Free Republic

Mombasa, Kenya A commando unit from the US Navy’s Seal Team Six launched an amphibious raid on a Somali town, but failed to confirm a capture or kill of their Al Shabab target, suspected to be linked to Nairobi’s Westgate mall terror attack. The operation could have opposite its intended result of discouraging further attacks. Analysts warn that even earlier successful targeted strikes against Al Shabab, a Somalia-based Islamist militant group, failed to curb the group's capacity to carry out international terror attacks, and that failed missions could in fact bolster its support and recruitment. The predawn raid Saturday came...

A high-profile case of a Belgian transsexual who chose to be killed by medical euthanasia after a sex-change operation turned him into a "monster" has highlighted the soaring number of people in the region electing to die this way – and has raised fresh questions over the controversial practice. Nathan Verhelst, born Nancy, gave an interview to a local newspaper hours before his death this week citing his "unbearable psychological suffering" – rather than a terminal or degenerative physical illness – as his reason for dying voluntarily. "When I looked in the mirror, I was disgusted with myself. My new...

Today in Illinois, President Obama spoke the language of decline, promising more of the same left-wing policies that have weakened US competitiveness, eroded economic freedom, and have saddled the world’s superpower with historic levels of debt. Americans deserve better than the failed statism that has bankrupted cities like Detroit, and threatens to do the same to the rest of the country.

AN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Bay Area Rapid Transit workers walked off the job early Monday morning after last-minute negotiations failed to produce a new contract agreement. The strike ensured a nightmarish commute to start the week, leaving about 400,000 BART riders to find another way to get work. The unions were seeking a 5 percent annual raise over the next three years. BART spokesman Rick Rice said the transit agency had rolled out several offers over the course of negotiations, including an 8 percent salary raise over the next four years. But the unions dismissed the proposals as “surface...

Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination. And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his reelection success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co....

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour. That would be almost a 25 percent increase. Let's look at the president's proposal, but before doing so, let's ask some other economic questions. Are people responsive to changes in price? For example, if the price of cars rose by 25 percent, would people purchase as many cars? Supposing housing prices rose by 25 percent, what would happen to sales? Those are big-ticket items, but what about smaller-priced items? If a supermarket raised its prices by...

With the 2008 election of Barack Obama, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. more than doubled in many Arab countries. But in the two years since his famous “Cairo speech,” ratings for both the U.S. and the President have spiraled downwards. The President is seen overwhelmingly as failing to meet the expectations set during his speech, and the vast majority of those surveyed disagree with U.S policies. In five out of the six countries surveyed, the U.S. was viewed less favorably than Turkey, China, France—or Iran. Far from seeing the U.S. as a leader in the post-Arab Spring environment, the countries...

America is heading into a retirement crisis, an economist says. Most retirees haven't saved enough money to retire and Teresa Ghilarducci blames America's entire system for retiring. It’s been 30 years since the Individual Retirement Account model became the standard way for Americans to save for retirement. But many people who saved for three decades watched a lot of that money disappear during the financial crisis. And now, more than half of American workers have saved less than $25,000 for their golden years, and about 30 percent have saved less than a thousand dollars. Overall, the system is failing, says...

Former Republican presidential contender and Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum announced the formation of a new conservative group Friday, saying it will seek to thwart President Obama's bid for re-election in 2012. "The defeat of Barack Obama, and those who support his policies, will be our first priority."

The April unemployment report brought attention to the millions of Americans suffering in silence as a result of President Obama’s failed economic policies. The Romney campaign has released a new video “Silence” highlighting the terribly disappointing April unemployment report: No wonder that during his so-called official start to his reelection campaign, President Obama told Americans not to ask if they are better off than they were four years ago, but how they’ll be tomorrow. Only 115,000 jobs were added in April, far fewer than the 180,000 economists were expecting. The reason the unemployment rate declined slightly to 8.1 percent and...

A comparison of President Obama's State of the Union speeches.

In a blow to the Obama administration, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has concluded that the president’s economic stimulus plan created fewer jobs than expected and “crowds out” private investment. A new report the CBO released on Tuesday finds that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act may have boosted the economy in the short run by sustaining some 700,000 jobs at its peak in 2010 but “will reduce output slightly in the long run — by between 0 and 0.2 percent after 2016.” The report estimates that the total number of jobs the plan produced was far fewer than the...

Melissa Ohden September 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - How could my biological mother have ever fathomed that as she attempted to abort me in 1977 that she was not only ending the life of her child, but she was wiping out every future generation to come from that one life - her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, her great-great grandchildren? She may not have been able to fathom it, the thousands of women who end the lives of their children everyday through abortion may not be able to fathom it, but as an abortion survivor now pregnant with my second child, I can...

[snip] You know you’re in trouble when Harry Reid says you should be more aggressive. If the languid Obama had not done his usual irritating fourth-quarter play, if he had presented a jobs plan a year ago and fought for it, he wouldn’t have needed to elevate the setting. How will he up the ante next time? A speech from the space station? Republicans who are worried about being political props have a point. The president is using the power of the incumbency and a sacred occasion for a political speech. Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the...

<p>BEIRUT (AP) -- Syria's closest ally, Iran, warned Saturday that a power vacuum in Damascus could spark an unprecedented regional crisis while urging President Bashar Assad to listen to some of his people's "legitimate demands." Thousands of protesters, meanwhile, insisted they will defy tanks and bullets until Assad goes.</p>

Industrial Policy: The fact that President Obama's "green jobs" campaign has been an enormously expensive failure is now so glaringly obvious even the New York Times can't ignore it any longer. In a surprisingly candid article headlined "Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises," the Times' Aaron Glantz reports that "federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show," and that Obama's goal of 5 million new green jobs in 10 years is a "pipe dream." Glantz notes, for example, that Obama's much-heralded weatherization program "never caught on." California still...

Few Americans needed Standard & Poor to confirm the mismanagement of the United States government and its finances. The downgrading of American credit will raise interest rates on America’s huge debt and ultimately on all Americans. Popular polls say that most Americans blame Congress—but that’s too simplistic. As much as Barack Obama would like to shift that blame onto Congress, the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of President. It is first and foremost a leadership problem that is crippling America—and the leader is President Barack Obama—not the many members of Congress. No matter how many speeches he makes, the...

Hidalgo County Sheriff Department has confirmed that New Mexico rancher, Larry Link, was murdered earlier today on his property. Sources are reporting that the rancher was responding to an alleged- illegal alien on his property at Stein’s Ghost Town when the he was gunned-down. The murder took place on the southwest side of the state near the Arizona border on Interstate 10 at mile marker three. The Hidalgo Sheriff’s Deputies responded to the scene, only to find the rancher had already died.

RUSH: Look, we know that Obama's stimulus plan, Obama's stimulus was nothing more than a money laundering slush fund. We know that now. We know that in any number of ways, learning it most recently from Wisconsin. A full 80% of the money that Wisconsin got went to the public sector unions -- and, of course, that money, a percentage of that just goes right back to the Democrat Party. But let's say -- just for the sake of discussion, playing devil's advocate, let's -- that Obama is simply is a misguided, well-intentioned statist; and he really believes that massive...

STATE MULTICULTURALISM HAS FAILED, SAYS BRITISH PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON It looks like Europe may be waking up to the Islamist threat to liberty and democracy faster than America. That’s disappointing to me. But at least some portions of the free world aren’t completely brain dead. You’ll recall on October 18, 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made headlines by denouncing “multiculturalism” in Germany as having “failed utterly.” Now Cameron has some choice words for the morally confused. See more at www.mrformansplanet.com