Free Republic

The Obama administration has decided to walk away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the Afghanistan war in an effort to de-emphasize the president's pledge that he would begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials said Tuesday. The new policy will be on display next week during a NATO conference in Lisbon, Portugal, where the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014, according to three senior officials and others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy. Afghan President Hamid Karzai...

The Official Obama Administration Scandals List has just hit 1,500! The list contains the lies, broken promises, flip-flops, gaffes and scandals of Team Obama. From the President's early days in politics through today, the list has already filled up one book; Legacy of Lies - The 2009 Obama Administration! The latest three added to the list are... Biden's SmartA** GaffeSupreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan comparing the NRA to the KKK!Obama's Caribou Coffee Cover-Up! Please help me to spread the word about this incredible list! Tell your friends! Email your favorite liberals too! Tweet this post (or the list)! Facebook us!...

"Yesterday, President Barack Obama said, “We will continue to bear witness to the extraordinary events (in Iran)"...Bear witness? That’s it? That’s not what he promised! We take you back to December 1st, 2009. In his address to the nation from West Point, the President promised to be there for those oppressed by tyranny. From the Official Obama Administration Scandals List # 842: (12/1/9) "Tonight, the President of the United States told a brazen lie about Supporting Freedom. Barack Obama tonight said “America will speak out for” those living in tyranny! That’s a dang lie! He was silent when voices oppressed...

Obama crushes a medication policy he'd vowed to endorse. Such bogus election-year promises undermine democracy. Every now and then, an insider inadvertently exposes the hideous rationalizations that run the American political grotesquerie. The best known of these statements are memorialized on TV as "gaffes." But the ones that never become famous tend to reveal the ugliest assumptions of all. Case in point is the comment the pharmaceutical industry recently let fly in the Washington Post. The newspaper this week examined how the Obama administration crushed legislation that would have allowed Americans to purchase lower-priced FDA-approved medicines from abroad -- legislation...

"One thing Commander Quitter-in-Chief, Barack Obama, left out of his little West Point talk is that his new Afghan strategy has forced him to break a promise he made to the Army his first week on the job!... ...the...promise to soldiers that the Army would be moving to 2-for-1 Dwell Time — that is, each soldier would get twice the time at home as deployed. That move,...was aimed at combating record-high rates of suicide, divorce, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder..."

Former Monsanto vice president Michael Taylor may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history. Yet he has recently been appointed by Obama to be the U.S. food safety czar. It looks like we have yet another case of the fox guarding the hen house. The safety of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in the public food supply has been hotly debated in Europe. As a result, labeling laws have been enacted there to allow consumers choice in the matter. Yet in the U.S., the powerful agriculture lobby, which is dominated by Monsanto and a few other...

The man who took the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber from jail on compassionate grounds accused him yesterday of breaking an undertaking not to celebrate his release. Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, had shown “no sensitivity” to the families of those who died, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, told the Scottish Parliament. It was the first time that Scotland’s Nationalist administration has joined the condemnation of the triumphal scenes. Aware that Britain is caught in the cross-hairs of international outrage, Gordon Brown is expected today to urge Libya not to fête al-Megrahi further. Appearing...

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it. The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. “When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent...

The Promise: "Obama and Biden are calling for legislation that would allow withdrawals of 15% up to $10,000 from retirement accounts without penalty (although subject to the normal taxes). This would apply to withdrawals in 2008 (including retroactively) and 2009." Update April 10th, 2009: Penalty-free 401(k) penalty withdrawals still not on the agenda, and taxes are due next week .

After only two months in office, President Obama may have fallen short on a number of his campaign promises. As a candidate, he promised to allow public comment before signing bills, eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, provide tax credits to businesses for hiring new employees, allow Americans to withdraw funds from 401(k) and retirement accounts without penalties, ban lobbyists from serving in his administration, reform earmarks, bring all combat troops home from Iraq in 16 months, sign the "Freedom of Choice Act," give Americans $4,000 in credits for college and run a "transparent" administration. However, after giving his...

During his recent address to Congress Obama said that people making under $250,000 wouldn’t pay a single penny in additional federal taxes. I called that statement Obama’s “read my lips” moment, and I’m right too. Obama is already planning a massive tax hike for all Americans, albeit an indirect one. It’s called “cap and trade.” In one of the budget’s most ambitious proposals, the president plans to cap the emissions of greenhouse gases, forcing polluters to purchase permits for emissions that would be slowly brought down to 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below 2005 levels by 2050....

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks. "We need earmark reform," Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely." President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts...

7 Broken Promises: 1. Make Government Open and Transparent 2. Make it "Impossible" for Congressmen to slip in Pork Barrel Projects 3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public (republicans shut out) 4. No more secrecy 5. Public will have 5 days to look at a Bill 6. You'll know what's in it (Republican Senators didnt know) 7. We will put every pork barrel project online

It took only 16 days for President Obama to break his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the poor. When President Obama signed the SCHIP bill, increasing the excise tax on Tobacco products by 156%, he raise taxes on 55% of smokers who are the “working poor” and the 25% of smokers who live below the poverty line. This bill is to provide health care to many of these smokers’ children. If he cared about the health of these children, the purpose of the cigarette tax would be to deter smoking because many children from homes of smokers require...

Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 3:39 pmUpdate on Sunlight Before Signing As we've noted on the blog, the President has signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. We've also published the DTV Delay Act of 2009. Since a few questions have come in [NVA: I'll bet!], we want to update you on the President's campaign commitment to introducing more sunlight into the lawmaking process by posting non-emergency legislation online for five days before signing it. This policy will be implemented in full soon; currently we are working through implementation procedures and some...

President Barack Obama kept one campaign pledge Wednesday afternoon and at the same time violated another when he signed into law the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which extends health care coverage to 11 million low-income children. The White House views the SCHIP legislation as a down payment on Obama’s pledge to provide universal health care by the end of his first term. The bill ran into some partisan resistance because it allows states for the first time to use federal money to cover children and pregnant women who are legal immigrants. But Obama’s 5 p.m. signing came barely three...

I hope it's as bad as it sounds.

To reduce bills rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them, Obama "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." One of President Obama's major campaign planks was making government more open and accountable. It's a reaction to a habit in Congress of rushing bills through the House and Senate without giving people much opportunity to know what the bills would do. Indeed, sometimes members of Congress don't even know what's in the bills. So...

PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as: No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

In the 1992 Presidential campaign, candidate Bill Clinton mercilessly hammered President George H.W. Bush over his "broken promise." Bush had once famously said in a State of the Union, "Read my lips. No new taxes," only to be forced to raise taxes by a Democrat-controlled Congress. No single thing was more costly to Bush than his "broken promise." Well, Barack Obama is breaking a major promise before even being inaugurated. And an "I told you so" is fully warranted. On the campaign trail, Barack Obama repeatedly promised a 3,000 tax credit for American businesses hiring new full-time employees. But promises...

Bowing to widespread Democratic skepticism, President-elect Barack Obama will drop his bid to include a business tax break he once touted in the economic stimulus bill now taking shape on Capitol Hill, aides said last night. Obama suggested the $3,000-per-job credit last week as one of five individual and business tax incentives aimed at winning Republican support. He proposed $300 billion in tax relief in a bill that could reach $775 billion, and he resurrected the jobs-credit proposal from the campaign trail as one of his main provisions. (snip) "We've always said we're open to other ideas. This was never...

I'm Surprised to see this up to almost 1300 diggs so far. It links to a critical commentary by CNN's Cambell Brown of Obama breaking his pledge to accept public campaign financing. It looks like conservatives are making a presence known on Digg.

Politics wasn't invented to be clean, positive and reassuring. It was invented so that one group could beat the holy hell out of another. To do that, they need money. Lots of it. All told, candidates for the presidency have raised more than $1.5 billion since January 2007. This staggering sum is bound to arouse dismay in all high-minded people. And remember, we're not even counting those "independent" advocacy groups that are dredging the swamp for votes. But before we get all moralistic about the state of the union, let's put these numbers in perspective. Americans spend around $8 billion...