Free Republic

It started as a joke between friends, but Morris the cat's bid to become mayor of the Mexican city of Xalapa, the capital of the state of Veracruz, has now turned into a social media phenomenon with a serious message about political disenchantment.

Does it? Should we believe the OMB's numbers that legalizing 15 million illegals will add $179 billion dollars to the U.S. economy over the next 10 years, and $700 billion over the next 10 years after that? Should we believe Menendez? How accurate was the Office of Management and Budget on what OBAMACARE would cost? I would like to see how much faith Rubio, McCain, Graham and others - be they conservative hosts on television or on talk radio - put in the numbers that the OMB supplied concerning legalizing 15 million illegals. Should they believe Menendez? The New York...

DENVER - BY MEGAN SCHRADER megan.schrader@gazette.com Enough signatures were verified Tuesday to make Senate President John Morse the first state-level elected official to face a recall election, but Morse isn't going to ballot without a fight. The secretary of state's office verified that 10,137 registered voters in Senate District 11 - west and central Colorado Springs - signed a petition to recall Morse through a election. Only 7,178 signatures are necessary to take the issue to voters in coming months. But a voter in Morse's district challenged the petition a few hours after the signatures were verified Tuesday, saying it...

7-2 decision practically invites Arizona to try again using proper administrative procedures Most of what you have heard in the media about the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona is incomplete to the point of misleading. It is true that the Court held that Arizona’s Proposition 200 (passed in 2004) requiring documentary proof of citizenship was invalid as contrary to the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requirement that states “accept and use” the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) voter registration form which merely requires that a registrant affirm citizenship. But, this ruling essentially was...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down one of its first major decisions of this term, striking down Arizona’s measure requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. Media reports are already off base in interpreting this decision, says Heritage legal expert Hans von Spakovsky. Here are three things to know about the decision. 1. This is not a voter ID decision. This decision has to do with voter registration, not the act of voting. Von Spakovsky explains: In 2004, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum that had two major components: voter ID for in-person voting and a requirement that anyone registering...

You’d think when the Huffington Post’s top writer on finance writes about the tax code, he’d understand at least how the tax code works. But in an age when “finance” editors, like the HuffPo’s Mark Gongloff, are demonstrably anti-business, pro-Occupy and work as shills for progressive ideas, facts take a back seat to ideology, outrage and agendas. The latest outrage Gongloff has taken issue with is how little of the U.S. tax revenue, on a percentage basis, is generated by corporate taxes, as opposed to the good old days of the 1950s. He even has a chart to prove it...

It’s not clear why much of the Western media continues to describe Iran’s newly elected president as a “moderate.” After all, Hassan Rouhani is a regime pillar: As an early follower of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rouhani joined him in exile in Paris, and over the last 34 years, the 64-year-old Qom-educated cleric has held key positions in the regime’s political echelons, and served in top military jobs during Iran’s decade-long war with Iraq. As Iran’s chief interlocutor with the West on the regime’s nuclear portfolio, Rouhani boasted of deceiving his negotiating partners. ....

If ever there was a region where incumbent Republican governors can experience the great GOP gubernatorial apocalypse, it is the upper Midwest. Three of the races involve Republican incumbents who rode the Republican wave of 2010 into office. They are Rick Snyder in Michigan, John Kasich in Ohio and Scott Walker in Wisconsin. That potential loss of three Governor’s offices may be mitigated by a Pat Quinn Democratic loss in Illinois. The problem is that Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin are less red than Illinois is certainly blue.

ModMark wrote: One of the coal plants shut down in Chicago was built ~90 years ago. While upgraded in the 1950's. it still did not meet EPA standards before Obama was elected. These plants were grandfather in when the clean air act was past. These ancient relics should have been converted to natural gas long ago.Do you really want to live next to one of these ancient plants? –in response to Obama Promise Kept: Coal Plants to go Bankrupt with New EPA Carbon Cap Dear Comrade Mark, The building was built 90 years ago, but the actual power plant generating electricity is considerably...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declined an invitation to attend a major gathering of social conservatives this week in Washington, opting instead to make a high-profile appearance at a forum organized by former President Bill Clinton in Chicago. Christie's decision was hardly a bombshell: Up for re-election in November in a Democratic-leaning state, the governor can hardly afford to be seen courting Christian conservatives and sharing a stage with divisive figures like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain. But his absence was a sore point for many conservative activists who traveled to the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference...

"The enduring image most Americans have of you is standing there in your jacket, grieving with your people, working with them and working with the president," Clinton said to Christie during an onstage discussion at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago. Christie drew sharp criticism from his own party for putting aside politics as he stood side-by-side with President Barack Obama, who was up for re-election in mere days, when the president traveled to New Jersey to survey the destruction. Despite their political disagreements, Christie and Obama have maintained that relationship, and Christie again openly embraced the president's visit...

Erik Nielson, writing at the Huffington Post, says that President Obama deceived many who supported him during his first presidential campaign, including hip-hop artists. He says that Obama's policies haven’t helped the minorities who elected him to office. There was something remarkable about seeing rappers pledge their support to a mainstream presidential candidate, especially given the history of antipathy between national politicians and hip hop. And, of course, there was something equally remarkable about watching a future president embrace hip hop culture. Indeed, whereas politicians on both sides of the aisle had made a political tradition out of demonizing hip...

Documents Reveal that ‘Dreamers’ Order Opened Door to Relatives of Illegal Immigrants, “Inundating” Border Towns with Petitions for AdmissionJudicial Watch announced today that documents obtained recently through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) abandoned required background checks late last year, adopting, instead, costly “lean and lite” procedures in effort to keep up with the flood of amnesty applications spurred by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) directive, which grants illegal aliens a two-year deferment from deportation. Acting on a tip from a whistleblower...

Vice President Joe Biden praised former Vice President Al Gore, who was present during a fundraiser for Massachusetts Senate Candidate Ed Markey, asserting that Gore had actually won the the 2000 presidential election. With characteristic hyperbole, Biden introduced the former Vice President while praising his political career. “This man was elected president of the United States of America,” Biden said according to the pool report. “No, no, no. He was elected president of the United States of America. But for the good of the nation, when the bad decision in my view was made, he did the right thing for...

I'm Sick and Tired, and you should care.. REALLY! Why you should care, is that I am a member of that generation of folks that remembers what our Country was before the 60's radicals began destroying our country, culture, and future.. I am indeed sick, but still strong enough to muster the revolting reaction to the state of our National decline..I can't say I haven't warned everyone that would listen to me, to react to the changes that have taken us down this road, sadly without much reaction from those that had to suffer my diatribes.. There aren't many of...

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I would describe this man as an American hero, as a person willing to risk life, limb and liberty in order to expose to the American people one of the most extraordinary violations of the American principles, value judgments and the Constitution itself in all of our history. A person so familiar with the intelligence community, as you just heard from the excerpts that you just played. He's aware of the personal danger to himself. He knows of the likelihood of prosecution. But he also understands that the government listening to half the country is not what...

A little over 13,500 signatures to recall Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, were turned in Monday morning to the secretary of states office by local gun-rights advocates. To put the ouster attempt on the ballot 11,500 of those signatures must be valid, which is 25 percent of the number of votes cast in the 2010 election that put Giron in office. Victor Head, a plumber from Pueblo who is leading the campaign against the senator, said they were diligent to ensure all of the signatures were in Giron’s Senate District 3. The state has three weeks to determine whether the signatures...

Urgent. While some Tea Party groups testified at the House Ways and Means Committee Hearing last week over the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) abuse of power for targeting and harassing them and approximately 500 other conservative groups when they sought tax-exempt status, if you are looking for a political judicial solution, such as congress, impeachment or a special prosecutor to solve the tsunami of unlawful acts coming out of Washington, you are looking in the wrong place. What the IRS did tilted President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election in his favor. The bottom line is this. You can’t get justice within...

The key question that needs to be answered now is...WHY WAS CATHERINE TARGETED PERSONALLY? Bell asked: "Was there anything in particular that you think may have triggered that special attention?" Catherine answered: "We believe that much of it had ultimately had to do with True the Vote activities involving our 'Verify the Recall' project to ensure that petition-gathering connected with actions in Wisconsin to remove Governor Scott Walker were following the rules. This was obviously seen as a threat by liberal organizations and unions bent upon recalling him. "It's important to understand that our purpose and actions in this project...

How much money did U.S. investors raid from the future following President Barack Obama's re-election on 6 November 2012? We've long noted the tax-avoidance motive that investors had for taking this action, as well as the factors that drove its timing, but we've never fully quantified just how much money was involved in the great dividend raid of 2012. Until today, that is! Our first chart shows how the amount of S&P 500 dividends per share expected to be paid out the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first three quarters of 2013 changed in the period from 21...

Initial Reaction The establishment survey showed a gain of 175,000 a reasonably good but not spectacular print. The bright spot was involuntary part-time employment only rose by 26,000 so most of the jobs were (for a change) full-time jobs. The civilian labor force rose by 420,000 for a change, enough to raise the unemployment rate 0.1 percentage points to 7.6%. The Participation Rate rose 0.1 to 63.4%, just off the low of 63.3% dating back to 1979. Obamacare Effect Given there was not a huge jump in part-time employment this month, the bulk of the Obamacare effect of employers reducing...

Why does Obama boast an average approval rating of 48 percent when he scores terribly on each issue he is now handling? Here’s the rundown in the latest Bloomberg News poll: ... The answer is, of course, demographics. African-Americans, Latinos, gays, students, and single white women are so frightened of a world without Obama and so alienated from Republicans that they dare not give the president overall negative ratings. Will they ever? Yes. When the scandals reach the point where they cannot avoid it and when the Republicans stop alienating these groups. Immigration reform will the first break in the...

The Democrat Party is the Teat Party; that we all know. Will a Tea Partier or pro-Tea Party person be nominated by GOP voters or will we get another GOP-e stooge (IOW, Teat Party lite)? Feel free to comment....

For the former Miss America who just jumped into the race for Illinois’s 13th Congressional District, the Republican primary might be, well, a bit like a beauty pageant. She calls her opponent, an incumbent freshman, a “good person,” insists there’s no need for attacks, and says let the judges, no, make that the voters, decide. “I view this primary process as being very healthful to the party because we will be able throughout the campaign to debate the issues that are important to the party,” newly declared candidate Erika Harold told POLITICO, referring to her challenge of Rep. Rodney Davis...

Many (be they libertarians, liberals, etc) support easing restrictions on marijuana use, especially in the sphere of "medical" marijuana. If marijuana can indeed be used to block pain, can scientifically be proven to do so, and is the only substance that some say is effective in blocking pain, can the pain-blocking ingredients/substances within marijuana be extracted, placed in a pill form, grown, manufactured and distributed by pharmaceutical companies, dispensed by a licensed physician (no home-grown stuff), all-the-while the "high"-inducing substances are left out of the pill form? I hear some people say that they drink wine for its health benefits....

Senate President John Morse isn’t hiding his budding bromance with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg anymore ... Morse openly declares his fervent hope that Bloomberg rides to the rescue with some more cold hard cash for his recall defense campaign. He’ll need it after recall organizers turned in over 16,000 signatures, compared to the only 13,866 votes Morse received in his last election in 2010. Any Bloomberg bucks would be in addition to the at least $20,000 Morse’s recall defense campaign has already taken from Bloomberg-backed America Votes.

The death of Frank R. Lautenberg on Monday has left Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey with the kind of opportunity that politicians usually covet: the chance to give away a seat in the United States Senate. But the decision is fraught with pitfalls, none bigger than having to choose between improving his party’s fortunes in Washington and furthering his own political ambitions at home. Mr. Christie, a Republican, is up for re-election in November and hoping to secure a huge victory margin, which he could then use to accelerate his drive to present himself as a presidential candidate with...

At an event where the price of admission ranged from $1,000 to $32,000 per seat, President Obama urged 150 donors to give as much as they can to the effort of the Democratic Party to retake control of the House of Representatives in the 2014 elections. “Right now the nation’s business is being held hostage by the Republican House majority that insists on pressing ahead with useless investigations,” Obama declared. “Even if we were to concede that the issues they want to investigate are legitimate—which we don’t—it must be admitted that those affected constitute a tiny minority.” “We’ve got four...

There were two big shocks for me on election night 2012: 1) Obama beat Romney. I had concluded that 2012 would look a lot like 2004, i.e. a 50-49 victory with about 290 Electoral votes. I did not subscribe to the landslide (i.e. Dick Morris) but did see a narrow Romney victory! 2) All of the talk about the "hispano" vote. I had looked at anecdotal evidence and did not see a "hispano" wave on election day. So I was surprised with all of the conventional wisdom that "hispanos" had reelected Obama. It turns out that "hispanos" did not really...

Egypt's highest court ruled on Sunday that the nation's Islamist-dominated legislature and constitutional panel were illegally elected, dealing a serious blow to the legal basis of the Islamists' hold on power. The ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court says that the legislature's upper house, the only one currently sitting, would not be dissolved until the parliament's lower chamber is elected later this year or early in 2014. The constitutional panel has already dissolved after completing the charter. SNIP The same court ruled to dissolve parliament's lower chamber in June, a move that led to the promotion of the normally toothless...

New book: Obama was pushed by Clintons into endorsement of Hillary in 2016 By EDWARD KLEIN Last Updated: 5:54 AM, June 2, 2013 Posted: 11:07 PM, June 1, 2013 EXCLUSIVE President Obama made a secret deal to support Hillary Clinton when she runs for president in 2016, campaign sources say, payback for the support her husband gave him in 2012. Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is legendary. A year before the last election, he was urging Hillary to challenge the sitting president for the nomination — a move she rejected. According to two people who attended that meeting in Chappaqua,...

Rand Paul is the latest Republican to tell his party to open up to a wider range of views within its ranks. "The party can be big enough to allow people who don't all agree on every issue," Senator Paul told an audience in California, a state that produced three Republican presidents in the 20th century but now votes reliably Democratic. "When the Republican Party looks like the rest of America, we'll win again," he said. "It's not going to change who I am or what I talk about but I think we can be a big enough party to...

White and Hispanic turnout fell from 2004 to 2012, according to a new study by the Center for Immigration Studies based on newly-released U.S. Census data. Had turnout equaled what it was in 2004, 4.7 million more whites would have voted in 2012, of which 4.2 million were not college graduates, according to the study. Obama received five million more votes than Romney. “As Republicans think about how they can expand their voter base, the new data suggest that one of their biggest problems in the last presidential election was that so many less-educated whites sat home,” said Steven Camarota,...

Tired of listening to Pollsters/Pundits give their take on something they don't know anymore than we do? Wondering how one poll shows a candidate up 5, and another showing the same candidate down 6? Well now's your chance to look at the data yourself and make your own predictions, sniff out fraud, and beat the pollsters to the punch with the new Official 2013 VA Governor Vote Prediction Spreadsheet. This is the home game version because instead of myself filing in the data in the prediction columns, I've left them empty so that you can fill in your own predictions...

Michele Bachmann isn’t running for re-election but that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t run against her. Her announcement was a little bittersweet for Democratic groups who have long used Bachmann’s out-there comments to build up e-mail lists, aggressively fundraise, and denounce her House colleagues. But it was especially tough on Adam Graves, the son of businessman Jim Graves — the Democratic candidate who was gearing up for a rematch with the Republican firebrand. A little bit of the wind went out of the younger Graves’ sails early Wednesday morning when Bachmann’s YouTube video appeared. Adam got his first taste of electoral...

<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A Wisconsin appeals court says a law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls is constitutional.</p> <p>Republicans passed a law in 2011 requiring voters to show photo identification, saying the mandate would help fight election fraud. The League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court in October 2011 challenging the law. Judge Richard Niess ruled the law was unconstitutional in March 2012, saying it would abridge the right to vote.</p>

Mideast: Iran's electoral board eliminated all moderates this week, leaving just eight hand-picked candidates for June 14's clearly rigged election. Two are 9/11-style terrorists and all are hard-liners. The nuclear trigger is next. If you were disheartened by the results of Iran's 2009 election, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "won" a second term amid widespread allegations of fraud and a futile millions-strong "Green Revolution" uprising in protest, the outcome of the next presidential vote looks to be even worse.

<p>COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – A Democratic campaign office here usually would be quiet this time of year, a few weeks after the state's legislature wrapped up work and lawmakers headed off to summer vacations.</p> <p>But even though it's not an election year, the office is in full campaign mode, with volunteers working the phones and reviewing maps in anticipation of a new front of modern campaigning -- the recall phase.</p>

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted tried to reassure voters that the 135 possible voter fraud cases his office is pursuing do not constitute “an epidemic.” “We feel confident that the majority of elections are probably decided in an honest fashion,” Husted said. “To believe otherwise would lead to truly frightening conclusions. We’d rather not go there. I mean, if people lose faith in elections how will we choose who will govern? Living with a little corruption is surely better than undermining the whole premise of democracy, isn’t it?” if you missed any of this week's other semi-news/semi-satire posts you...

I can't wait for Chris Wallace of Fox News to ask - really ask - a Democrat if JFK could get the nomination today, and/or if the Democrat Party really is big-tent (accepting of Dems who are pro-second amendment, pro-across-the board tax cuts, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage), etc... If one could go back to JFK's time and ask him personally if he would support same-sex marriage, I wonder what he would say. And JFK supported across-the-board tax cuts, too, btw. One thing that we could take from the interview though is that there is no reason for the GOP to say...

Former Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Sarah PAC contributed $5,000 on 5/14 to Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who is running in the Missouri 8th District Special General Election on 6/4. The seat was vacated by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) in January. Emerson is now the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Smith, who is the Speaker Pro Tem of the Missouri House of Representatives, reported raising $200,313 from 4/1 to 5/15, and has $228,147 cash on hand as of 5/15. Smith raised $114,083 from individuals, including $5,200 from Anthony Kelly (owner, Precision Tent Rental, MO); $5,200 from Charlotte...

From: Bill Montgomery To: Brian Reilly Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 8:30 AM Subject: Website Submission Dear Mr. Reilly, Thank you for taking the time to write and for the concerns you have expressed. There are a couple of points of analysis, though, in determining whether a criminal charge can be filed, regardless of the charge or who the suspect might be. The first is whether I have jurisdiction over the case. That requires that some conduct had to have occurred in Maricopa County for me to have jurisdiction. From the Sheriff’s Office investigation into suspect documents produced by the...

(WMC-TV) - District Judge Kristine Baker sentenced a former West Memphis councilman and a West Memphis police officer for a conspiracy to commit election fraud. Former West Memphis City Councilman Phillip Wayne Carter, 44, and former West Memphis Police Officer Sam Malone, 32, were sentenced Wednesday. They pleaded guilty in September, along with former Democratic representative Hudson Hallum. In doing this, Carter and Malone acknowledged his participation in a conspiracy to bribe voters to influence absentee votes in the Arkansas District 54 primary, its runoff election, and the general election. All of those events were held between February and July...

If Republicans were writing a movie script for next year’s congressional elections, the working title might be “2014: Apocalypse of Obamacare.” The plot: The rollout of President Barack Obama’s health care law turns into such a disaster that enraged voters rebuke him by rewarding the GOP with undisputed control of Congress. But there’s a risk for Republicans if they’re wrong and the Affordable Care Act works reasonably well, particularly in states that have embraced it. Republicans might be seen as obstinately standing in the way of progress. …

There are good reasons to be hopeful about the 2014 midterm election. The second presidential midterm election has historically been murder. With the exceptions of Clinton in 1998 and Reagan in 1986, the president in his second midterm has lost massively in the House of Representative: FDR (-71 seats), Ike (-49 seats), Nixon (-49 seats), Bush II (-31 seats.) Except for Clinton in 1998, each of those midterms produced losses for the president's party in the Senate (Reagan, in fact, lost the Senate in 1986). Senate elections are affected by the particular class of senators elected six years before as...

Despite failing in courts across the country, Plaintiffs have continued to file lawsuits alleging that President Obama is ineligible to serve as the American President because he is not a natural born U.S. citizen. However, as set forth above, federal courts cannot grant Plaintiffs the relief sought because the issues which Plaintiffs raise in their pleadings are constitutionally committed to the jurisdiction of another branch of the federal government. If Plaintiffs believe that President Obama has violated the law, their remedy is to alert Congress to the alleged wrongdoing. Congress could then initiate impeachment proceedings with the aid of an...

The streams emerging from beneath an Arctic glacier are several degrees warmer than the icy water Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has tossed on a Tea Party group’s effort to draft former Gov. Sarah Palin as a U.S. Senate candidate in 2014. Reviving one of Alaska’s great political feuds, Murkowski told The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C.: “I think there are a lot of outside interests that would like to see Sarah Palin in some form of elected office. Most in Alaska recognize our former governor is rally not involved in or engaged in the state anymore, that she’s moved...

Gov. Cuomo says it would be shameful if Anthony Weiner is elected mayor. Cuomo, during an appearance before the Syracuse Post-Standard's editoral board Wednesday, stayed neutral when asked his thoughts on Weiner entering the race. "He runs? He runs," the paper quotes him as saying in a transcript But asked how he would feel if Weiner (self-pictured at right) were to be elected, Cuomo was blunt. "Shame on us," he replied. Cuomo, a Democrat, has said he has no plans to get involved in the mayor's race. He gave a less definitive answer hours before he spoke to the Syracuse...

With apologies to Aristotle, there is one thing that abhors a vacuum even more than nature, and that is politics. As the Obama scandals continue to unfold, every Democrat is already thinking HARD about what might happen, and what it might mean for 2016. So let's speculate as well, shall we....

Cold Case Posse Commander Mike Zullo of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on submitted a devastating 57 page 207 paragraph affidavit to the Alabama Obama ballot challenge appeal case that is before the Alabama Supreme Court. He did this at the request of Attorney Larry Klayman representing the appellants. Now Alabama Democratic Party attorney's Barry Ragsdale and Thomas Woodall have fired back with a 'Opposition To Motion To Strike'. They slam Zullo and the Cold Case Posse's evidence confirming Obama's birth certificate and selective service registration card are forgeries. They state in their motion to strike that Mike Zullo's affidavit...