Free Republic

The coming year could bring an enormous electoral shift in the U.S. Anti-incumbent fever is sweeping the nation. People are furious at the federal government's takeover over the health care, banking and auto industries, as well as massive spending and a sputtering economy. The system failures with Flight 253 brought national security back to the forefront. The tide is turning and it will not bode well for Democrats in 2010. Here are my predictions for key races across the nation for the coming year....

It would appear that what is needed most in the Obama White House is adult supervision. In the wake of the latest terror incident was the Administration's top priority finding the weakness in our security systems that allowed a Muslim terrorist to come so close to destroying an American airplane full of Christmas travelers? Well, no, according to an unnamed staffer who is quoted at American Spectator: "The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving...

Since President Obama has now come out and blamed the security breach that resulted in a near successful attack by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on "systemic failures," the question becomes: How do we go about fixing that? For some answers, The Cable turned to Jim Locher, the president and CEO of the Project on National Security Reform, a nongovernmental organization with ties to National Security Advisor Jim Jones that has been sounding the alarm about America's dysfunctional national security infrastructure for years. "While President Obama said there were systemic failures, our problem has been that we haven't done systemic...

Iran: opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi 'ready to die' for the cause Iran's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said the country is in 'serious crisis' and he is 'not afraid to die' for his cause. Published: 9:28AM GMT 01 Jan 2010 In a statement posted on his website on Friday , Mr Mousavi called for the immediate release of his supporters arrested after the disputed presidential vote in June and during protests earlier this week. "Arresting or killing Mousavi, [and another opposition leader Mehdi] Karoubi ... will not calm the situation," he said. "I am not afraid to die for people's demands...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber set off an explosives-laden vehicle on a field during a volleyball tournament Friday in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 25 people, police said.

Democrats Join Calls for Napolitano to Step Down Following Failed Attack Democrats have joined the ranks of those calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago. Some Democrats have joined in calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago. Though the CIA and an agency under the Director of National Intelligence have been under particular scrutiny in the preliminary review of possible missteps, Napolitano so far has taken the most heat from...

About 3,000 Medicare patients who’ve been getting care at a Mayo Clinic facility in Arizona will have to pay out of their own pocket or find another doctor. Starting in 2010 (i.e., next week), the five primary care docs at a Mayo outpost in Glendale, Ariz. will stop accepting Medicare. Patients in the program who choose to stick around will be on the hook for about $1,500 per year, Mayo spokesman Michael Yardley told the Health Blog. The clinic expects that most of the patients will find another place to get their primary care. “We know it’s been incredibly difficult...

PARIS – The son of the deposed shah of Iran urged nations worldwide on Thursday to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran to protest a relentless government crackdown on opposition demonstrators that resulted in at least eight deaths this week alone.

Iran regime has lost touch with people Iran’s regime has definitively lost touch with the aspirations of its people but it is still far from certain that the protest movement confronting it is ready and able to seize power, experts say. The street battles that rocked Tehran and other major cities over the Ashoura holiday show that the demonstrations have entered a new phase with increased state repression and more violent incidents. But, unlike the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah, Iran’s latest uprising is not led by a well- organized opposition in exile. The largely spontaneous protest movement does...

The Obama administration is scurrying to implement new procedures to find and keep potential terrorists off U.S.-bound planes, as results of a preliminary intelligence review flow into the White House. Emerging as a central focus are deficiencies in the U.S.'s network of watch lists, a system designed after the Sept. 11 attacks to keep tabs on potential terrorists and prevent them from boarding planes, according to a senior U.S. counterterrorism official. The official noted that government audits turned up problems in recent years, including gaps that kept suspected terrorists from being added to the U.S.'s no-fly list. President Barack Obama...

SANAA: Yemeni forces raided an al-Qa'ida hideout and set off a battle yesterday as the government vowed to eliminate the group claiming it was behind the Christmas bombing attempt on a US airliner. The fighting took place in an al-Qa'ida stronghold in western Yemen, haven for a group that attacked the US embassy in the country in 2008, killing 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians. A government statement said at least one suspected militant was arrested. "The (Interior) Ministry will continue tracking down al-Qa'ida terrorists and will continue its strikes against the group until it is totally eliminated," Deputy Interior...

US President Barack Obama's hopes of sparking rapid political transformation in 2009 fell short, yet his bruised administration still dreams of forging historic change in the year to come. After 11 months in power, Obama is greyer, drained by Washington's acrimony and no longer an untested source of hope for millions, but a commander-in-chief who agonised, then escalated the Afghan war. Once soaring approval ratings are now under 50 per cent in some polls - dangerous territory for any president. Obama endured a chastening learning curve abroad, and saw an ambitious domestic agenda slow in Congress. But if lawmakers soon...

The finger-pointing began in earnest on Wednesday over who in the alphabet soup of American security agencies knew what and when about the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up an airliner. But the harshest spotlight fell on the very agency created to make sure intelligence dots were always connected: the National Counterterrorism Center. The crown jewel of intelligence reform after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the center was the hub whose mission was to unite every scrap of data on threats and suspects, to make sure an extremist like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber, would never penetrate...

It's showtime, folks! Today's the deadline President Obama imposed on Iran's leaders to give up their nuclear ambitions and be nice. Not sure if the deadline expires at midnight in Tehran or on Washington time, but the mullahs and President Mahmoud "Mighty Mouse" Ahmadinejad aren't scrambling to give Obama a New Year's Eve smooch. Rather than cave in to our president's mighty rhetoric, the Tehran tyrants took a break from killing protesters in the streets to attempt to import more than 1,300 tons of make-a-nuke uranium ore from Kazakhstan. They've also increased their nuke-cooker centrifuge count, tested new long-range missiles...

North Korea early on Friday called for an end to hostile relations with the United States, after a year marked by nuclear and missile tests and its rejection of international peace efforts. The call was made in a New Year joint editorial of several leading state North Korean newspapers, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, and comes with a US Christian missionary apparently detained in the isolated country. "The fundamental task for ensuring peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the rest of Asia is to put an end to the hostile relationship between the DPRK...

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS – Authorities tell News 8 a suspicious device found in a North Texas neighborhood did contain explosives. It was found near a copy of the Koran. Investigators don’t know whether they were left by the same person. A resident found what appeared to be a coke can on the street just before noon Thursday. What he saw inside, however, caused him to call 9-1-1. “It’s some type of metal in a coke can,” said Sean Hughes, Northeast Explosives Response Team. Firefighters at the scene called in the Northeast Explosives Response Team. “They zip tied the can in...

Gen. David Petraeus, former U.S. commander in Iraq, reportedly is “absolutely certain” that British hostage Peter Moore was held secretly in Iran for part of his 31-month ordeal. Petraeus’s claim is likely to intensify the bitter diplomatic relationship between London and Tehran. Moore, an IT consultant, was set free Wednesday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of five American servicemen. He was released by the League of the Righteous, or Asaib al-Haq (AAH) – an extremist Shia group allied to Iran – and his first night of freedom was spent at the...

KANEOHE, Hawaii — The attempted bombing of an American passenger plane on Christmas Day could greatly complicate President Obama’s efforts to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as lawmakers in both parties call on the administration to rethink its approach. The task of determining what to do with the detainees held at Guantánamo has already proved so daunting that Mr. Obama is poised to miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for shuttering the prison by Jan. 22. But evidence that Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen was behind last week’s failed plane attack will make closing the center even harder...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday dropped its subpoenas it had issued to two Internet writers in its effort to find the leaker of an airline security directive. The subpoenas were criticized by a leading journalism organization. The TSA said the investigation is "nearing a successful conclusion and the subpoenas are no longer in effect."

Obama summons intel chiefs for Washington talks Photo 8:32pm EST By Jeff Mason KANEOHE, Hawaii (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday summoned U.S. intelligence chiefs to a meeting next week to discuss how to prevent a repeat of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25. Seeking to quell criticism of his administration over an intelligence breakdown, Obama said he was briefed by his top advisers and would get assessments from intelligence agencies later on Thursday and study them over the weekend before returning to Washington from Hawaii. Obama had ordered an immediate review of what he...

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is leading the charge to challenge the constitutionality of part of the federal health care bill. He and 12 other Attorneys General sent a letter Wednesday to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In the letter they warn congressional leaders that legal action may result if they do not remove a provision that gives Nebraska a break on Medicaid payments.  The group says the “Cornhusker Kickback” is unconstitutional and was added to secure the vote of Nebraska U.S. Senator Ben Nelson. Republican U.S. SE Lindsey Graham and Jim...

Napolitano on the hot seat -- again By: Jen DiMascio December 31, 2009 04:54 PM EST After a determined effort Monday morning to walk back three disastrous words that threatened to rival “heck of a job Brownie,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spent the rest of the week in Washington reviewing the department’s detection capabilities and increased security and updating President Barack Obama on the assessment Thursday morning. The president seemed to be trying to throw her a lifeline Tuesday when he made it clear that he understood that her statement that “the system worked” referred only to what transpired...

“We hope the Egyptians get so annoyed they just want to get rid of us.” Jodie Evans, Cairo, December 29, 2009 Top President Barack Obama funder Jodie Evans and her terrorist sympathizing group Code Pink have provoked a violent crisis in Egypt over an attempt to deliver ‘humanitarian aid’ to Hamas-run Gaza to mark the one-year anniversary of Israel’s response to repeated provocations by Hamas terrorists. Evans was joined in Cairo by Obama pals Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn, both former terrorists with the Weather Underground. nye131-150x150 Jodie Evans appealed to Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak for help after the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Associated Press has learned that the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a remote outpost in southeastern Afghanistan had been invited onto the base and was not searched. A former senior intelligence official says the man was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – As a prisoner at Guantanamo, Said Ali al-Shihri said he wanted freedom so he could go home to Saudi Arabia and work at his family's furniture store. Instead, al-Shihri, who was released in 2007 under the Bush administration, is now deputy leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that has claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempted bomb attack on a Detroit-bound airliner. His potential involvement in the terrorist plot has raised new opposition to releasing Guantanamo Bay inmates, complicating President Barack Obama's pledge to close the military prison in Cuba. It also...

US Releases Iranian-backed Terrorist Behind murder of US Troops The British are all smiles over the release of Peter Moore, a British citizen who was held hostage by an Iranian-backed Shia terror group in Iraq. But there is little talk about the price paid to secure Moore's release. The US military has freed Qais Qazali, the leader of the Asaib al Haq, or League of the Righteous, as well as his brother Laith, several Qods Force officers, and more than 100 members of the terror group, in exchange for Moore. And that isn't all. The British also received the corpses...

A woman called police on Monday and said a man was forcing his way into her apartment in the 5300 block of Elm Street. When officers went inside, they found something that made them concerned enough to call the bomb squad. They found an AT-4 shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. It can shoot a missile nearly 1,000 feet through buildings and tanks. "It gives infantrymen the advantage with an ultra-light weapon that can stop vehicles, armored vehicles as well as main battle tanks and fortifications," said Oscar Saldivar of Top Brass Military and Tactical on the North Freeway. That type of rocket...

This week Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas once again honored the memory of the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi - this time by sponsoring a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of her birth. Mughrabi led the worst terror attack in Israel's history in 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians. Present at the ceremony were Palestinian dignitaries and a children's marching band. Earlier this year, Abbas sponsored a computer center named after Mughrabi.

Terrorist Abdulmutallab (the 20-something who tried to make a murderous statement against Christians with his Christmas Day blow-up attempt on the flight to Detroit) is, apparently, a "lonely" and "depressed" young man. That is only if you believe internet postings Terrorist Who Tried to Blow Up Plane in Detroit May Actually Be Just a Bit Lonely and Friendless supposedly written by the terrorist himself, spanning a timeframe of 2005 to 2007. Awwww, maybe now, the liberals and Democrats will have sympathy for him and decide he has to be treated for "depression" as opposed to being incarcerated and executed as...

Tennessee State Guard commander Richard Hamblen said it's his Second Amendment right as part of a militia to convert assault rifles into fully automatic weapons. The Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. A former commander in the Tennessee State Guard has lost an appeal to overturn his conviction for trying to provide his soldiers with homemade machine guns for possible use in defending the state. On Wednesday, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati threw the case out of court. “Whatever the individual right to keep and bear arms might entail, it does not authorize an unlicensed individual to possess...

Al Qaeda’s Yemen Connection, America and the Global Islamic Jihad December 30, 2009 — The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of al Qaeda's Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year. Since merging with the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi Arabia last January and renaming itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it has stepped up operations in Yemen itself, struck into Saudi Arabia, and now operates on...

I'm not sure if we can post Business Week article excerpts any more now that they are owned by Bloomberg. The headline pretty much summarizes the contents of the article. Wallison is the former general counsel of the U.S. Treasury. You can read the entire story here: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2009-12-31/u-s-to-lose-400-billion-on-fannie-freddie-wallison-says.html

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's opposition leaders faced new threats Thursday with the state prosecutor warning they could be put on trial if they don't denounce this week's antigovernment protests -- the worst unrest since the aftermath of the disputed June election. The warning came a day after crowds at progovernment rallies chanted calls for the execution of the opposition leaders and a group posted an online threat that suicide squads were ready to assassinate those leaders if the judiciary didn't punish them within a week. For a second straight day, government supporters staged a rally wearing white funeral shrouds to...

...Obama's ambitious plan to begin phasing out nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from officials in the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, posing a threat to one of his most important foreign policy initiatives. Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague in April, vowing the U.S. would take dramatic steps to lead the way. Eight months later, the administration is locked in internal debate... Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against administration proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission.... The debate represents another collision...

An 11-person European Parliament delegation is scheduled to visit Tehran next week, drawing a rebuke from U.S. lawmakers concerned the visit could legitimize Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government. The Jan. 7-11 mission marks the first visit by a Western parliamentary body to Tehran in more than a year. It comes as Mr. Ahmadinejad's security forces have accelerated a crackdown on Iran's political opposition. The trip, set to occur a week after the expiration of President Barack Obama's deadline for Iran to respond to international calls for negotiations over its nuclear program, is feeding debate among the U.S. and its European...

Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday. Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam. "Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain. Ever since I...

Behind the drama unfolding in the streets of Iran, the regime is quietly clamping down on some of the nation's best students by derailing their academic and professional careers. On Wednesday, progovernment militia attacked and beat students at a school in northeastern Iran. Since last Sunday's massive protests nationwide, dozens of university students have been arrested as part of an aggressive policy against what are known as Iran's "star students." In most places, being a star means ranking top of the class, but in Iran it means your name appears on a list of students considered a threat by the...

A federal appeals court reaffirmed its ruling Wednesday that allowed sponsors of California's ban on same-sex marriage to withhold campaign strategy documents from gay rights advocates who are seeking to overturn the ballot measure. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Dec. 11 had overturned a judge's order to produce the documents, ruling 3-0 that their disclosure might discourage participation in future campaigns and inhibit strategists from speaking candidly. . . . Proposition 8, amended the California Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, overturning a May 2008 state Supreme...

Larry Jones took bribes and hid hard-core porn magazines at the charity, Feed The Children is alleging in a countersuit against its fired president. The charity also is accusing Jones in the civil case of other misdeeds, including misspending charity funds, pocketing travel money, keeping gifts from appearances and misusing a charity employee as a nanny. Jones, 69, denied wrongdoing. "They fired me wrongfully,” Jones said Tuesday evening. "What they’re trying to do is build a case up against me so that will hold up. It won’t hold up … I didn’t do anything. … If I had … done...

Rasmussen's health-care polling results since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the Christmas Eve vote are full of undeniably bad news for Democrats. In roughly ascending order of bad news (if one is a Democrat)... Likely voters oppose Obamacare by more than the (18-point) margin by which Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale: 58 percent to 39 percent. There are far more likely voters who "strongly" oppose Obamacare (46 percent) than there are likely voters who support it even "somewhat" (39 percent). Only 24 percent of likely voters think that the quality of health care would get better under Obamacare, while...

White House Visitors Log: ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis In Obama Residence Week Before Sting Videos Launched This afternoon, on arguably one of the slower news day of the year, the Obama White House released another document dump of “visitor records.” According to the White House, today’s batch total more than 25,000 records, covering meetings between September 16-September 30th. ACORN.Bertha.Lewis You can scroll through the list of records on the White House site OR you can download the raw data. Interestingly, the full download uncovers almost 30,000 records, including many from outside the mid-September time-frame detailed on the White House site....

Dutch and Nigerian officials say the two countries will begin using full-body scanners to tighten airport security after a Nigerian passenger – Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- tried to blow up a U.S. airliner heading from Amsterdam to the Midwestern U.S. city of Detroit. The scanners, unlike metal detectors, produce a whole-body image of a passenger and can reveal plastic or chemical explosives hidden in clothing. Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority Director Harold Demuren said his government wants to make it impossible for terrorists to pass through all Nigerian airports. “In combating the new trend of terrorism as unfolded recently, Nigerian government...

WASHINGTON - If the nation ever faces a large-scale attack by a biological weapon like anthrax, the U.S. Postal Service will be in charge of delivering whatever drugs and other medical aid Americans would need to survive. In an executive order released Wednesday, President Barack Obama put the Postal Service in charge of dispensing "medical countermeasures" to biological weapons because of its "capacity for rapid residential delivery." While most likely unrelated, the release of the executive order comes less than a week after a man with alleged ties to al-Qaida tried to bring down a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner. In recent...

For years, many Americans have dismissed the battle between Mexico's government and drug cartels. * * * But this problem, funded largely by U.S. drug users, has rapidly transformed into a battle against a terrorist insurgency, and victory is every bit as important to Mexico's security as is America's battle against al-Qaeda. Defeat for Mexico means nothing less than a descent into chaos. This might sound alarmist, but the tactics being employed by Mexico's drug gangs, not to mention their spread into U.S. border cities, is truly cause for alarm. * * * Drug gangs are challenging the government for...

The good news for Senator Ben Nelson is that he doesn't have to face Nebraska voters until 2012. If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote. Nelson's health care vote is clearly dragging his numbers down. Just 17% of Nebraska voters approve of the deal their senator made on Medicaid in exchange for his vote in support of the plan. Overall, 64%...

This afternoon, on arguably one of the slowest news day of the year, the Obama White House released another document dump of “visitor records.” According to the White House, today’s batch total more than 25,000 records, covering meetings between September 16-September 30th. You can scroll through the list of records on the White House site OR you can download the raw data. Interestingly, the full download uncovers almost 30,000 records, including many from outside the mid-September time-frame detailed on the White House site. In other words, only the records from the specific two week time period are viewable on the...

Love 'em or loathe 'em, and there seems to be little in between, 2009 was a remarkable year for Fox News Channel. Despite being ensnared in seemingly weekly controversies involving accusations that its coverage of the Obama administration was laced with right-wing political bias, the year-end numbers are in, and they show Fox News establishing dominance over rivals CNN and MSNBC. In short, 2009 was the best year in the network's 13-year history. According to Nielsen, the ten-most-watched cable news shows in 2009 were all Fox News programs. With conservative-leaning opinion shows like "The O'Reilly Factor," "Hannity," and "Glenn Beck"...

Lisa Miller Is Supposed to Handover Daughter Isabella to her Former Lesbian Partner Janet Jenkins on Friday - ABC News

A Tennessee congressman has introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives known as “the Citizen Participation Act of 2009” that would provide protection for people who are sued for exercising their First Amendment rights of petition and speech. If passed, the measure by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., would become the first federal anti-SLAPP law on the books. SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. A SLAPP suit seeks to silence an individual or a business simply because that person or entity has spoken out or exercised First Amendment rights. The filer of a SLAPP suit...

The LAPD plans to launch its own Explorer program for young people this month, removing the Boy Scouts of America from management, officials said Tuesday. The Police Commission voted two months ago to end its relationship with the Scouts because of the organization's policies that discriminate against gays. The program had been operated by the Learning for Life Foundation, a subsidiary of the Boy Scouts. The move to create the Los Angeles Police Department's own teen program should be launched by Jan. 1, Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger told the Police Commission. "We have received inquiries from dozens of agencies on...