Free Republic

The Obama campaign began airing a TV ad Saturday in key election states attacking Mitt Romney for his stances on abortion and Planned Parenthood that was immediately rebuked by the Romney campaign as “viciously” negative and false. The 30-second spot titled “Troubled” is airing in Virginia and seven other swing states. “Every woman who believes decisions about our bodies and our health-care should be our own is troubled Mitt Romney supports overturning Roe v. Wade,” says a female voice at the beginning of the ad. “Romney backed a law that outlaws all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.”;...

THE unfolding story of how Barclays — and, in all likelihood, other big banks — rigged interest rates is full of telling tidbits about the way Wall Street works. It also represents yet another teachable moment. By now the world knows that Barclays manipulated the most widely used benchmark rate, the London interbank offered rate. But Barclays is just one member of the cozy club that sets the Libor, which is supposed to be based on the average rate at which large banks can borrow money overnight. It’s not based on actual transactions, however — and that leaves room for...

One of the few Republicans in the country who's been tirelessly pushing for the implementation of Obamacare at the state level has been tapped to head Mitt Romney's transition team, should he become president. Former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, and his consulting group Leavitt Partners, are the primary advocates within Republican circles for implementation of Obamacare's exchanges. It just so happens that his consultancy is one of the major beneficiaries of the taxpayer funded gold mine of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange implementation grants. But that's a coincidence, of course.

(CNN) — A top adviser for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign said Sunday the president was entirely dedicated to ending the so-called Bush tax cuts for the wealthy at the end of this year. “He is 100% committed to it,” Robert Gibbs said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Obama signed a bill in 2010 to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, citing the need for economic stimulus at the time, but has since vowed he would not permit another extension. The tax breaks are set to expire in what’s known as the “fiscal cliff,” a package of spending cuts and...

The Supreme Court's decision to uphold most of President Barack Obama's health care law will come home to roost for most taxpayers in about 2½ years, when they'll have to start providing proof on their tax returns that they have health insurance. That scenario puts the Internal Revenue Service at the center of the debate, renewing questions about whether the agency is capable of policing the health care decisions of millions of people in the United States while also collecting the taxes needed to run the federal government. Under the law, the IRS will provide tax breaks and incentives to...

........TexasAttorneyGeneralGregAbbott argues that the state has a responsibility to guard against election fraud, and that its new law is not subject to Justice Department review under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That provision, which has angered Southern conservatives for decades, requires jurisdictions with a historical pattern of discrimination to win federal "pre-clearance" from the JusticeDepartment or a federal court in Washington,D.C., before implementing changes in voting laws or political lines. Southern states, led by Alabama, have argued that Section 5 is a violation of states' rights. Texas Republicans have charged that President BarackObama's Justice Department has manipulated...

Republicans continue to hold an edge in Iowa voter registration, according to the latest figures from the secretary of state’s office. From the Des Moines Register report: 619,452 Iowa voters are now registered Republican, compared to 598,074 Democrats. Both parties, however, are outnumbered by No Party voters, at 655,457. Democrats held a lead in registrations for several years beginning in mid-2006, but fell behind Republicans earlier this spring. In an e-mailed statement, Iowa Democratic Party spokesman Michael Hunt said additional Republican registrations in June were probably related to the unusually large number of contested GOP races in the June 5...

US President Barack Obama said Saturday the United States needed to do more than just reclaim jobs lost to the recession, as he called for rebuilding the economy to make it secure for future generations. "Our mission isn't just to put people back to work - it's to rebuild an economy where that work pays; an economy in which everyone who works hard has the chance to get ahead," Obama said in his radio and Internet address. The comment came after new Labor Department statistics showed that the June jobless rate was unchanged from May at 8.2 percent, with 12.7...

Could a second Obama cabinet member be found in contempt of Congress? The possibility arose on Friday when House investigators escalated their efforts to make Interior Secretary Ken Salazar comply with a subpoena pertaining to the drilling moratorium that he imposed after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. After the spill, Salazar had released a report recommending a moratorium — a report protested by the very group of experts that it cited, who said their opinions were misrepresented in order to justify the moratorium. “For more than three months, the [Interior] Department has flouted a duly authorized and issued Congressional subpoena...

This week begins the most important 26-day period for our Second Amendment freedoms in recent history. That’s because today, representatives from many of the world’s socialist, tyrannical and dictatorial regimes will gather at United Nations headquarters in New York for a month-long meeting, in which they’ll put the finishing touches on an international Arms Trade Treaty that could seriously restrict your freedom to own, purchase and carry a firearm. Specifically, the U.N. wants to implement international gun registration requirements, bans on commonly owned firearms, tracking and registration of ammunition purchases, and create a new U.N. gun control bureaucracy. You might...

The American Red Cross says power outages created by recent storms in the East and Midwest cut blood donations, which were already low this summer. In June there was a nationwide shortfall, with donations down more than 10% across the country. "We are asking people to please call 1-800-RED-CROSS or visit us at redcrossblood.org to find a way to donate if they can," said Stephanie Millian, Red Cross director of biomedical communications. "We need people's help." One group that would like to help, but legally can't, may be moving one step closer to eligibility. Since the 1980s, when the AIDS...

By Mr. CurmudgeonHere we are, at the midpoint of 2012, and unemployment - thanks to stimulus spending (and borrowed Chinese money) - stands at 5.6%. No, wait a minute, it's not! That was the rosy prediction by the smartest man on the planet back in 2009 - Barack Obama.Friday's jobs report failed to move U.S. unemployment below its three-month 8.2% level. Of course, that Department of Labor Statistics' figure (classified U-3) does not include Americans who have run through their unemployment benefits and still cannot find work. The more accurate U-6 figure puts real U.S joblessness at 14.8%.The smartest man...

Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers entered the U.S. air defense zone near the Pacific coast on Wednesday and were met by U.S. interceptor jets, defense officials told the Free Beacon. It was the second time Moscow dispatched nuclear-capable bombers into the 200-mile zone surrounding U.S. territory in the past two weeks. An earlier intrusion by two Tu-95 Bear H bombers took place near Alaska as part of arctic war games that a Russian military spokesman said included simulated attacks on “enemy” air defenses and strategic facilities. A defense official said the Pacific coast intrusion came close to the U.S. coast...

From NPR: "First thing that always pops into my head regarding our president is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him ... they just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white — very white American, Kansas, middle of America," Freeman said.

Kevin Madden, a Republican communications expert with long ties to Mitt Romney, will become a more frequent and visible spokesman for the presidential campaign, a source close to the decision said on Friday. The increased responsibilities for Mr. Madden came in the wake of criticism from nervous Republicans about Mr. Romney’s campaign team. The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial that the campaign “looks confused in addition to being politically dumb.”

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down...

Americans are more likely to say the 2010 healthcare law upheld by the Supreme Court last week will hurt the national economy (46%) rather than help it (37%), while 18% say they don't know or that it will have no effect. Independents polled: 34% help; 47% hurts the economy

TROOPATHON RADIO DRIVE WITH MELANIE MORGAN THIS WEEKEND This is a special reminder for everyone to please spread the word and let your friends and family know about the Troopathon campaign to raise money for our troops. We have a very special privilege to reach out and get some people engaged right now! Our Troopathon host, Melanie Morgan, who co-founded Move America Forward and has been with us ever since, will be hosting a special hour long Troopathon pre-show this weekend! Tune in from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm (Pacific time) TOMORROW JULY 7th! Melanie will be interviewing several...

Here's a fun tidbit that I missed from the June jobs report. Most months, the number of people transferring out of the workforce on disability claims are easily dwarfed by the people who find jobs. In June? Hope and change, baby: More workers joined the federal government's disability program in June than got new jobs, according to two new government reports, a clear indicator of how bleak the nation's jobs picture is after three full years of economic recovery.The economy created just 80,000 jobs in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. But that same month, 85,000 workers left...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. employers added only 80,000 jobs in June, a third straight month of weak hiring that shows the economy is still struggling three years after the recession ended. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the Labor Department said in its report Friday. The economy added an average of just 75,000 jobs a month in the April-June quarter. That's one-third of the 226,000 a month created in the first quarter. For the first six months of the year, U.S. employers added an average of 150,000 jobs a month. That's fewer than the 161,000 a month for the...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows Mitt Romney attracting 46% of the vote, while President Obama earns 44%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided. Romney has a six-point advantage among unaffiliated voters. He also picks up 20% of the vote from White Democrats.

From 2-27 July, all countries of the world will come together in New York to negotiate what is seen as the most important initiative ever regarding conventional arms regulation within the United Nations. A robust arms trade treaty can make a difference for millions of people confronted with insecurity, deprivation and fear.

Several electronic road construction signs around Anchorage were hacked late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, according to the state Department of Transportation. Signs that normally display closure and detour information, like the one on Minnesota Drive near 100th Avenue, were changed to read “Impeach Obama.” That particular sign wasn’t fixed until sometime between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Thursday. It happened because DOT says it doesn't lock the boxes on the signs that hold the message control pad. Construction managers say sign-hacking has never happened before, so they never thought to lock the boxes.

Beaver had June and Ward. Ricky had Ozzie and Harriet. Mom and Dad, same-sex couples or blended families, California law is clear: No more than two legal parents per child. When adults fight over parenthood, a judge must decide which two have that right and responsibility – but that could end soon. State Sen. Mark Leno is pushing legislation to allow a child to have multiple parents. "The bill brings California into the 21st century, recognizing that there are more than Ozzie and Harriet families today," the San Francisco Democrat said. Surrogate births, same-sex parenthood and assisted reproduction are changing...

Since the "soak the rich" rhetoric has begun again, I though it was a good time to make sure that everyone knows exactly how adjusted gross income and federal individual income taxes are distributed among the various income brackets. I hope the moderators will indulge me and leave this in front-page news. I encourage everyone to bookmark this thread or the original source of data, so that you can refer to it when someone claims that the rich aren't paying their fair share. First, let's start with the source of the data: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09in03etr.xls That's an Excel workbook. If you don't...

WOLFEBORO, N.H. — Mitt Romney is planning to fortify his communications and messaging team by adding seasoned operatives, advisers close to the campaign said Thursday, after withering criticism from prominent conservative voices that his insular team has fumbled recent opportunities. Romney’s advisers insisted that he would keep his inner circle intact amid growing concerns about the Republican presidential candidate and his campaign. The tempest began with a weekend tweet from media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and burst Thursday onto the pages of his newspaper the Wall Street Journal, as its conservative editorial board opined that Romney’s advisers were “slowly squandering an...

Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder is once again taking his opposition to federal health care law to court, this time with a lawsuit challenging language that will appear on Missouri’s Nov. 7 ballot. **SNIP** The ballot language asks voters, “Shall Missouri law be amended to deny individuals, families, and small businesses the ability to access affordable health care plans through a state-based health benefit exchange unless authorized by statute, initiative or referendum or through an exchange operated by the federal government as required by the federal health care act?” The language was immediately greeted with outrage from Missouri Republicans. Kinder,...

As president, Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. These justices hold dear what the great Chief Justice John Marshall called “the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected”: a written Constitution, with real and determinate meaning. The judges that Mitt nominates will exhibit a genuine appreciation for the text, structure, and history of our Constitution and interpret the Constitution and the laws as they are written. And his nominees will possess a demonstrated record of adherence to these core principles.

A fresh round of Democrats has announced they will not be attending the party convention in Charlotte. Most troublingly for President Obama, several of them are from North Carolina, and not only have they decided not to drop in on a convention held in their own state, they’ve refused to endorse Obama for president in 2012. The latest round of Democrats fleeing from Obama include North Carolina congressmen Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell, plus candidate Hayden Rogers. Additionally, news broke just before the Fourth of July holiday that Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas has decided not to attend the party...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. private employers stepped up hiring in June and the number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits last week fell by the most in two months, hopeful signs for the struggling labor market. Employers outside government added 176,000 new workers to their payrolls last month, the ADP National Employment Report showed on Thursday, after increasing 136,000 in May.

Counter-terrorism police swooped on a coach today after a man was reportedly seen pouring liquid into a bag which was smoking.

The Obama administration is moving toward decisions that would further cut the number of U.S. nuclear weapons, possibly to between 1,000 and 1,100, reflecting new thinking on the role of nuclear weapons in an age of terror, current and former officials say. The reductions under consideration are in line with President Barack Obama's vision of trimming the nation's nuclear arsenal without harming national security in the short term, and in the longer term, eliminating nuclear weapons.

Who does President Barack Obama think he is that he can change the wording of the Declaration of Independence? Again and again he presumes to quote the great Declaration while making a significant change: he omits the word “Creator.” Americans know that the Declaration of Independence proclaims as a matter of fact that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But when Obama recites this line, he omits the word “Creator.” Listen carefully to how Obama censors that famous line. Here are his own words: “all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with...

Unemployment ebbs and flows, but one measure of the nation's economic health, average weekly wages, rarely dips. Until now. In the latest demonstration of the struggling economy that threatens President Obama's reelection, average weekly wages fell in 2011, one of only five declines since the category was created in 1978 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In a just-released review of employment in the nation's largest 322 counties, BLS found that weekly wages dropped over the year by 1.7 percent to $955 in the fourth quarter of 2011 from a high of $971 in the fourth quarter of 2010. That...

Amid John Roberts' craven surrender to "the political branches" on Obamacare -- a bizarre capitulation, at that, since Roberts honored a statute that he hallucinated, but neither Congress nor the president authored nor authorized -- Americans should remember just how many rules, standards, and traditions had to be twisted or bulldozed in order for the [un]Affordable Care Act to become law. For Obamacare to be enacted in the first place required each of more than a dozen, highly unlikely or even suspect, occurrences or actions. It then took some serious constitutional hocus pocus for it to survive in court. Consider...

Retired Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, who heads a committee tasked with examining the legality of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, declared on Tuesday that Israelis have a legal right to settle the region. "According to international law, Israelis have a legal right to settle all of Judea and Samaria, at the very least the lands that Israel controls under agreements with the Palestinian Authority. Therefore, the establishment of Jewish settlements [in Judea and Samaria] is, in itself, not illegal." The committee was established by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in efforts to determine and cement the legal status of...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - July 4, 2012 CONTACT: Ryan Gill at Ryan@CampaignToDefeatObama.com or (650) 678-7732 Updated VIP Guest List For Today's Defeat Obama Telethon! Herman Cain - 2012 Republican presidential candidate and founder of Cain's Solutions. Congresswoman Sandy Adams - (R) Florida. Sheriff Joe Arpaio - "America's Sheriff" David Limbaugh - Author and syndicated columnist. Janine Turner - Radio talk show host, television commentator and actress. Dick Morris - Political analyst, author. Phyllis Schlafly - Founder, Eagle Forum Wayne Allyn Root - 2008 Vice Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, author of "The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold and...

Are you “reverent of individual liberty?“ Are you ”suspicious of centralized federal authority?“ Do you think there is a ”grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty?” Well, then you fall into the category of “extreme right-wing” terrorist, according to a new study out of the University of Maryland, which was funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security.

Speculation persists over why Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberals to uphold the President Obama's signature health-care reform law, and that could affect the Supreme Court. Unprecedented leaks of behind-the-scenes information at the US Supreme Court are raising questions about whether the threat of political attacks and other potential criticism played a role in the high court’s recent decision to uphold President Obama’s health-care reform law. The most detailed leaks came in a CBS News report over the weekend, suggesting that Chief Justice John Roberts may have switched sides in the high-profile case in part to insulate the court and...

Address to the Nation on Independence Day July 4, 1986 My fellow Americans: In a few moments the celebration will begin here in New York Harbor. It's going to be quite a show. I was just looking over the preparations and thinking about a saying that we had back in Hollywood about never doing a scene with kids or animals because they'd steal the scene every time. So, you can rest assured I wouldn't even think about trying to compete with a fireworks display, especially on the Fourth of July. My remarks tonight will be brief, but it's worth remembering...

The Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses Taxpayers are reminded that the president’s healthcare law is one of the largest tax increases in American history. Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses. Arranged by their respective effective dates, below is the total list of all $500 billion-plus in tax hikes (over the next ten years) in Obamacare, where to find them in the bill, and how much your taxes are scheduled to go up as of today: Taxes that took effect in 2010: 1. Excise Tax...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows Mitt Romney attracting 47% of the vote, while President Obama earns 44%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. Last week, the president received an immediate bounce following the Supreme Court ruling on his health care law. On the night of the ruling, the single night poll results were by far the best recorded for Obama in many months. Over the past few days, the numbers have returned to where they’ve been for most of the past month—Romney up slightly among likely voters in...

Ballot summaries for two measures that will appear on the November ballot were released today by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. **SNIP** Carnahan's approved ballot summary asks voters: Shall Missouri law be amended to deny individuals, families, and small businesses the ability to access affordable health care plans through a state-based health benefit exchange unless authorized by statute, initiative or referendum or through an exchange operated by the federal government as required by the federal health care act? No direct costs or savings for state and local governmental entities are expected from this proposal. Indirect costs or savings related to...

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Obamacare’s individual mandate on Thursday — and in fact dubbed it a tax in spite of the Obama administration’s denials — no one was more jubilant this past weekend than the recently hired agents at the Internal Revenue Service who get to keep their jobs, according to a law enforcement official in Washington, D.C. Their jobs are now safe and secure. Over the weekend, President Barack Obama’s minions swarmed the Sunday morning news shows arguing that Americans were not going to be taxed to raise money for Obamacare, yet reporters failed...

A U.S. Navy oiler slipped away from a fuel depot on the Puget Sound in Washington state one recent day, headed toward the central Pacific and into the storm over the Pentagon's controversial green fuels initiative. In its tanks, the USNS Henry J. Kaiser carried nearly 900,000 gallons of biofuel blended with petroleum to power the cruisers, destroyers and fighter jets of what the Navy has taken to calling the "Great Green Fleet," the first carrier strike group to be powered largely by alternative fuels. Conventionally powered ships and aircraft in the strike group will burn the blend in an...

RALEIGH, N.C. - The gas-drilling process known as "fracking" will be authorized in North Carolina now that the General Assembly has overridden Gov. Beverly Perdue's veto of a bill that sets rules and regulations for the form of shale gas production.

Telly Hudgins has been stopped and frisked by the police too many times to count in the Brownsville, New York, public housing project where he lives. One occasion sticks in his memory. "I had my pajamas on and my slippers on and I'm emptying my garbage" at the trash chute. "They asked me for ID to prove I lived there. Who walks around in their pajamas with ID?" asked the black, 35-year-old counselor for the mentally handicapped. He says he complained about the search and was issued a summons for disorderly conduct. Deborah Richardson, 60, a black postal worker, has...

Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington — too often, Republicans — who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by them, to use their wisdom instead of their cleverness. President Bush 41 epitomized these betrayals when he broke his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. He paid the price when he quickly went from high approval ratings as president to someone defeated for...

As private sector salaries flattened over the last decade, military pay climbed steadily, enough so that by 2009 pay and allowances for enlisted members exceeded the pay of 90 percent of private sector workers of similar age and education level. cut The military gained its lead with annual raises from 2000 to 2010 that exceeded private sector wage growth and some extra increases in housing allowances to eliminate average out-of-pocket rental costs. Meanwhile, civilian pay growth stalled as markets collapsed and jobs disappeared. cut By 2009, the report says, average RMC for enlisted exceeded the median wage for civilians in...

<p>Border Patrol agents in Arizona are blasting their bosses for telling them, along with all other Department of Homeland Security employees, to run and hide if they encounter an "active shooter."</p>