middle America that has been getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Yet the middle of these Americans seems to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Boy Oh Boy the world sure has changed for them! What used to be a porcelain complexioned rosy cheeked European immigrant, has shockingly morphed into a range of brown and yellow skinned slant and slit eyed, bushy and dark browed, beard and mustachioed horde of freaking heathens! It must be very hard for Beck's White...

The culture of America is always under siege. Countless new arrivals have transformed American culture over the generations. Muslims from places as diverse as Morocco, Albania and Malaysia will change American culture, too. Whoever follows them will change it again. The idea that a handful of Islamic radicals can destroy a nation of 300 million people protected by the world's largest military is absurd. But questions about the Muslim world and its intentions toward the United States deserve answers, and I don't mean the ignorant rants polluting cyberspace. Fortunately, we have Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun and an...

LINK HERE will take you to Japanese YouTube clip of major Japanese TV network JNN/TBS and their short report on Glenn Beck D.C. event last weekend.In a word?ゲロ� (BARF!)

Tuesday night, my father won the Arizona Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Like so many times before, I stood behind him on stage proud and hopeful for the future—for both the state of Arizona and our country. It is no secret this seemed to have been the summer of anti-incumbency rhetoric in numerous Republican primaries. This is probably most evident in the Charlie Crist/Marco Rubio race in Florida, where Gov. Crist left the Republican Party to run as an independent against the much more conservative Rubio. It is a complicated time in politics, especially Arizona politics. I recently moved back...

Now that John McCain has taken care of his political business in Arizona, it is time for him to return to Washington and the responsibilities he bears as a leader of the Republican Party and the nation. (snip) One of the conspicuous failings in the past few years has been the absence of a second party making principled decisions on when to support and when to oppose the president. McCain has the best opportunity -- and the best credentials -- to restore this. (snip) It is up to McCain to choose when and how to exert the influence he commands......

It's easy to sympathize with President Obama over the drumbeat of misrepresentations of his religion, place of birth and even the validity of his Social Security number. Such defensiveness is unedifying in the context of a religiously pluralist society. Also, like the irrational opposition to the construction of an Islamic community center in New York City, it could confirm suspicions in the Muslim world that this country is hostile to Islam. One pollster suggested that growing misconceptions about the president's religion reflected the fact that Obama hadn't "made religion a part of his public persona" as much as he did...

With the power and authority of government office, you might imagine that hotties would be falling over themselves to get their hands on the great and good. In fact, that’s rarely the case – politics can be a dry, dry subject and it takes decades to get to the top. However, to test the rule, here are 12 of the hottest women in the world to be married into politics! With the power and authority of government office, you might imagine that hotties would be falling over themselves to get their hands on the great and good. In fact, that’s...

Nov. 3: DAVID ROBERTS, GRIST: It’s all I can do not to start bawling. LUKE MITCHELL, HARPER’S: I’m picturing something like VJ Day in Times Square. Seriously! JOHN BLEVINS, SOUTH TEXAS COLLEGE OF LAW: It’s all I can do to hold it together. Nov. 4: MOIRA WHELAN, NATIONAL SECURITY NETWORK: I’m looking across the street at my polling place, and the line is wrapped around the block. I nearly burst into tears when I saw it. I’m feeling like today is closing the door on a terrible era, and opening another. I’m glad you started this thread because I was...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi hosted an unveiling ceremony for plaques to recognize the contributions of enslaved African Americans in the construction of the United States Capitol this afternoon in the Rayburn Room of the Capitol. Also in attendance were , Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Republican Leader John Boehner, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Congressman John Lewis, Senator Blanche Lincoln, and Members of Congress.

Revolution in California and political regime change come November has been a theme of mine for weeks. Tuesday night's big victories for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina moved that agenda nicely down the field. And let me add to it. Following the Tuesday primaries, the mainstream media began calling this the year of the woman, pointing not only to Fiorina and Whitman in California, but to Sharron Angle in Nevada, Nikki Haley in South Carolina, and Democrat Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. But we need a qualifier here. This is really going to be the year of the women from the...

BOSTON, June 7 (UPI) -- Some Boston officials say they want to convert two former public toilet facilities into upscale outdoor eating establishments. The idea of converting the aging gothic-style "Pink Palace" at Boston Commons and a grungy closed-up restroom called the Duck House in the Back Bay Fens neighborhood will be presented to lawmakers at a Statehouse meeting Tuesday by the city's Parks and Recreation Commission staff, the Boston Herald reports.