Free Republic

Citing what he believes are clear signs the economy is bouncing back from recession, Vice-President Joe Biden yesterday touted Barack Obama's 'stimulus package' and bailout of Wall Street. Time for yet another fact-check on the pathological liars of the Obama Administration. Banks are failing at double the rate of last year. During 2009, which the government claims was the peak of the recession, the total number of bank failures at this point in the year was 40. It is already 83 for this year. Yet the FDIC is running ads on radio stations across the country attempting to scare people...

Presumably, the goal of the Muslim outreach effort has been to soften opposition to our wars in the Middle East, but this too has failed miserably. The Pew report notes that Mr. Obama "receives overwhelmingly low ratings from publics in predominantly Muslim countries for his job performance on Iraq and Afghanistan." Approval ratings ranged from 4 percent to 22 percent, with disapproval ranging 53 percent to 84 percent. When Mr. Obama took office, he promised a regional framework strategy, "AfPak," for resolving the war in Afghanistan that supposedly was more sophisticated than that of his predecessor. With just 6 percent...

While the country is focused on the growing catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from the BP oil spill and decades of asinine policies enacted by environmentalist extremist politicians, another looming threat is being overshadowed. Illegal aliens are continuing their assault on America, aided and abetted by the Obama Administration. (AP Photo/Drew Angerer). Hillary Clinton chimes in on the federal government's intention to sue Arizona over its new illegal alien law. Federal law is very clear on the subject of illegal aliens. It is a felony to aid or abet an illegal alien in any way in the United...

The White House kicked off a "recovery summer" public relations blitz yesterday to promote the alleged benefits of stimulus spending. The mood of self-congratulation was interrupted by a Labor Department report that found initial jobless claims for the week climbed by 12,000. A Conference Board survey showed the average wait in unemployment lines increased from 30 weeks at the start of the year to 34.4 weeks in May. It won't be a summer of love in those households.... It is easy to "create jobs" when one uses the Treasury as an unlimited checking account where the bills never come due....

In a display that was indicative of political opportunism at best and hypocrisy at worst, members of the House committee on energy ripped into BP as if Congress is the shining example of honesty and integrity. Time for a serious fact-check. Congress has no moral authority to rip BP if they do not include themselves in the blame-game. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). BP CEO Tony Hayward with Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, one of the worst of the extremist environmentalists in Congress. Some of the very ones on the committee who did the most moralistic sermonizing to BP CEO Tony Hayward are...

As the deepening crisis of the catastrophic Gulf oil disaster continues to unfold, several oil spill stories of major importance have been virtually ignored. Even the conservative media have refused by and large to cover these stories. Conservative Examiner was among the first to break these stories, yet to this day not a single major media outlet has been willing to report them, not even Fox News or conservative talk radio. These stories are explosive, conclusive, factually verified, and of utmost importance to understanding what is truly happening in the Gulf and the scenario that led to it. First, on...

Despite Mr. Obama's dark vision of shadowy forces and gutless politicians denying the world a utopia of green fuels, alternative-energy sources are called "alternative" for a reason. Current technology will not support their economical and affordable use. Scientists have been working on these challenges for decades and hardly need Mr. Obama's nattering advice. For all the condemnations of the internal-combustion engine, gasoline is an extremely efficient, safe and affordable fuel. Gasoline has 80 times the energy by weight of lithium batteries, which are energy-intensive to produce and toxic when disposed. Other potentially viable alternatives are stymied by government regulations. The...

Energy Policy: President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises to deny America the energy it needs. Saving the planet is nice, but just how do we plug the hole again? With an abundance of hand gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now. Contrary to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign...

Apart from the fact that last night's address from the Oval Office was nothing more than a PR campaign for the cap-and-trade energy tax scheme, Barack Obama's false reassurances to the residents of the Gulf coast show that either he lied or he is terribly misinformed. At this point in the disaster it is way too early to provide reassurances to anyone, anywhere. The reason is clear and dire. The Gulf oil disaster is much worse than anyone will admit, and the repercussions for human life could be potentially catastrophic. Obama repeatedly asserted that the disaster will not destroy the...

Five weeks into the Hurricane Katrina crisis, President George W. Bush's Gallup weekly public approval rating stood at 45 percent. Five weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank, the same survey pegged President Obama's approval rating at 46 percent. That is bad news for the White House. The worse news is that Mr. Bush's approval rating had increased five points since the Katrina crisis had started; Mr. Obama's has dropped four points. Katrina is sometimes seen as the breaking point for Mr. Bush's public approval ratings. Mr. Bush's general job approval did not plunge into the permanent...

Sticking to the game plan of 'never let a serious crisis go to waste,' Barack Obama intends to use the Gulf oil crisis as an excuse to push for his so-called 'cap-and-trade' tax-on-energy scheme in order to supposedly 'reduce our dependence on oil and fossil fuels.' Part of that game plan is to lie about the costs to average Americans. The scheme is nothing more than energy snakeoil tomfoolery. The Leftwing extremist proponents of this taxpayer-robbing trickery, such as Henry Waxman, D-California, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, grossly underestimate the costs of the plan, just as they have with...

According to ABC News, In Fort Jackson, La., Jindal has ordered the Guard to start building barrier walls right in the middle of the ocean. The barriers, built nine miles off shore, are intended to keep the oil from reaching the coast by filling the gaps between barrier islands. Jindal intends to send the bill for the massive project to BP. Meanwhile, Barack Obama traveled to the Gulf Coast for a 4th time today and compared the disaster to 9/11. Yet all the while the disaster keeps getting worse, and Obama, unlike George W. Bush in the aftermath of the...

Leadership: FDR said we had nothing to fear but fear itself. JFK asked what we could do for our country. Now we can add Obama's whine about the disaster in the Gulf: "I can't suck it up with a straw." 'Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless," the president told Grand Isle, La., locals in a video released Friday. "So I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw. All I can do is make sure that I put honest, hardworking, smart people in place ....

BP is a convenient scapegoat for those in the U.S. government and the environmentalist movement who are attempting to avoid any blame for the mega-disaster in the Gulf. The U.S. government and environmentalists are actually the ones to blame for the disaster. Over the past 30 years the environmentalist movement has gained enormous influence over public policy and Left-leaning politicians at the state and federal levels. No greater example of this lunacy can be found than the opposition to oil drilling in ANWR. They successfully brought California's economy to the brink of disaster, at least in part, due to their...

So a man swept into office on an unprecedented tide of delirious fawning is now watching his presidency sink in an unstoppable gush. That's almost too apt. Unfortunately, in the real world, a disastrous president has consequences. So let me begin by citing the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Canada. Whoa, whoa, don't stampede for the exits! The Canadian thing's just a starting point, I promise. If I'm still droning on about inside-Ottawa stuff five paragraphs down, feel free to turn the page to our exclusive 12-page pictorial preview of "Sex and the City 3," starring Estelle Getty...

It was Bill Ayers who gave Obama his first real job, if one can call it that, as the Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Project. Yet when asked about his relationship with Ayers in the 2008 Democratic primary debate, Obama downplayed this significant relationship by saying that Ayers was 'just a guy in the neighborhood that I knew.' The reason for the lies is clear. Obama knew he had to gloss over that relationship due to the fact that Ayers and Dohrn have both stated repeatedly, and recently, that they regretted having not 'done much more' in their radical...

Politics: The Senate just claimed the title of the world's most delusional body by refusing to strip unelected EPA bureaucrats of the power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This was the day freedom died. One wonders why we have a Congress at all. The 53 profiles in cowardice that could not get a cap-and-tax bill through the U.S. Senate voted Thursday to let the Environmental Protection Agency keep the unprecedented power Congress did not expressly give it. It is power that the EPA arrogated to itself through regulation to control every aspect of the American economy and our...

The Leftwing radicals that control the Democratic Party and exert overwhelming influence over the Obama Administration are now stating publicly that this week is the 'time to move.' Self-avowed Communist Van Jones, adviser to the President, gave a speech this week during which he stated that this is the week that in the future revolutionaries will look back to as the pivotal turning point at which radicals made their concerted move to fundamentally change our system of government from top to bottom. Andy Stern, the Leftwing radical who ran SEIU and is now a special adviser to the President, stated...

Drama continues to unfold as the Gulf oil disaster drags on. An eyewitness to part of the area effected by the disaster raises this question--what on earth is happening at Grand Isle, Louisiana? Apparently much more than what the public is being told. As previously reported, the Obama Administration has banned all citizen journalists, photographers, bloggers, and other observers from the region. The few 'authorized journalists' of the mainstream media that are being allowed in have been instructed not to photograph or write about anything that could cast the Obama Administration in a negative light. However, at least 2 citizens...

Overregulation: The Senate votes on blocking a government bureaucracy from usurping power never delegated to it by Congress. This administration may put Copenhagen above the Constitution, but we the people have other plans. The GOP's 1994 "Contract with America," a gift that keeps on giving, hopefully will rescue us once again from the clutches of an unelected bureaucracy, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been allowed by the Supreme Court to regulate every breath we take and every machine we operate. When cap-and-tax legislation was introduced in Congress, the Obama administration threatened that if Congress failed to act, the EPA...