Free Republic

President Obama’s most recent green energy fixation—algae—may suffer from the accusations of cronyism that have plagued his broader effort to promote non-fossil fuel energy sources through massive federal subsidies. Solazyme, a San Francisco-based firm that specializes in the plant matter, has received more than $25 million in federal grants and contracts as part of Obama administration’s controversial stimulus package, and is poised to receive millions more as part of the president’s recent efforts to promote green biofuels such as algae. The firm employs a former member of the Obama-Biden transition team who, according to one online bio, “played a key...

Why on earth did President Obama offer algae as a solution to America's energy problems? I suspect that if he could, he would press the rewind button and erase the comment, as it has exposed him to widespread ridicule from heavyweights like Charles Krauthammer.  But the question remains: why bring it up at all?An answer may lie in his addiction to crony capitalism. Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon reports: Solazyme, a San Francisco-based firm that specializes in the plant matter, has received more than $25 million in federal grants and contracts as part of Obama administration's controversial...

It's one thing to send out fundraising letters trying to score cash off the John Doe investigation into various activities during Gov. Scott Walker's tenure as county executive. That's business as usual for political types. It's another thing altogether to suggest that individuals can help underwrite the long-running probe of the Republican governor by giving money to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. But that's what is happening at the party's slick website devoted to publicizing the John Doe investigation. "Help fund the investigation," says a virtual walkerinvestigation.com Post-it Note at the top of the site, walkerinvestigation.com. "Donate today." Click on...

Among the many growing problems Barack Obama is facing as he tries to fool enough people into voting for him is the one coming from that weird place on the left side of the country called California. Once a beautiful state filled with sunshine and the promise of a better life, California has been turned into a socialist gulag by Democrats who have infected her state government from top to bottom. Now it's the model for Obama’s socialist dream for all of America. Because Democrats do what Democrats will always do when handed full control of a state, California is...

Sessions says Reid dodging budget debate to avoid tough votesBy Pete Kasperowicz - 03/18/12 01:54 PM ET Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Sunday afternoon accused Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) of avoiding debate on a Senate budget resolution in order to protect Democrats from making tough choices on how to trim spending at a time of fiscal crisis. "When Senator Reid said it's foolish to bring up a budget, what he really is doing is avoiding having his members have to confront — and in public, not in secret meetings, but in public, with votes —...

Breitbart.com has uncovered video from 1995 of then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder announcing a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way." Holder was addressing the Woman's National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to "change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC" about guns.

At this point, anyone who does not see that we are living under a communist dictatorship of the current administration in Washington is woefully ignorant or willfully blind. One of the latest outrages against America’s free and sovereign states has—no surprise—come at the hands of the lawless Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ, under the racist Eric Holder, has made a mockery of its own name, because there is no justice in that department. It has become nothing more than a strong-arm, thug tool for Barack Obama (or whatever his name is). This week, the DOJ blocked Texas’ voter identification...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Obama has just announced that the United States and Britain are going to release oil from their Strategic Reserves. I didn't even know that Cameron was up for reelection. I did not know that he was up for reelection. That's why Obama's doing this. This is going to have absolutely no impact whatsoever. It is a purely political move from the guy who says, "We can't drill. We can't drill fast enough, can't drill soon enough." What does that mean? If we can't drill what it means is putting more oil on the market isn't gonna matter...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Congressional Budget Office says that Obamacare is gonna cost twice what he told us. The magic number for Obamacare was a trillion dollars. They had to keep that number under a trillion dollars in order to get it passed. I'm not gonna revisit why and I'm not gonna go back through all the details and the minutia and the arm twisting and the games they were playing to get Obamacare passed because they eventually got it passed. They tried toying around with the idea "deeming" it to have been passed, not even voting on it, a...

The controversy over requiring voters to provide photo IDs has reached the world stage. The United Nations Human Rights Council is investigating the issue of American election laws at its gathering on minority rights in Geneva, Switzerland.. This, despite the fact that some members of the council have only in the past several years allowed women to vote, and one member, Saudi Arabia, still bars women from the voting booth completely. Officials from the NAACP are presenting their case against U.S. voter ID laws, arguing to the international diplomats that the requirements disenfranchise voters and suppress the minority vote. Eight...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Karen Finney is the Democrat strategerist. She was on MSNBC last night. They were in total shock, total shock. "Santorum won last night! Santorum? Conservative women? How can this happen? " Karen Finney, big-time Democrat strategerist, said it hurt her that women voted for Santorum. FINNEY: (haltingly) Well... This woman vote really hurts me, I gotta say. (snickering) It's a little painful 'cause I'm wondering if those women really heard the full message that: Yes, there is the economy, but if you've gotta worry about your basic health care, how are you then gonna be able to...

GOP being Punk’d? We know that Democrats are crossing over in open primaries, such as Mississippi and Alabama, in order to vote for Rick Santorum, a big union candidate, their votes intended to throw the Republican National Convention into a contested balloting process. This tactic was written up at the Daily Kos. Big union money has even invested for the Santorum campaign. Pardon me for not having all the pertinent facts and I confess I don’t even have time to search for them all, today, to say nothing of presenting and formatting them, here. Can you help? Place further information...

Vermont Secretary of State James Condos is threatening videographer James O'Keefe with criminal investigation for his Project Veritas exposé of voter fraud in the state. Ironically, Condos would have made it far easier to commit the very fraud that O'Keefe's investigation has suggested may be possible at the polls. As a state senator, Condos pushed for same-day registration voting. "We are all concerned about maximizing the number of voters with an election that has integrity," Condos told The Burlington Free Press on February 14, 2005. "There is a lot of trust in our system," Condos told The Free Press on...

(@2:40 on Part II of the interview) Gillar: With regard to Andrew Breitbart...something suspicious about his untimely death...do you think it's something that should be investigated? Arpaio: You know, I go back to Watergate. I wasn't involved, but I knew all the characters that were involved. Dick Kleindienst, former attorney general, we were very close when I was regional director. G. Gordon Liddy, he and I ran an operation under Nixon to intercept...actually crackin' down on the US-Mexican border, so I knew a lot about the Watergate. As I say I think this situation is probably ten times worse than...

Madison - A Dane County judge permanently enjoined the state's new voter ID law on Monday - the second judge in a week to block the requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls. "A government that undermines the very foundation of its existence - the people's inherent, pre-constitutional right to vote - imperils its legitimacy as a government by the people, for the people, and especially of the people," said the eight-page opinion by Dane County Judge Richard Niess. "It sows the seeds for its own demise as a democratic institution. This is precisely what 2011 Wisconsin Act...

The Justice Department is objecting to a new photo ID law in Texas for voters, saying the state has failed to demonstrate that the the law is not discriminatory by design against Hispanic voters. The department's head of the civil rights division, Tom Perez, wrote a a six-page letter to Texas' director of elections saying that Texas has not "sustained its burden" under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters. About 11 percent of Hispanic voters reportedly lack state-issued identification. Perez wrote that while the...

Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has described 2011 as “the most difficult year in [Planned Parenthood’s] history.” Well, welcome to 2012. The Alliance Defense Fund, in conjunction with the Susan B. Anthony List, released its summary report on publicly available federal and state audits that identify waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood and state family planning programs and reveal systemic misuse of nearly $100 million taxpayer dollars. The audits speak for themselves in detailing Planned Parenthood’s misuse of the money that’s been funneled to state family planning programs and Planned Parenthood affiliates. Ten state...

While the media’s still buzzing about The Sandra Fluke Story, Democrats have rolled out a disappointing sequel starring a nurse who can’t get free contraception because she works at a Catholic hospital that doesn’t provide such coverage for religious reasons. Produced by DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a conference call last Friday featured a nurse at a Catholic hospital in Tacoma, Washington who complained that the hospital’s insurance doesn’t cover contraception. The nurse’s comments echoed those of Georgetown student Sandra Fluke, who has become the focus of national media discussion. “I currently work as a nurse at a...

A Dane County Judge on Tuesday granted a temporary injunction that bars the enforcement of the state photo ID law at polling places during the general election on April 3. Circuit Judge David Flanagan said that the Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP and Voces de la Frontera had demonstrated that their lawsuit against Gov. Scott Walker and the state Government Accountability Board would probably succeed on its merits and had demonstrated the likelihood of irreparable harm if the photo ID law is allowed to stand. Flanagan ordered Walker and the GAB to "cease immediately any effort to enforce or implement...

Ever since they announced their intention to do so, I've been publicly begging Leftists to waste spend tens of millions on a recall campaign against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.  I was convinced that the Democrat-Union coalition would squander precious campaign resources in an quixotic bid to exact revenge on one of their most despised conservative bogeymen.  A new poll from Rasmussen suggests that my instincts were correct.  Wisconsinites -- who have voted to re-elect a conservative state Supreme Court justice and to protect a Republican State Senate majority since Walker's budget fix passed -- now oppose replacing the governor by...