Free Republic

Engraved at the base of the statue of Liberty Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send...

The Obamas' summer break in Martha's Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets. But according to new reports, this is the least of their extravagances. White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers' money on vacations alone in the past year. Branding her 'disgusting' and 'a vacation junkie', they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol. The 'top source' told the National Enquirer: 'It's disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage...

“We’re going to do something to strengthen the banking system," Mr. Obama said, “You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back. You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Martha's Vineyard or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime. There's got to be some accountability and some responsibility.”

LOS ANGELES - Captain America will keep its patriotic full title in most of the world when the superhero adventure hits the big-screen. Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios gave distributors around the world the option of shortening the title of "Captain America: The First Avenger" to simply "The First Avenger," out of concern about anti-American sentiment. But the only countries that took them up on it were Russia, Ukraine and South Korea. In other territories, the movie will go out with the full title, a sign that the brand value of the Marvel Comics hero trumps any potential anti-U.S. feelings...

Most voters still believe President Obama is more liberal than they are, while just one-out-of-four say they share the same ideological views as the president. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 54% of Likely U.S. Voters think Obama is more ideologically liberal than they are, while only 13% view him as more conservative. Twenty-four percent (24%) say their political views are about the same as the president's. Most Mainstream voters (65%) say Obama is more politically liberal than they are, while those in the Political Class tend to view the president's views as more liberal or about...

Full title: 17 trying to storm governor's office are arrested; larger rally is planned Friday I cannot link the original article found on TheOlympian website (WA newspaper online) due to copyright complaint. SEIU is protesting budget cuts to 'state services'. The union is said to have 'brought' 500 protesters to the capital and some tried to storm the Gov. Chris Gregoire's (D) office. Seventeen people were arrested and the SEIU is promising bigger protests Friday. The union insists that the budget be met by ending corp tax exemptions instead of the proposed cuts to services.

We are wounded today, bleeding red ink, and everyone knows who is guilty. Our suffering is the fault of a small group of people, here and abroad: they are the greedy. You know them. We all can point them out. Greedy people gobble up unfair amounts of precious resources, keeping vast sums for themselves and sticking it to the rest of us. The greedy are pushing us to the brink. If we had the courage to stand up to them we could solve so many problems. It is time we put a stop to all the damage such selfishness causes...

If President Obama doesn’t kill us by denying us access to health care, he’ll kill us with tax increases. His new budget proposal includes nearly two trillion dollars of new taxes. According to Obama, while it would not exactly be against the law to work or to save, these are bad things and need to be heavily taxed. And, besides, we’re not doing enough for the moochers in society. People have a right by being born in this country, or not, to their fair share of what the evil people create through their work and their creativity. Equal pay...

Anyone critical of President Obama being in India right now is an "idiot," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough bluntly served on his morning show, which prides itself on being a safe haven for different views. India is "exactly where [President Obama] should be" right now, he opined. With Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass on as a guest Monday morning, Scarborough clamored that President Obama "needs" to be in India right now for the sake of U.S. foreign policy. "I would send my President to India, like once a month, if I could, for long weekends," he emphasized. Scarborough hit left-wing...

David Cameron today defended the Government's plans to limit housing benefit, saying it was not fair for working people to see their taxes used to fund homes 'they couldn't even dream of'. The Prime Minister dismissed reports there could be a climbdown over the proposals, telling Labour leader Ed Miliband: 'We are going forward with all the proposals we put in the spending review and in the Budget'.

The One Nation Working Together rally sure has a tiny population. As the AP so delicately phrased it, reporting on the rally's attendance, merely "thousands of people"--not tens or hundreds of thousands as with the descriptions of Glenn Beck's rally last month--punctuated with "sparse groups," roused themselves to the nation's capital, despite free bus rides and that ever popular free lunch offered by the unions and other rally organizers. John Avlon of the Daily Beast admits that compared to the Beck rally Yes, the music was better and the crowd more diverse, but this rally provided plenty of evidence the...

HOUSTON—At midnight on the first of the month, a scene unfolds at many Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sites that underscores the deep financial strains that many low-income American consumers still face. Parking lots come to life after 11 p.m. as customers start to stream into the stores, cramming their shopping carts full of milk, infant formula and other necessities. Then at midnight, when the government replenishes their electronic-benefit accounts with their monthly allotments of food stamps, nutritional grants for mothers with babies or other aid for needy families, they head for the registers. "We're not starving or anything, but we come...

Are any networks planning on covering today's ralley?

Yes, folks, there are two Americas: the authentic America of community builders and the other America, made up of socialist group-thinkers, moochers, and no-accounts, many of them living off government grants or welfare checks. The tension between these two Americas has been a constant tug-of-war for nearly a hundred years, since our premier socialist-progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, bore the first rotten fruits of liberal fascism on our shores. With the election of the first socialist-progressive president in decades, the political tension between the two Americas has reached fever pitch. Independent voters, who were lulled like sheep into the lion's den...

If this dopey quote had come out of Dubya’s mouth, tell me it wouldn’t already be a slogan emblazoned on a t-shirt at Zazzle underneath a Bush/chimp photo comparison: As the president walked around the restaurant, some cordoned-off reporters shouted out to him questions, including one about the war in Iraq. But the president was in no mood today to discuss the issue with reporters in that setting. He ignored questions for a bit, then turned to the reporters. “We’re buying shrimp, guys,” he said, smiling. “Come on.”

Some things need to be said about the mob that showed up to glom some applications for Section 8 welfare housing in East Point this week, and I’m your guy — the (ahem) author of The New York Times best-seller “Somebody’s Gotta Say It.” My experience with these Section 8 “clients” goes back to the mid-1970s when I had a law office at the First National Bank building in Decatur. It was my misfortune to occupy an office down the hall from the Decatur Housing Authority. Being a quick learner, I figured out I needed to be somewhere else on...

The White House today confirmed what many islanders have been anticipating for weeks: The first family will return to Martha's Vineyard for vacation next month. President Obama and his family are scheduled to vacation on the island from Aug. 19 to Aug. 29.

More 20-somethings are moving back home with Mom and Dad -- and happily accepting financial assistance. So pronounced is the trend -- many parents, on average, are giving their 20-somethings 10 percent of their combined income ... Look, 20-somethings, it's only partly your fault that the economy is still a mess -- most of you voted for you know who -- but it isn't your fault that you lack the skills to deal with it. Your generation has been coddled like no other generation before it -- never has any generation been given so much for doing so little --...

Dear Mr. President: During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone. While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of...