Free Republic

(The Politico) On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized the Washington press corps for failing to report what he believes is unprecedented Republican obstruction. So Friday afternoon, Reid reached out to the liberal blogosphere. "You need to keep doing the job you're doing, but you need to move on," Reid said in a Webcast hosted by a handful of progressive bloggers. "We need your help to push back against the Republican harangue ... that we're not allowing votes" on oil drilling amendments. The Webcast was hosted by meetthebloggers and included bloggers from HuffingtonPost, OpenLeft and thesmogblog.com. Reid seemed flustered...

The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money. Even the Associated Press — no bastion of conservatism — has considered, at least superficially, the media's favoritism for Barack Obama. It's time to revisit media bias. True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is...

The U.S. Senate soon could be debating whether you, your spouse and each of your children – as well as your in-laws, parents, grandparents, neighbors and everyone else in America – each will be spending $2,500 or more to reduce poverty around the world. The plan sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the office of president, is estimated to cost the United States some $845 billion over the coming few years in an effort to raise the standard of living around the globe. S.2433 already has been approved in one form by the U.S. House of...

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh at lunch today, and he mentioned that Ms. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) was castigating the President for failing to release any of the "700 million barrels" of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (our emergency supply). Guess what? Nancy has been preventing the production of a lot more than 700 million barrels of our oil, and she has been doing it for years. Take a look here: http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/offshore/oil-gaspdfs/2000-063.pdf"Unproved reserves are estimated to be 1,316 million barrels of oil and 922 billion cubic feet of gas, in 25 fields."That's ONE BILLION, THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN...

Sirius Satellite Radio host Howard Stern supports the merger of his network with XM Satelitte Radio and is fuming at Democratic opposition on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) panel. After FCC commissioners announced they have reached a deal to approve the merger of Sirius (NASDAQ:SIRI) and XM (NASDAQ:XMSR), Stern ranted about Democrats’ ‘gangsterism’ and ‘communism’ and the obstacles to the merger.

With less than six months to go before he would be sworn in as the nation’s 44th president, Sen. Barack Obama has directed his aides to begin planning for the transition. "Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organizational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked s small group to begin thinking through the process,” a senior campaign adviser said. “Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, how he wants it to move forward, and the establishment and execution of his timeline is proceeding apace.” Last month, the...

The National Rifle Association is putting the election-year squeeze on conservative Democrats, demanding that they buck their leadership to support a bill to erase more of the District of Columbia’s gun laws. Democratic gun rights supporters will risk losing their A-plus rating if they don’t sign a discharge petition to be filed Wednesday bringing the gun-rights bill directly to the floor. It will be the first time in more than 20 years that the NRA has “scored” a discharge petition in determining the grades it gives lawmakers before the November election, said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “We’re making this a priority....

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to debate two bills that could give the federal government unprecedented control over the way parents raise their children – even providing funds for state workers to come into homes and screen babies for emotional and developmental problems. The Pre-K Act (HR 3289) and the Education Begins at Home Act (HR 2343) are two bills geared toward military and families who fall below state poverty lines. The measures are said to be a way to prevent child abuse, close the achievement gap in education between poor and minority infants versus middle-class children and...

Of the 311 fundraisers who bundled more than $100,000 in donations for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, only eight are on the list of contributors to Barack Obama’s campaign in June. Their total for the month: just $19,250. “The fact that fewer than 3 percent of Clinton’s donors have donated any money directly to Obama in his first month as presumptive nominee is likely to raise the eyebrows of some leaders in the Democratic Party who are hoping to see signs of unity,” the Huffington Post observed.

Bill O'Reilly Nails Robert WexlerTue Jul 22, 2008 at 09:11:12 PM Bill O'Reilly did a good number on "local" Congressman Robert Wexler tonight. And I think Wexler is in a bit of trouble. You see, the longtime Democratic rep says he lives in Delray Beach and he's required to maintain a residence in his district. But he really lives in Potomac MD. The house in Delray that he calls his "offical residence" is owned by Lawrence and Roslyn Cohen, the parents of Wexler's wife, Laurie. And it's in a restricted over-55 community, which makes it impossible for Wexler and and...

Debra Bartoshevich received e-mail notification Monday evening about a conference call to decide her fate as a delegate. Rachel Strauch-Nelson, communications director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said the group also tried to reach Bartoshevich by phone Monday afternoon. The conference call will take place Friday and Bartoshevich will have an opportunity to explain why she should remain a delegate despite her reported endorsement for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. ORIGINAL STORY: Members of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party will vote Friday on the delegate status of Debra Bartoshevich, a Democratic National Convention delegate from Waterford who has publicly supported Republican...

Gas taxes are for the little people not Democratic party dignitaries. The committee hosting the Democratic National Convention is using the city's gas pumps to fill up on fuel, avoiding state and federal highway taxes, officials said today. "There's something there that just doesn't seem right to me because, in a sense, you're saying then that the officials who pass the laws are not willing to live by them, and that concerns me," Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz said. ...Faatz asked if it was customary to have "fleets for dignitaries" not pay for highway taxes if they're using government fuel facilities. (Mayor...

We've come to expect incisive and articulate analysis from Charles Krauthammer, but he still never ceases to amaze me. In this segment of the Fox News All Stars on Special Report, Krauthammer lays out the democratic understanding of the world: everything from terrorism, the weak dollar, the mortgage crisis, global warming (or is it "climate change" now?), is the fault of the Bush administration. That is, of course, everything but the good news coming out of Iraq. That just happened by chance. Please pay special attention at 1:03 into the clip as you get a glimpse of the other guests...

One of the most liberal members of Congress in Florida Robert Wexler (Obamapropagandist and notorious leftist) is not a resident of his district. He has lived in Maryland since the late 90s. He claims to live in a house in Del Ray (owned by his mother-law) in an active adult community where no children are allowed, though he has three children). You can't live there with kids, it's against the rules of the community. Another example of Democrat hubris - I am above the law. It seems he has no connection to Florida at all. Clearly it's a phantom residence,...

Samantha Baskin gets paid to be patient. One of thousands of students across the District who had pay problems in the summer youth jobs program last week, Samantha, 14, said that she doesn't actually do anything at the Washington East of the River Academy. "We don't do nothing," she said. The director "holds us in a room for hours." Although she was owed several hundred dollars, Samantha was paid a nickel Friday and was finally paid in full yesterday. (snip) At least 200 of the 800 students in the academy indicated by a show of hands that they had not...

After eight years in the wilderness, the left expects a clean sweep in the 2008 election -- the presidency (and with it the federal bureaucracy) and larger majorities in both houses of Congress. Looking ahead, liberals are determined to derail potential opposition to their plans to accelerate the deconstruction of America. Consequently, they have targeted talk radio. Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine is just one facet of their scheme to eviscerate the only part of the media controlled by conservatives. Crucial to an understanding of the jihad against talk radio is this: The left will do anything to gag its...

Gasoline is at over $4 a gallon in late summer of an election year. Once upon a time, incumbent congressmen and senators would have reacted to this about as well as Dracula to sunlight and crucifixes. And they would have rushed to get prices lower by the first Tuesday in November, so as to best protect their precious re-elections. But not this year. Democrats have stopped all attempts to increase domestic drilling with the ruthless efficiency of The Terminator. On its face, this would seem to be an insane and suicidal move. Even with a biased mainstream media giving them...

The tricky 60 By: John Bresnahan July 21, 2008 06:58 PM EST Senate Democrats hope Barack Obama will lead them to a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in November. But it may be a case of “be careful what you wish for.� As some Democrats are quietly acknowledging, sweeping Democratic victories in the fall would put the party under enormous pressure to make good on its promises to end the Iraq war, turn back global warming, provide universal health care, reduce the price of gas, and protect Social Security and Medicare — or to suffer the consequences of failing. If past...

The House for a second time defeated a Democratic bill to require energy companies to explore their existing oil and gas leases or lose them. The “use-it-or-lose-it” bill (HR 6515) was the Democratic leadership’s response to a drumbeat of Republican calls for legislation to open up new public lands and offshore areas to oil and gas drilling. It was a retread of a measure (HR 6251) that Democrats rushed to the floor ahead of the July 4 recess under suspension of the rules, an expedited procedure requiring a two-thirds vote for passage. The 223-195 vote on that bill June 26...

New York tax filers reporting more than $375,000 a year in earned income may end up paying nearly 60% of their wages in taxes to the government under a Barack Obama presidency, economists who have analyzed his plan said. The Democratic presidential candidate is proposing not only raising the federal income tax, but also adding a Social Security tax for those Americans earning more than $250,000 a year. For New Yorkers, that could mean that if the current Social Security rate is applied, the marginal tax rate, or rate on every extra dollar earned, could rise to 58%. "This is...

WASHINGTON -- Gasoline prices are flattening consumer wallets and hobbling our economy, while the Democrats sit back and play politics with the issue. Voter surveys show that the economy and gas prices top the list of the most critical issues facing our country. A Washington Post/ABC News poll reported last week that 85 percent of voters polled said gas prices will be either extremely or very important to their vote in this year's elections. And with good reason: Americans are getting walloped with huge gas bills, while utilities, buckling under ever-higher energy prices, are raising electricity rates to historic levels....

Pelosi: Let Them WalkNancy Pelosi is an unlikely choice for Speaker Of The House of the United States. She is stupid, greedy, ignorant, vengeful, and stubborn. All poor qualities for someone in leadership, particularly someone that is third in the line of succession to be President. While these apparent political attributes have served her well, they have made the country less secure. Pelosi stands firm against offshore drilling The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and the steady push to tap the potential reserves off the state's rugged coast had galvanized Californians and made opposition to offshore drilling part of the...

The Crude Truth July 17, 2008 Most politicians, and all liberal politicians, are a disgrace to the concepts of good governance.  James Madison warned us about this in Federalist No. 10 when he cautioned that, “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” Today, in lieu of “enlightened statesmen”, American governance is dominated by Mini-Me Machiavellis adept at obtaining and retaining power for the sole purpose of...obtaining and retaining power. Good governance, or shepherding the will and best interests of the citizenry, has nothing to do with it. Immediately after John McCain admitted the previous error of his ways and voiced support for...

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called President George W. Bush "a total failure" who "has no ideas," in an interview with CNN. Responding to stinging criticism from Bush on the Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress and the slow pace of the legislative agenda, as Congress prepares for its one-month summer recess in August, Pelosi let loose: "You know, God bless him, bless his heart, the president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject." Pelosi, 68,...

Todays announcement from BLM should serve to remind Democratic leaders that NPR-A is already open for energy production, is already in the process of being leased for energy development, and has otherwise been explored for more than a generation. Democrats brought forth their Use It or Lose It bill without knowing it was already the law of the land... todays announcement is good news for the American people -- and bad news for Democratic leaders who worked furiously to prevent these lease sales from going forward ... Unfortunately, very little happening this week in Washington will get us any closer...

Unlike Kerry, Obama Covets Soros' SupportRobert B. Bluey, CNSNews.comWednesday, July 28, 2004BOSTON – Without a formidable Republican opponent in his U.S. Senate race, Barack Obama has little reason not to take money from billionaire liberal financier George Soros, a man other Democrats keep at a distance. When Obama took the stage Tuesday night for a prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention, the candidate for Senate in Illinois was introduced to a wider audience ... [snip!] Democrats expect him to pass any test he faces. They view Obama as a rising star within their party, touting his good looks and...

WASHINGTON: Upon entering Congress in 1987, Representative Nancy Pelosi quickly became part of the solid California front against oil drilling along much of the nation's coast. The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and the steady push to tap the potential reserves off the state's rugged coast had galvanized Californians and made opposition to offshore drilling part of the political DNA of up-and-coming figures like Pelosi. She repeatedly resisted oil drilling in marine sanctuaries off the state's coast near her San Francisco district and, after joining the Appropriations Committee, was an advocate of reinstating the coastal drilling ban through spending restrictions...

Dems’ Doublethink on Drilling Will the oil issue prove a gusher for the congressional GOP? By David Freddoso In the novel 1984, George Orwell used the word “doublethink” to describe the process of believing two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The concept invites an appropriate but superficial comparison to congressional Democrats’ current approach to gasoline prices. Idea Number One: High gasoline prices are good. A high price, imposed through federal carbon taxes or carbon caps, is precisely the mechanism by which Democrats hope to curb carbon emissions. We know that this mechanism works because it is already working: As gas prices rise,...

The domed ones on Capitol Hill have insisted that loosening up on those bans to drill offshore wouldn't make any difference for years and years and years. So how come the price of crude (futures) went down $10 the very day that Bush signed an executive order repealing the ban that his father had put in place when he was in the White House. Just imagine what the price of crude would fall to if congress did its part in repealing the ban that they put into place to appease the environmentalists! And further, I heard somewhere yesterday that the...

Bill Phillips spent nearly 50 years in the US oil and gas industry; most of his career was with the Phillips Petroleum Company. Bill is a descendant of Frank Phillips. Frank Phillips, along with his brother Lee Eldas (L.E.) Phillips, Sr., founded the original Phillips Petroleum Company in 1917 in Bartlesville, OK. Do you remember Phillips 66 gas stations? Phillips Petroleum Company merged with Conoco, Inc. in 2002 to form the current ConocoPhillips oil company. As you prepare to cast your crucial ballots this Fall, please think long and hard about the far-reaching, cumulative effects of the US political philosophies,...

Barack Obama has proposed increasing every major Federal tax. He supports increasing individual income tax rates, allowing the Bush tax cuts, which cut rates for all income levels, to expire. He has proposed almost doubling the capital gains tax rate, from 15% today to 28%. He supports more than doubling the tax on dividends, from 15% to as high as 39%. He has proposed numerous corporate tax increases. He supports increasing the death tax back to the stratospheric levels that applied before President Bush. He supports increasing the payroll tax on higher income earners. In other words, if you run...

The Democrat party controlled congress has reached a record low approval rating. Will the Pelosi-Reid partnership continue for another 2 years? Is the electorate still asleep?

Everyone knows this, but it's worth repeating: The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln and was established in 1854 to block the expansion of slavery. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery: Its two founders, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, owned large numbers of slaves, and every party platform before the Civil War defended the institution unequivocally. After the war, it was the Republican Party that rammed through the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution over Democratic opposition. Republicans also enacted a series of civil-rights laws that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1875,...

"Their proposals have been the legislative equivalent of a flyswatter when the American people are clamoring for the heavy artillery."U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday regarding the need for a serious and balanced approach to lowering the price at the pump:“As we stand here, Americans are suffering from the most dramatic oil shock in memory.  A single barrel of crude oil costs almost three times today what it did a year and a half ago. This is a crisis that demands our full attention. “Yet, until now, Democrats on Capitol...

Democratic Senator Richard Durbinof Illinois declared, “We can’tdrill our way to lower prices.”When it comes to domestic oil production, the Democrats and their Green/Left supporters are all singing from the same deranged hymnal. In May, one of the choir leaders, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois declared, “We can’t drill our way to lower prices.” Never mind that 85 percent of America’s Outer Continental Shelf is off-limits to oil and gas exploration. Forget that the offshore areas that John McCain and George W. Bush want to open to exploitation might contain 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion...

Press Releases Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami 202-226-7616 For Immediate Release 07/15/2008 Pelosi on Gas Prices: ‘It’s the Economy, Mr. President’ Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders today held a news conference with economic experts following an economic forum this morning. At the forum, five national economic experts endorsed Democrats’ call for the President to immediately release a small amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce energy prices for American consumers. Below are selected comments by the Speaker on energy: “The President said today that he would not support the release of the oil...

If you think that Muslims burning the Danish Mohammed Cartoons don't have a sense of humor, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Just wait til the Political Correct Commissars catch you laughing at Barack Obama. It's like the old rabid feminists: That's Not Funny! Mr. Obama is very easily offended, like Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, who is constantly looking for the smallest slights to his egg-shell fragile ego. Obama told Maureen Dowd early in the primaries that he is hypersensitive to any remarks about his ears. Obama is offended if you criticize his tough-as-nails lawyer wife -- although...

WASHINGTON – Fearing environmental damage to the state's coastline, California's top leaders made it clear Monday that they want nothing to do with President Bush's plan to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. Bush said his approach would reduce pressure on record gasoline prices, and he urged Congress to follow his lead. "Failure to act is unacceptable," Bush said. But as soon as the president made the announcement in a Rose Garden ceremony, California's Democratic leaders accused Bush of cozying up to oil interests. They said his plan would do nothing to lower gasoline prices. "Once again, the oilman in...

First, from the top of the Democrat Party, we had Howard Dean banning fried food at the Democrat Convention and authorizing only approved food colors. Of course, the caterers correctly thought Dean was a moron, and told him so. Now the Left Coast chapter of the Fraternal Order of Oral Limitations (FOOL), which enforces food consumption regulations as well as speech control laws, has decided that people in South-Central are too fat and unhealthy so they want a moratorium on any new fast food joints.

Imagine a society where simply speaking out of turn or saying the "wrong thing" was openly discussed as a crime against humanity, and where sceptics or deniers of the truth were publicly labelled "criminals", hauled before the press and accused of endangering humanity with their grotesque untruths. Imagine a society where even some liberals demanded severe restrictions on freedom of movement; where people campaigned for travelling overseas to be made prohibitively expensive in order to force people to stay at home; and where immigration was frowned upon as "toxic" and "destructive".

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Sen. Barack Obama has the Democratic Party's pro-abortion political base incensed and up in arms over recent overtures designed to soften the candidate's image as the party's most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever. The presumptive nominee has followed recent calls for continuing faith-based initiatives by voicing a position in favor of abstinence education and prohibiting abortion in certain cases. Sen. Barack Obama has been trying to enhance his appeal to voters by moving closer to the political center at the same time as pro-family and pro-life groups have been drawing attention to his extreme...

The California Democratic Party has donated $250,000 to help Don Perata pay off his legal bills, as the Senate Democratic leader continues to rack up expenses fending off an ongoing FBI corruption investigation. The party made the quarter-million dollar donation on July 1, according to campaign filings. The money comes just in time for Perata, who, according to a May disclosure, had only $273 cash on hand in his legal defense fund and $250,000 in unpaid bills. Jason Kinney, a spokesman for Perata on legal issues, said the donation -- and the continuing expenses -- are "no indication of anything."...

"Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." --Bill Ruder, Democratic campaign consultant and Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Kennedy Administration The usual suspects will be doing the dirty work. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) or Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) will likely resurrect the failed Media Act (Meaningful Expression of Democracy in America Act) intended to make political commentary unflattering to Democrats more difficult to deliver and easier to suppress through congressional...

It looks as if Wesley Clark is waving the white flag -- sort of -- in an attempt to avoid more discussion of his remarks on "Face the Nation" a week ago suggesting that John McCain's military experience didn't at all qualify him to be president. When the former general and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate was criticized for those remarks, he dug in and defended them. Then members of his own party begged him to get off center stage. "On a scale of 1 to 10, Clark's words were a 10 in terms of unhelpfulness," a prominent Democratic consultant told...

The “God Not Guns” coalition is predictably upset about the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning the Washington, D.C., handgun ban. “It will embolden adherents of GUNdamentalism in their belief in the inerrancy of the 2nd Amendment,” intoned the Rev. Nancy Smith, coalition founder and chief. “Gundamentalism is a religious movement without spiritual grounding. Rather, it is rooted in the sale and promotion of violence.”

550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium worth millions of dollars were shipped out of Iraq to Canada. The uranium was transported in 37 military flights in 3,500 secure barrels. Though the yellowcake had been in Iraq for some time and had been discovered by the United Nations inspectors after the first Gulf War in during the Senior President Bush’s presidency the material has finally been removed. This is a fact the Democrats don’t want publicized and the MSM will oblige.

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline. The Democrats’ base -- wealthy white “limousine liberals”, and very poor people -- won’t be harmed, but the families who live in suburbia will be devastated. The multi-millionaires like billionaire Senators John Kerry & Jay Rockefeller, financial speculator George Soros, filmmaker Michael Moore, and actors George Clooney & Meg Ryan can easily pay for their auto and private jet fuel. Poor people are forced to...

Five-point energy proposal may lower gas prices in near future5-point plan aims to help rid nation of 'oil addiction' By Kevin Clark | South Florida Sun-Sentinel 10:07 PM EDT, July 3, 2008 DEERFIELD BEACH - U.S. Rep. Ron Klein announced a "Declaration of Energy Independence" Thursday, a plan he hopes to push through Congress that he says will help the country with what he calls an "addiction to oil." Klein, D- Boca Raton, thinks the plan, unveiled at a news conference, , could work to lower gas prices in the near future. The five-point plan consists of: • Imposing criminal...

Americans are worried. Americans are angry. Soaring gas prices are seriously crippling our economy and hitting us where it hurts the most -- in our pockets. We have a right to be angry, but anger is no longer enough. It’s time for rage -- good, old American rage aimed at those elitist Democrats who prefer to see the folks beggared by soaring fuel prices rather than take the action this very real economic crisis demands. Drill. We know that the law of supply and demand is what’s causing gas prices to soar, but merely knowing the ultimate cause of the...

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