Free Republic

The standard critique of President Obama’s foreign policy is now generally well-known—mercurial, paradoxical, and passive. “Leading from behind” seems at odds with the traditional American commitment to ensure—preferably with allies or, if need be, alone—the continuance of the postwar global system of sovereign borders, free trade, safe commerce, and open communications. Many of Obama’s recent foreign policy initiatives have resulted in a diminished United States and they have found little success. The reset with Russia earned us a strange sort of contempt from Vladimir Putin. Moscow almost gratuitously thwarts the U.S., gloating that we offer loud self-righteous sermons to others...

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away. HHS didn’t...

Senate leaders on Wednesday struck an 11th-hour agreement to avoid a U.S. debt crisis and fully reopen the federal government, putting lawmakers on track toward ending a stalemate that worried investors world-wide and provided striking evidence of congressional dysfunction. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), in a statement released Wednesday afternoon, said House Republicans will allow the Senate deal to come up for a vote. "Blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us," Mr. Boehner said.

When a liberal reporter asked Steve Lonegan if “Sarah Palin was too far-right for New Jersey,” Lonegan did what Republican candidates for Senate have not done in recent memory: He went on offense. “I don’t think it’s far right to support small business owners and to support taxpayers who are struggling,” he shot back. “Sarah Palin is a wonderful mother. She was also a wonderful governor and an excellent role model for women.” That’s not how Republicans coming out of the Northeast typically respond when they encounter a hostile reporter. And if you ask Amy Kremer, chair of the Tea...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sat down with MSNBNC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday to discuss what appears to be a deal which is poised to end the government shutdown and raise the nation’s borrowing limit. She criticized the unfocused Republican members of Congress and praised Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) who she said had been “a master at work” during the shutdown. “Have you ever seen anything quite like this, a battle over what most people felt was nothing — nothing relevant to the issues at hand?” Mitchell asked. “I think that Republicans even forgot what they...

Two leading conservatives are coming to Speaker John Boehner’s defense as he moves to put the Senate deal to open the government and hike the debt ceiling on the floor likely without the support of a majority of Republicans.

On the brink of a national default, the leaders of the Senate struck a deal Wednesday to reopen the federal government and extend its power to borrow money. The House appeared ready to go along — and end, at least for now, the crisis in Washington. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor at midday that his party and Republicans had found their way to a compromise to “provide our economy with the stability it desperately needs” and avert financial disaster. His Republican counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell, offered his blessing: “This is far less than many...

Journalist and author Carl Bernstein said Wednesday that Republican Party leadership is “cancerous” and has put the United States at risk by letting the tea party lead the GOP. “The Republican Party today has become a rabid organization from the top down. The leadership is cancerous,” the former Washington Post reporter said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. Bernstein called the current situation a “terrible moment in our history” and said only segregation politics offers a comparison. “You have to go back to the party, the Democratic Party of segregation to find this kind of scorched-earth politics putting the national...

As the Affordable Care Act goes into effect, Andy Pudzer, CEO of conjoined fast-food chains Carl's Jr and Hardee's, went on Fox News to tell Megyn Kelly that President Obama is flat-out "wrong" in thinking that health-care reform has no widespread effect on the job market, claiming that employers, himself included, are overwhelmingly choosing to hire part-time employees to avoid paying for benefits. It's baffling that companies continue to admit their preference for hiring more part-time employees, rather than paying for health care for those working 40 hours a week. Here, Pudzer helpfully spells out his house rules. He tells...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Wednesday morning said members of Congress are like the parents of everyone in the country and said these "parents" need to act quickly to protect their toddlers from the possible fallout of a debt default. "We, as custodians of this great nation, members of the United States Congress, are like parents," she said on the House floor. "And therefore I ask any parent that is listening: How long do they wait before they see a toddler fall, or do they leap toward that toddler so that they know the strength of that parent is...

Eric Sanders, lawyer for Miriam Carey's family was arrested today. The arrest comes on the heels of a scathing twitlonger tweet, from Sanders Esq., in reference to the handling of the Miriam Carey incident: "After we somewhat rest Miriam's soul on Tuesday, we are going to press a full frontal campaign to bring those who violated her civil rights to justice." Eric Sanders, a civil rights attorney best known for suing the NYPD, was arrested outside his house in Melville, L.I., Tuesday morning after Federal Bankruptcy Judge Dorothy Eisenberg issued a warrant last week. Eisenberg was furious that Sanders had...

The National Park Service director will blame terrorism for having to shut down most of the National Mall during the government shutdown, saying that was the only way to protect the memorials with limited staff “in a post-9/11 world.” In testimony submitted to Congress, Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said he’s only been able to keep a dozen of the normal 300 employees charged with cleaning and caring for the capital region’s memorials during the shutdown, and without the rest of his staff he cannot guarantee the safety of the property.

<p>SELBYVILLE, Del. (AP) — Delaware officials are celebrating the state's first health insurance exchange enrollee.</p> <p>Department of Health and Social Service officials have declared 59-year-old Janice Baker of Selbyville the first confirmed resident to enroll in the marketplace. It opened Oct. 1 as part of the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act.</p>

Dan Pfeiffer’s fingerprints are all over the White House’s strategy of not negotiating with congressional Republicans over the government shutdown and debt ceiling. The senior adviser to President Obama has been plotting the White House’s every move, and is described by some within the administration as the “relentless guardian” of Obama’s no-negotiations stance. “He’s been the most ferocious on that principle,” one senior administration official said. “He was quite adamant and relentless about this. And on the face of it, it’s not an easy argument to make.” Even before the shutdown began on Oct. 1, Republicans had turned their fire...

Dear John: If you were hoping to have a quick "date" with the woman standing on the street corner in Sanford, you may want to think again. Starting this week, the Sanford Police Department will send "Dear John" letters to registered owners of vehicles spotted lingering in areas known for prostitution. (snip) Sanford police said Monday that letters will only be generated when an officer is confident the driver is circling the block looking for a prostitute, and not, for example, driving around lost. Automated license-plate readers placed on patrol vehicles will be used to capture images of the suspect...

ABERDEEN, MD (WJZ/CNN) – Police in Maryland arrested a suspect who allegedly tried to carjack the mother of baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr. The incident occurred on Tuesday outside of a bank in Aberdeen, MD, north of Baltimore. Police say a man with a handgun approached 75-year-old Violet Ripken and demanded her car. Ripken pressed the panic button her key ring, setting off the car's alarm and scaring the man away. He was later captured by police.

Officials said William Happ was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke. He was executed by injection. Florida has executed 51-year-old William Happ for the 1986 rape and strangulation of a woman he encountered by chance in a convenience store parking lot. Officials said Happ was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke. He was executed by injection, 24 years after he was sentenced to die following his conviction in the murder of 21-year-old Angie Crowley. In a final statement, Happ expressed remorse for his actions. "To my agonizing shame, I must...

Abdellah Taia, the only openly homosexual Moroccan writer, was in Venice to present his debut film, “Salvation Army”, adapted from his autobiographical novel about growing up gay in Morocco. FRANCE 24 sat down with Taia for an interview. By Jon FROSCH (text) In an edition of the Venice Film Festival notable for the prevalence of works grappling with global and societal woes (unemployment, terrorism, pollution, war), perhaps no film has blended the personal and the political as strikingly as Abdellah Taia’s “L’Armée du salut” (“Salvation Army”). A promising directorial debut presented in the independent “Critics’ Week” category on Wednesday, the...

Women's rights have advanced across the world, and legislation is catching up with the times. In most modern countries, gender equality has been codified into the system. But not everywhere. Unfortunately, some retrograde legislation against women persists — and some laws are just downright incomprehensible. 1) Driving in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's long-standing driving ban hit headlines recently, after conservative Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan announced that driving "harms women's ovaries" on a popular news site. "If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show...

"The big Kerry arm." That's how some of his Senate staff used to describe John Kerry's approach to negotiation. It's reminiscent of what Lyndon Baines Johnson used to do to his Senate colleagues: a little light physical pressure to drive home a point. You can bet that at some point over the weekend the six-foot-four Kerry, who landed in Kabul on an unannounced visit Friday, applied that big arm to the shoulders of the diminutive Hamid Karzai, the often combative and erratic president of Afghanistan, whom Kerry knows well and with whom no one else in the U.S. government seems...

Estimating casualties of war is a difficult science. Exact counts are nearly impossible to achieve, especially in areas where violent conflict continues long after the last of foreign troops have withdrawn. Determining a death toll for Iraqi civilians during the eight-year U.S.-led occupation has proven especially challenging. Multiple attempts by different organizations have covered only a few years of the war, and the resulting tallies range from as low as just over 100,000 to as high as 600,000. The latest estimates, detailed in a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, come from an investigation into the total number...

The number of visitors to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov Web site dropped 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, according to a new analysis of America’s online use, while less than half of 1 percent of the site’s visitors successfully enrolled for health insurance the first week. The new numbers on the new health-care law — released by Kantar US Insights and based on an assessment conducted by the nonpartisan research firm Millward Brown Digital — provide a partial snapshot of how the federal health-care exchange has fared since it launched at the start of the month. Of the...

The Maryland State Police sharply rebuked Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler on Tuesday after he called a veteran police commander a “henchman” for having documented allegations that Gansler ordered troopers assigned to him to regularly speed and run red lights even to routine appointments. In a television interview, Gansler strongly denied the allegations and said the accusations were part of a campaign of “dirty politics” by Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, Gansler’s chief rival for next year’s Democratic nomination for governor. In a news release, the leadership of the state police called Gansler’s comments “unseemly and unacceptable” and said he...

Action News has learned that one student has been charged in connection with a videotaped beating on a Delaware County school van. No further details have been released about that teen. Investigators tell Action News that two more teens are being sought. The incident happened Wednesday, October 9th, aboard a Southeast Delco School District van. 17-year-old Dylan Fonner, a friend who was sitting next to him, and three other students were headed home from their school, The Delaware County Alternative High School. Investigators say those three students, a couple of 16-year-old boys and a girl, recorded video for several minutes...

Huge numbers of goats, cows and even camels will be slaughtered in Pakistani on Wednesday homes to mark the Islamic holy day of Eid al-Adha. The sacrificial offering of around 6m animals will allow families to fulfil a religious duty, guarantee some much appreciated meat handouts to the poor and provide nearly half of the annual requirement of the country's leather industry. It will also generate an extraordinary cash windfall for some of Pakistan's most dangerous militant groups. Thinly disguised front organisations have been gearing up to compete against each other and legitimate charities to collect as many animal skins...

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Tuesday that the Tea Party has stuck a knife in the backs of working-class families by shutting down the government and threatening default. “There was so much economic hurt that had already piled up … people just didn’t have any wiggle room, when the Tea Party decided to stick a knife into the backs of hard-working American families,” Murphy said on the Senate floor. The government has been shutdown for more than two weeks, and lawmakers are also fighting an Oct. 17 deadline for when the U.S. can no longer borrow money. Murphy said this...

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the frantic stop-and-go effort in Congress to avoid a debt default and end a government shutdown is "a mess" as a gloomy mood descended over the White House with time running out to a Thursday deadline. Obama, who is to meet Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday, and his Democratic backers stressed there is still time to avoid a historic default even as efforts to reach a deal in Congress floundered on Capitol Hill. "My expectation is that it does get solved, but we don't have a lot of time," Obama told WABC in...

The United States has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become the world's biggest oil producer as the jump in output from shale plays has led to the second biggest oil boom in history, according to leading U.S. energy consultancy PIRA. U.S. output, which includes natural gas liquids and biofuels, has swelled 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2009, the fastest expansion in production over a four-year period since a surge in Saudi Arabia's output from 1970-1974, PIRA said in a release on Tuesday. It was the latest milestone for the U.S. oil sector caused by the shale revolution, which has...

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday took some indirect swipes at Vice President Joe Biden at an off-the-record gathering, a state representative in attendance told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I know she’s running for president now, because toward the end, she was asked about the Osama bin Laden raid. She took 25 minutes to answer,” George State Rep. Tom Taylor told the newspaper. “Without turning the knife too deeply, she put it to [Vice President Joe] Biden.”

President Obama is reminding New Jersey voters to vote for Cory Booker in the state’s special Senate election Wednesday. Just one day before the election Obama appeared in a video for the Booker campaign encouraging New Jersey residents to support the popular Democratic Newark mayor. “Voters in New Jersey have the opportunity to vote for a leader with uncommon character, Cory Booker,” Obama said in the video.

After two weeks of a partial government shutdown, ask voters which party they want in charge of Congress, and - it’s a draw. Right now, Democrats control the U.S. Senate, and Republicans have the majority in the House of Representatives. Forty-six percent (46%) of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Democratic Party to be in charge of the entire Congress if their vote in next year’s elections was the determining factor. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just as many (45%) would vote for the Republican Party to be totally in control.

Senate staffers were notified by the Disbursing Office on Tuesday that they will need to enter the D.C. health care exchange, regardless of their state of residency, and will lose their employer contribution if they do not enter the D.C. exchange, according to a memo obtained by CQ Roll Call. Some Washington, D.C.-based congressional staff retain their in-state residency (oftentimes to pay the lower tax rate in their home state) and all members have district staff outside Washington. The open enrollment in the D.C. exchange for most staffers who are losing their Federal Employee Health Benefits plans will be Nov....

Survey: More Americans Trust GOP to Manage Economy BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff October 15, 2013 3:25 pm Approval ratings for Republican leadership in Congress may be at an all-time low, but a new survey shows that more Americans trust the GOP with handling the economy. A Pew Research survey said that 44 percent of Americans trusted Republicans more with managing the economy while 37 percent said they favored Democratic control of the economy. GOP Runs Even on Economy, Managing Government: More people continue to blame Republicans than the Obama administration for the government shutdown, and the GOP is widely...

"You know, the president signed a bill that left himself out of Obamacare but put members of Congress in. I think it's time that the president go into Obamacare, and I mean really into Obamacare." "Look, I think if the president thinks so well of Obamacare and the vice president thinks so well of Obamacare, he should be in it. So I think for the members of the -- for Sebelius to not be in Obamacare and then not feel the pain of its complete and total failure to perform at the scheduled levels is a good example of where,...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dared Speaker John Boehner to call a vote on Republicans’ latest debt ceiling proposal, saying it will receive no Democratic votes and result in default. Speaking in front of the White House after the House Democratic leadership met with President Barack Obama, Pelosi offered a scalding commentary on the latest GOP proposal, which she said would have to pass “with 100 percent Republican votes.” “I think it’s a little frivolous, more than frivolous, reckless to put a bill on the floor like that when the markets are watching what’s happening here,” Pelosi said. “But nonetheless,...

(CNN) - Former President George W. Bush's heart situation that caused him to undergo a procedure in August was more serious than originally thought, as two sources close to the 43rd president now confirm he had a 95% blockage in an artery. Bush, 67, had a stent placed in his heart in August at a Dallas hospital one day after the blockage was discovered. While a 95% blockage is significant, Bush's doctors are not commenting about how grave the situation may or may not have been.

House Republicans scrambled Tuesday to convince their skeptical conservative flank to support a new plan to end the government shutdown and increase the debt ceiling. Rank-and-file GOP lawmakers pushed back on the original plan from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants, forcing party leaders to modify a proposal just hours after they laid it out in a private meeting. By Tuesday afternoon, Republican leaders had dropped a proposal to delay a medical device tax that has opponents in both parties, making a provision to strip employer contributions that lawmakers and congressional staff get for health insurance as the only...

ROME (CNN) - The Italian branch of schismatic Catholic sect with a history of anti-Semitism has agreed to hold a funeral for a convicted Nazi war criminal, despite protests from Jewish groups and the local mayor. -snip- But the conservative Society of St. Pius X, whose leaders were excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1988 for ordaining their own bishops without Vatican approval, agreed Tuesday to hold funeral rites for Priebke. -snip- The society also said that it "reaffirms our repudiation to any form of anti-semitism and racial hatred." But the Society of St. Pius X has a long history...

Democrats may think they've won, but the nation will lose if warnings about spending, debt go unheeded. If congressional negotiators fail to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government, voters will blame House Republicans, but it's the president and fellow Democrats that are behaving like teenagers by wanting to spend irresponsibly. Studies by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and Medicare and Medicaid actuaries indicate if Washington continues spending and borrowing as current law requires, then all Americans, and not just the wealthy, will be paying higher taxes and more on private health care. Federal spending on Social Security and...

Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America. Harsh? Look around you at what is happening to America and you will see harsh. I am not talking about closed parks and monuments. I am talking about the funds cut to nearly 9 million mothers and young children for food, breastfeeding support and infant formula. That is harsh. Making a war against babies is harsh. And for what? Because Cruz, Republican senator from Texas, has grown so drunk on the sound of his own voice and so besotted with illusions...

House Republicans scrambled Tuesday to convince their skeptical conservative flank to support a new plan to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling. Rank-and-file GOP lawmakers pushed back on the original plan from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants, seeking more sweeteners to what was essentially a framework crafted by the Senate. The impasse sidelined the Senate, which on Monday appeared close to a tentative deal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suspended their recent talks, as the Senate GOP sought to give Boehner more maneuvering room. “I don’t know if anything...

According to a new study conducted by Texas Tech University Professor Dr. Michael Giberson for the Institute for Energy Research, the government and wind lobby aren't telling taxpayers the whole truth about how much wind energy really costs. The study comes as the wind lobby is set to receive another extension on massive subsidies with little results to show for it. "As Big Wind's lobbyists fight tooth and nail to extend the wind Production Tax Credit, it is important that we look at the true costs of wind power to taxpayers and ratepayers," IER President Thomas Pyle said about...

According to multiple reports, Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are close to a deal to reopen the federal government and lift the debt ceiling. The deal would fund the federal government through January 15, and lift the debt ceiling until February 15. Attached to that would be a pair of minor provisions. Republicans would get some kind of assurance that people can't lie about their income to get Obamacare, and Democrats would get the delay of a small "reinsurance tax" that was intended to expire after three years anyway (and which unions hated). This is a huge win for...

Some health insurance brokers are setting up states that mimic the name and look of the official state exchanges. But the fake sites are easily identifiable because, unlike the official sites, they work. (Snip) The unofficial sites can sell real insurance plans however those plans have not been certified by the government and are therefore not eligible for government subsidies. So if you log on to a health insurance exchange site that seems to be working properly, caveat emptor.

A court has ruled that Belgian anti-Islam campaigners must remove all posters featuring the stilettos of luxury French footwear designer Christian Louboutin. The poster, promoted by the campaign group Women against Islamisation, showed the legs of Anke Van dermeersch, a former Miss Belgium and now a politician for the far-right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). It showed her wearing Louboutin's trademark red-soled heels, and included a scale of what it said was Islam's view of a woman according to the length of her skirt. The scale went from from "sharia conform" at floor level, to "whore" just above the knee and...

Dry ice bombs have exploded for two successive nights in restricted areas at Los Angeles international airport, the world's sixth busiest. Two other devices that were found on Monday night before they detonated appeared to have been placed outside the main terminal buildings in an area near planes, according to television news footage. Detectives in America are investigating how the bombs, which consisted of water containers packed with dry ice, were planted in locations where access is barred to the public.

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday to deliver a brutal review of the Affordable Care Act's launch. "When you implement a project of this size, the first thing is unit testing, then application testing, and then integrated testing, and then scaleability testing and user testing," Bertolini said. "That plan is usually a lot longer than some of the application development itself. That's happening on the fly." The hosts were disbelieving. "None of that was done beforehand?" one asked. "All of it has been on the fly," Bertolini said.

The principal of a public high school in Washington, D.C. indicated that he would ask the student government to decide whether or not to prohibit clothing featuring the Washington Redskins name — something at least one American Indian student thought was offensive. Principal Pete Cahall of Woodrow Wilson High School told The Washington Post that the decision would be placed in the hands of student council members, who would have the power to decide — on behalf of all students, collectively — whether the Redskins moniker is offensive. “I’ve got no dog in the fight,” he told The Washington Post....

An advocacy group for K Street is moving forward with a rebranding effort that will remove the word “lobbyist” from its name. The board of the American League of Lobbyists (ALL) on Tuesday announced it has recommended to members that the group change its name to the Association of Government Relations Professionals. The group says the board “overwhelmingly” backed the name change as a way to more accurately “represent the range of associated professions involved in the government affairs, lobbying and public affairs community.” ALL officially began moving forward with the rebranding effort last month, as first reported by The...