Free Republic

Walker came to office in the Republican wave of 2010. He inherited a mess. Under his profligate predecessor, Jim Doyle, state government had operated almost as a slush fund for public employee unions. Giveaways to teachers and others put the state on an unsustainable fiscal path, so Doyle raised some taxes and threatened to raise others. He raided a state fund set up to cover medical liability, essentially stealing contributions doctors had made to the pooled account. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against that pilfering, but the money had already been spent. Even after budget gimmickry that would make Fannie...

Oklahoma’s proposed anti-abortion Senate Bill 1433 states a fetus “at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.” In response, pro-choice Oklahoma State Senator Constance Johnson introduced an amendment......

MARK FIORINO was legally carrying his .40-caliber Glock on his hip as he walked along Frankford Avenue on Feb. 13, 2011, when he was stopped by Philadelphia police, who pointed a gun at him, harassed him and handcuffed him. Today, he plans to file a civil suit against the department for the incident. Fiorino, who recorded his 45-minute confrontation with police and posted it on YouTube, is suing for "violation of his constitutional rights to be free from unlawful searches, excessive force and malicious prosecution," according to the complaint filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union. "Since...

Mitt Romney was the inevitable nominee — until he wasn't. In order to sustain a lead, a candidate's message must resonate with the heart and the mind. Mr. Romney's cakewalk to the nomination has been stymied by the inability to get anyone excited about his campaign. He has supporters but not believers. Rick Santorum's message resonates with voters' hearts and minds (this week at least), because he is a true believer. He believes in his message, and his message is consistent with core Republican values. What gave Mr. Santorum the edge in Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri can give him...

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney takes a hard line against congressional earmarks, but the Republican presidential candidate had a more favorable view of federal pork-barrel spending as governor of Massachusetts. Under Romney's leadership, Massachusetts sought tens of millions of dollars in earmarks for transportation projects through the state's congressional delegation. A prime example was the $30 million his administration requested to renovate the historic Longfellow Bridge over the Charles River between Cambridge and Boston.

During an interview with WAGA, President Obama attempted to make excuses for his failed promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is scheduled to make a campaign appearance in Macomb County this week, the first GOP candidate to visit the county in 2012. Santorum will attend a rally at the Palazzo Grande in Shelby Township on Friday, Feb. 17. The banquet center is located at 54660 Van Dyke Avenue south of 25 Mile Road. There is no charge to attend and the event is open to the public.

RAEFORD, N.C. — A Hoke County preschooler was fed chicken nuggets for lunch because a state worker felt that her homemade lunch did not have enough nutritional value, according to a report by the Carolina Journal. The West Hoke Elementary School student was in her More at Four classroom when a state agent who was inspecting lunch boxes decided that her packed lunch — which consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips — “did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines,” the Journal reports. ... The student’s mother told the Journal she received...

Romania digs out from 15 feet of snow The Associated Press reports: Snow as deep as 15 feet (4.5 meters) isolated areas in Romania, Moldova and Albania on Tuesday and turned a power plant in Kosovo into a park of dazzling ice sculptures. In a winter harsher than many can remember, energy workers struggled mightily Tuesday to break the ice that has encapsulated Kosovo's main power station in Obilic. Steam from the plant's vents coated its pipes and buildings with ice and snow, turning them into unworldly, unrecognizable objects of art.

Under the emerging details of the agreement, the payroll tax cut still wouldn't be offset by other taxes or spending cuts, however, negotiators are working out funding provisions for the unemployment and Medicare measures. Sources said Tuesday that negotiators were looking at various ways, such as tweaking federal worker retirement benefits, to pay for those other two provisions. One source also said the plan would reduce the maximum duration of jobless aid from 99 weeks to 63 weeks in most states. Negotiators are hoping to include all three provisions in one bill with the goal of sending it to President...

Patton: Just a Taste of a Second Obama Term First, he came for the General Motors bondholders, but the religious leaders were not GM bondholders, so they did not speak up. Then he came for the oil companies, but they were not oil company executives, and again they did not speak up. Next, he came for control of the nation’s health care system, and again they saw no threat — in fact, many of them supported his plan. We were told we had to pass the plan to find out what was in it. Then he came for our freedom...

Emergency powers for president dropped from cybersecurity billBy Gautham Nagesh - 02/14/12 01:55 PM ET A comprehensive cybersecurity bill introduced Tuesday abandons proposals that would give the president emergency powers over the nation's networks. “The nation responded after 9/11 to improve its security. Now we must respond to this challenge so that a cyber 9/11 attack on America never happens,” said Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). Public apprehension about the possibility of handing the White House a "kill switch" for the Internet has dogged the cybersecurity debate, fueled by a proposal that would have codified emergency powers...

Photos: Dining with Michelle Obama in Orlandoposted by joe burbank on February, 10 2012 10:36 PM

President Barack Obama listed rising gas prices as among the many reasons to extend the payroll tax cut Tuesday, flanked by individuals the White House promoted as being affected by $40 per paycheck the average American would lose if the tax cut is not extended at the end of February. The payroll tax funds Social Security. Cutting the tax would reduce funding to Social Security by $119 billion over the next year, on top of the $105 billion reduced from funding in 2011. While Republican lawmakers have expressed plans to vote for a full-year extension to the tax cut, Obama...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is weighing options for sharp new cuts to the U.S. nuclear force, including a reduction of up to 80 percent in the number of deployed weapons, The Associated Press has learned. Even the most modest option now under consideration would be an historic and politically bold disarmament step in a presidential election year, although the plan is in line with President Barack Obama's 2009 pledge to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons. No final decision has been made, but the administration is considering at least three options for lower total numbers of deployed strategic...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he'll let a bill that would repeal the White House's hot-button birth control mandate be brought up for a vote. Reid had criticized Senate Republicans for offering what he called "extraneous" amendments to the Senate's transportation bill but then said he had agreed to a vote on contraception mandate, The Hill reported. Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/02/14/Birth-control-mandate-repeal-will-get-vote/UPI-78731329257213/#ixzz1mP2m2JPz

A man thought to be Iranian has had both legs blown off after attempting to throw a bomb at police in the Thai capital, Bangkok, officials say. Two other explosions were reported in the same busy commercial district of the city, injuring four other people. Police said one blast took place at the house the injured man rented with other Iranians. One of those men also threw a bomb at a taxi in the capital. Last month, the US embassy warned of possible attacks in Bangkok.

CHICAGO (CBS) — A former Chicago alderman turned political science professor/corruption fighter has found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country. He cites data from the U.S. Department of Justice to prove his case. And, he says, Illinois is third-most corrupt state in the country. University of Illinois professor Dick Simpson estimates the cost of corruption at $500 million. It’s essentially a corruption tax on citizens who bear the cost of bad behavior (police brutality, bogus contracts, bribes, theft and ghost pay-rolling to name a few) and the costs needed to prosecute it.

<p>White House to Retirees: Cough Up $13 Billion The White House released details of its personnel and healthcare budget proposals on Monday, and they confirmed pretty much what MOAA had predicted.</p> <p>All told, the TRICARE fee proposals envision shifting about $13 billion in health costs from the Pentagon to retirees over the next 5 years.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration's corporate tax reform plan will end "dozens and dozens" of tax breaks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday as he defended the White House's election-year call for higher taxes on the wealthy. Within days, the administration is set to unveil a blueprint for revamping the corporate tax system aimed at leveling the playing field for all companies, which pay wildly differing levels of taxes, while lowering the top corporate tax rate. Companies are clamoring for a cut in the top 35 percent corporate tax rate but disagree about how to how eliminate...

Desperate to win re-election, President Obama is taking inspiration from a tactic used by China’s Chairman Mao during so-called "Cultural Revolution."In order to spread his ideology, he creates his own army of brainwashed propagandists who are supposed to popularize talking points sent to them directly from the White House. Modern days hongweibings (Chinese for red guards) are called the Truth Team, and if everything goes as planned, the president will have an army of over two million Americans on his side.The Obama administration unveiled on Monday a campaign created to crush the GOP competition come November, a mission that...

RUSH: This is from Rayford, North Carolina. Carolina Journal. I'm gonna read it to you exactly as it printed out here: "A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet US Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day." Again, let me read this to you again: "The...

Senator Gretchen Hoffman isn’t letting police union opposition to a gun bill she sponsored get to her. Instead, she’s focused on the voices of support she’s received on a piece of legislation she’s dubbed the “Stand Your Ground” bill. The bill (SF 1357) expands gun owners’ self-defense rights. Currently, the use of deadly force is authorized when a person believes they are in danger of bodily harm or death, but the new bill presumes that threat may be posed by a home invader. It also eliminates residents’ “duty to retreat” from a threat if possible, instead allowing deadly force. The...

RUSH: I want to move on to this Dick Morris business and the attack on the Catholic Church last week by Obama. I want to ask you, if you remember back in January there was a presidential debate, a Republican debate in Manchester. Do you remember -- 'cause this is a setup for what's coming -- do you remember, we were all perplexed here. George Stephanopoulos kept hounding Romney on contraception. It had not come up, nobody had said anything about it, and we were all confused, as was Romney, what the deal was. Well, it is Dick Morris' theorem...

The idea of the average mayor pole dancing would not appeal to most voters, but in the Italian town of Taranto, porn stars Amandha Fox and Luana Borgia both think it will get one of them the job.

Illinois state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston) has endorsed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to create a statewide gun registry in order to decrease gun violence, according to a news release issued Friday. Emanuel proposed requiring gun owners to register each handgun in their possession at a fee of $65 per gun. Currently, Chicago's gun control laws ban weapon sales in the city and prohibit people from taking guns out of their homes. For 28 years Chicago banned gun ownership entirely, until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that policy in June 2010. Prospective Illinois gun owners must obtain a firearm owner's...

Just days after a mysterious incident in which she was reportedly attacked at a Newark motel by an ex-boyfriend, Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer said Tuesday that she has enrolled in a program to be treated for chemical dependency. Lockyer, 40, the wife of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, said in a statement that she entered a “wellness and recovery center” last week for treatment of the unspecified chemical dependency and “my injuries from the assault.”She also said she was being treated for “chronic pain from a past debilitating car accident,” without giving specifics.“Alcoholism and addiction are diseases from which many...

Rick Santorum has surged back into contention for the Republican presidential nomination because of persistent reservations among conservatives about Mitt Romney. But those on the right who embrace Santorum as an alternative should do so with no illusions. To his credit, Santorum did not support the kind of mandate and subsidize approach to health care as Romney, but as Senator, he still voted like a big government Republican on many occasions. Some of this had to do with being a loyal soldier during the Bush era, when he backed the Medicare prescription drug plan and No Child Left Behind. But...

An unidentified male at the White House was taken to a hospital after suffering a hand injury Tuesday morning... Shortly before 11 a.m., a man...had a “possible amputation of one or two fingers,”

PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVES In January 2012 the Department published a paper -- “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices” – identifying the major budgetary changes made in response to the new defense strategy. Changes in the Fiscal Year 2013 Budget support U.S. defense strategy and are organized around four major themes: 1. Making more disciplined use of defense dollars. 2. Applying strategic guidance to force structure and investment. 3. Ensuring the quality of the all-volunteer force. 4. Fully supporting deployed warfighters. Disciplined Use of Defense Dollars The FY 2013 budget continues the reform agenda advanced in the Department’s previous three budgets. The FY...

President Obama’s budget is bad for jobs, bad for seniors, and makes the economy worse. House Budget Committee And Senate Budget Committee Republican Summary Of President’s FY2013 Budget February 13, 2012 The President has not merely ducked from our fiscal and economic challenges, but—with his fourth straight budget flop—he has advanced policies that dangerously accelerate the crisis before us. His gimmick-filled budget fails to reduce the fast-rising debt, permanently entrenches unsustainable levels of government spending, and erects new barriers to upward mobility. His plan stifles economic growth, threatens the health and retirement security of millions of Americans, and commits the...

While we worry about future threats like global warming, and present threats like Iran’s escalating nuclear program, the sun’s propensity for belching out monstrous solar flares (like the Carrington event of 1859) could almost instantly create a world without modern conveniences, or even electricity. The sun could literally “bomb us back to the stone age”.Imagine a world without iPhones, and you’d understand why Homeland security rates New York and Seattle the highest for likelihood of major social unrest. Humans don’t do well in the dark. DHS has taken notice.Above: A modern solar flare recorded Dec. 5, 2006, by the X-ray...

OPINION –Opponents of Barack Obama have long questioned the legitimacy of his citizenship. They claim that Obama’s birth may have taken place outside of the United States. If Obama were born in Kenya, as some claim, he would be in violation of the Constitution’s requirement in Article 2 Section I that a candidate for president must be “natural born citizen” of the U.S. To this end, the so-called “birther” movement has spent much of the last four years demanding that Obama provide his original birth certificate as definitive proof that he was actually born in the U.S. After inexcusable foot-dragging,...

Say goodbye to the much-loathed Alternative Minimum Tax and hello to the Buffett Rule. Sweet relief. The AMT has perplexed taxpayers and agonized accountants for decades. But wait: Are the AMT and the Buffett Rule really so different? The two take aim at different types of tax avoidance, so the details have little in common. But the headline is the same: Both were designed to make sure that wealthy citizens pay their fair share of income tax -- without creating a tax monster that somehow reaches down to regular people. When the AMT came into being in 1969, rich people...

Scandal: A drug enforcement agent says other agencies knew in 2009 about the Justice Department's gunrunning operation and even tried to interdict the weapons flow. And, yes, it was a gun-control plot. The notion that Fast and Furious was a localized operation run out of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of which few, particularly the arguably clueless Attorney General Eric Holder, were aware continues to be exposed as the lie it is. "In 2009, I became aware that ATF was walking guns," Tony Coulson, who was in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency-Tucson...

A decision was made during the Bradley County Commission work session Monday afternoon to place a resolution to call for a referendum on the question of whether a countywide motor vehicle tax (wheel tax) of $32 should be levied. Commissioner and Education Committee Chairman Jeff Yarber proposed the wheel tax resolution several weeks ago as a solution to funding requests for capital projects by the county school system. The county school system needs an estimated $25.5 million for a new elementary school, improvements and expansion for Walker Valley High School and Lake Forest Middle School and land for a third...

At least 1.8 million registered voters won’t be showing up to the polls this fall - because they’re dead. The shocking finding emerged in a report from the Pew Center on the States that concluded a whopping 24 million - or one in eight - of the nation’s active voter registrations have serious errors. In addition to the 1.8 million dead on America’s rolls of registered voters, the study, released Tuesday, also found that 2.75 million in the U.S. are registered as active voters in more than one state.

Combat judicial activism by utilizing checks on judicial power Constitutionally available to the elected branches of government. (Read an extended white paper on restoring the proper role of the judicial branch here.)

The 2012 election year has just begun, and already controversies have swirled around a number of President Obama’s actions. Constitutional issues are at the forefront as the president seeks to improve his chances of reelection by delivering on his promises. But is the president violating the Constitution as he tries to implement his program of transformation? Constitutional attorney David Rivkin believes he is. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington D.C. will be facilitating a discussion on one of the recent controversies, President Obama’s “recess appointments.” On January 4, 2012, President Obama made the following appointments: Richard Cordray as Director...

I think late January and February have been the busiest time for Operation Fast & Furious. The media still doesn’t give it proper coverage, especially this news: On February 4th, Mexico arrests a key figure in Fast & Furious. Not only is he a key person in Fast & Furious, but he was also a top lieutenant to El Chapo. I first found out about it on Borderland Beat, a great website keeping us up to date about the drug war in Mexico. The Los Angeles Times reported it on February 7th and my colleague AWR Hawkins published commenrary on...

Announcing his budget plans for fiscal year 2013 in an address at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., President Barack Obama characterized the current income tax rates--signed into law by President Bush a decade ago--as a form of government spending. Essentially, the president said that the federal government "spends" when it does not raise taxes. “Right now, we’re scheduled to spend more than $1 trillion more on what was intended to be a temporary tax cut for the wealthiest two percent of Americans,” Obama said. “We’ve already spent about that much. Now we’re expected to spend another $1 trillion....

Wall Street made its broadest assault yet against new regulation on Monday, taking aim at a rule that has come to define the battle over how to police banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Regulators in charge of writing the Volcker Rule, which would ban banks from trading with their own money, were inundated with complaints and suggestions on Monday, the deadline to comment on a draft proposal. More than 200 letters were expected to be filed by the midnight deadline on the rule, which regulators outlined in October. Commenters included the rule’s namesake, Paul A. Volcker, the...

A Dallas woman says TSA agents repeatedly asked her to step back into a body scanning machine at DFW International Airport. “I feel like I was totally exposed,” said Ellen Terrell, who is a wife and mother. “They wanted a nice good look.” When Ellen Terrell and her husband, Charlie, flew out of DFW Airport several months ago, Terrell says she was surprised by a question a female TSA agent asked her. “She says to me, ‘Do you play tennis?’ And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘You just have such a cute figure.’” Terrell says she walked into the body...

Margaret Thatcher once famously pointed out the core problem of socialism: “They always run out of other people’s money.� California has been intent on demonstrating exactly what Thatcher meant with its highly progressive income-tax system that relies heavily on hitting the higher-income earners to fund their government. As the state has been discovering for the past few years, it’s a recipe for amplifying disaster in an economic downturn: Gov. Jerry Brown wants to hit California’s highest-income taxpayers with billions of dollars in new taxes, and is jousting with other groups with their own tax-the-rich measures over which, if any, will...

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 13, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Within weeks, the top lawyers in a dozen states may file a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration’s controversial requirement that all insurance plans include access to abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization, the attorney general of Nebraska told LifeSiteNews. Jon Bruning told LifeSiteNews.com that 12 states had signed onto a scathing critique of the mandate and were preparing to take more serious action. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning On Friday, ten state attorneys general addressed a scathing letter to President Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis....

The remarkable success of Prime Minister Mario Monti, feted as a hero both at home and abroad, has created turmoil among Italy's discredited politicians and is likely to provoke radical shifts in the political landscape over the coming year. Some analysts say the impact of Monti will spark a political revolution comparable to the "Clean Hands" corruption probe—whose 20th anniversary is this week. That scandal swept away the old order, sending hundreds of politicians to jail and forcing Bettino Craxi, the dominant figure of his era, into exile in Tunisia where he died. "The whole Italian system is in transition,...

When animated television tyke Lisa Simpson had to announce a tax increase to the American public, she deftly called it a "temporary refund adjustment," avoiding any mention of the three-letter T-word. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration stole a page from The Simpsons last week, repackaging a projected deficit in his new budget as a conditional surplus -- all without using the D-word. But while Lisa earned accolades from the fictional voters who only heard her mention a "refund," it remains unclear whether Malloy effectively steered the political debate -- and media coverage -- away from the $424 million hole his...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has named Gov. Bill Haslam his campaign chairman in Tennessee. The Romney campaign also announced Tuesday that it has gathered a full slate of 48 delegate candidates on the Tennessee ballot, led by former Gov. Winfield Dunn. Haslam said in a statement that the delegates represent the statewide strength of the Romney campaign in Tennessee. SNIP Romney supported Haslam in the state's 2010 governor's race, and Haslam's father and brother also hold leadership positions in the former Massachusetts governor's Tennessee operations.

Say what you will about the principle of tikkun olam, but you can’t confuse it for something else. This central tenet of liberal Judaism means only one thing: Fix the world as it is, and you will be serving God. Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Mend a broken heart. End war. Stop injustice. These are acts that focus the Jew on problems of collective pain. Tikkun olam creates a mission for the Jew to go out into the world and solve problems. Whether the repair work is any good is debatable; that the mission is divinely inspired is...

NASHVILLE — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has scheduled a trip to Tennessee next week while a poll indicates Rick Santorum is now leading in the state despite his lack of a campaign organization within the state. The American Research Group Inc. poll, involving 600 "likely" Republican voters contacted by telephone Feb. 8-9, found Santorum favored by 34 percent, followed by Mitt Romney (27 percent), Gingrich (16 percent) and Ron Paul (13 percent). The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania recruited no committed delegates to appear on the Tennessee's March 6 ballot, though if he wins the state primary, he will...