Free Republic

As the landmark Supreme Court decision looms next month, Republicans have been privately considering a plan to reinstate some popular provisions of “Obamacare” if it’s struck down. The revelation sent conservative advocates — who have demanded nothing less than total repeal — into a tizzy, which forced House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to reaffirm his commitment to “repealing Obamacare in its entirety,” declaring that “[a]nything short of that is unacceptable.” But more evidence is emerging that Republicans believe that’s not tenable. Rep. Allen West (R-FL), a tea party darling, told ThinkProgress that he supports preserving three popular provisions of the...

The wishful scenario many Republicans envisioned after Barack Obama’s change of heart this month on gay marriage—the president’s African-American base, far less supportive of expanding marriage than other parts of his coalition, becomes demobilized or even defects as a result of Obama’s stance—already seems unlikely to be realized. Last Thursday, Public Policy Polling revealed a 36-point swing in black support for gay marriage among Maryland voters, who will have the chance to legalize the practice in a November referendum, since PPP’s last poll on the subject in March. Then, 56 percent had been opposed to the new marriage law and...

How would they destroy our economic system and self governing system and replace them with something else? It takes patience. First they must convince the populace that America is the main source of many of the world's problems. Furthermore, that Free Enterprise created the current real economic threat, the imagined ecological stress and that government can do better by playing the Blame Game using the following: - Propaganda - Generational dependency - Regulations on business - Attack Industry - Divide and Conquer Americans - Mob rule - Destroy the Military from within - Attack, corrupt and infiltrate Religion and Morality...

Everyone knows that ObamaCare will discourage employment. Everyone who stops and thinks that is. Yesterday's job report was genuinely awful. Here is a congressional hearing on why ObamaCare is making things worse. By mandating that employers buy expensive health insurance for their employees, the new health reform law will raise the cost of labor and make it more expensive than otherwise to hire new workers. Plus, the law forces employees to have this expensive fringe benefit, even if they would prefer a less costly health plan in exchange for higher wages. To make matters worse, the health plan that employers...

Last week, two prominent Catholic women -- Kathleen Sebelius in an address to the graduates of Georgetown University's public policy school, and Maureen Dowd in a column published in the New York Times -- delivered strong statements about the Church's role in civil society. Dowd's column was more or less a screed, while Sebelius's address was relatively measured in tone. Yet both were marked by some pretty fundamental misunderstandings, which have, sadly, become widespread. Echoing an army of commentators from the last fifty years, Dowd exults in James Joyce's characterization of the Catholic Church (drawn, it appears, from the pages...

As the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition I have had the opportunity to read stories of despair and other stories of hope. The story that I am writing about today is one of the greatest stories of hope. This is the story of Lilliana Dennis, a child who is living with Trisomy 18, a rare genetic condition that many doctors have labelled as "incompatible with life." This is a story of a child who was not supposed to live. A child who has a condition that most doctors would refuse to provide treatment for and let to die,...

We are winning; defeating the evil that is liberalism in large and small battles ways every day. What is happening to the Susan B. Komen for the Cure Foundation governing board is a good example of our victories. Last January when the Komen board was confronted with the fact that secretly produced videos proved Planned Parenthood would knowingly arrange an abortion for a supposed under aged prostitute, it did the right thing and stopped funding the death mills. They listened to their donors who demanded they stop giving their money to a group devoted to killing babies. Nevertheless, within days...

If you never watch another 6 MINUTE VIDEO - WATCH THIS ONE! DR. DAVID JANDA from Ann Arbor , a nationally known health care expert spoke on on behalf of candidate Rob Steele on Sunday Oct 10 2011 in Saline, WI. His comments here are repeats of his testimony before congress - the one you never heard about in Obama's media. THIS WILL SEND CHILLS DOWN YOUR SPINE - GUARANTEED.

The Obama campaign has released a new ad suggesting that little girls will never be able to live full lives unless the government subsidizes their birth control. The YouTube video titled “Letters to the President: The Dreams of Our Daughters” features a mother talking about her two young daughters, six-year-old Daisy and nine-year-old Caroline, in a letter to President Obama. She thanks him for the HHS mandate, which requires all religious institutions and other businesses to include free coverage for birth control, sterilization and abortifacient drugs even if it violates their deeply held religious beliefs. While no overt mention of...

Chilling Undercover Video Sheds Light on Growing Trend LINK TO WATCH VIDEO AUSTIN, May 29 – Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Austin, TX encouraging a woman to obtain a late-term abortion because she was purportedly carrying a girl and wanted to have a boy. The video is first in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.“I see that...

Your parents spill a few secrets as they get older. One night at dinner with my mom, I ventured that the rhythm method had worked well for her, given that there were six years between my sister Peggy and my brother Kevin, and six more between Kevin and me. She arched an eyebrow. "Well, sometimes your father used something," she said. My parents were the most devout Catholics I've ever known. But my dad came from a family of 16 in County Clare in Ireland, and my mom's mother came from a family of 13 in County Mayo. So they...

The archbishop of Washington on Sunday accused the network news programs of having "missed the boat" by largely ignoring lawsuits filed this past week by Catholic institutions challenging the Obama administration's so-called contraception mandate. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," was responding to an analysis by the conservative Media Research Center of how the networks' evening newscasts treated coverage of the dozen federal lawsuits filed Monday. According to the center, CBS spent 19 seconds on the story after it broke, while the other networks gave it no coverage. "It is puzzling, particularly since they're focusing so much attention...

Only in public schools and universities is the fairly tale still taught that governments are representative of the people. The blue collared man on the street realizes the chips are stacked against him. For those who don’t have political connections, the pseudo fascist system that is still referred to as “capitalism” in the U.S. is akin to a casino game of chance. That is, the odds are always in the house’s favor. The house is the federal leviathan and its equivalent at the state and local level as well as the big, cartelized industries which feed off government protection. As...

The nation’s changing views on same-sex marriage and new support from black leaders could put Maryland on track toward becoming the first state to cast a public vote in favor of gay marriage, according to a poll released Thursday. The survey from liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling showed 57 percent of Maryland voters would vote for gay marriage if it is put to referendum this fall and just 37 percent would vote against it — a stark departure from past polls by the firm and other groups that have shown Marylanders to be almost evenly divided on the issue. More than...

The excellent Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has a great timeline on their site about the HHS mandate, along with a detailed list of plaintiffs against the Obama Administration. HHS Mandate Timeline: August, 2011, Federal government issues a regulation requiring that all group health plans must cover “[FDA-]approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.” The mandate, a provision of the “Affordable Care Act,” would take effect August 1, 2012.November 10, 2011, Press Release,  Belmont Abbey College Sues Federal Government (Becket Fund)December 21, 2011, Press Release, Colorado Christian University First Evangelical University to Fight Abortifacient Mandate (Becket Fund)January...

STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA, May 24, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A California-based bishop is concerned that the lawsuits to overturn the HHS mandate filed by the leading dioceses and institutions of his Church may be used to underscore political criticism of the Obama administration. Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton told America magazine that, while the bishops he knows in California “are strong supporters” of these religious liberty lawsuits, “I think there are different groups that are trying to co-opt this and make it into political issue.” Forces “very far to the Right” may be tempted to make the legal challenge a part of...

The news Monday that 43 different Catholic entities across the country are suing the Obama administration, in response to the Health and Human Services' (HHS) rule mandating employer health care coverage of contraception, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization, comes as a blow to the president's strength among Catholics, a demographic that helped carry him to victory in 2008. This news comes on the heels of the the latest CBS News/New York Times poll which finds Mitt Romney now leading President Obama among women, yet another demographic that he previously commanded. If Mr. Obama was hoping to once again rely on Catholics...

A newly released Gallup poll shows that only 41% of Americans now identify themselves as "pro-choice," a record low. A look back at the history of these polls shows at least two things: they are notoriously fickle, often seeming to show a reaction against the party in power; but there is also a general trend in the pro-life direction, which Gallup acknowledges. So, while we in no way base our pro-life convictions on polls, it is encouraging to see this general trend. And this trend is supported by other objective evidence of a changing of America's heart on the issue...

Americans now tilt "pro-life" by nine-point margin, 50% to 41%

At sometime in the future a political scientist – maybe one not yet even born- will point to Barack Obama’s declaration of war against the Catholic Church as the worst move of many bad moves he has made in his inordinately poor campaign for reelection. Perhaps no other stupid Team Obama move better highlights the gulf between actual Americans and the phony Obama. It reminds us that Obama may (or may not) have been born in America and has spent his parasitical life here, but he is not OF America. He doesn’t understand America and the over rated schmucks that...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - At a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver tonight, President Obama set out to upend conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending. "I'm running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law," he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency. "My opponent won't admit it, but it's starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I've been president, federal spending has...

Yesterday I attended a meeting of pro-choice colleagues working to ensure women throughout this country get safe, compassionate abortion care. Today, I received an email from one of those colleagues, detailing the ordeal through which she was put by American Airlines on her flights home. They actually forced her to miss her connecting flight and demanded she change her top. The reason? Her politically salient pro-choice t-shirt was offensive to the flight crew. That sign said: "If I wanted the government in my womb, I'd f*** a senator." ...

This column originally appeared in THE DAILY BEAST. In looking ahead toward the November election, Republican strategists should take proactive steps to avoid a damaging, dangerous conclusion to the presidential race and to prevent the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama. The problem stems from the lopsided margins President Obama will surely pile up in a few uncontested states with big populations, including California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, will prevail by comparable margins in only relatively small states: Utah, Idaho, the...

ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, today announced it has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the HHS mandate, on behalf of Legatus, the Nation’s largest organization of top Catholic business CEOs and professional leaders. Also joining in the lawsuit as Plaintiffs are the Weingartz Supply Company, a Michigan retailer since 1945, and its President who is a member of Legatus. The 42-page Complaint was filed late yesterday afternoon against the Obama administration in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Legatus” is the...

You'd think the largest legal action in American history in defense of religious liberty would be a major news story. But ABC, CBS and NBC don't judge news events by their inherent importance as relates to the future of our freedoms. They deliver the news according to a simple formula: Does it or doesn't it advance the re-election of Barack Obama? If it doesn't, it isn't news. On May 21, 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations sued the Obama administration over its ridiculously narrow idea of how a "religious institution" can be defined under the Obamacare law. Never has the Catholic...

Ave Maria University has become the second Catholic college to announce it will discontinue its student health insurance plan due to the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. In a May 21 statement, university president Jim Towey called the mandate “an affront to our core values.” “Ave Maria University will not offer or pay for health insurance plans that violate our deeply-held religious beliefs,” he said. The announcement comes amid continued controversy over a federal insurance mandate that will require employers and colleges to offer health care plans that cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-causing drugs, even if doing so violates their religious...

The Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund is hopping into the Nebraska Senate race and has supported the pro-life candidate who is looking to take the seat currently held by Ben Nelson, who upset pro-life voters with his Obamacare support. The national pro-life political action committee today announced its endorsement of Deb Fischer for U.S. Senate in Nebraska. “Deb Fischer is a fighter for unborn children and their mothers. Her record in the Nebraska state legislature is one of fighting passionately for pro-life, pro-woman policies,” said Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “On the other hand, the...

The evening news broadcasts all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom. The May 21 editions of ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News refused to report the fact that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Obama administration. CBS Evening News gave this historic news a mere 19 seconds of air time. This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that...

Freedom Of Religion: Deciding not to go quietly into the secular night of ObamaCare, 43 Catholic institutions have sued for the right to practice what they preach and they thought the Constitution already guaranteed them. The 43 institutions are situated in 16 jurisdictions from the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., to the University of Notre Dame. Yes, that Notre Dame, where President Obama in 2009 gave a commencement address in which he called for "open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words" in the pursuit of "common ground." Seeing that common ground shifting under their feet, the Catholic institutions have decided to pick...

BURLINGTON, VERMONT, May 22, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The city council of Burlington, Vermont, has passed a new ordinance that could have the effect of banning pro-life protesters from exercising their right to protest in front of the town’s Planned Parenthood facility. On Monday, council members voted to establish a 35-foot “safety zone” about the town’s abortion clinic by a vote of 13-1. Republican Paul Decelles cast the lone dissenting vote. The measure now goes to a three-member Ordinance Committee for final wording. Ten council members supported the measure going in, although the Burlington Free Press reports pro-life and pro-choice citizens...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 22, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Obama administration’s HHS mandate has united Christians of all stripes – evangelical, historical Protestant, and Roman Catholic – as they close ranks behind a flurry of lawsuits filed yesterday morning to overturn the controversial measure and stall government interference in religion. After 43 Catholic institutions – including the major archdioceses, dioceses, universities, and publishing houses affiliated with the Church in the United States – filed a dozen lawsuits to strike the measure down on First Amendment grounds, the Christian and conservative communities quickly applauded the move. President Obama with Secretary of Health...

Health Care: The Obama administration just inked a $20 million deal with PR firm Porter Novelli to help promote ObamaCare. Why do they need to promote a law that was supposed to get more popular once it passed? According to news accounts, the multimedia campaign is mandated by ObamaCare as a way to educate the public about how to stay healthy and prevent illnesses. Right. Like another $20 million will make a difference on top of the avalanche of public health news already out there. A Health and Human Services official let slip the real reason, telling Roll Call that...

Why did the Catholic Church wait until 1992 to pardon Galileo? Answer: the Pope is no mere president, the Church hierarchy no mere Congress. They cannot simply change opinion. They derive their authority from a higher, infallible authority. To admit error, is to question the Church’s connection to the higher authority, and thus undermine the institution. The Supreme Court is in a similar position. The Court is no mere legislature, free to change its mind through personnel turnover or popular demands. The Court seeks Truth, the meaning of the Constitution. At the very least, it must maintain the pretense that...

May 22, 2012 (The Crescat) - The bumper sticker read, “Having an abortion does not make you un-pregnant, it makes you the mother of a dead baby”. The word “mother” struck me because “mother” is such a powerful word. It conjures many meanings, and when a woman becomes one she is fundamentally changed. “Mother” as a verb means to nurture, care for and protect. “Mother” as a noun means a female person who is pregnant with or gives birth to a child; or a female person whose egg unites with sperm, resulting in the conception of a child. By this...

Abortion pictures are not pleasant to view, particularly on one’s way to Sunday morning worship service at a pro-choice church. For the past several weeks Todd Bullis has taken his Church Project to the Custer Road United Methodist Church in Plano, Texas. Showing the reality of abortion through abortion pictures, Todd and his team have made it their mission to educate church goers that the place where they worship condones this heinous act against God, in whose image we are made. There is no denying, although some uneducated parishioners tried, that the United Methodist Church supports abortion. From its website:...

The main goal of the contraception mandate is not to protect women's health. It is a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda. This week Catholic bishops are heading to federal courts across the country to defend religious liberty. On Monday they filed 12 lawsuits on behalf of a diverse group of 43 Catholic entities that are challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) sterilization, abortifacient and birth-control insurance mandate. Like most Americans, the bishops have long taken for granted the religious freedom that has enabled this nation's diverse religions to flourish in relative harmony. But...

The Defense funding bill that will get a house vote later this week includes provisions that would protect conscience rights for military chaplains and prohibit same-sex marriage ceremonies from being performed on U.S. military bases. Amendments to the Fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act authored by House Armed Services Committee members Steve Palazzo (R-Miss.) and Todd Akin (R-Mo.) for that purpose were approved in committee last week, but not without a fight. The provisions continued to be a source of controversy as debate on the bill began on the House floor Wednesday. Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) said the amendment only...

Today's Roman Catholic calendar lists May 21st as the feast day of St. Christopher Magallanes, a martyr killed for celebrating Mass during the Cristero War in Mexico. Perhaps Catholics today may want to recall St. Thomas More -- the patron saint of lawyers, who was executed for refusing to agree to a mandate that gave Henry VIII the prerogative of defining religious expression in England. Dozens of Catholic institutions filed lawsuits today against the Department of Health and Human Services over its mandate and its narrow definition of religious practice: Catholic archdioceses and institutions filed suit in federal district courts...

Statement as issued Monday by Our Sunday Visitor: HUNTINGTON, Ind., May 21, 2012 - Our Sunday Visitor has joined with the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the University of Notre Dame and other Catholic organizations in filing federal lawsuits to block an unprecedented infringement on religious liberty. The lawsuits are in response to regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that would force all Catholic organizations and employers to provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception to their employees free of charge, despite the fact that they are against Catholic teaching. The regulations also narrowly define what...

In 2009, President Obama delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. Now, Notre Dame is suing his administration over its insistence that Catholic schools and other institutions provide insurance coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives, and other abortifacient drugs without any meaningful opt-out for conscientious objectors. Rev. John Jenkins, the university's president, was given much grief over his commencement invitation to President Obama in 2009. Today, he sent the following email to Notre Dame employees, announcing and explaining the lawsuit.

The Illinois Tea Party is shocked to learn House Republican Leader Tom Cross is cutting a deal with Chicago Democrats to implement Obamacare two years early in Cook County. "We have fought the passage and implementation of Obamacare for three long years," said Denise Cattoni, State Director of the Illinois Tea Party. "For Tom Cross to flip-flop on Obamacare while its constitutionality is being ruled on in the Supreme Court is unfathomable. Obamacare was written behind closed doors and passed against the will of the people through backroom deals. Illinois Republicans seem poised to repeat that same mistake."

If you have any doubts that Obama will be sent packing from the White House in November, then cast your eyes at this list of reasons Barack Obama will be a one-term president.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Michelle Obama, the attorney wife of pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, is coming under fire for a letter she wrote defending partial-birth abortions. The 2004 letter, written to help Obama in his campaign for his U.S. Senate seat, opposes the ban on the abortion procedure. In February 2004, Michelle Obama penned a fundraising letter to help her husband Barack raise funds for his Illinois-based Senate seat. The letter contends the federal ban on partial-birth abortions "is clearly unconstitutional" and "a flawed law." Though the three-day-long partial-birth abortion procedure involves the partial birth of a baby...

As a general in the War on Women, Barack Obama might be best compared to one who inadvertently fires on his own positions. Team Obama has tried to exploit the usual gender gap in national elections by claiming to fight on behalf of women. Earlier this month the campaign rolled out the creepy “Life of Julia� campaign, and President Obama himself launched the same attacks at a recent commencement speech at all-female Barnard College. How effective has Obama been at this war? Former CNN and NBC anchor Campbell Brown wants Obama to surrender immediately, as she writes in yesterday’s New...

So it’s unanimous, then– Thomas Edsall was right: In the aftermath of Obama’s gay marriage flip, pundits seem to have concluded that Obama’s Democratic party has indeed given up on white working class voters. They’ve been dropped from the winning coalition, which is now composed of three main groups: “young people, college-educated whites (especially women), and minorities,” according to Ron Brownstein. Bill Galston agrees. Ruy Teixeira–who once wrote a book called America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters–agrees. Here’s Teixeira on how Obama can win Arizona: First, the share of Hispanic voters must grow and their support...

This election is being fought along the traditional skirmish line of capital versus labor. President Obama projects himself as the protector of workers and families who are preyed upon by greedy and wealthy capitalists. Mitt Romney counters that the president doesn't understand business and that his antagonism discourages private investment and job creation. A couple of observations on the table. First, capital income doesn't flow just to "fat cats." It also goes to small businesses, retirement accounts, college endowments, ordinary shareholders, landlords and people who collect interest. Second, labor's shrinking share isn't necessarily a disaster for workers. What else is...

A neurologist named Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna tells of a potential treatment for persistent vegetative state.  From the MSNBC report: Researchers from the University of Munich recently reported that they were able to awaken an 82-year-old woman who’d been in a persistent vegetative state by using injections of her own immune cells. The woman, who had suffered a stroke, had been cared for at home by her family and a home health nurse — for nine long years. Then her doctors proposed an experimental new treatment, offering to give the octogenarian intramuscular injections of her own immune cells, specially activated in...

Clement’s career is cresting just as the momentous legal crusades of a radicalized Republican Party are reaching the appellate level. His ability to strip the politics out of a contentious argument, the goodwill he engenders from Democrats, and his chumminess with the justices�these are all qualities that would appear to be anachronistic in contemporary, hyperpartisan Washington. But the case of Paul Clement suggests that, at least in one corner of the capital, they are very much in demand. Clement disputes this political interpretation. �Look, I get it, I hang out in this town, I understand how people are looking at...

Newt Gingrich took the stage at the Georgia Republican Party state convention on Saturday wearing a Mitt Romney sticker, focusing his attacks on President Barack Obama and attempting to energize the crowd around his former Republican rival. "To every conservative, everywhere in America: When your choice on the one hand is Barack Obama, and your choice on the other hand is Mitt Romney, no serious conservative could possibly believe that electing Barack Obama is acceptable ... for America."

...In a statement, the campaign says Mr Romney would support using an executive order to waive "Obamacare" for all 50 states, and the pipeline would be "approved" by Mr Romney...