Free Republic

Not a single person showed up at the Georgetown waterfront Tuesday for a climate change agenda event put on by Organizing for Action, the shadowy nonprofit advocacy group born out of President Obama’s 2012 campaign, the NRCC wrote in its blog.The event page for the “Climate Change Day of Action Rally� disappeared after rainy weather appeared to drive away whatever people planned to attend. The embarrassing showing follows the news that only one volunteer stayed for an OFA Obamacare event in Centreville, Va., last week to work the phones: ZERO PEOPLE at the OFA rally at the Georgetown Waterfront this...

OAK BLUFFS, Massachusetts (Reuters) - It rained on President Barack Obama's island vacation on Tuesday. After spending the first two days of his August vacation on the golf course, Obama made the most of a rainy day on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard. First, his motorcade carried him across the island to Oak Bluffs, where he stopped at Nancy's restaurant, picking up a variety of fried delicacies: Shrimp, oysters, onion rings and french fries. SNIP The restaurant is a favorite of his senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, who is staying at a waterfront home nearby with a sweeping view of...

The real answer is Congress, but the President's answer to NSA spying on Americans is to put the guy who lied under oath about spying on Americans in charge of investigating the NSA. Is your head spinning yet? Today, Obama ordered Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to name an outside panel to review the United State's global collection of signals intelligence - meaning its efforts to target phone calls, internet messages, and various forms of electronic communication. And a flashback: DNI James Clapper says that the NSA does not collect data on millions of Americans

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) on Tuesday called on the Justice Department to review her state’s new voter identification law, calling it one of “the most restrictive in the country.” North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed into law a bill on Monday that would require voters to show government identification when voting, shorten early-voting days, cut off same-day registration and end a program to preregister teens who would be eligible to vote by Election Day. “I am deeply concerned that H.B. 589 will restrict the ability of minorities, seniors, students, the disabled, and low and middle incomes citizens to exercise...

Raleigh, N.C. — A day after filing a lawsuit against Gov. Pat McCrory for his decision to sign historic elections changes into law, a team of lawyers and state NAACP President William Barber laid out their legal plan Tuesday to fight what they called "regressive, unconstitutional acts to rig and manipulate elections through voter suppression." The lawsuit alleges that Rosanell Eaton's constitutional right to vote is threatened by House Bill 589, which requires voters to show photo identification when they go to the polls, starting in 2016. **SNIP** Eaton, of Louisburg, claims the new elections law will keep her from...

The left has been waging a decades-long smear campaign against conservatives, painting them as bigots who have been on the wrong side of history on every issue, including America’s greatest sin – slavery. Vice President Joe Biden even went as far as to suggest during the 2012 election that a Republican victory would re-enslave African-Americans. Leftist academics and historians have gone to great lengths to bury and distort the names and legacies of the men who defended the ugliest of American institutions; men whose philosophy on government, rights, and liberty, as it turns out, is uncomfortably close to their own....

The White House on Tuesday released a new report arguing a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants would add 2 million jobs to the economy and boost gross domestic product by $1.4. trillion over the next decade. The report, penned by Director of Domestic Policy Cecilia Muñoz and Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, is the latest in a series of releases touting the economic benefits of comprehensive immigration reform as the White House pushes House Republicans to act on the issue. "We cannot afford a system that creates a group which can never...

George Zimmerman should be disarmed. If ever a man deserved to be shunned by society, it is pudgy Georgie Zimmerman. And in some quarters, he is. Unfortunately, there are enough of his ilk around – the big guns who run the National Rifle Association, conservative talk radio Obama haters and others – who quickly and emphatically drew the besieged Floridian into their warm and fuzzy protective cocoon of right-wing fanaticism. The ink was not even dry on the long-delayed Zimmerman arrest warrant when the NRA brass leaped to his defense because he fulfilled their classic gunfighter role model — a...

Pratt & Whitney officials said the company is cutting 400 positions company-wide, with about half of them coming from the Connecticut workforce. Officials at Pratt & Whitney said it was a tough decision to make, but was necessary to remain competitive. According to Pratt & Whitney officials, those affected will receive severance pay, outplacement help, continuation of group insurance and employee scholar program benefits and other services. The job cuts are effective immediately.

The delay in implementation of ObamaCare's employer fines won't keep them from growing between now and when they finally hit in 2015. Each year, the fines will grow in line with the growth in average per-person health insurance premiums relative to 2013. Here's the problem: Average wages generally grow slower than health premiums, and the wages of low-income workers lag average wage growth. That means the penalties will gradually loom larger and larger relative to wages for modest-skilled workers, giving employers a bigger incentive to cut them to part-time. Even if health premiums grow at an average 3.5% annual rate...

President Barack Obama has found a way to cater to his obsession with pre-K programs while the rest of his education agenda stalls: Skip Congress and spend the money anyway. Hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary funding for early learning are funneling into states although Congress hasn’t seriously considered paying for President Barack Obama’s universal preschool proposal. Race to the Top early learning awards and Affordable Care Act money are helping states carry out their pre-K and early childcare plans. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is traveling the country to deliver what amounts to an early childhood stump speech, and...

Commercial flight with a pet carrier 99.7% cheaper... Although über-patriot Allen West first made clear to Mark Levin (on his radio show Monday 8/11) that he's loathe to engage in 'small ball' with some of the more petty White House scandals, he nonetheless was asked 'how do you justify' the latest Obama middle-finger-to-America -namely, the shipping of 'Bo' the dog to Martha's Vineyard via two exotic, VERY expensive-to-operate Marine VTOL aircraft... West responded 'You don't' justify it- labeling it 'an outrage'. With Obama -in West's eyes- 'It's not about serving... it's about being served.' He then described today's 'progressive' debt + money-printing-and-spending...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department's application for a waste site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was "simply flouting the law" when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of...

President Obama liked the idea laid out in a memo from his staff: an ambitious plan to expand high-speed Internet access in schools that would allow students to use digital notebooks and teachers to customize lessons like never before. Better yet, the president would not need Congress to approve it. White House senior advisers have described the little-known proposal, announced earlier this summer under the name ConnectEd, as one of the biggest potential achievements of Obama’s second term. There’s just one little catch — the proposal costs billions of dollars, and Obama wants to pay for it by raising fees...

A report that another provision of ObamaCare -- one that would cap out-of-pocket health care costs -- was being delayed brought a defiant challenge Tuesday from a top Senate Republican, accusing the president of "illegal and unconstitutional" acts in changing laws without congressional approval. "The president doesn't get to write legislation, and it's illegal and unconstitutional for him to try and change legislation by himself," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Fox News. The New York Times first reported on Tuesday that the administration is giving some insurers and employers a one-year grace period to adhere to the limit, which otherwise...

Who knew that when President Obama promised, “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period,” he was only referring to federal employees … and himself? A new survey of 2,500 federal employees and retirees found that 92.3 percent believe federal workers should keep their current health insurance and not be forced into ObamaCare. Only 2.9 percent say they should become part of the new health insurance exchanges. I suspect a similar percentage of private sector employees would also like to keep their coverage, but most won’t get that option. What...

One might expect that the extra scrutiny applied to conservative political groups by the IRS would have ended after the practice got exposed three months ago. At least according to a recent deposition from the House Ways and Means Committee investigation into the scandal, IRS agents still are being directed to automatically apply extra scrutiny to applications mentioning the Tea Party, even if no other political activity is indicated in the application: Q: “If you saw – I am asking this currently, if today a Tea Party case, a group – a case from a Tea Party group came in...

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner sent official documents from her government e-mail address to a personal account, according to House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa and his colleague, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. “This raises some serious questions concerning your use of a non-official e-mail account to conduct official business,” the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to Lerner demanding all documents from her non-official account for the period between January 2008 and the present. “Additional documents related to the Committee’s investigation may exist in these non-official accounts over which you have some control, and the lack of access...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A controversial gun measure proposed by a Southern California lawmaker that would require background checks for all ammunition purchases statewide is moving forward in Sacramento. Senator Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) first introduced Senate Bill 53 last December, which would require anyone wishing to purchase ammunition in California to first obtain a Ammunition Purchase Permit issued by the Department of Justice, valid for one year from the date of issuance. To obtain such a permit, the holder would have to pass a traditional background check as well as a mental health check, according to De León....

White Presidents, on the other hand, are free game. A rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask during a show at the Missouri State Fair found himself banned forever. SEDALIA, Mo. (KSDK) - The rodeo clown who donned an Obama mask during a show at the Missouri State Fair over the weekend has been permanently banned from performer there ever again. In a statement released to the media Monday afternoon, the commission apologized again for the rodeo clown's actions and said they were inappropriate and not keeping with the fair's standards. The commission unanimously voted to ratify a decision by...

Embattled mayor responds to recall effort DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO — Mayor Bob Filner said he's committed to moving San Diego forward and never references the ongoing sexual harassment scandal in his formal response to the effort to recall him from office. Filner, who has been under siege for the past month amid allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior, provided the written response late Monday as was his right under the city's recall rules. Now recall proponents must publish it before they can begin collecting signatures for his ouster on Sunday.

In response to the Newtown, Conn. massacre and a host of school shootings in recent years, the Obama administration released a 67-page report on emergency planning this summer that includes several pages advising educators on how to manage “an active shooter situation.” The U.S. Department of Education’s “live-shooter” section doesn’t recommend that schools arm teachers or employ armed guards. It doesn’t even advise schools to add door locks for classrooms. Instead, the section counsels teachers and students to “run,” “hide” and then “fight”—but only “if neither running nor hiding is a safe option.” Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education and...

Airline travel suppression. Why not have the same-day ability to buy an airline ticket and hop on board a plane minutes afterward - even with a college-issued id? What about one-stop purchasing of airline tickets? How about even no id required to purchase an airline ticket? To stop terrorists from hopping on board a plane? Hmmm. Didn't one of the Tsaernaev brothers go to an area near Russia, engage in activities that alarmed the Russians, they alert the U.S., and yet he flies back here nonetheless? Scrap all of the security measures because its just one guy? Stupid (even though...

BELLEVUE, WA – -(Ammoland.com)- You heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Jay Carney said Obama will sign the UN Arms Trade Treaty “before the end of August…We believe it’s in the interest of the United States.” This is very strategic timing considering Congress is on a 5 week vacation lasting thru the month of August! These back door tactics are nothing new for the Obama Administration, which is why we are using tactics of our own to stop his anti-gun agenda. We have the home fax numbers of every Senator so while they are absent from the Capitol we...

North Carolina Gov. Patrick McCrory has signed a sweeping voting reform bill that imposes strict photo identification requirements on the state's 4.5 million voters, rolls back the early voting period and repeals one-stop registration during early voting. Almost immediately following the signing, civil rights groups filed lawsuits in federal court challenging the law.

When America was a racist country, Democrats were primarily the ones engaged in racism. However, now that racism has been largely relegated to the fringes of American society (the KKK, the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, La Raza, MEChA, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, American Nazi Party, etc.), the Democrats are constantly wagging their fingers about it. Of course naturally, given the racist history of the Democrat Party, liberals have managed to rig the rules in order to benefit themselves and hurt their political opponents. That's a pretty neat albeit despicable trick that they've managed to pull off. 1)...

In the industrial midwest, the city government of Detroit went into bankruptcy in July. Out in California, the city governments of Stockton and San Bernardino entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2012. But the Detroit and California bankruptcies, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, are not alike. They suffer from quite different ailments. You can see the difference by comparing their populations in the 1950 and 2010 censuses. In 1950, Detroit – then the nation’s fifth-largest city – had 1,849,568 people. In 2010, it had 713,777. Stockton and San Bernardino were not much more than small towns in 1950, with 70,853 and 63,058, respectively....

As every Constitutional scholar knows, the First Amendment includes a clause that strictly forbids mockery of the President of the United States, depending on who it is, and which party he belongs to. It’s in one of the penumbras of the Constitution, or maybe it’s an emanation. I always get those two mixed up. Thus it became essential for the forces of freedom and democracy to crush an impertinent rodeo clown who dared to put on a mask of our Dear Leader, President Barack Obama, and ask spectators if they would like to seem him get run down by a...

Last Thursday, Texas based email provider Lavabit suddenly shut down their encrypted email service, leaving behind a message for its customers on the company's website. The owner of Lavabit, Ladar Levinson, intimated that the company had received a secret search order from the government and shut his business down to avoid being "complicit in crimes against the American people."

Earlier this week, Oprah Winfrey, Queen of talk, declared Martin’s murder “the same” as Emmett Till. Eye roll! In 1955, Till was savagely murdered by two racist white men in Mississippi because he was a 14 year old black boy and a white woman thought he whistled at her. Martin, a 17 year old black teen tragically contributed to his own death by starting a fight with Zimmerman. Not the same, not even respectfully close. Oprah should stick with pushing Hollywood stereotypes of blacks by promoting her new film “The Butler” and leave history to experts who know it.

President Obama knows something about being a low-level, nonviolent drug offender, such as the kind the Justice Department today exempted from harsh mandatory prison sentences. In a sense, he was one himself once, although the young Barry Obama was never arrested or charged with a crime. Obama wrote openly in his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” about using marijuana and “maybe a little blow” during his high school days in Hawaii in the 1970s. Biographer David Maraniss reported that Obama was even a pot-smoking trend-setter and leader in the “Choom Gang.” But decades later, openly reflecting on the “stupid”...

“Why would the president do this for the cameras? It’s one thing to take a vacation but is this pose shoving it down the throats of the American people?” she asked. “Many are out of work. They can’t afford to spend the day working on their golf game in one of the most expensive places to vacation. Is this what leadership looks like?”

Several of President Obama’s political appointees are using secret government email accounts, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. The administration officials contend the separate addresses used by the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments are necessary to keep their primary inboxes from overflowing. But the practice invites concerns that federal agencies are conducting official business through accounts that go undetected in public records requests. It brings worries that government officials are hiding information and decisions. "What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years,"...

President Obama is quietly moving forward with gun control regulations. A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives(ATF) Final Rule published Tuesday in the Federal Register and a news release issued last Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) are recent developments ignored by the mainstream media even though Vice President Joe Biden announced last week that the administration would be using executive orders to advance “gun control” goals following a Senate battle that could not muster the votes to do so legislatively. President Obama has side-stepped Congress by implementing portions of the UN Small Arms Trade...

...Remember on Friday how one of President Obama's efforts to get people to trust the government more concerning the NSA's surveillance efforts was to create an "outside" and "independent" board to review it all?... ...Except, that was Friday. Today is Monday. And, on Monday we learn that "outside" and "independent" actually means setup by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper--the same guy who has already admitted to lying to Congress about the program, and has received no punishment for doing so. This is independent? From this we're supposed to expect real oversight?!? This is from the letter sent to Clapper:...

The 2014 race for Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District -- targeted by national Democrats as one they believe they can win -- is about to become more crowded and more interesting. Paula Overby, who is a 59-year-old quality assurance analyst from Eagan, says she has nearly enough signatures on a petition to get on next year's Democratic primary ballot to compete for the congressional seat. Overby, born a man who now identifies as a woman, believes she will be the first openly transgendered person from Minnesota to run for Congress.

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...