Free Republic

Bill Berryhill's pitch to voters at a recent candidates forum came down to more than just his positions on issues affecting San Joaquin County's 5th Senate District. It was about the balance of power in the Capitol."Do you realize if one party gets sole power, you think you're taxed to the max now? Guess what? You better grab your wallet, because they only have one way to go and that's to tax and spend, tax and spend," the Republican assemblyman told the crowd at Tracy's Kimball High. Berryhill is running in one of a handful of newly drawn swing seats...

While discussing gay marriage with two black religious leaders on different sides of the issue, MSNBC's Chris Matthews said Jesus would not have chased a kid and cut his hair like Mitt Romney reportedly did as a youth in high school. Matthews says Jesus would have protected the kid. "I remember that Jesus always stood against the people being stoned," Matthews said to gay marriage opponent Bishop Harry Jackson of the Hope Christian Church. "He was the one who said, 'don't condemn people.' His friend was Mary Magdalene, right?" Matthews asked rhetorically. "He wasn't out there saying obey the law...

We have sent the Tea Party Express "Mobile Call Center" down to Texas for the final push before TOMORROW'S election!Sorry to interrupt your Memorial Day, but we here at the Tea Party Express want to thank you for your support of conservative Texas U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz and want to show you what we are doing to ensure that conservatives show up to the polls tomorrow to vote.  In a campaign first, we have harnessed cutting edge technology with good old fashioned Tea Party passion and present to you the Tea Party Express "Mobile Call Center":The Tea Party...

Much has been said, here at American Thinker and elsewhere, about Barack Obama's recent pair of teleprompted references to his (presumably) non-existent sons. Thomas Lifson toys with the notion that Obama might in fact have secret sons, as a way of making sense of the seeming insanity of it. Selwyn Duke suggests it might indicate brain damage from Obama's (presumably) past drug use. (Funny, isn't it, how often one is left no choice but merely to presume about the Cipher-in-Chief.) David Paulin asks whether Obama might be the victim of a teleprompting prankster/saboteur. All of these are reasonable speculations --...

If polls are correct, the recall election that opponents hoped would rid the State Of Wisconsin from its present governor, Scott Walker, will end leaving Walker in office. Many analysts attribute Walker’s apparent success in overcoming this recall effort to the Big M — money. Millions of dollars have poured into Wisconsin from right-wing billionaires, money Walker has used to gain an advantage. He outspent recall advocates more than 10-1 before his recall opponent was even nominated and legally able to raise his own recall funding. It’s pretty clear to me, however, that money isn’t the only Big M explanation...

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was one of several speakers at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth undergraduate commencement that took place this Sunday. Frank was also one of two people that received the Chancellor's Distinguished Service Medal at the event. However, Congressman Frank made a controversial comment about Hubie Jones, a black recipient of an honorary doctorate, that elicited an audible gasp from the audience. In reference to the Trayvon Martin case, Frank said "you now got a hoodie you can wear and no one will shoot at you." After the audience reacted, Frank said, "I think you'll feel, I hope,...

Back in 2004, Thomas Frank wrote a famous book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", in which he lamented working class white people's choices to vote their "values" rather than what -- in his not-so-humble opinion -- was in their "genuine" economic interests. Why didn't they identify as liberals and vote Democratic? Frank's book was the midwife of President Obama's infamous "clinging to guns and God" remark on April 11, 2008: The last few years have not been kind to Frank's or Obama's dogmatic assumptions that economic liberalism is in the interest of Kansas -- i.e., the working people of...

More than 40 Catholic individuals, dioceses and universities have sued the Obama administration to prevent trampling of their First Amendment right to practice religion by forcing them to pay for abortifacients, sterilizations, contraception, devices and pills that would violate their religious beliefs. We would be stunned and alarmed if the courts reject their arguments, grounded as they are in the constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion...

PRINCETON, NJ -- U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four-percentage-point edge. These data, from an analysis of Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted April 11-May 24, show that 24% of all adult men are veterans, compared with 2% of adult women. Obama and Romney are tied overall at 46% apiece among all registered voters in this sample. Men give Romney an eight-point edge, while women opt for Obama over Romney by seven points. It turns out...

The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent because another 522,000 adults quit looking for work and are no longer counted. In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression more than four-fifths of the reduction in unemployment has been accomplished by a dropping adult labor force participation rate—essentially, persuading adults they don’t need a job, or the job they could find is not worth having. In the first quarter, growth slowed to 2.2 percent and was largely sustained by consumers taking on more debt, and additions to business inventory. Gains in manufacturing production have not instigated stronger improvements in employment largely...

President Barack Obama needs an agreement with Iran to get reelected, claims a senior Iranian legislator speaking to government-controlled media. Iran is locked in talks between six world powers, including the United States, over its unsupervised nuclear program and Tehran’s demand to enrich high-grade uranium. "No international consensus will be made for any measure in the next six months and until the presidential election in the US, and at present it is the US which is in need of an agreement with Iran and attempts to lead the western sides to the same path," said Mahdi Sanayee. A member of...

The presumptive GOP nominee has some Republicans worried he lacks the “vision thing” that has hurt previous presidential candidates and haunted George H.W. Bush in his quest to succeed Ronald Reagan. Some GOP officials fear that their nominee for president has so far failed to articulate a clear and compelling plan for the country if he defeats President Barack Obama in November. Instead of framing his ideas in a positive and specific way — like some of his GOP primary challengers — they say Romney must stop solely running a defensive campaign that leaves voters without a clear idea of...

The late Andrew Breitbart saw in Ted Cruz the future of the conservative movement.  On paper, Cruz seems like someone out of central casting, perfectly put together to represent conservatism’s future. His father fled oppression in Cuba for freedom in America. He grew up immersing himself in the works of Frederick Bastiat, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman, earning scholarships by giving speeches about their ideas. He went to Princeton and Harvard law without losing the common touch. He racked up legal victories that helped defend the Second Amendment and America’s sovereignty against the World Court.  But while...

I just finished reading Brian Sullivan’s Reform battles rollback as Romney pledges to repeal Obama's financial regulations regarding the differences between Romney and Obama on the financial services regulations known as Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. Sullivan’s piece is mostly what you would expect from a mainstream media outlet. It’s a topical check list of “On the one hand Romney wants, on the other hand Obama says…” that is just a series of campaign infomercials disguised as balanced analysis. (Please see my personal plea at the end of this article for USA Cares this Memorial Day- and please... give generously)     And it illustrates what’s really...

Let us bury, once and for all, the unsupported assertions that Minnesota's election system is the best in the nation and there is no evidence of ineligible voting. Consider that on Election Day in 2008, more than 500,000 people walked into polling places, filled out pieces of paper called Voter Registration Applications, and then voted. The state treated these individuals differently from those of you who registered prior to the election. Specifically, your registration information was compared to the Department of Public Safety records indicating you are a citizen and are not a felon with unrestored voting rights. Additionally, your...

Winston Churchill captured what this presidential election is about when he observed “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” It’s why the young black Democrat mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker, got high level repudiation from the Obama campaign, including from the president himself, when he insolently suggested that Bain Capital, the investment firm once headed by Mitt Romney, might actually do positive things. Booker, an Obama campaign surrogate, went off script on Meet the Press when he refused to justify a campaign attack ad...

The ham-handed Barack Obama campaign attack ads on Mitt Romney's former firm Bain Capital have drawn a lot of ire from other Democrats. And not just because they were sloppily fact-checked (the ads hit Romney for layoffs long after he left Bain) and because a leading Obama money bundler is a Bain executive himself. Chiming in with various degrees of disapproval were Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker ("nauseating"), former Rep. Harold Ford, Obama car czar Steven Rattner, Sen. Mark Warner and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. There are other signs of unease among Democratic elites. Obama contributions from Silicon Valley...

Poll after poll shows public support for same-sex marriage steadily increasing, to the point where it's now a majority viewpoint. Yet in all 32 states where gay marriage has been on the ballot, voters have rejected it. It's possible the streak could end in November, when Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington state are likely to have closely contested gay marriage measures on their ballots.

Conservative super-PACs are attempting to gin up disillusionment among President Obama's supporters and keep their turnout low in November's election, in part by highlighting his ties to Wall Street.Within the past month, three separate ads — two from the American Future Fund and one from Crossroads GPS — have assailed Obama from broadly comparable perspectives. Especially striking are the American Future Fund ads which make the kind of anti-Wall Street argument heard largely on the left. The outside groups' message contrasts with the one being pushed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, who has called the Obama's "the most anti-business...

Bruce Willis calls Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney an "embarrassment" in a new interview with Esquire magazine and says he doesn't care which side wins in November. "Yeah, Romney. He's just such a disappointment, an embarrassment," Willis told the magazine. "Chin up, hair up. He's just one of those guys, one of those guys who says he's going to change everything and he'll get in there, and they'll smile at him and introduce themselves: 'We're Congress, we make sure nothing changes,'" Willis went on. "He won't do it. He can't. Everybody wants to be Barack Obama. And what did he...

As the lone Democrat seeking to challenge Elizabeth Warren in the Senate primary in Massachusetts, Marisa DeFranco has been ridiculed, admonished and, worst of all, ignored. But for the moment, Ms. DeFranco, an immigration lawyer with high energy and a scrappy band of volunteers, is enjoying a burst of momentum. She surprised party insiders by collecting enough valid signatures by the May 1 deadline — more than 10,000, gathered everywhere from town meetings to town dumps — to qualify for the Democratic primary on Sept. 6. If Ms. DeFranco clears one more hurdle — winning 15 percent of the delegate...

Barack Obama has taken his reelection campaign to new depths with a television ad targeting veterans released last week timed for Memorial Day.Now never mind that Memorial Day is to honor those killed in service while Veterans Day is set aside to honor living service members. We know that Obama has trouble differentiating the two. ("On this Memorial Day as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes--and I see many of them in the audience here today..." Obama, May 26, 2008)The Associated Press quots Obama in the ad:"It's because of what they've done that we've been able to...

Union Statistics: What You May Not Know | LaborUnionReport.com Monday, May 28th, 2012 HomeLaborUnionReport Updates DAILY NEWSGeneral NewsProject Labor AgreementsPublic Sector UnionsUnion BossesUnion HypocrisyUnion OrganizingUnion StrikeUnion Violence Legal UpdatesNLRB Watch National Right to Work Political Updates EconomyEnvironmentalismHealth CareImmigrationMarxism/Socialism Union Corruption Union Corruption Report The Blogroll Filed Under:  LaborUnionReport Updates Union Statistics: What You May Not Know September 15th 2011   ·   1 Comment Tweet Sharebar Tweet The folks at UnionFacts.com have a ‘vital statistics‘ page that provides some good information about unions that many Americans may not know. Here is just some of the information:Financial Information Annual Dues Paid to Unions: $8,217,838,676 Total...

CBS's Bob Schieffer certainly wasn't in an Obama-loving mood Sunday. CBS's Bob Schieffer certainly wasn't in an Obama-loving mood Sunday. Having asked the President's senior campaign adviser "Whatever happened to hope and change" early in the program, the Face the Nation host in a subsequent segment laughed out loud after playing a clip of Obama bragging about his accomplishments on 60 Minutes last year (video follows with transcript and commentary):MRC TV video playerBOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: I want to play a little something for you. I think one of the lessons that probably all of us recognize is that if you--...

By the time President Obama took the stage at the Fox Theater here, he was in the 18th hour of a 19-hour day. His tie was still knotted to the top as he launched into his stump speech, attacking his opponent’s record and defending his own. “I still believe in you,” he said, “and I hope you still believe in me.” SNIP The protesters waiting outside a campaign fund-raiser in Denver last week were probably never supporters. But some of their signs cut close to the bone. “Out of Hope, Ready for Change,” one read. “Obama’s Blvd. of Broken Promises,”...

Camp David has been an historic presidential retreat since World War II, but according to New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper, Barack Obama "hates it" because there isn't any golf. Such was revealed on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend (video follows with transcript and commentary): NYT White House Correspondent: Obama 'Hates' Camp David Because There's No GolfHELENE COOPER, NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Alright, for something totally superficial, I have figured out why President Obama does not like Camp David. CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: He doesn’t like it? COOPER: He hates it. We were up there...

Of all of the evidence that has been released in the Trayvon Martin case, none has been debated and scrutinized more than the alleged injuries suffered by George Zimmerman, the shooter. Photos have surfaced showing Zimmerman with various cuts and bruises on his nose, head and perhaps other places. And, two days after Trayvon was gunned down, Zimmerman’s personal physician claimed Zimmerman had blackened eyes and a broken nose. Well, we all know the devil is tricky. The devil will make you think the victim is the criminal and the murderous stalker was an innocent bystander in fear of his...

If it weren't for Sarah Palin, the last convention would have been the most uninspiring that I can recall going all the way back to Goldwater. Fox News has invested heavily in Obama's defeat. Can Rove and the Republican estblishment deliver or will Romeney insist on calling the shots given what happened in 2008. Any thoughts?

As NewsBusters has been reporting for weeks, much of the Obama-loving media have been shamelessly carrying water for the White House's claim that Mitt Romney's vast business experience is not a qualification for president. When Candy Crowley tried this on CNN's State of the Union Sunday, her guest Rudy Giuliani replied, "That's really jerky" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Giuliani to Crowley's Claim Biz Experience Isn't Presidential Qualification: 'That's Really Jerky'RUDY GIULIANI: I mean, the simple fact is that Mitt Romney has been far more successful in the things that he's done than Barack Obama. I mean, going way...

Claremont McKenna College, a private liberal arts college 60 miles east of Los Angeles, drew national attention earlier this year when its dean of admissions, Richard Vos, was caught deliberately misreporting the SAT scores that students had achieved before attending CMC. VosÂ’s goal was to reach the coveted 1400 SAT average for highly selective liberal arts colleges. He resigned soon after the scandal emerged in January, but not before touching off a debate about the lengths to which colleges will go to boost their rankings. Journalists and education-policy experts lectured about the corrupting effect of U.S. News and World ReportÂ’s...

REMEMBERING THOSE WHO GAVE EVERYTHING SO THAT WE MAY REMAIN FREE

The story told here is not a tale of right and wrong. There are no good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, in this account. American politics is regularly cast in such moralistic terms, but that has not been our approach here. Instead, our focus has been on the factions within American society, and how the Democratic party has transformed the interests of those factions into public policy. That is the great challenge of a republican system of government such as ours—one in which the people are sovereign and the government operates on their behalf. Such governments are easy...

After 16 months of unimaginable discord, Wisconsin feels more divided than ever. But the underlying fault lines are not new. Gov. Scott Walker’s job performance is splitting the state along familiar political and demographic lines. Walker’s job rating is positive among men, married people, frequent church-goers, higher-income-earners, whites, non-union households and people without a college degree. Walker’s job rating is negative among women, people who aren’t married, people who don’t go to religious services, non-whites, lower-income-earners, union households, and people with a bachelors degree or higher. These patterns transcend the Wisconsin recall wars; they are basic features of today’s red-blue...

Barack Obama's senior campaign adviser Robert Gibbs certainly didn't expect this question when he agreed to go on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday. Right out of the gate host Bob Schieffer pressed his guest about all the negative ads the President's campaign is running until he finally asked, "Whatever happened to hope and change?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):VideoBOB SCHIEFFER: You know one of the refreshing changes when, when the President was elected, he talked about hope and change. Whatever happened to hope and change? Now, it seems he is just coming right out of the box with these...

Recent polls have pointed toward a victory for Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s June 5 recall election. But here’s the clearest evidence to date that national Democratic party officials believe their side is losing: Democratic officials are playing down the potential impact. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) insisted in a television interview that a loss for the Democratic candidate in the recall, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, wouldn't have any implications for other races, such as the presidential election. “I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Wasserman Schultz said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program....

As we reported last week, every gun owner concerned about the future of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms should be aware that the United Nations and the global gun eradication movement are attempting to eliminate our Second Amendment freedoms by drafting a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. This treaty would cover tanks, helicopters, and other heavy weapons but could also include civilian rifles, shotguns and handguns. The treaty's language will be finalized by the U.N. this July during a four week conference. In an attempt to thwart this serious threat to our sovereign rights and freedoms, earlier this year,...

The new round of national and state surveys this week generally showing President Obama clinging to a tenuous advantage over Republican Mitt Romney reinforce the conclusion that socially liberal, upscale white women may stand as the president's indispensable line of defense in his struggle for reelection. Both the national ABC/Washington Post survey released earlier this week, and the NBC/Marist Polls released Thursday in the battleground states of Ohio, Virginia and Florida show Obama retaining preponderant support among minority voters who were critical to his 2008 victory. Conversely, in almost all of the surveys, Obama faces a consistent pattern of erosion...

Even after “updating” a May 17 ‘Fact’ Check which this writer characterized as "taking three sentences from an hour-long May 1 Rick Hamada interview with Afghanistan combat veteran Rep. Charles Djou, twisting Djou's words into a pretzel and fact-checking statements Djou did not make", Civil Beat is still lying about Charles Djou’s Afghanistan combat record and his votes in Congress relating to that war. (See article below.) Shamed into retracting their “false” rating, Civil Beat on Friday shifted to a “half-true”. In spite of the shift, the “half-true” rating remains a lie which hangs on a single sentence of willful...

MADISON — Someone, it appears, thinks Terry Moulton might lose, or at least is willing to commit $227,000 toward making that happen. The buzz for a while has been that Democrats’ best chance of winning one of the four Senate seats up for recall on June 5 is in Senate District 21, where Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, is trying to fend off a challenge from his Democratic predecessor, John Lehman. But spending this month — from liberals and conservatives alike — indicates they aren’t quite certain that Moulton, facing former Democratic Rep. Kristen Dexter, can hold onto the District 23...

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday classified Democratic efforts in the Wisconsin recall election as a “test run” for the presidential race. “It’s given the Obama for America operation an opportunity to do the dry run we need of our massive, significant dynamic grassroots presidential campaign,” the Florida representative said of the battleground state on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Elizabeth Warren can no longer count the Harvard University administrator who listed her as "Native American" among her advocates in the unfolding scandal of her professed minority heritage. In the reaction to the Boston Globe's controversial article on Harvard's EEOC reports which listed Elizabeth Warren as a Native American, one particular revelation has gone largely unnoticed. Alan Ray, the former administrator who filed diversity reports during Warren's tenure, distances the university from any responsibility for erroneously listing her as a Native American.

I am asking all GOP voters in the Texas GOP primary on May 29, 2012, in state house district 64(Denton) to vote for Mike Brucia against six term incumbent Myra Crownover. Myra Crownover is a statist. She is another John McCain in the making(i.e. getting ready for a US House or Senate run). She is very anti-tobacco, and has made it her crusade to dictate to private business owners how they run their businesses over a legal product, tobacco. I know that alot on FR are anti-tobacco, but this is a core issue, what's next? Food and guns? Those who...

Thirty officials of the North Korean regime who were involved in talks with South Korea have been executed or died in "staged traffic accidents," according to a human rights report.

The president, for all his cool, has a mean streak—just ask Hillary Clinton—and this week he turned it on Mitt Romney, writes Lloyd Grove. Never mind “cow pie of distortion”—President Obama’s earthy attack on Mitt Romney that dominated the headlines Thursday night from his barn-burner at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Obama President Obama speaks at a campaign event at the Iowa state fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday (Nati Harnik / AP Photo) The psychological heart of Obama’s campaign speech was “prairie fire of debt,” the phrase that set up his scatological punch line. “I know Gov. Romney came...

Nearby today readers will notice excerpts from a memo written to Ronald Reagan by his economic advisers between his November 1980 election and inauguration. We share the memo because it shines a historical perspective on our own economic dilemmas as the Presidential race hits its Memorial Day turn. The memo was sent to us by George Shultz, who later became the Gipper's Secretary of State but had served previous stints at Treasury, Labor and the White House budget office. The signers include some of the last century's most consequential economic figures, notably the great Milton Friedman, tax-cut evangelist Jack Kemp...

California has a “single-subject rule” limiting ballot propositions to just one issue. This is to reduce confusion and prevent massive proposals from being enacted. Thus, it’s no surprise the tax increases on this November’s ballot do not also contain government-reform measures. But there’s nothing stopping the backers of these proposals from endorsing companion legislation designed to soften the burning revulsion that so many people feel for state government, at least enough to allow one or more of the measures to pass. In fact, I think that’s exactly what voters need to see before they agree to pay more taxes. According...

Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker, fighting a recall election, against his challenger Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, face-off June 5, 2012, in one of most important contests of our generation.. Background noise? Not even close..Make no mistake, this pesky little contest will determine the momentum, on both sides, and serve as a preamble of the major General Election this November.. All of the important Democrat lifeblood constituencies are at stake, and are being challenged, and hanging by a slim thread, thanks to a true hero, GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER. He and the fighting spirit of his fellow Wisconsinites, dared to touch...

When Mitt Romney came to an inner-city charter school here Thursday to promote his new education agenda, he received something of a history lecture about the persecution of blacks in America and the struggles of African American children to meet the academic achievements of their white counterparts. Seeking to broaden his appeal heading into the general election, Romney was venturing for his first time in this campaign into an impoverished black neighborhood to hear the concerns of local educators and community leaders. But here in the streets of West Philadelphia, the emotion surrounding his contest with the nation’s first black...

I feel something washing over me. I’m standing in New Jersey, so it’s probably red ink. No, wait a minute — it’s glowing ink! It could only be one thing: more conservative hagiography about the Garden State’s GOP governor. Chris Christie is so not one of us that articles like “Christie Is One of Us” — a new contribution to the genre, from National Review’s Noah Glyn — are churned out regularly as the governor’s smitten admirers, from Ann Coulter to NR staffers, labor to convince us of what they’ve convinced themselves of: that an ostensibly gruff, internally milquetoast, progressive-lite,...

Much has been said about the bullying history of both of the presumed presidential nominees for 2012. Last week a North Carolina teacher was put on paid suspension because she got caught bullying her own classroom on the topic of which candidate had been the worse bully years previous. Bullies--we are told--are the cause of everything from eating disorders to teen suicide. The Trayvon Martin case had originally been sold through the media as a case in which an older vigilante wanted to bully a young child. Bullying as a subject itself has even been bullied a great deal. Specifically,...