Free Republic

This time around, all the major voter consolidation processes appear to have worked to the advantage of Mr Barack Obama. Eight years earlier, those processes had favoured Mr George Bush Right after President Barack Obama won his second term, there were the obvious questions about the wider implications of his mandate. At one level, these questions were lazy and misleading. In election after election, political pundits —and this writer is not excluded —faithfully identify long-term trends only to find that there is no long-term trend. That comment may sound facetious and overstated but, nevertheless, cannot be dismissed. Take Mr Obama’s...

Prediction: Obama and Democrat Party will seek to have the Presidential 2-term limit law changed to enable him to remain in office. Wanted to be the first to predict that here.

Does anyone know what in the heck this photo is on the Drudge Report.....or where it originated? It's just weird.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sees no reason to celebrate the reelection of US President Barack Obama. The US aggressively pursued and “persecuted” the whistleblower site under a Democratic administration, he explained. “Obama seems to be a nice man, and that is precisely the problem,” the 41-year-old told AFP, speaking from his room in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. “It's better to have a sheep in wolf's clothing than a wolf in sheep's clothing,” he said. “All of the activities against WikiLeaks by the United States have occurred under an Obama administration.” Assange was equally critical of the Republican, saying it “has not...

Over at the always interesting Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, Jason Brennan has a contemplative post about the Bush-era anti-terror policies that Obama’s supporters voted to continue. These are the same voters — and candidate, mind you — who once decried Dubya’s anti-terror policies of Gitmo, drones, supposed “torture,” and all the rest as crimes against humanity worthy of charges at the International Criminal Court. Yet, in four years, Obama has implemented Bush’s anti-terror policies harder and more bluntly. And Obamaphiles and others who once took to the streets and the blogopshere to protest Bush’s “crimes” happily voted for the current...

(CNSNews.com) -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released the results of an informal exit poll on Friday that shows more than 85 percent of American Muslim voters picked President Barack Obama in Tuesday's election. That number is lower than a similar poll conducted in 2008 that showed 89 percent of American Muslims cast a ballot for Obama. CAIR conducted the informal survey of 650 American Muslim voters, with just 4 percent of respondents stating that they voted for Mitt Romney. Poll findings: 95.5 percent of the Muslim voters said they went to the polls on Nov. 6. 85.7 percent...

David Petraeus, the retired four-star general who led the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, abruptly resigned Friday as director of the CIA after admitting he had an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, according to a new report.

President Obama must have run the greatest campaign in the history of campaigns (and he's been telling us he did too). First he got over 99% of the vote in places where GOP inspectors were kicked out in Pennsylvania, then he got 100% of the vote in 21 districts in Cleveland. Now he's done it again! Down in Broward County, Florida, Mr. Obama came away with more votes than he garnered in 2008, a particularly staggering accomplishment considering he received fewer state-wide totals in both Florida and across the country. How exactly did he accomplish this? Well, in part thanks...

Just two days after President Obama’s re-election, the Obama Interior Department announced a plan to shut down 1.6 million acres of federal land to oil shale development. The land had originally been slated for drilling under President George W. Bush. “By significantly reducing the acreage of wilderness potentially available for leasing, Secretary Salazar is laying out a creative, thoughtful and more responsible approach in managing some of our most precious resources,” said Bobby McEnaney, senior lands analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Unless you are a dead democrat voter stuck in a graveyard, you will notice an awful LOT of businesses are laying people off right for the last three days. It finally hit me, is Atlas starting to shrug or is it merely shuddering only to fall asleep again? Is this a sign of shrugging or is it a sign of the dragon shuddering only to roll over and fall back asleep again?

I’m here to tell you something. In short: I am impressed. As a propagandist, you have achieved everything I set out to do. You soared to victory this week like a Bundesadler in a Leni Riefenstahl film. I’m amazed der Juden and der junge are so devoted to your cause, as it seems you are determined to extinguish both. But what really impresses me is the blind faith with which more than half of America follows you. These are people who couldn’t care less about politics, yet somehow they are in a trance. Why? Because you promised them you care....

A chilly day in February came to a boil without warning. A frenetic CNBC reporter, Rick Santelli, took the floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2009 to vent his rage against the U.S. government’s foreclosure-relief plan. “The government is rewarding bad behaviour,” he ranted to cheering traders. “Subsidized losers” didn’t deserve to have mortgages. The people who needed support were ones who “carry the water instead of drink the water.” Then, to louder cheers, “I’m going to have a Chicago Tea Party in July, all you capitalists that want to show up at Lake Michigan, I’m going to start...

The recent re-election of Barak Hussein Obama has served to uncover the deep Spiritual crisis in America, particularly among confessing Christians. What a blow to the cause of freedom,playing by the rules, and responsibility! On election night, most people I know didn’t expect anything less than a reprieve from the four years long nightmare that is the Obama presidency. We sat in stunned silence, contemplating the new reality. We who cherish the American ideals of limited government, Judeo Christian morality, and sane servant leadership, no longer have the prevailing consensus, for now. But perhaps our vision of the right path...

Frank Aquila wasn’t 100 percent positive that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was going to win heading into Tuesday’s election. Despite his strong conservative roots, Aquila – who served as a county chair for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and penned a book about the decision to go with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate – had seen too much transpire over the course of four years to count out to former senator from Illinois that cut his teeth in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics. And while certain parts of the election – like the Democrats...

We narrowly dodged a bullet in the 2012 presidential election. Americans were presented with the choice between Mitt Romney’s fossil fuel reliant 19th century view of energy and Barack Obama’s cleaner 21st century low carbon vision. Even more significant than the Obama victory is the fact that Romney was denied the world’s most powerful office. The election of Romney would have had dire implications for renewable energy and it would have undermined decades of environmental protections. Romney’s reliance on oil would also have dramatically increased American greenhouse gas emissions. As we are already precariously close to a number of environmental...

The CEO-in-waiting of the defense contractor who declined to issue WARN Act layoff notices on the urging of the Obama administration — sequestration-related notices mandated by law that would have gone out just before the election — has resigned, citing an affair. Christopher E. Kubasik, 51, today resigned from his role as vice chairman, president and chief operating officer (COO), effective immediately, Lockheed Martin announced. Kubasik was set to become CEO in January. He “resigned after an ethics investigation confirmed that he had a close personal relationship with a subordinate employee. His actions violated the company’s Code of Ethics and...

After election analysis can be interesting, but when it comes from the same people who got the pre-election analysis wrong it should be taken with many grains of salt. After election reactions can also be rather elitist. I know it is easy to want to disparage those who voted against a supported candidate in a “How dare you” tone. Political junkies kind of expect everybody else to be political junkies.Still I was trying to understand the dynamics of this election and was not really finding a key to understanding it. I was listening to Al Kresta and he said something...

Since Romney lost on Tuesday, many Republicans, like Sean Hannity and John Boehner, have been promoting a change in the Republican views on immigration policy to attract more hispanic/latino voters.  Unfortunately, I think this is a trap that will make Republican electoral prospects worse, not better. Just do the math, there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country.  Let's say you do what Sean Hannity proposes and give those already here a "path to citizenship".  Now, assume they don't magically become Republicans when they gain their citizenship and 71% vote Democratic like in the last election. That...

President Obama’s first-term Supreme Court appointments make it seem unlikely to conservatives that the president will nominate judges over the next four years known for their judicial restraint. In fact, for progressives, judicial restraint takes on an entirely different description. At least, that’s the impression given by Ian Millhiser at a recent Center for American Progress event, in which he said that the “frivolous” lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, convinced him against judicial activism. “And one thing I will say that that taught me is that judicial restraint is really important and that I think...

“This was a central question during the election,” Obama said in his first postelection comments on the economy. “The majority of Americans agree with my approach.” Following up, Obama’s spokesman said later that the president would veto any legislation extending tax cuts for families making $250,000 or more. The president, speaking in the White House East Room, said he wasn’t wedded to every detail of the plans he outlined during the election, adding, “I’m open to compromise.” But he offered no indication that he was willing to back down.