Free Republic

This is most peculiar. No one would know who she was if she didn't come forward. View video here

The repeal vote is also an important statement for political accountability. The president and his allies jammed Obamacare through Congress with an arrogance not seen in many years. They had large majorities in the 111th Congress, and they were determined to use it to pass a government-run health plan, come what may. At every crucial step, they chose to go it alone with Democrats rather than compromise in any meaningful way. To get the votes for passage, they bullied opponents, bought votes, and made an end run around the Senate after Scott Brown’s victory — all because they wanted to...

Matching hungry Depression-era Americans with farm surpluses motivated the first Federal food stamp program in the 1930s. Today, to remove the stigma of paying at the supermarket with the stamps, some 120 Million Americans get Electronic Benefit Transfer debit cards (EBT) from the renamed Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). Applications are pouring in every day as radio and TV ads, paid for with taxpayer funds, inform the world how to get free food. Since the states administer the program for the Feds, individual states have gotten creative.

There is so much misinformation and grossly misleading talk about what will happen if the federal debt ceiling isn’t increased that, before any more unnecessary bloodcurdling language is used that increases everyone’s anxiety, it’s worth taking a few steps back from the edge. First, not raising the current federal debt limit absolutely will not immediately shut down the federal government. In fact, the federal debt ceiling has virtually nothing to do with whether federal departments and agencies continue to operate. Borrowing is just one of the ways the federal government finances its activities, and not increasing the debt ceiling only...

For all the accolades President Barack Obama has won for his call to end the blame game and restore civility, there is one audience he has failed to win over: the ones pointing the fingers. Partisans on the left and the right continued Friday to say it is right to call the other side to account. They said Mr. Obama’s speech in Tucson Wednesday night amounted to a ducking of tough choices, not a heroic embrace of ambiguity. <---- snip ----> “The call for toning down the ‘heated political rhetoric’ is a convenient scheme by the permanently intemperate and propaganda...

While Speaker John Boehner called for a “free exchange of ideas” today on the House floor, the truth is nothing is likely to pass this week or ever. The only piece of legislation the House will consider this week is a resolution in support of Rep. Giffords and the shooting victims which is expected to pass by voice vote this afternoon. After that the Republicans leave on their annual retreat. The odds of the GOP agreeing to increase members' budgets in this economic climate are slim-to-none.

Global warming, Vaccines v. Autism, DDT, Saccharine, Alar . . . Aside from the fact that these claims always begin with a dubious “scientific” study and then escalate as other “scientists” climb on the funding bandwagon, the other element is always the role that the mainstream media plays in keeping the fraud alive until the sheer weight of evidence makes it impossible to do so. Ultimately, this destroys the trust we normally accord to legitimate scientists, exhausting our ability and willingness to embrace the science that has prolonged and protected the lives of millions.

Madison - Labor contracts for state workers dramatically stalled in the Legislature late Wednesday after the leader of Senate Democrats defied his party and cast the deciding vote to reject them. In a rare lame-duck session before Republicans take over the Legislature, the no-pay-raise contracts for tens of thousands of workers were approved by slim majorities in the Assembly with a decisive vote cast by a lawmaker released from jail. But senators tied 16-16 with one senator absent on the contracts and outgoing Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Wausau) and Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) voting with all Republicans against...

"If her name was Bristol Smith or Bristol Jones, she would not be on the show or she would not have gotten this far," he said. "She went from being a bad dancer to a mediocre dancer. But she was not the best dancer."

In this way, the “Don’t touch my junk” fiasco raises, yet again, what has become the central theme of Mr. Obama’s presidency: America’s faltering confidence in the ability of government to make things work. From stimulus spending and the health care law to the federal response to oil in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Obama has continually stumbled — blindly, it seems — into some version of the same debate, which is about whether we can trust federal bureaucracies to expand their reach without harming citizens or industry.

TSA’s other body-scanner contractor is Rapiscan Systems Inc. In 2009, the company was awarded an agreement that could be worth up to $173 million. And like L-3, Rapiscan has a notable K Street presence. Holland & Knight, Rapiscan’s outside lobbying firm, has earned $480,000 in fees from the company since May 2008, according to lobbying disclosure records. David Whitestone, a former aide to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), and John Buscher, once the chief lobbyist for United Airlines, are lobbying for the company. Overall, Rapiscan has spent close to $3.6 million on lobbying since 2007, according to records.

The secret peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban leaders took a giant step backwards Monday. Turns out, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, an alleged boss in the ranks of terror and the supposed key to negotiating a peaceful future, was a fake. His impostor sham fooled the best. The man pretending to be Mr. Mansour was given diplomatic treatment for his role in the talks, including being flown on NATO aircraft from Pakistan to Kabul and escorted to the presidential palace for three meetings. A Western diplomat was quoted saying he also received "a lot of money." The jig...

2. What has the fall of the New York Times meant for America, if anything?The Times is the Harvard of news. It is at the top of the journalistic food chain and what it says is news sets the agenda for much of the rest of the press. That might be changing somewhat, but it’s still important. The problem is that the Times has seen a lessening in its commitment to agnostic, professionally detached and neutral reporting in favor of advancing its political values in a way very correctly characterized, in many cases, as “cheerleading.” Yet this kind of p.c....

We are exceptional then, but not because we are so special, so much better than people of other nations. Rather it is because God graced us with founding fathers who were brilliant at understanding human nature and who had spent considerable time studying what constitutes good governance and they codified those thoughts in a gorgeous federal republic guided by a written constitution. Founders who, perhaps alone in history ceded their power to the people in the belief that self governance by free men beat any other system known to man, It is our obligation in every generation to preserve and...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport. That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest. "Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process," says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA...

Guess who was the real big winner in the 2010 midterm election? The word on the street in Washington is that it was Dick Armey, the former House majority leader. I'll bet you didn't even know he was on the ballot. Guess what? You were right. But he's being hailed as "the godfather of the tea-party movement." And he is being positioned by insiders – as well as his own PR machine and a media determined to constrain the impact of the grass-roots activists actually responsible for the historic congressional shift – to serve as an adviser to the Republican...

Anti-tax activists everywhere have been loudly arguing for an extension of George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in the United States. Now a group of millionaires is arguing the opposite. More than 40 of the nation's millionaires have joined Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength to ask President Obama to discontinue the tax breaks established for them during the Bush administration, as Salon reports. "For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you allow tax cuts on incomes over $1,000,000 to expire at the end of this year as...

In a letter Thursday to a top official of the Anti-Defamation League, Ailes apologized. He said he should have instead said "nasty inflexible bigot." <---> snip <---> Both NPR and Fox News say Ailes has not apologized to NPR executives for calling them Nazis.

Janet Napolitano is getting a lesson: treat customers unreasonably and they will leave. Airport operators do not have to use TSA to screen passengers, and the first airport has already announced it will use one of the five private screening firms already approved to offer security screening for air travelers. Unsurprisingly, the move comes from a scrappy underdog airport which competes with a larger, more famous facility: Orlando Sanford Airport, which is much smaller and farther from the Disney/Universal Studios attractions than the better-known Orlando International Airport. Sanford is a focus airport for low cost carrier Allegiant (which offers service...

The onetime Republican strategist is a man of strong opinions, in case that wasn’t clear, and he also puts his money where his mouth is. When Juan Williams was fired by National Public Radio for remarks he made on Fox about fearing airplane passengers in Muslim garb, Ailes rushed to award him a three-year, $2 million contract. “A guy who gets fired and humiliated in the press can lose a lot of confidence,” Ailes says. Calling Williams “a pure liberal,” Ailes says he wanted to compensate the pundit for his losses because he was “mad” and “I didn’t want him...