Free Republic

Obama proposed this last year and now its back on the table: This week, the Wall Street Journal’s John D. McKinnon and Andrew Ackerman are reporting that House Speaker John Boehner “is willing to consider curbing the tax-exempt status of municipal-bond interest, subject to negotiations with the White House.” Reality check...the only reason investors buy muni bonds is because of the tax exempt status. They pay less interest than other bonds that are already taxed so if they are gonna tax the muni's....might as well get the higher interest rate. So what happens then? Local, county and state municipalities will...

Menards is blaming President Obama for the company's decision to scrap plans for building a store in Missouri, saying the president is "scaring the dickens" out of small businesses. The Eau Claire, Wis.-based home improvement chain said it won't build a planned store in O’Fallon, Mo., because of economic uncertainty...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is tightening its grip on domestic travcel. I don't mean the random, unpredictable security checks at bus, subway and train stations which already exist. I mean a coordinated and systematic police control of internal travel within America. Groundwork is being laid. Application to Make U.S. Into an Airport Screening Zone The application was tucked away on page 71431 of Volume 77, Number 231 of the Federal Register (November 30). It was surrounded by soporific references to forwarding "the new Information Collection Request (ICR) abstracted below to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review...

Nations in the Middle East, some of whom were once allies of the U.S., appear to be defying America. This is very evident when reviewing the events over the past six months in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, and also among the Palestinians. As former Vice President Dick Cheney stated, "[o]ur allies no longer trust us, or have confidence in us, and our adversaries no longer fear us." The problem is also that America's allies in the region are dwindling while its adversaries are increasing. American Thinker interviewed experts to get their opinion about this very important issue. In Iraq,...

News flash for conservatives, Christians, libertarians or anyone in America who embraces traditional values, the rule of law, common sense, basic math, a more secure nation or politicians who put you and your family first: You have lost or are losing across the board. Period. With the re-election of Barack Obama — and he and his campaign should be congratulated for not only running a winning campaign but, more importantly, for also exploiting the weaknesses created by the nanny-state — there is now no more mystery or doubt. Liberal ideology rules supreme in our country and to say otherwise, is...

Representative Michele Bachmann has claimed that Barack Obama is determined 'to lift up the Islamists' and bow to their 'ultimate demand' of imposing Sharia law on America. In an extraordinary interview at the weekend, the woman who once had high hopes of being the Republican candidate in this year's presidential election, said that Americans should study Islamist texts just as those worried about fascism pored over Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' in the 1930s and 1940s. In an extended on-air conversation with conservative radio hosts Jan Markell and Eric Barger, Bachmann contended that Obama was endangering the United States and Israel...

A new poll finds that a majority of voters would blame both President Obama and congressional Republicans equally if efforts to find a deficit deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” fail. Fifty-six percent surveyed in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll say both sides would be responsible if a compromise is not reached. Nineteen percent would blame Obama and Democrats only, with 24 percent saying the GOP would be at fault. Those numbers could suggest a shift in public opinion as both parties work to find a way to prevent tax rate hikes and automatic spending cuts from taking...

Senate Democrats who helped pass ObamaCare are finally seeing what is in it and aren't really so sure the massive tax increases mandated in the legislation will be good for their constituents, especially when it comes to the medical device tax which is set to further increase on January 1. With some of their most influential constituent groups facing onerous tax increases that are slated to help fund the law’s mandates and regulations, Senators like Al Franken (D-MN), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Patty Murray (D-WA), John Kerry (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and...

Eighteen Democratic U.S. Senators and senators-elect sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week calling for a “delay in the implementation” of the medical device tax in Obamacare, the Wall Street Journal reports. The provision was an integral part of the version of the Obamacare law, which was passed in the Senate under Reid’s stewardship in 2009. It is set to take effect on January 1, 2013. An effort to repeal the provision failed in Congress in June. At the time, Reid characterized the proposed repeal as a Republican attack on Obamacare. “The medical technology industry directly...

For the good of the country and the survival of the Republican Party, the GOP must allow President Obama to take America off the so-called “fiscal cliff” on January 1. Given the intransigent position that Obama has taken on raising marginal tax rates, any deal that the Republicans in the House of Representatives could conceivably make with him before the end of the year would be counterproductive. It would impede economic growth, and thereby actually reduce the present value of future federal revenues. Such a deal would also further damage the Republican “brand”, which has been trashed by the “clueless...

Regarding the fantasies that there will be a day when a large percentage of voters will see the error of their ways, resulting in a mass defection of the Democrat Party...

The last nail on America's coffin has been hammered while Obama and his comrades smirk over its grave....

(Reuters) - Researchers have named a newly discovered, prehistoric lizard "Obamadon gracilis" in honor of the 44th president's toothy grin. The small, insect-eating lizard was first discovered in eastern Montana in 1974, but a recent re-examination showed the fossil had been wrongly classified as a Leptochamops denticulatus and was in fact a new species, researchers told Reuters on Tuesday. Obamadon gracilis was one of nine newly discovered species reported on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In naming the new species, scientists from Yale and Harvard universities combined the Latin "Obamadon" for "Obama's teeth" and "gracilis,"...

In an interview with Fox News host Bill O´Reilly last year, President Obama claimed he "didn´t raise taxes once." O´Reilly didn´t challenge the claim, and other reporters repeated it as fact. But it was completely false. By the time he went on O´Reilly´s show, Obama had signed more than 20 tax hikes into law with a combined 10-year price tag of more than $500 billion. However, since most of these taxes targeted relatively small and unpopular groups — smokers, tanning salons, insurance companies, the rich — few seemed to notice. Indeed, a review of the tax hikes Obama has enacted...

A New Mexico couple has been warned by the federal government not to touch trash – tin cans, broken glass and the like – that has accumulated over the years on the 20 acres of desert land they bought for their retirement home near Santa Fe because it could hurt the Rio Grande River, 25 miles away. Huh? The dispute over the Obama administration’s claim to jurisdiction over desert land belonging to Peter and Francoise Smith is heading to court now. Their lawsuit alleges Washington is over-reaching in its claim that their land, which does not contain any “relatively permanent,...

For months, federal agencies and the White House have sidetracked dozens of major regulations that cover everything from power plant pollution to workplace safety to a crackdown on Wall Street. The rules had been largely put on hold during the presidential campaign as the White House sought to quiet Republican charges that President Barack Obama was an overzealous regulator who is killing U.S. jobs. But since the election, the Obama administration has quietly reopened the regulations pipeline. In recent weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rules to update water quality guidelines for beaches and other recreational waters and deal...

Since returning from a trip to southeast Asia on Nov. 21, President Obama has managed to play three rounds of golf but has met face-to-face only once with Speaker John A. Boehner, the man with whom he is trying to strike a deal on taxes and spending that could prevent another recession. With the deadline for going over the “fiscal cliff” less than three weeks away, the president’s schedule this week is exceptionally light. It does not include any time on the links with Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, who is also an avid golfer.

President Barack Obama is the most divisive man to ever occupy the White House –period! Yet, 95 percent of black Americans worship him as if he’s the messiah. Why? Actor and comedian Jamie Foxx recently took the stage at the Soul Train Awards and told the audience, “Thank God, and our lord and savior, Barack Obama!” Foxx called on the audience to stand up and clap for Obama. His outrageous remarks were broadcast on national television, yet not one nationally known black leader repudiated Foxx. Barack Obama’s ability to seduce people is well-known. He can bring his biggest critics into...

No, not Mitt Romney. Google has paid nearly nothing in taxes over the last few years: Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries. Google has sheltered about $10 billion offshore- in...

Rebel groups across Syria are defying the United States by pledging their allegiance to a group that Washington will designate today a terrorist organization for its alleged links to al-Qaeda. A total of 29 opposition groups, including fighting "brigades" and civilian committees, have signed a petition calling for mass demonstrations in support of Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist group which the White House believes is an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The petition is promoting the slogan "No to American intervention, for we are all Jabhat al-Nusra" and urges supporters to "raise the Jabhat al-Nusra flag" as a "thank you". "These...