Free Republic

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in Egypt recently that she "would not look to the U.S. Constitution if [she] were drafting a constitution in the year 2012," it was no surprise. In that the Constitution militates against a nanny state and preserves a status quo, it is by its very nature a conservative document. This is why liberals hate it so. And, as the power of the left grows via their control over the culture, their teeth and contempt for the Constitution are displayed ever more (see Obama, Barack et al.). But what of conservatives? Some may say that I...

Especially the last one...

The United Nations continually claims that their arms control treaty efforts are not directed at curtailing legal private ownership of guns. However, in a practice gun destruction exercise 4,000 firearms were destroyed in Jamaica in early February under the auspices of the UN Center For Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.(UNLIREC) The United Nations has instituted a 10 day Training Course designed to help implement international “treaties” for gun control in Jamaica and throughout the Caribbean. Each session is led by a UN gun control trainer. The courses objectives are to give police technical skills related...

The recent revelation that the head of Media Matters walked the streets of Washington with a Glock-toting bodyguard may make it a little awkward for the group the next time it seeks a donation from a gun control advocacy group. Media Matters reportedly took more than $400,000 from the Joyce Foundation specifically earmarked to promote a $600,000 initiative on "gun and public safety issues." At the same time, Media Matters' gun-guarded boss David Brock reportedly obsessed over his own security. ....Brock reportedly told confidantes that he feared for his safety and needed hired guns to keep him safe.

Tucker Carlson discusses his website The Daily Caller's shocking new exposé on the liberal media watchdog group, Media Matters for America

I knew a long time ago that Jones was a serious player, who was going to be with us for the long haul, that's one of the reasons why this is being done. Now, Nancy Pelosi has confirmed what I knew a year ago: But as 3,000 Democrats met this weekend in San Diego for a three day convention here, Jones was lauded by Burton and Pelosi, who even described herself as “a fan” of Jones - a positive statement also once echoed by 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. Here is how the source article itself opens: Van Jones,...

America’s Catholic bishops have criticized the White House’s mandate for insurers to provide free contraception coverage to employees, but plenty of other Catholic groups have endorsed the plan – some taking swipes at the bishops in the process. “The Catholic bishops and their allies in the Republican Party are increasingly isolated,” James Salt, executive director of a liberal group called Catholics United, said in a statement over the weekend supporting the White House’s contraception rule.

A Commission has recommended many fixes. Here is an excerpt dealing with Healthcare. Note "End of life discussions for middle age folks". TORONTO - Ontario’s public health care system — the single largest expense in the government’s budget — needs major surgery. “Canada has one of the costliest health care systems in the world which may surprise people who are too accustomed to comparing our record only to that of the United States... . “Despite its high cost, our system does not produce superior results on a value-for-money basis relative to other countries.” Drummond is recommending significant changes — increased...

Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, wife of California treasurer, acknowledges substance abuse, affair (Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer at a public event in San Leandro, Calif., April 22, 2011.) Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, wife of California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, said Tuesday that she's in rehabilitation for a substance-abuse problem after an extramarital affair culminated in a beating by her ex-lover. The announcement marked a sharp turn in the career of a woman who at 40 had been seen as a rising star in California politics. The scandal is also an ugly footnote on her husband's nearly four-decade-long career, which made him...

ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have a credibility problem with conservatives and Middle America. And it seems to be getting worse. It’s not just that ABC News hired Bill Clinton’s White House spokesman and counselor George Stephanopoulos as a journalist; it’s that the pack mentality at ABC News doesn’t see it as a problem. “The planning meetings [at ABC News] have little political diversity. Everyone is left of center and at ease with their liberal ideals. The other viewpoint is rarely raised and never fully represented,” a current ABC News producer told me last week. ,,,,, But the bias at...

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...

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...

A left-wing freebie newspaper in Toronto, called NOW magazine, has published a photoshopped picture of the conservative mayor, Rob Ford, pointing a gun to his head. This from a magazine that claims to be against guns and gun violence. NOW magazine is unimportant to most people, but there is an important point buried amidst its smut: Liberals don’t mind promiscuous suggestions of gun crime, if it’s someone they hate in the crosshairs. It’s like when the movie, Death of a President, came to the Toronto International Film Festival. It wasn’t about a historical assassination. It was a Hollywood liberal fantasy...

The Philadelphia Inquirer's big story Feb. 4 was about how a budget crunch at the Philadelphia School District had caused the district to lay off 91 school police officers. Over the years, there's been no discussion of what has happened to our youth that makes a school police force necessary in the first place. The Inquirer's series "Assault on Learning" (March 2011) reported that in the 2010 school year, "690 teachers were assaulted; in the last five years, 4,000 were." The newspaper reported that in Philadelphia's 268 schools, "on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were...

When Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), spoke at CPAC on February 10th, he predicted that if Barack Obama wins a second term it will usher in an all-out attack on the Second Amendment. In so many words, he said the same people who brought us Fast and Furious, “a criminal enterprise” for which there has yet to be prosecutions, will use four more years to gut constitutional protections on the right to keep and bear arms. And anyone who wonders what this assault on the Second Amendment might look like need look no further...

The same presumptions of superior wisdom and virtue behind the interventionism of Progressive Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the domestic economy also led them to be interventionists in other countries. Theodore Roosevelt was so determined that the United States should intervene against Spain's suppression of an uprising in Cuba that he quit his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to organize his own private military force — called "Rough Riders" — to fight in what became the Spanish-American war. The spark that set off this war was an explosion that destroyed an American battleship anchored in...

"Often wrong but never in doubt" is a phrase that summarizes much of what was done by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the two giants of the Progressive era, a century ago. Their legacy is very much alive today, both in their mindset — including government picking winners and losers in the economy and interventionism in foreign countries — as well as specific institutions created during the Progressive era, such as the income tax and the Federal Reserve System. Like so many Progressives today, Theodore Roosevelt felt no need to study economics before intervening in the economy. He...

Although Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States, he is by no means unique, except for his complexion. He follows in the footsteps of other presidents with a similar vision, the vision at the heart of the Progressive movement that flourished a hundred years ago. Many of the trends, problems and disasters of our time are a legacy of that era. We can only imagine how many future generations will be paying the price — and not just in money — for the bright ideas and clever rhetoric of our current administration. The two giants...

At a protest "Occupying CPAC" in Washington DC, a protester admits that it would be legitimate to abort a baby because it was gay, all for the woman's "Right to Choose".

And we're the ones, the old-fashioned conservatives, we want to deny people a good time, we want to deny people fun, we want to deny people all these things in life. So we have yet another example of life in America under the thumb of an ever-expanding state with central planning, otherwise known as "well-intentioned liberalism." From violating religious rights where there is no power permitted to do so, to mandating the purchase of products, to now mandating insurance companies sell certain products at a price that's also mandated, from czars, to denying the right to travel, it's all here....

With all that's going on with the Catholic Church and the President right now, this has become a huge hot button topic. But why is this so important to progressives? Rush keeps saying that "abortion is the sacrament of liberalism." What makes this so? Let's ask Margaret Sanger. In her book "Woman and the new race", Sanger explains the purpose of birth control:(Page 229) Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Think about how far we've come, folks, in just three years. Just three years. We've gone from, "Birth control and abortion is a matter of conscience that we cannot impose on anyone," to, "Birth control and abortion is a human right that everybody must get for free if they want it." Now, what other benefits are we entitled to for free, even if we have the means to pay for them? Let me tell you... (interruption) Cell phones? That's true. But this just shows what the sacrament to the religion of the Democrat Party is. It's abortion....

A federal grand jury is investigating whether city vendors gave former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin gratuities ranging from plane tickets to materials and equipment for his family's granite-countertop business and also helped the firm land an exclusive installation deal with a retailing giant while Nagin was in office, according to several sources close to the probe. The federal probe is zeroing in on Nagin along three parallel tracks: luxury travel and home maintenance provided by city technology vendors; a granite countertop installation contract that Nagin's family company got from The Home Depot; and the possibility that at least two...

Occupy Albany has announced an event in March called, The Weather Underground Meets Occupy Wall Street. The event will be held March 3rd, and is co-sponsored by The Sanctuary For Independent Media and the Albany Social Justice Center. It is described as, “A book event and multi-generational dialog to celebrate U.S. political prisoner David Gilbert’s new memoir, “Love and Struggle.” Gilbert is currently serving time in the Auburn Correctional Facility and is described as “an American radical leftist organizer and activist.” He was imprisoned for his role in the Brinks Robbery of 1981, a botched effort that led to the...

Warren Buffett’s stake in Bank of America Corp. increased in value by $154 million after President Obama and the U.S. Justice Department announced a $25 billion foreclosure abuse settlement with the five largest U.S. banks Thursday, records show. Buffett invested $5 billion in Bank of America (B of A) on Aug. 25, 2011. As part of his investment deal, Buffett gained warrants that allow him to buy 700 million shares of Bank of America stock at a strike price of $7.14 a share. However, on Dec. 19, 2011, it was reported that Buffett was $1.5 billion underwater on his stock...

This health hazard and social menace is what the Left regards as America's next great political cause? As the tents were coming down at McPherson Square, the dead rats and mice being retrieved, the urine and feces and filthy bedding disposed of by District of Columbia employees dressed in hazardous-materials suits like their contemporaries at Fukushima, I thought of the left-wing press. You see, I read the left-wing press. Not the urban throwaway rags, but I read the Nation, the Progressive, the American Prospect, and more -- I read them all. They have been raving for months about the exciting...

The age-old hobby of tossing a football or Frisbee on the beach on a beautiful summer day in Los Angeles will cost you a cool $1,000 thanks to a new ordinance passed by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday. Claiming that such activity could be dangerous to other beachgoers, the Supes outlawed "any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll any ball, tube, or any light object other than a beach ball or beach volleyball” on or over a beach.

Doctors who handed out sick notes to protesters while on the corner of Mifflin and Hamilton streets last year claim protestors received more thorough examinations on the street in public than they would have at an office visit. This revelation was discoverd in an examination of documents obtained by the MacIver News Service through an open records request. The Medical Examining Board issued reprimands to seven doctors in October, who had given hundreds of sick notes to protesters last February so they wouldn’t get in trouble for skipping work. The MacIver News Service was the first to report on the...

Well, at least the kids weren’t singing – everybody now – “Mmm mmm mmm…Barack Hussein Obama.” But the latest example of Big Education fawning over Barack Obama isn’t much better. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Cass Elementary School in Livonia, Michigan aired a video of still images of Obama, with a speech by King and – strangely – a Bob Marley song playing in the background. Watch video at Big Government (don't know how to incorporate a video here). The students looked about as interested as if they were watching paint dry. It’s unclear how long the song actually...

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — When you head down to the beach for a little fun this summer, county officials want you to leave the pigskin at home. The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County. In passing the 37-page ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public. The updated rules now prohibit “any person to...

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation. The conservative think tank's annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were "traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families." The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show. The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an...

Last Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to answer questions about his role in the deadly “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal. However, instead of answers, Congress got more defiance, more arrogance, and more wasted time with an attorney general who clearly feels no sense of obligation to the American people or our rule of law. But for all the stonewalling, there was at least one telling moment at this hearing, and it should concern law-abiding gun owners and all Americans who expect accountability from our government. In a rash attempt to...

US Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg tells Egyptians: Don’t look to the “OLD US Constitution” for guidance in drafting a new constitution. Justice Ginsburg holds in high esteem the constitution of South Africa and Canada.

WHEN Facebook goes public later this year, Mark Zuckerberg plans to exercise stock options worth $5 billion of the $28 billion that his ownership stake will be worth. The $5 billion he will receive upon exercising those options will be treated as salary, and Mr. Zuckerberg will have a tax bill of more than $2 billion, quite possibly making him the largest taxpayer in history. He is expected to sell enough stock to pay his tax. ..................................................... For individuals and married couples who earn, say, more than $2.2 million in income, or own $5.7 million or more in publicly traded...

Controversy erupted at a Slidell junior high school late last week when at least one parent observed drawings and altered pictures depicting malicious images of President Barack Obama, including one photo in which a bullet hole was portrayed on his head. The work is believed to be part of a class project done by students at Boyet Junior High, and several similar pieces were posted on walls at the school. At least five images were posted, including a drawing of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck standing next to a tree with a sign that read, "Obama Season," underneath a likeness...

There are a lot of things NOT to like about liberals, but you have to give them some credit. These are people who are badly, dangerously, and devastatingly wrong on almost every issue of consequence and yet, year after year, they hang in there at a rough parity with conservatives. So, they may do a lot wrong, but there are things we can learn from the Left. 1) Fight Harder: Liberals win a lot of battles just because they're willing to fight harder. Look at what happened to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Komen decided not to keep giving...

The “Occupy DC” protest group is planning to disrupt the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference using a range of potentially illegal tactics that could even include violence against participants, Scribe has learned. The planned disruptions at CPAC come only days after U.S. Park Police raided Occupiers’ tent cities at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., confiscating a number of tents, and prohibiting Occupiers from camping out there any longer. During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the protests, Occupiers brainstormed tactics for shutting down or disrupting the conference, according to a source who...

WASHINGTON — The Constitution has seen better days. Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning. In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.” A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David...

I have been writing for a long time about the real news in the Battleground Poll results over the last decade.  These bipartisan polls predict election results with remarkable accuracy and which also reveal the answers to all the questions respondents provided -- including, critically, how people describe themselves ideologically. In the last twenty consecutive Battleground Poll reports over the last ten years, the overwhelming majority of Americans have described themselves as "very conservative" or "somewhat conservative," although the poll provides six other possible responses:  "moderate," "somewhat liberal," "very liberal," or "don't know/unsure."  On average, about 60% of Americans in...

Pelosi: 'I Don't Want To Pay For It...Surcharge' The Rich For Doctors Visits and Unemployment Benefits http://www.breitbart.tv/pelosi-on-unemployment-benefits-extension-id-rather-not-pay-for-it/

What does race have to do with Los Angeles City Council redistricting? It is truly astonishing in the year 2012 to hear politicians, pundits and newspapers speak openly and unashamedly about ensuring "minority seats" in Los Angeles City Council. What does any of this have to do with clean, safe streets and good schools? Every 10 years, Los Angeles City Council redraws its boundaries for its 15 seats. Or more precisely, it has the districts redrawn by somebody else. Then the incumbent politicians start complaining. Usually it's lefty politician vs. lefty politician as to who keeps or loses what in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Susan G. Komen bunch, the Race for the Cure, whatever? They have caved big time to the feminazis at Planned Parenthood. It is stunning! Yesterday everybody was holding firm, and today Nancy Brinker who runs the Susan Komen group (I think it was her sister) made a big time cave. Biiiig time. Abortion is the sacrament to the religion of liberalism. Nobody is gonna mess with that money's flow. Nobody is gonna mess with that pile of money. Nobody's gonna mess with that at all. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to talk about this Susan G....

On Tuesday, director Joe Carnahan announced on Twitter that he had embarked on a remake of the Charles Bronson vigilante classic Death Wish. The main question, for any director approaching such a topic, especially with source material as infamous as Death Wish, is “Have you read any reviews lately?�Vincent Canby, in the New York Times, dubbed the original Death Wish “a despicable movie, one that raises complex questions in order to offer bigoted, frivolous, oversimplified answers.� Dirty Harry, whose 40th anniversary passed in December, attracted similar distaste. Pauline Kael savaged the film’s “fascist medievalism,� and described it as a...

Actual title is : It’s baaack! The plan to kill talk radio. Group advising White House wants to restore controversial policy An organization that helped to craft President Obama’s environmental policies has recommended the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, purportedly as a method of silencing critics of the theory of global warming. The Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, last year released an extensive list of recommendations for the White House in a 75-page paper entitled, “Building the Obama Administration’s Climate Legacy.” Primary among the PCAP’s recommendations is that the Department of Energy should join the U.S. Department of Housing...

Is sugar as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco? One group of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, says so. And they are urging a tax on sugary treats and some action by the government to get Americans to cut back on sugar. In an editorial published today in the journal Nature, the UCSF doctors, Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, said the ballooning rates — and costs — of obesity, diabetes and other diseases, mean it’s time for regulators to lump sugar into the same category as booze and cigarettes and put similar restrictions on its sale...

Energy: Small- and medium-size businesses serving Louisiana's energy industry are shedding employees, dipping into personal savings or moving elsewhere to stay afloat. The administration's war on fossil fuels is taking its toll. The federal six-month moratorium on drilling that was issued in May 2010, after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has been officially lifted, but it might as well still be in effect. The glacial permitting process put in place in the aftermath in the name of public safety is killing an industry pledged to wean us from the "energy of the past" will not mourn. A...

The date was January 2, 2010 and I started the year with some thoughts on Barack Obama that ended up going around the world a couple of times. Insofar as Friday 22nd is Good Friday, I am going to post those thoughts again in lieu of an original commentary. Feel free to share this with friends and family.The date was January 2, 2010 and I started the year with some thoughts on Barack Obama that ended up going around the world a couple of times. Insofar as Friday 22nd is Good Friday, I am going to post those thoughts again...

President G.W. Bush might very well have been sincere when he proclaimed, “I’m a uniter, not a divider,” but it nevertheless was boilerplate political rhetoric. Barack Obama, too, campaigned on the idea of uniting our nation. It’s an interesting fantasy. But the reality is quite different. Recent polls show that if we’re to measure a President’s unitive capacity based on how divided opinion on him is, Obama is the most polarizing Commander-in-Chief in history. Writes The Washington Post, “For 2011, Obama’s third year in office, an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing in...

A federal appeals court has rejected a former University of Tennessee college student's appeal against being convicted for hacking former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account during the 2008 campaign. Lawyers for the ex-student, David Kernell, said the felony obstruction of justice statute he was convicted under was so vague as to be unconstitutional. In particular, they argued, Kernell had no obvious notice that a federal investigation was underway before he deleted files from his computer and defragmented his hard disk. However, according to Politico, in an opinion Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of...

NEW YORK, January 30, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After years of renting the property, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America has purchased its headquarters in New York City for $34.8 million. The nation’s largest abortion provider has rented the commercial condominium where its headquarters are situated since 2002, and had reportedly originally signed for a 20-year lease for 104,000 square feet of the property at around $35 per square foot, according to The Real Deal, a local real estate news source. Although legally a nonprofit organization, Planned Parenthood reported over $1 billion in net assets in 2009-10 according to its...