Free Republic

At some point in this year’s presidential campaign, perhaps on a debate stage, President Obama is likely to repeat his claim that the Massachusetts health-care law signed by Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006 was the inspiration for the federal health-care plan that he himself signed in 2010. Obama knows that his signature legislative accomplishment remains unpopular. But he also knows that policy experts of various political stripes have claimed that Obamacare is essentially Romneycare taken national. If Romney is the Republican presidential nominee, as he seems likely to be, Obama will try to block him from taking advantage of his...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So what do we do now, folks? That's the question. Everybody wants to know what do we do now? And what we do now is what we should have been doing all along. I'll give you an example. Obama's on TV this morning. He was in Falls Church, Virginia, doing a campaign speech. And in this appearance he announced yet another plan to bail out people who are underwater in their houses. I don't know what this is, HARP 2, HARP 3. We alluded to this a few weeks ago where Obama was gonna take people that...

The great British preacher John Newton had a friend, a poet by the name of William Cowper, who along with Newton wrote hymns which eventually were compiled in the Olney Hymnal. Cowper’s more noted contributions to this hymnal were “Oh, for a closer walk with God” and “There is a fountain filled with blood.”......Sadly, we find documented in Forbes Winslow’s Anatomy of Suicide (written in 1840) that Cowper has tried more than once to take his own life. As psychiatrist and Christian author John White puts it, “Here then we are presented with a gifted and Godly man, a man...

John King, CNN: "You make your case there passionately for President Obama. But also understand that this is a tough reelection climate for any president, Democrat or Republican in this economy. Because of your history with Speaker Gingrich, what goes through your mind when you think of the possibility, which is more real today than it was a week or a month ago, that he would be the Republican nominee and that you could come back here next January or next February with a President Gingrich?"

January 25, 2012 Gingrich, Romney in Dead Heat in New Florida Poll By Stephanie Condon Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich has erased the double-digit lead his GOP rival Mitt Romney once held in Florida, leaving the two candidates in a dead heat in the latest poll out of the Sunshine state. Romney leads with 36 percent among likely Republican primary voters in the new Quinnipiac poll, while Gingrich earns 34 percent. The poll, conducted January 19-23, has a margin of error of four points. Former Sen. Rick Santorum garnered 13 percent support while Rep. Ron Paul won 10 percent. The...

All of the occupy movements start with the premise that we all owe them everything. The take over a public park they didn’t pay for; To go nearby to go to bathrooms they didn’t pay for; to beg for food from places they didn’t pay for; to instruct those who go to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously proclaim that they are the paradigms of virtue for which we owe everything. Now that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral...

<p>U.S. space officials, meanwhile, fear that China could overtake the U.S. as world leader in space if it continues to make rapid advances like the one this month, when the country completed its first space-docking mission—a milestone in its plan to build a space station by 2020.</p>

We Need Jobs, Depending on the Color The White House rhetoric has been consistent in regards to giving lip service to its relentless focus on creating jobs, especially those of a certain color. Do jobs have a color? They do if you are a government official, in particular an empathetic, self ordained, omniscient and paternalistic liberal, endlessly fighting for the working class. Remember, the conservatives fight for the rich, and the rich don’t even work! They just “have a lot of money”. Even the Republicans believe in colored jobs, so far as they have regurgitated the liberal lingo in their...

Muslims around the country are calling on state officials to rebuke Rep. Rick Womick, R-Murfreesboro, for saying the U.S. should purge Muslims from the military. But if they want strong denunciations, Gov. Bill Haslam isn't their guy. He might be the chief executive of this state and the head of the Tennessee Republican Party, but he clearly doesn't see standing up for freedom of religion or striking a blow against bigotry as top priorities. Asked today what he had to say about Womick's remarks, the governor declared: "I don’t think I would agree with Rick on that." OK, governor, but...

"Job Cuts Rock CNN" is the Title URL on Drudgereport. Note Lack of Explanation in the actual URL site.

As many as a dozen members of Congress and their aides took part in insider trading based on foreknowledge of market moving information on Capitol Hill, disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff told CNBC in an interview. Abramoff, who was once one of the wealthiest and most powerful lobbyists in Washington before a corruption scandal sent him to federal prison for more than three years, said that many of those members of Congress bragged to him about their stock trading prowess while dining at the exclusive restaurant he owned on Pennsylvania Avenue. But Abramoff, whose black trench coat and fedora became...

Westboro Baptist Church, best-known for picketing funerals of dead soldiers, is now taking its show of hate to Penn State - to protest the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal that has rocked the country and shocked the university. However, the divisive group's actions have united a divided campus, by inspiring a counter-protest by the atheist and LGBT student groups. On Saturday, Nov. 11, the WBC will be holding up its famously abrasive signs at Beaver Stadium in University Park, PA where the Penn State football team will take on Nebraska. According to the WBC website, "Penn State has the...

DEMS ON SUPER COMMITTEE BOLT... Sen. Rand Paul tells radiohost Sean Hannity this afternoon, Dems on the budget super committee walk away from heated negotations... AT IMPASSE... Developing...

HARRISBURG - Attorney General Linda Kelly and Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan today announced that criminal charges have been filed against three Centre County men as the result of an extensive and wide-reaching grand jury investigation into reports of the sexual abuse of children.

The settlement agreement between the National Restaurant Association and a woman who accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment was reached in September 1999--and was not signed by Cain himself, according to Joel Bennett, a lawyer for the woman. --------------------------------- Cain left the association June 30, 1999, according to the NRA. Under that timeline, Cain would have been gone when the settlement was reached--and may well have been gone when she filed the complaint ------------------------------------------- http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57318500-503544/cain-did-not-sign-settlement-accusers-lawyer-says/%20http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504564_162-57318500-504564/cain-did-not-sign-settlement-accusers-lawyer-says

This is the new face of Zuccotti Park! A deranged homeless man who has been squatting among the Occupy Wall Street protesters in lower Manhattan went on a violent, early-morning rampage yesterday, cursing incoherently and kicking down tents. The only thing that could stop Jeremy Clinch from his Godzilla-like rampage was a left hook to the face delivered by a paranoid fellow protester who claimed to be an ex-Turkish diplomat -- and charged that his assailant was carrying out a plot hatched by Mayor Bloomberg. “I’ve been here from Day One! I haven’t got a tent!” the Cleveland-native Clinch shrieked...

Reportedly considering removing combat troops and replacing with "advisors." Just in time for Nov, 2012? All troops out of Iraq soon.

Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney's landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romney's own health care advisors and experts to help craft the act now derided by Republicans as "Obamacare.".........

Perry's time as a tenant farmer began when he got out of the Air Force in 1977, and returned to his hometown of Paint Creek, Texas, in Haskell County. It was a place to figure out what to do next with his life. Instead of flying giant military cargo planes, Perry planted cotton and wheat, and raised cattle. Coleman says Perry liked the "ranching" part of life at Paint Creek. "You'd see him on a horse, and this and that, but you know, driving a tractor I guess gets a little boring." By all accounts, Perry was restless. He farmed...

Dr Guy Scott (born 1 June 1944) is a Zambian politician. He is currently the Vice President of Zambia and a member of the Patriotic Front (PF). After graduating from Cambridge University in 1965, Scott joined the government of the Republic of Zambia where he served in the Ministry of Finance as a planner. He was also the deputy editor of the Business and Economy of East and Central Africa during this period. In 1970, Scott left the government to become an entrepreneur and set up Walkover Estate, an agribusiness venture, which ventured into high value crops such as irrigated...

Phone interview [11:30am] between Neil Cavuto of FNC and retired US Army General Tommy Franks about the Shanksville Flight 93 Memorial.

Their deaths two million years ago have breathed new life into our understanding of the way human beings evolved. Two primitive ape-like creatures, believed to be a mother and her young son, plunged through the roof of a cave and suffered a slow death from starvation. Now scientists believe their fossilised skeletons show they could be our direct ancestors, the long-sought ‘missing link’ between apes and humans.

This is a Facebook posting I received from a friend and retired Marine I served with on Okinawa. Today I was incensed at the conclusion of a funeral for my beloved 85 year old uncle who proudly served in the US Army during The Korean Conflict. During the committal service at a Pittsburgh cemetery the local military detachment performed their ritual, then folded and presented the American Flag to my aunt. As I'm sure you have witnessed during military funerals, a soldier bends to one knee and recites a scripted message to a surviving relative that begins 'On behalf of...

A Message from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka All of us will remember the horror and anguish we experienced 10 years ago. Whether we lost loved ones ourselves—family members, union brothers and sisters—or felt the shock of a society that lost nearly 3,000 people and was forever changed, we need no reminding. Instead, I would like to reflect on doors that were opened on Sept. 11, 2001, and what has come of them in the 10 years since. Working men and women rushed through doors to danger and became America’s everyday heroes. Firefighters, construction workers, nurses and EMTs—all kinds of professionals...

Commonwealth of Virginia Office of the Attorney General For media inquiries only, contact: Brian J. Gottstein Email: bgottstein@oag.state.va.us (best contact method) Phone: 804-786-5874 Cuccinelli expresses disappointment in Fourth Circuit’s ruling in health care case RICHMOND, VA (September 8, 2011)— Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli responded today to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Virginia’s lawsuit against the federal government’s health care reform act. “Obviously, we are disappointed in the ruling. Our disappointment not only stems from the fact that the court ruled against us, but also that the court did not even reach the merits on the...

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and fellow Americans: Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse. This past week, reporters have been asking “What will this speech mean for the President? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls, and the next election?” But the millions of Americans who are watching right now: they don’t care about politics. They have real life concerns. Many have spent months...

click article link to read storyA member of an anti-gay church that pickets at military funerals said via Twitter that church members will come to Carson City in the wake of the shooting deaths of three Nevada National Guard soldiershttp://www.rgj.com/article/20110907/NEWS/110907005/Anti-gay-church-hints-will-protest-funerals-slain-guardsmen-Carson-IHOP-shooting?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

According to KVUE-TV, the state of Texas, under Gov. Rick Perry, cut state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires. Firefighters have actually been dipping into their own pockets to fight fires. Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain had their funding cut from $30 million to $7 million. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas; 114 are paid fire departments, while 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid. At a press conference Monday, Perry promised to seek federal disaster relief and said that FEMA would be in the...

Firefighting air tankers are siting idle at a California airport, grounded by the Obama administration Nearly half of the federal government’s firefighting air tankers are siting idle at a California airport, grounded by the Obama administration in a contract dispute just weeks before wildfires swept through Texas killing a mother and her child, and destroying 100,000 acres. The massive blazes forced Texas Gov. and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry to abruptly call off a campaign appearance in South Carolina earlier this week to respond to the crisis, and may force him to cancel his first debate appearance Wednesday night....

San Clemente High evacuated after threat San Clemente High was evacuated on the first day of school after a bomb threat made in note was found at Camp Pendleton

My father used to tell me that if I worked hard, it would pay off in the long run. How could he have been so blind? Laziness pays off now! We all know that the power to tax is the power to destroy. So too is the power to regulate. Equally powerful is the reality that rewarded behavior is repeated. After applying these inescapable truths to the analysis of Obamanomics, a collection of policies designed to reward or deter (or even outright banish) certain behaviors - to ordain winners and losers - it’s all clear to me now. The reason...

Release No. 09-02-11Sept. 6, 2011WASHINGTON (AFRNS) -- The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced Sept. 1 that the remains of a serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and returned to his family for burial with full military honors. Air Force Maj. Thomas E. Reitmann of Red Wing, Minn., will be buried Sept. 8 in Arlington National Cemetery. In 1965, Reitmann was assigned to the 334th Tactical Fighter Squadron deployed out of Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., to Takhli Air Base, Thailand. On Dec 1, 1965, he was flying a strike mission as the No....

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio—President Barack Obama this week will try to launch a political comeback amid the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and a growing sense of economic foreboding here and across the country among voters who are increasingly questioning their president's skills and priorities. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of 1,000 adults, taken Aug. 27-31, found that 44% of Americans approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, with more than half, or 51%, disapproving for the first time since his inauguration. Some 73% say the country is headed in the wrong direction, a level of...

Hold your nose and vote syndrome In 1992, Republicans got a good look at an obscure governor from Arkansas and decided that even though they didn't want George Bush Sr. – champion of a new world order – no way did they want another Roosevelt liberal in the White House. Their option became "hold your nose and vote" because the elitist power brokers behind the scenes made certain Bush Sr. would be their standard bearer in that election. There was no choice for those of us seeking a pro-Constitution, "America first" president. In 1996, the Grand Old Party decided...

A little more history. Jim Puplava talks to James Dines about his book “Goldbug! The Second Great Depression, the Coming Currency Crisis – Hyperinflation” recorded on February 20th 2010. The world’s financial system was set up by a British Socialist and an American Soviet agent.

I wanted to dreadfully suggest an historic article to friends, relatives, business men and women, investors, workers, and pretty much anyone and everyone who can still read English – yet, for a week there was no time. No time, as, while being in Las Vegas among hordes of pie in the sky technologists forecasting a bright and brilliant future as much as 2001 A Space Odyssey predicted in 1968 what the world would be in 2001, day and night there was simply not an opportunity as time took away even a descent lunch. Strangely, all the pontification took place in...

We're facing a tough election season and we need your help to save the senate and protect women's health. We have a chance to fight back against the extreme agenda that women face in accessing reproductive health care in the Commonwealth. And we can't do it without you. VOLUNTEER TO SAVE THE SENATE: We are going to show the power of Planned Parenthood by helping to re-elect state Senator Edd Houck. Senator Houck has a 28-year voting record that demonstrates his commitment to reproductive health and rights. This is going to be tough, but you can never underestimate the power...

In April St. Louis youths playing the “knock-out game” beat, kicked and punched 72-year-old Hoang Nguyen and his wife on their way home from the grocery store. Nguyen died in the attack. In June black youths playing the “knock-out game” targeted and beat a gay man going to work. The victim suffered a broken nose, a sore jaw and a black eye. This past week black youths in St. Louis playing the “knock-out” game are targeting cyclists in the city. KMOX reported: There’s an alert out about recent assaults on bike riders in south St. Louis. Trailnet.org, an organization that...

It’s fine that NBC made a strategic decision to move to the left, adding blatant bias to its overall coverage. It’s where most of the networks are anyway, only NBC is a little further over on the spectrum. Fox News is conservative – I’d say unabashedly so, except that it pretends to be fair and balanced, which it’s not – and being a conservative network is fine too. But what’s very disconcerting is having a major TV news network in the tank for a specific politician. This is unprecedented and a little frightening, giving off the noisome air of a...

In a trend that continues to worsen, more Illinoisans found themselves unemployed in the month of July. Illinois lost more jobs during the month of July than any other state in the nation, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report. After losing 7,200 jobs in June, Illinois lost an additional 24,900 non-farm payroll jobs in July. The report also said Illinois’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent. This marks the third consecutive month of increases in the unemployment rate. Illinois started to create jobs as the national economy began to recover. But just when Illinois’s economy seemed...

Lots of looting burning going on at the compound.

In the same week that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department was going to review the cases of 300,000 illegal aliens in deportation proceedings and allow “low priority” cases to stay in the country and receive work permits—a move House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith called a “back door amnesty”—President Barack Obama’s approval dropped to an all-time low of 44 percent among Hispanics, according to Gallup polling data released today. That is a drop of 41 points from the spring of 2009, when Obama’s approval among Hispanic Americans peaked at 85 percent (in the weeks that ended April...

Who believes in the power of hard work? Advances in gene sequencing and brain scanning technologies are continually threatening the human notion of free will, and the smart money appears to be on us coming to the uncomfortable realization that we have a lot less control over our actions, behaviors, and abilities than we think we do, sooner rather than later. That said, it's encouraging to find that over two-thirds of Americans, when questioned on what it takes to get ahead, assert that hard work is more important than are lucky circumstances or getting help from others. At the individual...

A US senator said Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission may have destroyed thousands of documents related to probes into possible violations by major banks and hedge funds. Senior Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said that "an agency whistle-blower" sent him a letter that described the SEC's allegedly unlawful destruction of records related to more than 9,000 informal investigations. The documents included cases arising from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, including Goldman Sachs, AIG, and the Bernard Madoff pyramid fund, according to the whistle-blower, Grassley said. The whistle-blower, 13-year SEC lawyer Darcy Flynn, said the destroyed records related to "matters under...

Accountability: After a long legal battle, a federal judge has ruled that White House visitor logs are public and can be released under the Freedom of Information Act. So much for the White House's vaunted claim to openness. It took the lawyers of Judicial Watch almost two years to pry open White House records on the matter of who visited the president and his advisers in the first seven months of Obama's administration. That information was solemnly promised to voters by candidate Obama in his 2008 campaign as a means of distinguishing his governing style from the supposedly ominous, secretive...

No P-3 Orion replacements as Pak-US ties low: Secy Defence Production The secretary, Lt-Gen (r) Shahid Iqbal, told Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that no proposal was under consideration to purchase alternative aircraft for those which were destroyed in Mehran Base attack and it was impossible to acquire Orion planes in the prevailing tense ties between Pakistan and the US.The Committee met Tuesday in Parliament House under Zahid Hamid to review audit objections pertaining to the Ministry for Defence Production. Officials of the Ministry for Defence Production were not sure whether the Pakistan Ordinance Factory was running in loss or profit....

A fossil touted since the time of Charles Darwin as the "missing link" between dinosaurs and birds is likely just a dinosaur, scientists have admitted in a new report in the journal Nature.. The proposal to reclassify the specimen Archaeopteryx, which has been presented since its discovery in 1861 as a key transitional link, highlights the shifting sands on which much of evolutionary theory is based, according to one expert in the field. David Menton of Answers in Genesis has a Ph.D. in cell biology from Brown University, taught anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine, lectured in anatomy, was...

As President George W. Bush's top speech writer, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). Now, his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster," How the CIA Kept America Safe (Regnery), has been published. Here is an excerpt from "Courting Disaster:" Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi. A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house....

Anti-government activists are reported to be planning to stage nationwide demonstrations against the ruling al-Khalifa family on 13 -14 February. The protests are reportedly referred to on social networking websites as ‘The 14 February Revolution in Bahrain', and organisers claim they are not associated with any pre-existing political group or movement. The gatherings are likely to focus on government buildings in the capital Manama, such as the interior ministry in the west of the city. Other potential rally venues are Exhibition Road, the Ras Ruman mosque near the Diplomatic Area in the north of the city, the US Fifth Fleet...