Free Republic

Spring cleaning is a healthy tradition. If only politicians did it! They don't. When Barack Obama ran for president, he promised to clean house, "I'm not a Democrat who believes that we can or should defend every government program just because it's there. There are some that don't work." I cheered when I heard that! But politicians always say they'll get rid of waste. Then, once in power, they spend more . Obama sure has. "We just need to cut back!" said Obama, the candidate. He promised to end "waste at the Economic Development Agency and the Export-Import Bank that's...

Spring cleaning is a healthy tradition. If only politicians did it! They don't. When Barack Obama ran for president, he promised to clean house, "I'm not a Democrat who believes that we can or should defend every government program just because it's there. There are some that don't work." I cheered when I heard that! But politicians always say they'll get rid of waste. Then, once in power, they spend more . Obama sure has. "We just need to cut back!" said Obama, the candidate. He promised to end "waste at the Economic Development Agency and the Export-Import Bank that's...

A handful of Democratic Senators are up in arms about the Golden Globe awards. No, they’re not upset that Breaking Bad beat out House of Cards for best Television Drama Series. Instead, they’re fuming about a few actors using electronic cigarettes during the award show broadcast. They’ve fired off a strongly worded letter to NBC Universal and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for “glamorizing” the use of e-cigarettes. And now they’re going even further in advocating for a ban on these products in the U.S. Capitol. Banning consumption of electronic cigarettes in public has become a troubling trend of paternalistic...

With election season upon us and the Democrats' generic ballot numbers declining, President Obama has done the only thing he could do -- delay, again, the employer mandate in Obamacare. The new delay will run until 2016. The delay comes after a Congressional Budget Office report found anecdotal evidence of employers already shifting employees to part-time employment. The report also noted "(b)eginning in 2015, employers of 50 or more full-time equivalent workers that do not offer health insurance ... may respond to the employer penalty by seeking to reduce or limit their full-time staffing and to hire more part-time employees."...

"What matters?" It's a question Charles Krauthammer, psychiatrist-turned-Pulitzer-winning columnist, asks in the first sentence of his new book, a memoir-ish collection. The book is called "Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics." He explains how the working title for the book had originally been "There's More to Life than Politics" and was going to include just about everything but politics. Naturally, though, a man who "left a life in medicine for a life in journalism devoted mostly to politics" couldn't disengage. Thanks be to God. There is, of course, much more to life than politics. But...

There is plenty of angst to go around as conservatives lament the surrenders that led to the most recent meaningless “deal” crafted between Democrats and their willing Republican accomplices. But as we move forward amid a web of strategic arguments over how to proceed, it is important to close this month’s chapter with some clarity over what happened and what did not, what is true and what is false. So toward that end, here are the Top 10 lies of the October Struggle: 1. We just dodged a nearly fatal economic bullet. Please. The talk of default and unpaid bills...

'Mass Panic': Car chase from White House to Capitol ends in gunfire

Want a glimpse of what the Obamacare battle will look like in 2015? Just glance at liberal websites. You'll find a trove of insurance company bashing. Are insurance premiums rising instead of falling by the $2,500 per family that Obama repeatedly promised in 2009? They are. If you consult ThinkProgess, Daily Kos and Physicians for a National Health Program, you'll learn that it's the "greedy insurance companies" that are causing prices to rise, not the risibly titled, "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." You can take this to the bank: In the run-up to the next presidential election, Democrats will...

Welcome to The Hill's annual 50 Most Beautiful list! This year marks the 10th anniversary of the list and brings in a slew of new faces as, for the first time, White House and executive branch employees were eligible for consideration.

Currently 20 of the 100 U.S. senators are women, as are 78 of the 435 representatives, for a grand total of 18 percent of congressional seats. In contrast, according to exit polls, women made up 53 percent of the voters in the 2012 presidential election. President Obama won women by 10 points. This might lead you to wonder: Why aren't more women running for and winning elected office? There are four times as many men in Congress as there are women. In other words, those who are being elected do not represent those who are voting, at least from a...

Grassroots Americans from across the political spectrum will march in Washington, D.C., from Freedom Plaza to Capitol Hill on Monday from 9:30 AM until the early afternoon. Breitbart News will be broadcasting the event live online at Breitbart.com, starting when speeches from members of Congress and leaders in the activist community begin on Capitol Hill at 11 AM EDT and continuing until 4 PM EDT. Confirmed speakers at the event include Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), Reps. Steve King (R-IA) and Mo Brooks (R-AL), former Florida Republican Congressman Col. Allen West, conservative activist Wayne Dupree, the Rev....

1) Our own government chides those of us who pay taxes for being greedy because we don't want to give the politicians even more of our money to do things we don't want done at any price. 2) Increasingly, every bill that is proposed in D.C. seems to be crafted with the hope that at least 51% of the American people are ignorant or not paying attention to what the legislation actually does. 3) When there's a slip-up and members of Congress and their staff are *** gasp *** expected to follow the same laws as the rest of us...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is looking beyond Friday and the beginning of the sequestration. In an interview I conducted with him on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Ryan told me he believes a majority of Americans will come to understand how bad the debt is after the rhetoric gives way to reality. "Mitt (Romney) and I shadowboxed against the theory of big government," he says, "while (President) Obama made all the great promises of what it delivered and used soaring rhetoric to sell it, but that will be different in a second term (when) the results start materializing." As...

The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET, which is Hebrew for “truth), held a series of discussions on Capitol Hill Thursday, to a standing room only crowd of over 80 Congressional staffers, foreign diplomats and citizen activists, focused on the geopolitical and ideological threats facing the nation of Israel. The talks were part of EMET’s Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Seminar Series, a monthly briefing series held on Capitol Hill, intended to inform members of Congress and their staff on Middle East national security matters. Speaking first was Mark Langfan, who specializes in producing 3d topographical maps of Israel and...

GALLUP: Obama Ratings Negative in Most States, Highest in D.C. "Obama’s approval rating is below 50 percent in 37 states ... The president is most popular in Washington DC, where his job approval rating is an astonishing 83 percent." POLITICO: In Oakland, "[o]fficials say the window at Obama's office at 16th Street and Telegraph Avenue was broken as more than 100 protesters marched around 12 p.m. Friday ET."

SNIPPET: "A radical Tunisian Islamist leader, denied an entry visa into the United States during the 1990s, is scheduled to make two appearances on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of Tunisia's Ennahda Party, will attend a forum on the Arab Spring at the Cannon Office Building, an announcement from the event's sponsor, the Muslim Public Affairs Council's (MPAC) said. He'll also attend a special dinner Tuesday evening. Ghannouchi's Ennahda Party recently won the majority in the first free parliamentary elections since the ouster of Tunisia's longtime ruler, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali." SNIPPET: "In a May interview with the...

Outsider Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is spending a tumultuous week in Washington courting the GOP establishment. And, at least for now, it seems that the establishment likes him — despite allegations of sexual harassment that continue to surface. Following a series of private meetings with the Georgia businessman early in the week, Republican Members pronounced themselves impressed with Cain and unconcerned about the sexual harassment claims that have dogged the White House hopeful since Politico reported them Sunday. Cain spoke today with Members in several private settings as he sought to boost support for his campaign, sell his controversial...

Wading directly into the spending negotiations on Capitol Hill for the first time in weeks, President Obama on Saturday afternoon called the top Republican and top Democrat in Congress, telling them he supports a deal cutting another $23 billion from last year’s spending levels. In calls to House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, Mr. Obama also said time is running short, according to a White House statement recounting the calls. Mr. Boehner, in Republicans’ weekly radio address Saturday, said there is no final spending agreement but added Republicans’ pressure has pushed...

A Silver Spring man convicted of falsifying immigration documents had threatened to blow up the White House, the U.S. Treasury building, a federal courthouse and a Metro stop, vowing to "slaughter the enemies of Islam," federal prosecutors said Monday in court. Lajqi, an ethnic Albanian who came to the United States through Mexico in the mid-1980s, is a self-described "extremist militant," who said he was trained by Bosnian Muslim rebels, according to court papers. He was angry about American military involvement in Kosovo in the 1990s, and "blamed all Albanian deaths in Kosovo on the United States," the court papers...

The white House and Capitol Hill are no longer listening to Christian voices. Say goodbye to Billy Graham, James Dobson and other Christian influencers who kept political leaders honest and focussed on the God of the Bible. Those days are over. Now there's a strange voice and a foreign god leading the nation -- the spirit of Islam. A friend of mine on Facebook posted an alarming comment on my wall along with a shocking picture of thousands of Islamists praying on Capitol Hill.