Free Republic

Ilya Somin writing at Volohk Conspiracy fleshes out what is sure to be a court challenge against the constitutionality of individual or business mandates to purchase health insurance. His point - there is no "consensus" among constitutional scholars on the issue "In an important recent speech, Senator Max Baucus claims that there is a broad consensus among legal scholars (that the individual mandate is constitutional. He claims that 'those who study constitutional law as a line of work have drawn th[e] same conclusion' as congressional Democrats. Similar assertions have been made in parts of the liberal blogosphere. For example, Think...

Christmas time is finally upon us, and as we contemplate the big lump of coal that the Democrats have given the country in the form of a so called health care bill, PopulistAggression.com has come up with a few gift giving ideas to reward them for all their hard work.

The left is starting to believe President Obama is a “poser,” Glenn Beck said on his TV show. In their view, he has failed to achieve many of his campaign promises. He dropped the so-called public option from his healthcare legislation which is “the progressives’ ultimate prize.” Said Beck: "As the concessions are being made and this bill gets stripped down, the only thing left is a mandate to buy insurance, a giant boon, they’ll say, to those evil big insurance companies. That’s not exactly what the left had in mind, not Democrats — the left, and they are coming...

One would think an entire think-tank university staff is behind Snopes. Not so. It's a couple — husband and wife. Their opinions are considered bible by countless who check out "the facts" by going to Snopes.com. These countless include college profs, Congresspersons, the National Review writers, and masses climbing all over the grassroots.

Boy, this “Obama Derangement Syndrome” really has gotten out of hand. Why, just this past week the decreasingly popular president has been called a “bald-faced liar,” “an executive who can’t bring himself to lead,” and even an “Uncle Tom.” And that’s just by liberals. The progressive crack-up, before Obama even reaches the end of his first year, has been an awesome and occasionally humorous sight to see. Undead ’60s warhorse Tom Hayden got the ball rolling in early December with his dramatic announcement in The Nation that, with the president’s decision to increase troop levels, “It’s time to strip the...

The American Mainstream media and Washington D.C. are dominated today by a Leftist, Secular and Godless mindset. That isn't any secret. Not even the unregenerate (unbelievers) will disagree with that. As Lucifer (Satan) controls more and more of the Media today - with these Godless surrogates and talking heads - his agenda is moving along quite rapidly and increasing exponentially. Never in the history of this nation has the Main Stream Liberal Media pushed and supported a President’s leftist agenda as this one we have today. Today Lucifer’s American Leftist Media is ram-rodding, bulldozing, redefining and cultivating the U.S. ground...

The outrage among some of America’s most vocal liberals at President Barack Obama’s failure to expand government-run health care caps a year of disappointments for Obama’s allies on the left and raises worrying questions for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. The revolt led by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean comes after a series of more contained disappointments among traditional Democratic constituencies that invested heavily in Obama — unions, gays, civil libertarians, Hispanics, and anti-war Democrats, among others — who have seen specific promises deferred and grand hopes of systematic change denied by an administration that has found itself severely...

Politico's Ken Vogel is reporting that the Obama worshiping group Organizing for America -- 13 million strong -- was "activated" to call their senators in support of health care reform. Apparently, they didn't get quite the response they were hoping for: "The campaign yielded 150,000 calls - less than half the number of a similar effort in October - and it prompted a backlash among online and local activists who had logged countless volunteer supporting Obama's campaign and legislative agenda, but who felt betrayed by recent Democratic concessions in the healthcare reform fight. To be sure, the October effort targeted...

Paul Krugman, op ed columnist for The New York Times, wrote today that while Senator Joe Lieberman should be hung in effigy and President Obama should be chastised for caving completely on the public option, the health care bill as it now stands in the Senate should still pass. Unfortunately, none of us know what exactly is in that bill since Senator Harry Reid is playiing hide-and-seek with it. Nevertheless, Krugman lists the usual bunch of supposed benefits of the legislation, forgetting to mention that we will all be facing higher taxes, mandates and charges for four years before anyone...

Wrote this one for NRB, thought you guys would enjoy it. In an interview with ABC News, President Obama once again proved to be one of the best spinners in Washington, D.C. The United States, he said, will go “bankrupt” if his multi-trillion dollar health care plan America cannot afford, isn’t passed by Congress. I know what you’re thinking: “that doesn’t make sense. If we’re already terribly in debt, we shouldn’t be adding to it.” Well, that may sound logical to your fiscally conservative and therefore terribly old-fashioned mind, but that’s only because you don’t understand the golden rule of...

Keith Olbermann is ready to go to jail over it. Markos Moulitas is pre pared to see the health-care bill die over it. Howard Dean is assaulting the White House over it. It's the individual mandate, the source of rare cross-ideological agreement in the health-care debate. The provision to force everyone to buy health insurance long labored in obscurity, overshadowed by the more glamorous and controversial public option. No more. The public option's death left the individual mandate exposed. Disappointed Liberals now confront in the cold light of day a provision that will, by force of law, make people hand...

President Barack Obama is on a path to becoming the greatest con man in history. He conned the Nobel Committee into awarding him the Peace Prize, even as he continues military occupations and escalates and expands his wars. He conned many peace advocates into voting for him, but now he continues President George W. Bush's military policies. He conned many environmental activists into voting for him, but now his administration promotes nuclear power, persecutes endangered species such as wolves, and promotes an ineffectual, loophole-filled "cap and trade" carbon scheme. He conned many health reform advocates into voting for him, but...

So we’re going to shut down the detention center at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay and move the 200-plus terrorists detained there to a seldom-used civilian correctional center in Thomson, Ill. And we’re doing it, the Obama administration and Sen. Dick Durbin assure us, not because they want to use federal money to indemnify their home state for a white-elephant prison Illinois taxpayers should never have built, but because Guantanamo Bay simply must be closed. Gitmo, they say, causes terrorism. It’s worth remembering that the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, perhaps the world’s most influential jihadist, was never...

One of the most extraordinary features of Barack Obama's victory over John McCain was his capture of 78% of the Jewish vote. To be sure, there was nothing extraordinary about the number itself. Since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75%—far higher than that of any other ethno-religious group. Yet there were reasons to think that it would be different in 2008. The main one was Israel. Despite some slippage in concern for Israel among American Jews, most of them were still telling pollsters that their votes would be strongly influenced...

Howard Zinn (left) with the very serious-looking actor Viggo Mortensen The small-screen version of Marxist historian Howard Zinn’s leftward-slanted history of America, The People Speak, aired Sunday night on the History Channel. The film, based on Zinn’s influential book, A People’s History of the United States, is chock full of useful idiot celebrities including Matt Damon, Marisa Tomei, Morgan Freeman, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Penn, Bruce Springsteen, and its executive producer Josh Brolin, all parroting the radical platitudes written for them. One scene in the shlockumentary tells the story of an organizer-agitator who rallied tenants against landlords during the Great Depression....

<p>In 1997, Matt Damon played the part of a janitor who turned out to be not only a math wizard, but one of the most brilliant men you could find anywhere. Trying to impress an arrogant Harvard student, who thought he knew everything, Damon’s character quotes from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. He tells the Harvard kid and a psychiatrist at the hospital he works at that “you’re surrounding yourself with all the wrong fuckin’ books. You wanna read a real history book, read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book’ll [explitive deleted] you on your [explative].”</p>

Sorry for the vanity, but the few minutes that I have seen is disgusting!

People such as George Soros and Michael Moore certainly talk a good game, but the next Mother Teresa they are not. Mother Teresa never criticized the free-market system; wealth just wasn't for her. Soros and Moore are quite the opposite. They will never take a vow of poverty and dedicate themselves to helping the poor. They just want our civilization to take a vow of poverty and become poor. This has caused many to wonder: How can someone preach socialism while being the most rapacious "capitalist" imaginable? Well, I have a theory about this. It has often been observed that...

Have you checked out that game-changing HQ for political news and analysis, the Huffington Post, lately? The site is a trove of deepthink policy analysis. Take “Political Grandstanding: Excessive Compensation and the Health Care Bill.” You tell ’em, Aaron Zelinsky! Your analysis of Section 162 (m) of the Internal Revenue Code drew 13 comments. President Obama’s freshly-announced effort to do something about Afghanistan inspired the op-ed, “Talking the Talk: An Exercise in Irony from West Point to Oslo,” that accused Obama of being a cog in Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. It sprouted 14 comments. Keep scrolling down the front page on...

The purpose of all war is peace—Saint Augustine: The City of God While President Barack Obama was in Oslo, Norway yesterday accepting his Nobel Peace Prize (while at the same time justifying his troop surge in Afghanistan), back home Congressman and fellow progressive Democrat Dennis Kucinich was busy metaphorically pulling the red carpet out from under him by denouncing the surge and demanding an immediate withdrawal of all troops from that country. Amy Goodman reported on both events on Democracy Now!, a network which represents the Marxist ideology, an ideology which is itself no stranger to war and destruction. From...

Hollywood & Howard Zinn’s Marxist education project by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2009 The two most important questions for society, according to the Greek philosopher Plato, are these: What will we teach our children? And who will teach them? Left-wing celebrities have teamed up with one of America’s most radical historians to take control of the classroom in the name of “social justice.” Parents, beware: This Hollywood-backed Marxist education project may be coming to a school near you. On Sunday, December 13, the History Channel will air “The People Speak” – a documentary based on Marxist academic Howard Zinn’s...

History serving “a social aim,” rather than chronicling the past in a detached manner, is what readers get in A People’s History of the United States. With any luck, “The People Speak,” the History Channel documentary based on the book that premieres this Sunday, will be, like so many Hollywood productions, unfaithful to the original. Given A People’s History of the United States’ infidelity to facts, this might be the only chance viewers have of seeing anything resembling an accurate retelling of history.Through Zinn’s looking-glass, Maoist China, site of history’s bloodiest state-sponsored killings, transforms into “the closest thing, in the...

THR Film Review-Bottom Line: A titanic entertainment — movie magic is back! A dozen years later, James Cameron has proven his point: He is king of the world. As commander-in-chief of an army of visual-effects technicians, creature designers, motion-capture mavens, stunt performers, dancers, actors and music and sound magicians, he brings science-fiction movies into the 21st century with the jaw-dropping wonder that is “Avatar.” And he did it almost from scratch. There is no underlining novel or myth to generate his story. He certainly draws deeply on Westerns, going back to “The Vanishing American” and, in particular, “Dances With Wolves.”...

The political import of Avatar -- and there's no waving this aspect away because it's right in your face start to finish, and especially in the third act -- is ardently left. It is pro-indigenous native, anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. Iraq War effort, anti-U.S.-in-Afghanistan (and anti-troop-surge-in-that-country, or strongly against the thinking of President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal), anti-rightie, anti-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, etc. Yes, it's very teenaged adolescent in its super-imaginative wacko visions and exuberant energy levels, but politically it's pure Che Guevara (more the Motorcycle Diaries or Che-in-Cuba version than Che in Bolivia), Naom Chomsky, Hugo Chavez, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal,...

A recent headline in the British Columbian newspaper The Globe and Mail reads “Amy Goodman’s Border Woes Have Americans in a Tizzy.” Really? Because this is the first I’ve heard of it. Don’t know who Amy Goodman is? You’re not alone. As host of the television/radio program Democracy Now! (undoubtedly the most ironic misnomer in the history of news media), her activist-style “journalism” has kept her operating on the periphery of mainstream media. Fact is, a quick Google news search shows that the only U.S. news outlets to report on her “ordeal” have been, well, Amy Goodman for Democracy Now!...

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele gave the only appropriate response on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today, to Senate Majority Leader and member of the anti-war Left Harry Reid comparing critics of health care reform to opponents of abolition: he refused to answer questions about it and told CNBC commentator Donny Deutsch to change the subject. It was a good reaction, because taking it seriously would have mainstreamed an argument, conservatives shouldn’t want to mainstream. Progressives have set the tone of the debate for too long. It’s time for conservatives to fight back and create new rules for the political debate....

The left's police-hating chickens are coming home to roost. While partisan liberals have gone out of their way to blame conservative media and the Tea Party movement for creating a "climate of hate," they're silent on the cultural and literal war on cops that has raged for decades -- and escalated tragically this year. The total number of law-enforcement officers shot and killed this year is up 19 percent over last year, reports the Christian Science Monitor. More officers have died in ambush incidents this year than in any other since 2000. The Lakewood, Wash., massacre on Thanksgiving weekend claimed...

Obama Pleases the NeoconsFirst Published 2009-12-04 Because of the Iraq calamity, other elements of the neocon vision of remaking the Middle East were put on hold. But the neocons haven’t yet given up on the idea of a military strike against Iran. The neocon detachment from reality continues to pervade their wishful thinking. The reality of the disappearing US industrial base and America’s decaying infrastructure do not fit into the soaring rhetoric about US global power, says Robert Parry. President Barack Obama’s escalation of the Afghan War has upset many rank-and-file Democrats who had hoped for a more peaceful strategy,...

History's most notorious Georgian-turned-Russian, the politically astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." The lesson has not been lost on the increasingly notorious Hungarian-cum-American George Soros. A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field. This is, of course, the same Soros, the same hyperpolitical left-wing philanthropist who makes no secret of...

It’s unbelievable, but while the entire Left has decided to ignore ClimateGate, leftist comedian Jon Stewart broke ranks. On his show yesterday, Stewart shattered the silence surrounding the scandal and actually criticized the scientists involved. It’s yet another sign that Conservatives are mistaken to believe that the host of “The Daily Show” is one and the same as fellow Leftists like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. They had, he said, done tremendous damage to the image of science in general. Laughing an obvious fake laugh, Stewart said, ironically, that the emails in which the now infamous scientists admit they’re putting...

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

We can abandon Afghanistan and it can revert to being an Islamist police state run by the Taliban. It can return to being a safe haven for those who want to destroy America, exterminate the Jewish race, and create a world in which marrying children and mutilating women’s genitals are the norm. War is indeed hell — not that I’m in any way qualified to make that judgment. (Read Karen Northon to get a more informed view. Patriotic heroes like Leo Thorsness also have a thing or two to say on the matter.) But which is worse: war or a...

Are Zero and Mobama PhotoChopped in this image, just plain dumb, or reciting some new leftist creed like: “I pledge undying love to the United Nations of Globalism and to kill all Republicans wherever they stand, one dominion, over everyone, taking liberty and justice from all"? Click the link and let me know (and pay close attention to the wedding rings and Bambi's lapel pin)...

What’s in a name? For decades the Left has attacked the Religious Right for any mention of one name in particular – Jesus Christ. Evangelical conservatives have been told it was wrong to mention Bible verses or the Savior when debating issues of law or politics. Lately it has become clear that the no-Jesus rule only applies to one side of the political spectrum. Most readers of NewsReal or viewers of cable news have probably noticed that Jesus’ name is being thrown out there for everything from supporting President Barack Obama, to ending capitalism, to promoting health care reform. Not...

This is disturbing enough when it comes from individual political left-wingers – but what happens when they are appointed to unaccountable positions of government power, as in the case of the legion of Marxist czars with which Obama has surrounded himself? This very website reported recently that "regulatory czar" Cass Sunstein, at least according to what he's written in his own book, wants to muzzle conservatives for daring to oppose the president – and wants to take sweeping totalitarian measures that would silence free political speech on the Internet in the guise of anti-libel regulations. And who could forget Nancy...

Any time a high profile "conservative" GOP leader, who also happens to be an evangelical, comes out in strong support of Israel, the rabid misguided Israel-hating leftist appeasers always trot out this "slander" against Christians who support Israel. Michael Yglesias did this when Huckabee went to Israel to show support and stand in solidarity with Israel in the face of pressure from Obama. Now this gang of leftists Israel-haters are doing the same thing to Palin. I would encourage the readers to see Erick Stakelbeck's article, Slandering Christian Zionists: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2312376/posts From Rosner's Domain: "Why Sarah Palin said that "more and...

Top Obama donor and fundraiser Jodie Evans met with the Taliban in Afghanistan on a recent trip there, according to a report by Jane Fonda of a discussion she had with Evans last month. The meeting with the Taliban took place just weeks before Evans was videotaped directly handing to President Barack Obama a package of information about her trip to Afghanistan at a high dollar fundraiser in San Francisco.The meeting with the Taliban was kept secret by Evans and her group Code Pink in reports she and the group posted from Kabul and in interviews with the media and...

For the second time since Sarah Palin stepped into the national political spotlight, a photo of the former Republican vice-presidential candidate featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine is sparking controversy. Palin herself blasted the "out-of-context" cover as "sexist" on her Facebook page. ... The reaction to the Newsweek cover has predictably sparked outrage from conservative supporters of Palin and kudos from liberals who oppose her. CBN commentator David Brady called the cover "a new low" for the "biased" magazine, adding that Newsweek has a history of portraying liberal women as "heroes for the next generation," while portraying conservative women...

More mischief from the SEIU? SEIU members think they are entitled to work and make money. Of course, if there is no government money to fund projects and volunteers step in and take up the slack, union thugs are demanding all work stop. It’s not fair! Cry me a river. From Jarrett Renshaw of the Morning Call. In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park. Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him...

When Hemnecher Amen, a student, joined a protest outside the White House recently, it was the latest visible opposition here to US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hardly anyone took any notice. "There's a lot of apathy and a growing disconnectedness to what's going on in world affairs," the frustrated Howard University junior said as around 200 people, including a handful of students, gathered for the march. "Students are more interested in trying to get a job and make money." With the US military several years into two faraway wars, American students like Amen are taking to the streets less...

Groucho Marx once said, ”Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” I doubt that sentiment has ever more true than it is today. The entire Global Warming movement and all the idiocy that goes with it such as Cap & Trade, has become 100% political. There’s literally ZERO scientific evidence that validates the ridiculous CO2 theory that it’s based on. Lord Monckton, in his inimitable way, explained exactly what’s really behind this entire scam to Americans quite succinctly when he displayed his “Traffic Light Tendency” during his recent...

Through the John Adams Project, the ACLU and the NACDL assembled a team of trial counsel, mitigation specialists and investigators to work with the under-resourced military lawyers in their representation of Guantánamo detainees accused in connection with the 9/11 attacks and other cases. The John Adams Project attorneys brought years of experience in criminal defense law, including much needed expertise in capital cases, to the defense effort. The Project’s lawyers, who were formally admitted by the presiding judge as part of the civilian legal team, appeared before the military commissions on their clients’ behalf numerous times and filed over 80...

On Dec. 4, 2009, the radical Hollywood left is poised to release its latest tribute to the men and women of the armed services, entitled "Brothers." The film stars Tobey Maguire as a military man serving in Afghanistan. When he is presumed killed in action, his wife, played by Natalie Portman, has an affair with his brother, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Naturally, Maguire shows up at home with a tremendous case of post-traumatic disorder -- which, if we are to judge from the trailer, causes him to fire weapons at random and physically abuse his wife. "Brothers" follows hot on...

President Obama at Fort Hood today: "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know — no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor." Really? At his blog today, Andrew Bostom, a scholar of jihadism, cites the following passage from "Reliance of the Traveler," a widely distributed manual of Islamic law produced by al-Azhar University in Egypt, the most authoritative interpreters of theology and sharia jurisprudence in Sunni Islam, the dominant tradition among the world's Muslims:

Reagan deliberately confronted criminal regimes with what they fear most: the publicly spoken truth about their moral weakness.

New Yorks archbishop has got the score only half-right. Bigotry is alive and well -- and it goes far beyond the Catholic Church. When Comptroller and failed mayoral candidate Bill Thompson this week heard a slur spat against Jews on a radio show, his reaction rang out loud and clear into the wilderness: He greeted the bigoted caller with total silence. When actress and social nitwit Janeane Garofalo was asked about tax protesters, she slimed thousands of white Americans as racist "rednecks" -- with brain damage. Again, the reaction was plain: Near total silence.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has condemned The New York Times -- blasting the Gray Lady and its columnist Maureen Dowd for what he says are examples of unfair, prejudicial and just downright mean anti-Catholicism. Dolan used his blog last Thursday on the Archdiocese of New York's Web site to rail against the Times a day after the paper refused to print his critique as an op-ed piece. He singled out Dowd -- a poison-penned, Pulitzer winner and former Catholic-school girl -- for "the most combustible," "intemperate and scurrilous" "diatribe" she wrote on Oct. 25, which "rightly never would have...

I used to have a job that felt like Divine Grace. Since I was raised secular, it was as close to a religious experience as I had ever had. I was fresh out of graduate school in my late 20s, working with black foster families and relatives in dicey areas of Oakland. Not a day went by that I didn't cry -- and not just because of the sorrowful plight of the kids. I'd never been around people like this before, who loved God, who praised Jesus, who lived to serve him. In retrospect, I think my tears came because...

The Left, champions of strict separation of church and state, have come out in support of an American theocracy. How can this be? Could this possibly be the same political machine that ritualistically goes from town to town scanning courthouses for explicit references to God, or even worse, the Ten Commandments? Or the establishment telling little Susie she cannot pray at school? Or the organization forbidding the reading of scripture, even on a purely non-sectarian, academic basis? Surely we can't be talking about the same ideologues. But there is no mistake. The Left supports theocracy, as long as it is...

The Rochester Operation "Can You Hear Me Now" rallies and march, is starting at the WHEC-TV Studios on 191 East Avenue. The rally will start at 11am on Saturday, 10/17/2007. Here's the map for the rally point: We're starting things off with the Presentation of the Colors, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and a few speeches. We'll then proceed on our march that will follow this route through Downtown Rochester, across the Genesee River, ending at the Gannett Building, for a protest at our local newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle: BTW, we are conducting a peaceful, but spirited event...