Free Republic

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was on Morning Joe today to discuss amnesty. The far left New York Senator told the audience there has to be amnesty: “I think we’re going to get a bill and I think Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell know it’s the right thing to do… I think the economic Republicans are for this strongly… We’ve always said, and that includes the Gang of Eight, one thing, that bottom line is there has to be some path to citizenship.” Thank you Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

As California Congressman Henry Waxman promised, he has introduced a Bill to ban the sale of “Parts kits” for “Assault Rifles, Assault Shotguns, and Assault Pistols." This also includes a ban on Receiver blanks. The Bill defines an “assault weapons parts kit as: “ any part or combination of parts not designed and intended for repair or replacement but designed and intended to enable a consumer who possesses all such necessary parts to assemble a semiautomatic assault weapon…” Which raised the question of vagueness in the law as to which components of an “Assault Weapons Parts Kits” could be sold...

The American Legislative Exchange Council released today a letter signed by nearly 300 state legislators from 39 states that expresses dismay over Senator Durbin’s letter inquiring into businesses and organizations’ participation in the American Legislative Exchange Council. The letter follows a statement released Friday by the American Legislative Exchange Council expressing concern over Senator Durbin’s inquiries. The letter, sent to all members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, can be accessed here.

<p>Former Florida Rep. Allen West had some harsh words for nationally known civil rights activists like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who have remained silent on a video showing black teens beating a white boy on a school bus.</p>

Following in the well-worn footsteps of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns, this week the Council on Foreign Relations released a memo urging the Obama administration to disregard the will of the American people and Congress and unilaterally enact a series of gun controls. Entitled, A Strategy to Reduce Gun Trafficking and Violence in the Americas, and written by CFR Senior Fellow for Latin American Studies, Julia F. Sweig, the memo pins the ills of Central and South America on U.S. gun owners and urges the president to curb our rights to...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rejected allegations that his support for legislation granting tax breaks to a firm that made substantial donations to his political campaign is corrupt. “The fact that the Extell Development Company donated to my campaign is, by itself, evidence of their support of good government,” Cuomo insisted. “Don't we want supporters of good government to prosper? Shouldn't good corporate citizens reap the rewards of their civic virtue?” Ironically, the potentially illegal link between the campaign donation and the tax break came to light after the Governor established a commission to look into legislative corruption. “It appears...

The president said that Republicans have one unifying principle - denying 30 million Americans the right to health care. Ummm... The CBO said that there would be 30 million without insurance even with ObamaCare fully implemented. Obama. Mixed up. Fail.

The Mainstream (Establishment) Media is trying to once again do the Republican vs Democrat thingy: that Obama has proposed some serious (cough, laugh) changes to the NSA spying program, and those wascally wepubs (Rep. McCaul and Peter King (R-GOP-e) are trying to thwart him. I never thought that I would see a recent liberal rally where hundreds marched (not reported by the MSM-e) where a person would be carrying a sign that said Snowden, patriot and Pelosi, traitor. And even the New York Times (Editorial Board, June 6th: Obama administration has lost all credibility on the issue of the NSA...

For a little sneak preview of where our ruling class’ obsession with amnesty for illegal aliens will lead us, take a look at what’s happening on the border right now. An astonishing surge of asylum seekers has literally overwhelmed U.S. Immigration in San Diego, forcing them to rent out hotel rooms to accommodate the overflow, while some aliens were “released to cities around the U.S.,” according to Fox News: Sources say one day last week, 200 border-crossers came through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry claiming asylum while and as many as 550 overflowed inside the processing center there and...

A sudden influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico requesting asylum is overwhelming immigration agents in San Diego, forcing agencies to rent hotel rooms

Financial QUESTION: Obama and Democrats Trying To SEIZE Retirement Accounts (IRAs, 401Ks) ? Aug 9, 2013 I want to know what other Free Republic Members know about this H.R. 2035: Automatic IRA Act of 2013 I got an e-mail stating: "Obama & BIG Government Are Planning To Seize Retirement Accounts!" President Obama’s FY2014 Budget Plan brings us one Large step closer to De-Privatizing IRA’s & 401k’s. Much like Obamacare, Obama’s “Automatic IRA” will force employers with 10 employees or more, to “automatically” enroll their workers in the new Government run accounts. Obama’s Automatic IRA will be managed by the Social...

Sen. Charles Schumer suggested Monday that, instead of boycotting the 2014 Olympic Games in Russia altogether, countries should wave rainbow flags during the opening ceremonies to show support for gay rights, The Hill reported. “That’d be pretty embarrassing for Putin,” the New York Democrat said on MSNBC. “Let our athletes participate but still make a stand.”

Liberals love their fantasies about slavery in America. It makes them feel superior to insist America was founded by “Old White Men” (OWM) who loved slavery. They refuse to acknowledge that those same OWMs often freed their own slaves although not until their death. They love their own fairy tale that, “freeing slaves had nothing to do with the Civil War.” Allowing that would force them to credit Lincoln and the (hated) Republicans with freeing the slaves – a gross violation of the false liberal narrative of American history. They are so desperate to keep the truth of who were...

Buried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama’s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change — namely, not at all: In an agency-wide address to employees Aug. 1, (Interior Secretary Sally) Jewell took the unusual step of suggesting that no one working for her should challenge the idea that human activity is driving recent warming. “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said. The address does not appear to be posted on the department’s website, so the Washington Examiner can only go by the...

"Comprehensive immigration reform," like virtually any initiative containing the magic word "comprehensive," looks good on the surface. But the details of the comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate in June by a 68-32 margin reveal a lot gone wrong underneath. Oblivious to this, top union leaders are gearing up for an all-out blitz this fall to secure passage of similar legislation in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Led by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (in photo), they are obsessed with providing 11 million or more persons living illegally in this country with amnesty and eventual citizenship, and with enabling millions...

President Obama took his case for ending the sequester to hundreds of disabled veterans Saturday, saying he protected their benefits from the “reckless” cuts to the federal budget but suggesting next year might be different. “It’s hurting our military. I made it clear that your veteran’s benefits are exempt from this year’s sequester,” the president said to the applause of hundreds at the Disabled American Veterans' convention in Orlando, Fla. “But I want to tell you going forward the best way to protect the VA care you have earned is to get rid of this sequester altogether.” The president...

Vice President Joe Biden is calling Democrats to action to stop grassroots conservatives from electing more Republicans in the mold of Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). In a fundraising letter for the Democratic National Committee, first reported by Ed Krayewski at Reason, Biden wrote told prospective donors that a “group of freshmen senators are running the show in the Republican Party” and played up the possibility of a government shutdown over ObamaCare.

In a radio interview in which he lamented the GOP filibusters and a gridlock in Congress, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hopes Republicans who oppose the president do so “based on substance and not the fact that he’s an African-American.” The comment came Friday during the Nevada lawmaker’s appearance on Las Vegas-based National Public Radio affiliate KNPR (http://bit.ly/16AheWv), and drew swift response from Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, who is black. “I hope Sen. Reid will realize the offensive nature of his remarks and apologize to those who disagree with the president’s policies because of one thing...

Second impeachment article against President Richard Nixon: Article 2 Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or...

Bo, the president's Portuguese Water Dog, arrived separately on one of two MV-22 Ospreys, a hybrid aircraft which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane.

It seems that not only is Justice blind in Washington, D.C., but she's been kicked out of town altogether. On Saturday, it was reported that Cindy Thomas just got a big promotion. If you don't know who Cindy Thomas is, she was the IRS official in charge of the exempt organizations office in Cincinnati. This was one of the IRS groups who targeted conservative tea party groups for harassment and intimidation. They also illegally leaked confidential tax information to other agencies and liberal groups. Cindy Thomas is a 35 year veteran of the IRS (bet her pension plan is rocking!)...

By PAUL PRESTON The new motto under the bear on the California State flag is going to have to be revised from “California Republic” to California Soviet Republic” if proposed Senate Bill 1 by State Senator Steinberg is passed and signed into law. SB 1 came about following the massive defeat of Prop. 31 in last November’s election which was defeated by California Voters 61% to 39%. Cal Watch Dog’s Wayne Lusvardi in his November 9, 2012 article tilted :http://calwatchdog.com/2012/11/09/prop-31-would-have-ended-californias-republic/“>Prop. 31 would have ended California’s republic”, commented “Republicanism Upheld Only by Accident: The reason attributed to Prop. 31 losing by...

Zing! But, wait … what? Yes, that happened. Bo the dog reportedly was airlifted to the Obama holiday home. Actor Nick Searcy blasted the move, proclaiming that “the First Snack gets his own plane!” Snicker. Enter Iowahawk, who took the opportunity to not only slam Obama, but to also rightly blast the lapdog press.

The “phony scandal” at the IRS keeps growing. E-mail correspondence unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee reveals that Lois Lerner, the figure at the center of the scandal, may have committed a felony by divulging information about a conservative group to the Federal Election Commission, in an incident that dates back at least to 2008, before President Obama took office. Though some conservatives have eagerly sought evidence that Obama’s White House instigated the IRS’s targeting of tea-party groups, the latest evidence suggests that an anti-conservative bias may instead be an endemic feature of the federal bureaucracy. And now,...

Speaking to a group of Veterans, President Barack Obama tried to make his case for ending the sequester. “We’ve got these reckless, across-the-board budget cuts called the sequester that are hitting a lot of folks hard,” Obama said. One can only assume these are the same “across the board” and “reckless” cuts that he proposed as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act, and let go into place by refusing to compromise on entitlement spending early this year. The President went on to say that without the repeal of these “reckless” cuts (which were passed with bi-partisan approval, and signed...

President Obama promised he would unite the world…and he’s right.Representatives from dozens of nations have bitterly complained about an awful piece of legislation, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that was enacted back in 2010.They despise this unjust law because it extends the power of the IRS into the domestic affairs of other nations. That’s an understandable source of conflict, which should be easy to understand. Wouldn’t all of us get upset, after all, if the French government or Russian government wanted to impose their laws on things that take place within our borders?But it’s not just foreign...

The House assistant Democratic leader said on Sunday that his party will campaign on President Obama’s controversial healthcare law in 2014. “We will be running on ObamaCare in 2014,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “In fact, we set it up to run on it in 2014,” he continued. “We fully expect to run on it; we expect to win on it. The American people will be the winner.” Clyburn noted that major provisions of the law are expected to go into effect on Oct. 1 and Jan. 1, 2014, leaving Democrats...

"Madam Presdent" the title on the NY Times Article. Can't excerpt as it is copyrighted. Would Maureen Dowd ever use this title on a female Republican or Tea Party Candidate?

US AMBASSADOR to Australia John Berry has married his long-term partner of 17 years in a private same-sex ceremony in Washington D.C. The 54-year-old former head of the Office of Personnel Management - which oversees the US public service - is the first openly gay US ambassador to serve in a Group of 20 nation and the highest ranking openly gay man in United States history. In a short statement, Mr Berry confirmed the nuptials, telling news.com.au, "John Berry and Curtis Yee, partners of 17 years, were formally married on Saturday August 10, at St Margaret's Episcopal Church in Washington...

We’ll know that it was really about racism when Hillary’s elected in 2016 and GOP opposition to Democratic policies magically melts away. Didn’t this guy once compare opposing ObamaCare to opposing the end of slavery? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told KNPR radio Friday that he hopes Republicans’ ongoing opposition to President Obama is driven by “substance” and not race. “My counterpart, Mitch McConnell, said at the the beginning of the presidency of Barack Obama that he had one goal — and that is to defeat Obama and make sure he wasn’t re-elected. And that’s how they legislate in...

Potential 2016 presidential contender Donald Trump spoke to ABC's Jonathan Karl Sunday morning and reignited the birther issue that he helped spark back in 2011, questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama's birth certificate and wondering whether Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada, was eligible to president. "Was there a birth certificate?" Trump asked. "You tell me. Some people say that was not his birth certificate. I'm saying I don't know. Nobody knows. And you don't know, either, Jonathan. You're a smart guy, you don't know, either." "I'm pretty convinced he was born in the United States," Karl said. "Ah!...

House Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Sunday that Democrats deliberately structured Obamacare to use as an issue in the 2014 election. During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Candy Crowley noted that many of the law’s more popular items (coverage for pre-existing conditions, for example) kick in in 2014, while the part requiring all employers to provide health insurance, for instance, was delayed until after the 2014 election. “The fact of the matter is, we will be running on Obamacare in 2014. In fact, we set it up to run on it in 2014,” Clyburn...

On July 18, President Obama held an event at the White House to promote Obamacare. It was Calculated Deception writ large, which is Obama’s rhetorical style of taking advantage of what he shrewdly calculates the great majority of average Americans will not know, and what he is certain the so-called mainstream media will not tell them. That smacks of third world style, authoritarian propaganda. Obama falsely claimed, “In states like California, Oregon, Washington, new competition, new choices, market forces are pushing costs down.” I have already discussed in prior posts the misrepresentation regarding proposed premiums for 2014 on the California...

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin is facing a firestorm of criticism after sending letters to hundreds of organizations trying to find out the depth of their relationship with the American Legislative Exchange Council. The senator’s interest in ALEC is based on the stand your ground legislation that has become a focal point for liberal activists and lawmakers after the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. But his hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, editorialized that the inquiries looked like “Durbin’s enemies list.” In the August 6 letter sent to think tanks and corporations, Durbin wrote, “I am seeking clarification whether organizations that...

Sarah Palin joined Eric Bolling on Fox News this morning to take a mini-victory lap over some Democrats suddenly embracing the idea she put forth years ago over health care “death panels.” Palin felt somewhat vindicated, but didn’t want to “condone them… for trying to jump off the Obama train wreck.” She told Bolling that rationing was in the health care law from the beginning, and the Democrats who didn’t notice it until now did not want to look like “buffoons.” Palin also took the media to task for wasting an opportunity at President Obama‘s big press conference to grill...

The media loves polls. Why shouldn’t they, for the most part they control their outcome and can use them to generate fake “news” items. The media used a steady stream of twisted and distorted polls to try to convince America that we were “demanding” strict gun control – even offering one that said eighty percent of Republicans favored tighter background checks. Of course they failed, but that hasn’t stopped them from using polls as weapons against conservatives. Nevertheless, one feature of a poll that will keep the media from using it is a message that the media and its Democrat...

<p>The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.</p>

This is how Democrats say thanks– Today Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went on KNPR in Las Vegas to discuss current affairs. One question he faced was about union uproar over Obamacare. Harry Reid said it’s time for them to give up their Cadillac plans and “put some skin in the game.” “Let’s understand where we are with the unions. One of the things we’ve learned with all of the hearings we held, dozens and dozens of them, is that if you have insurance you have to be able to have some skin in the game as we say in...

The Brain Dead American Media missed this veiled threat in Obama's opening statement: "We shouldn’t forget the difference between the ability of our government to collect information online under strict guidelines and for narrow purposes, and the willingness of some other governments to throw their own citizens in prison for what they say online" Tell that to the arab who made a movie and posted it to the Net and who was blamed for creating the Benghazi Attacks ? Tell that to all those who have been surveilled by federal agencies using the NSA databases ? Obama often uses words...

ObamaCare: Some Democrats are signing on to bills repealing the powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to effectively ration health care for seniors. So Sarah Palin was right about those death panels after all? Palin was mocked by liberals when at a Tea Party rally in Reno, Nev., in late 2010, shortly before the GOP retook the House of Representatives, she told attendees: "Don't be thinking that we've got victory for America in the bag yet. ... We can't party like it's 1773." Leftist know-it-alls insisted that 1776 was the correct year, when in fact Palin was right: The...

Loopholes in California and Colorado laws designed to keep criminals from hunting down cops and other public employees are being used by local officials and their extended family as a way to avoid paying thousands of dollars in traffic and parking fines. In Colorado, special license plates issued to 100 state lawmakers and representatives not only shield them from radar tickets for speeding, but also prevent collection notices on past-due parking tickets. That’s because the legislative plates in Colorado aren’t entered into the Division of Motor Vehicles database. If someone with a special license plate blows through the speed limit...

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he hopes Republicans who oppose the president do so “based on substance and not the fact that he's an African-American.” The comment came during a wide-ranging interview Friday with Las Vegas-based National Public Radio affiliate KNPR, in which Reid lamented Republican filibusters and claimed opponents do everything they can to make Obama fail. … Reid’s comments went unchallenged by the program’s moderator, but not by Newsmax contributor and Conservative African-American columnist Clarence V. McKee, who said there was no reason for Reid to bring up the race issue during the interview. … He...

The chill in relations between the US and Russia grew still frostier yesterday as President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister told the White House to start behaving like "grown-ups". Sergei Lavrov chided the US administration two days after President Barack Obama scrapped a summit with Mr Putin when Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden, the fugitive US spy.

Many things are not remarkable about the growing list of names bandied about in the 2016 presidential speculation sweepstakes - you've got your governors, your senators, your ambitious House members, your former elected officials and cabinet members, your vice president. Most have been in politics for a long time, and a lot of them have the gray hair to prove it. One thing that is remarkable about the field, though, is the number of women identified as plausible candidates. It's not just Hillary Clinton, who obviously looms over the race in a way no other candidate, woman or man, does....

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) recently expressed his concern about Sarah Palin someday becoming president and having control over the information gathered by the U.S government about Americans citizens. In an interview with Shark-Tank.net, Rep. Grayson said he has introduced a bill, 'The Mind Your Own Business Act,' that would ban the U.S. Department of Defense from gathering Internet, phone and other personal information about U.S. citizens without probable cause or evidence of a criminal offense, which is what the Fourth Amendment is supposed to do. Rep. Grayson explained how 'The Mind Your Own Business Act' was modeled "very closely after...

Russian President Vladimir Putin tends to think of the U.S.-Russia relationship in Cold War terms, according to President Obama, adding that the two leaders have a good personal relationship despite Putin’s bad body language when they’re together. Obama said Putin has increased tensions between the United States and Russia since he returned to the presidency. “We saw more rhetoric on the Russian side that was anti-american [and] played into the old stereotypes about the Cold War,” Obama told reporters during a press conference. “I’ve encouraged Mr. Putin to think forward as opposed to backward on those issues, with mixed success,”...

President Obama said Friday that he believes Edward Snowden – the whistleblower who revealed that the National Security Agency was collecting metadata and phone records of every American – was not a patriot for his leaking of classified documents. Obama, speaking at his first news conference since April, was responding to a question from NBC’s Chuck Todd about Snowden. “No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot,” Obama said before reiterating that as a senator he called for a review of the Patriot Act. “If in fact he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American...

"The Chicago connection NEVER surrenders or forgets its friends," a criminal complaint quoted one of the men as writing in a 2009 letter to the head of Zimbabwe's national bank. The two, Prince Asiel Ben Israel and C. Gregory Turner, were charged with violating federal law by lobbying on behalf Zimbabwe's longtime president, Robert Mugabe, whose violent and oppressive regime has been the target of U.S. economic sanctions since 2003. According to the charges, Ben Israel and Turner attempted to persuade undisclosed federal and state government officials — including an Illinois state senator and two U.S. representatives from Chicago —...

Last week we ran a story analyzing an op-ed piece that one-time Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which the former Governor of Vermont conceded that the Independent Payment Advisory Board was “essentially a health-care rationing body.” ObamaCare has been controversial from long before it passed by the narrowest of margins and probably no facet has drawn more critics that the IPAB. National Right to Life laid out the rationing problems that are part and parcel of the IPAB from the very beginning (www.nrlc.org/HealthCareRationing/ObamaHCRationingBasicDOCUMENTATION.pdf). Thus it was helpful that Dean admitted there really was...

As Ariel Castro, the convicted kidnapper, rapist and baby killer, shuffled off in chains to the hoosegow, I thought why was there so little reportage or commentary about his idiotic statement made in an Ohio courtroom. Is it because the man himself is so repugnant? Is it because his transgressions against society are so repulsive? I think it is both and one thing more. Americans have heard all this claptrap before. We are familiar with the rumblings of a sociopath. A sociopath, in plain language unadorned by the psychiatrists' hocus-pocus, is a person who does not know right from wrong,...