Free Republic

The number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. was actually dropping at the end of the George W. Bush years — but that progress has stopped under President Obama, according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies. With enforcement increasing and the economy souring, CIS said a net of 1 million illegal immigrants left the U.S. from January 2007 to January 2009, as the population went from 11.8 million down to 10.8 million. But progress has halted since Mr. Obama took office in January 2009 and, if anything, the illegal population in the United States rebounded slightly,...

Fuentes has spent 374 days at Community Regional Medical Center, the longest uninterrupted stay by a patient at the Fresno acute-care hospital, according to staff recollection. Doctors suspect Fuentes, 35, had gallstones that developed into a gallbladder infection, which was left untreated and progressed. The average length of hospital stay for uncomplicated pancreatitis is about two weeks, with a complicated case taking as many as 45 to 65 days, according to the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract. But Fuentes' case was far from uncomplicated. Fuentes had 12 surgeries overseen by three trauma physicians -- Drs. Jim Davis, Ricard...

Sorry, Prius owners. Starting Friday, your yellow sticker no longer works in California's car pool lanes while driving solo. The car pool privileges, originally allowed as an incentive for people to buy low-emission vehicles, have expired. The change affects 85,000 hybrid car owners -- about a third of them in Los Angeles. Bruce Yonemoto, 60, a professor of studio art at UC Irvine who commutes from downtown Los Angeles several times a week, said he often saves more than an hour during choked traffic because the yellow sticker on the rear bumper of his Prius gave him the right to...

The giant law firm King & Spalding received a flurry of criticism recently for canceling its agreement to represent the United States House of Representatives in defending the Defense of Marriage Act. After Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would no longer defend the constitutionality of the law, the House retained the high priced Atlanta firm to do the job Holder took an oath to do. After vocal pressure from gay activist groups, the firm flinched, and dumped their client in the middle of litigation. King and Spalding attorney Paul Clement nobly resigned in protest over...

A new study—which will doubtlessly be oversimplified and distorted by liberal blogs like us in order to demonize those whose political beliefs we find repulsive—has found that Democratic professors grade like this ("I am a laid-back hippie"), while Republican professors grade like this ("All the black students fail!"). What the study of professors at "an unnamed elite American university" actually found was that Republican professors tend to give more grades at the high and low extremes of the grading scale, while Democratic professors' grades tended to cluster in the middle, in a more copacetic manner. Oh, and this: With regard...

The Vatican is upset, and feeling like a victim. The Vatican is angry that the world is no longer willing to tolerate the alleged homophobia of the Catholic Church. However, not everybody is sympathetic to the Vatican's claim of victimization. Tuesday the Vatican condemned a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution in support of gay rights. The resolution was sponsored by 85 countries including the United States. The Vatican objects to this resolution that simply and clearly states that human rights apply to everyone, no matter who they are or whom they love. By Thursday, the Vatican's statement was being...

The House just voted 236-181 to remove federal funding for National Public Radio via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Bill O'Reilly's interview of President Obama on Fox News just prior to the Super Bowl confirmed that he remains a self-absorbed leftist. Now that he's ardently denied moving to the political center, maybe pundits and Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will finally get it, unless they naïvely believe he's been there all along. Obama's responses qualified for more penalty flags than were thrown during the game. His reaction to the crisis in Egypt is similar to his comment about the Super Bowl. He refused to "pick sides." The transcript is available online. Obama revealed his alarming apathy about the...

First of all, I request that everyone say actual prayers for all of the victims and their families involved in the Tuscon Arizona massacre. What good has a "moment of silence," ever done for anyone in need? A moment of silence is like saying, " Lets not invoke the Almighty into this affair, as it might offend someone." Never mind that it might offend Someone to make the pointless gesture of bowing one's head and blanking out the mind. Speaking of blanking out the mind, If ever there was a liberal zeitgeist going on in a community for some time...

The Harvard School of Public Health has released a new site called The Firearms Research Digest. The site has six years’ (2003-2008) worth of summarized research from social science, medical, criminology, and public health journals. It’s available at http://www.firearmsresearch.org The site will eventually be expanded to include research from 1988 to the present. You can do a simple keyword search for you can search by topics (a few dozen), year of research, or publication (there’s a huge list of publications available.) I did a search for storage and got 47 results, which were divided into sublistings including topics, keyword, and...

For the first time in history more than half the world’s population is living in towns and cities. We passed this milestone in 2008 and by 2040 two in three people are expected to live in urban environments. Urbanisation presents us with a wealth of new opportunities and huge challenges. It has the potential to further economic development and innovation, but also threatens to exacerbate key global problems, including resource depletion, climate change, and inequality. Megacities on the move sets out to find solutions to one of the biggest challenges – how billions of city-dwellers can access what they need...

The Republican plan to start off the first session of the new House of Representatives today with a reading of the United States Constitution is giving the left the fantods -- and with good reason. At Salon, Michael Lind gives us a piece headlined, "Let's stop pretending the Constitution is sacred." Ezra Klein, a Washington Post blogger, told a TV interviewer that the reading as a "gimmick" and suggested the Constitution isn't binding (though he later backpedaled). And David Corn, under the title "The House GOP Weaponizes the Constitution," argues that the Founding Fathers "wouldn't cotton to lawmakers exploiting their...

Rarely does a political pundit capture the intricacies as well as the broad overarching ramifications of politics as did Jennifer Rubin in her article entitled, Psst, there’s no Obama comeback. here As visions of DADT fairies dance in the heads of Liberals, Democrats and RINOs the reality is that, what is one Parties success is actually the country’s doom. Sure the progressive agenda was advanced under the 111th Democrat controlled Congress and any Democrat president, Hillary or whomever, could have signed into law what the radical Pelosi left unleashed on the American people with their super major in Congress. The...

All 42 US Senate Republicans wrote Majority Leader Harry Reid yester day, warning that the GOP will fili buster any legislation during Congress' lame-duck session until the matter of extending the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts is addressed. To wit: "Without . . . action by Dec. 31, all American taxpayers will be hit by an increase in their individual income-tax rates and investment income through the capital gains and dividend rates," the senators noted. "If Congress were to adopt the president's tax proposal to prevent the tax increase for only some Americans, small businesses would be targeted with a job-killing...

Does this really surprise anyone? Currently, the liberal psuedo-news site the Huffington Post has a gigantic picture of former VP candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and a 99 font size (and all capital letters) "GOTCHA" on the front of their website: The picture, which intentionally tries to mock Palin, links to an article by the Huffington Post that states that Palin "misquoted" a story in the Wall Street Journal. However, if you wade through the article and past the liberal slant, you would realize that Mrs. Palin is telling the truth. If you read the article, Palin stated that...

The New York Times editorial page has been persistent in publishing alarmist editorials on climate change. The latest one appearing shortly before the November elections accused politicians of being in "denial" about climate change. What nonsense! Climate is changing all the time; it has been doing it for millions of years -- without any human intervention. And politicians are simply trying to stay in step with the public. There is no credible evidence at all that human activities have had any appreciable influence on global climate changes during the last century. While many scientists still believe in a major human...

Nov. 5, 2010 Obama: "Leadership Isn't Just Legislation" After Midterm Defeat, Humbled President Acknowledges Failures in Exclusive "60 Minutes" Interview (CBS) After a suffering a "shellacking" in the midterm elections, President Obama acknowledges what many have seen as his chief weakness - failing to sell the importance of several legislative milestones to the American people. "I think that's a fair argument. I think that, over the course of two years we were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that, we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn't just legislation. That it's a...

During a phone call with left-wing group MoveOn, President Obama signaled he’s looking to continue his liberal agenda, which isn’t a surprise. However, this comes after saying he would listen to the GOP ideas and talked of compromise during his 1 p.m press conference on November 3rd.

The following is an email sent by change.org Full ViewSarah Palin vs. NPR From: Change.org Action Alert Add to Contacts To: XXX@XXX -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't let Sarah Palin kill public broadcasting Dear xxx Since National Public Radio fired Juan Williams last week for controversial remarks about Muslims, Fox News pundits have waged war on public broadcasting. They've called for defunding it completely, something conservatives have wanted for decades. Led by Sarah Palin, a chorus of commentators including Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, and Karl Rove are trying to paint public broadcasting as the "mouth of socialism" in a ploy to...

Halloween is approaching, but the true horror for Democrats will happen two days later on Election Day. Democrats have much to fear, and they have already reached into their bag of tricks to try to derail Republicans across the nation. Democrats are desperate to stop the red tide spreading from the heart of the nation and heading toward the coasts. They are eager to preserve and protect their liberal agenda and extend it in the years to come. They fear that Republican ascendancy in the House might lead to the defunding of several elements of ObamaCare and thus put it...

The Battle of Juarez is showing signs that the good guys are not prevailing. The Juarez newspaper, El Diario de Juarez, has cried uncle in its mixed stance of reporting the progress of the war. In the front page editorial that appeared recently, the editor waved the white flag and asked the cartels publicly what they want from him. The murder of a photographer and another reporter in the recent past are hitting far too close to home for him to continue to be a brave purveyor of the truth. In a city ravaged by nearly 7,000 deaths since 2006...

The Tea Party movement may have arisen to protest rising deficits and increasing federal control of everything from health care to the auto industry -- but the big-government coalition it's fighting wasn't born in Washington. The federal agenda that the movement is now battling to overturn originated in state capitals like Albany, Trenton and Sacramento. This agenda has been promoted with growing success in the last 50 years by a self-interested coalition of public-sector unions and social-advocacy groups that benefit from bigger government, higher taxes and more public control of the economy. Merely "taking back" Congress on Election Day won't...

The frustrations of minority status can drive a political party batty. The temptation is to substitute bel ligerence for thought, insist on a self-destructive purity, lash out at the American public and question the wisdom and viability of the country's institutions. Indulging in these tendencies almost always makes a party's position worse rather than better. The Obama Democrats may be the first party to engage in this self-defeating behavior -- borne of a frustrated desperation -- while holding the presidency and both houses of Congress by substantial margins. Through an accident of timing (a national election coinciding with a financial...

Is the American Dream getting smaller? Are we defining down the tools of opportunity and the pleasures of prosperity? President Obama's flippant dismissal of American Exceptionalism last year stirred a lot of criticism because it suggested he did not believe the United States held a special place in the world. It also suggested America's unique history is, to the President, no big deal. Now with fellow travelers exercising power at all levels of government, progressives can do more than just belittle the idea of American Exceptionalism. They can enact policies to make America unexceptional -- diminishing our quality of life...

In my right hip pocket, affixed by a clasp, is a 4-inch knife made in Olean, New York. It’s right where I can get it. Where I can reach back with one hand, pull it out, press my thumb against a knob on the back of the blade, and open it. Engraved on the steel is the phrase, “Carry on, my wayward son.” In New York County, that would make me a criminal. At least that’s the conclusion you draw from a recent extortion by the district attorney of New York County. In a $1.9 million rip-off of hardware and...

Well, some stars like Amanda Bynes use technology like Twitter to tell the world they are retiring. Some stars like Kelsey Grammar announce the end of his marriage. But today Anne Rice became the first pop culture figure I know that decided to break up with Christians, and she did it using facebook. On her official website she posted the following announcement via her facebook feed this afternoon:"I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be...

Congratulations, President Obama. It looks like you've won. Any meaningful questions about your performance in office, or the agenda you, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have been pushing are no longer part of the national discussion. The dust-up over Shirley Sherrod and inferences about her "reverse racism," the rank stupidity of the NAACP in condemning her and the Department of Agriculture firing her before uttering an ear shattering "Oops!" has effectively diverted everyone's attention from the really serious issues facing our country. Well played, sir. Sick, cynical, underhanded, true...but supremely effective. I'm particularly impressed by how quickly you got the...

MELBOURNE (AFP) – The Australian Sex Party on Tuesday promised to spice up campaigning for next month's elections with a manifesto "unlike Australia had ever seen before". Party chief Fiona Patten launched a risque national campaign at a Melbourne bar, saying her policies "would make (opposition Leader) Tony Abbott's hair stand on end and would turn (Prime Minister) Julia Gillard's hair grey". prospective "We've always been forward and we actually enjoy real action," Patten said, mocking Gillard and Abbott's "Moving Australia Forward" and "Stand Up For Real Action" slogans. The party's policies include legalising euthanasia, decriminalising all drugs for personal...

...the near future: Augustus Merryweather IV glanced up at the tapping on his office door. Harvey Carbunkle stood there... "You're firing me?" "I have no choice. Your work, ...it hasn't been up to the standard we expect for an editor at Merryweather Publishing. Frankly, I'm surprised. When I saw that you were a graduate of BU, I couldn't wait to hire you..." A proud smile. "Yes, sir. That's Beck University." Augustus was confused. "I've never heard of..." ..."You know, Glenn Beck? ...He founded an online university back in 2010 so people could learn the real truth they don't get in...

There are currently two pieces of tax legislation that have been introduced into Congress that will affect virtually every person in the United States. These new bills are very deceptive, since they tax the chemical and petroleum industry; however, what EPA and the sponsors of the bill do not mention is that these taxes will be passed back down to the consumer level. The sponsors of the bill also claim that this tax will create or save jobs and "punish the polluters" (the petroleum and chemical industries) -- especially in light of the BP oil spill. The original Superfund taxes...

According to Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard, the Obamis are planning a lame-duck session of Congress, "filled with defeated and retired senators and House members," to pass a VAT (value-added tax). Liberals know that they get a chance to enact progressive legislation only once in a generation. That's when the cycle of politics throws up a liberal majority in Congress, and liberals have the votes to cram down their agenda. That's why President Obama is in such a hurry, eager to jam down liberal legislation in the teeth of popular opposition. I call it the ratchet. In the 1900s,...

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has disappointed many social and cultural conservatives with his call for a "truce on the so-called [sic] social issues. We're going to just have to agree to get along for a little while," until the economic issues are resolved, Daniels told the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson. But as the American Spectator's Joseph Lawler has observed, it's doubtful that Daniels' truce would change anything. After all, Lawler rightly asks: "What typical Republican policies would he [Daniels] have to suspend and they [social and cultural conservatives] have to sacrifice? It's not clear to me that it would be...

The human brain is a complicated organ. It can be infinitely pliable but also maddeningly rigid. Humans can be slow to recognize signs of imminent disaster. While red flags are flapping wildly in the wind, the person ignores any and all warnings. But the brain can be highly suggestible, too, easily controlled and shaped by advertisers and spin doctors. Thus, after countless ads, a person associates soda with Coke, search engines with Google. And after having "Yes we can," burned into their neural pathways, all hope and change is connected to Obama. That's why it's crucial to notice all the...

We are taught to believe that ideology is the enemy of free thought. But that's not right. Ideology is a mere checklist of principles and priorities. The real enemy of clear thinking is the script. We think the world is supposed to go by a familiar plot. And when the facts conflict with the script, we edit the facts. So, for instance, David Horowitz is a stock villain on US campuses because he deviates from the standard formula of coddling the usual victims and lionizing the usual heroes. Once a committed left-wing radical, Horowitz now resides on the right. Two...

WASHINGTON -- The really amazing thing about the ongoing po litical purge we are seeing across the country is the genuine shock and hurt felt by the ousted. Pink-slipped in a West Virginia primary Tuesday, 14-term Congressman Alan Mollohan cried, "Right-wing smears!" It is like they still don't get the anger, frustration and weariness voters have with self-obsessed Washington, pandering politicians and the big, fat, dumb federal government. This is especially true of Democrats around here, who are riding high on so much euphoria from President Obama's historic victory. They actually thought it was true love. As if American voters...

A cool video spotted by Buzzfeed shows a city in the Netherlands that has made bikes a transit priority. Find the full video here (on YouTube).

Monday night I watched with hands over half open eyes the torturous scene the character Jack Bauer inflicted on the villain of the episode. The bad guy was a Russian terrorist involved with the murder of Jack’s love interest and colleague, Renee Walker. If I had been watching the episode in a movie theater, I’m pretty sure it would have been Rated “R”. It was a gruesome and difficult scene. During the climax of the scene, Jack needs a SD card that the terrorist swallowed. In what appeared to be a psychotic rage, the episode ends with a very dead...

Bring it on. In political, union and chattering circles, the idea of allowing retail behemoth Wal-Mart into the borders of New York City is viewed as destructive. Akin to blending polyester into silken La Perla thongs. Or inviting Lindsay Lohan to an open bar. Last summer, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who I suspect rejects a bargain on her Hanes, said that if Wal-Mart won't increase wages and stop running extortionate mom-and-pops out of business (like Target, Best Buy and Pathmark do), "I will block any attempt to locate in the five boroughs." City Councilman Charles Barron last month said that...

Monday, we looked at a discussion on "The Chris Matthews Show," in which two of the guests accused Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh of coming close to "sedition" in their criticism of the Obama administration. Today, it's "BuzzFlash" editor Mark Karlin (we've talked about him--and in a similar vein--before). His purveyors of "sedition" are the participants in the two gun rights rallies Monday, in and overlooking Washington D.C. At both rallies, the talk was defiant and seditious, threatening -- in the thinnest veiled code words -- a shoot out with federal officials if psychotic objections to the "infringement...

hyped and a profound threat to our nation’s security are not surprising. The truth, of course, is that the current robust opposition to the liberal agenda, of which the Tea Party movement is a large part, is neither. And there is no evidence that enthusiastic criticism of Obama administration policies will lead to violence. In fact, the Tea Party movement is a result–not a cause—of the frustration and anger many Americans feel today. The only threat it poses is to the status quo of big government activism. It’s been comical to watch the Left try to discredit the Tea Party...

President Obama and the vast majority of Sen ate Democrats believe that Lady Justice should peek from under the blindfold every now and then. Obama opposed both of President Bush's Supreme Court appointees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, presumably because they lacked what he called the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles." And in his run for the presidency, Obama said in 2007, "We need somebody who's got the heart -- the empathy -- to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be...

Henry Waxman, whom Michelle Malkin has dubbed "the Witch Hunter of Capitol Hill" understands where his loyalty lies. If he were faithful to the principals of our founders then his loyalties would be to his constituents, his state and the republic, but of course there is ample evidence to the contrary. Appearances aside, Waxman is not a mere stooge to the future former president and his gross clique of radicals and sycophants. Where then do Waxman's loyalties lie? This past week Mr. Waxman declared war on the CEOs of Caterpillar, John Deere, AT&T, Verizon and all others who dare to...

The new and much-publicized Coffee Party movement sports a fairy tale narrative about being a spontaneous uprising of concerned Americans appalled at the Tea Parties, and determined to restore civility. The truth, easily researchable on the internet, is that plenty of left wing establishment fingerprints are all over the birth of this supposedly spur-of-the-moment operation. Professional leftists, who assert they speak for the people, just hate it when the people manage to organize themselves to speak out against the Left, as in the prairie fire spread of the Tea Parties. Something had to be done, and in this case, "something"...

Why are Barack Obama and other Democrat leaders so intent on passing a government takeover of healthcare now…Now…NOW? They must know that costs will rise and the quality of care will fall, right? They must know that Obamacare would destroy the economy, right? Of course they do. But, they also know that the federal government would tighten its grip on the nation. They know that Obama’s czars and other appointees would be authorized to bypass Congress in enacting sweeping regulations on nearly every aspect of a person’s life. And, they know that these new powers of the federal government would...

The American people are not animals. We are not content merely to be fed, walked, and taken care of. Nor do we take joy in fetching sticks and sitting, heeling, and rolling over. As freedom-loving human beings, we have needs far greater than food stamps, welfare checks, unemployment benefits, and government-run health care. But just because government cannot provide what makes people uniquely human does not mean that government cannot take away what does. If Mr. Obama truly wanted to solve problems and help people, then he would stop viewing the citizen through the prism of the almighty dollar and...

President Obama's strategy for closing on health care relies on blaming the insurance industry, reminding Americans that coverage is a problem and urging public opinion to shift momentum in Congress. Not part of the equation: What if he loses? "No Democrat wants to contemplate it and certainly no one in the administration, because the consequences are too frightful," said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution. The White House this week is stepping up pressure on congressional Democrats in a final drive to get reform on the books. In two rallies this week, Obama is hoping to turn...

Extra small condoms for boys as young as 12 could soon be on our shelves. The Hotshot condoms are going on sale in Switzerland after research found that not enough 12 to 14-year-old boys were having protected sex. The condoms are likely to end up on sale in Britain, said their manufacturer Lamprecht AG.A spokesman said the UK would be ‘top priority’ if the company expanded abroad, considering it had the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. Nysse Norballe said: ‘At the moment we are only producing the Hotshot in Switzerland. ‘But the UK is certainly a very attractive market...

According to Joy Behar, monogamous marriages are a "life sentence." Porn star Ron Jeremy, Craig Gross, founder of the anti-porn ministry xxxchurch.com, and psychiatrist Reef Karim appeared on Behar's Feb. 24 CNN Headline News program to discuss porn and sex addiction. Behar compared monogamy to a "life sentence" after Jeremy noted that it's "a blessing" if a man is "sexually addicted to his wife" after "five or six years of marriage." "If you're just sleeping with your wife, that doesn't sound like an addiction, that sounds like a life sentence," Behar quipped. And despite Jeremy's claim about the "blessing" of...

Oh those simple Tea Party people! I just wanted to thank President Obama's senior advisor Valerie Jarrett for helping me realize that as a member of the Tea Party movement I am just too stupid to understand the workings of the health care debate. During a taped discussion at Harvard University she enlightened the masses when she answered a gentleman in the audience who stated the following: "Could the Obama administration...write some much simpler booklets on housing foreclosure, on the health care bill...where as a typical person including those in the Tea Party could understand the basics of it? Cause...

WASHINGTON -- Having lived in the belly of the beast for much of his life, Evan Bayh has emerged -- soul apparently intact -- to testify about it. What he witnessed convinced him that giving it all up and walking away was better than staying part of the criminal charade that is Congress today. From when he was a boy of 8, his father was a senator. Like many sons of senators, he grew up attending elite schools here. And until Evan Bayh was 26 years old, his father was a member of the most exclusive club on earth. And...