Free Republic

Washington, D.C. – It is possible, possible, that the massive shuffling of Cabinet positions for president Obama will have a positive effect on his next four years in office. With so many people leaving the make-up of the team that led to a lot of mediocrity and divisiveness will be fundamentally altered.timothy geithner leaving obama administration Some of those changes, say Secretary of State, clearly trade one strong player for another but in other places the changeover will not be as smooth or as clearly good. There is, perhaps, no position more important in all of this than the change...

President Obama cut a video, distributed by his reelection, to reiterate his belief that the wealthiest Americans still aren’t paying their “fair share” of taxes and to outline a second-term agenda ranging from environmental policy to gun control. Obama started by celebrating the tax increases — “making our tax code more progressive than it’s been in decades,” he said — that will take place because of the fiscal cliff deal. “Obviously, there is still more to do when it comes to reducing our debt,” Obama said in the video. “And I’m willing to do more, as long as we do...

Matt Drudge is the proprieter of the world’s #1 news aggregator site, the Drudge Report, which receives tens of millions of visits every day. On his personal Twitter account he has over 160,000 followers. He is also pro-life. This is the amazing message that his followers were greeted with this morning: There will be over 3,500 killed in USA today from abortion. No flags lowered, no presidents crying. No media hyperventilating. Normal day. The post is a bold move for Drudge. His reference to “presidents crying” appears to be a pretty direct reference to President Obama’s reaction to the...

As I wrote earlier this week, the fiscal-cliff deal was mostly a win for Barack Obama, but only a temporary victory fought on one issue. By delinking the tax debate from the spending debate and keeping the debt limit out of the fiscal-cliff deal, Republicans at least allowed themselves the chance to fight another day for spending cuts and entitlement reform. Whether they can successfully negotiate real reform is another question, of course, but even Obama's former OMB director acknowledges that the White House now has significantly less leverage to prevent budget reform now that taxes are off the table....

Eileen Norcross of Mercatus wrote an excellent article for American Spectator where she says: “On his blog, Confounded Interest, GMU finance professor Anthony Sanders dryly notes that the American Taxpayer Relief Act does nothing of the sort. As he puts it, “How is adding $4 trilion to the federal deficit in 10 years called, ‘relief’?”” I winced at “dryly” but her “Notes on the Cliff” is a must read. Calling the bill “The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012” is laughable. Not just the $4 trillion in Federal deficits to be added (which future taxpayers have to pay), but the...

“Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action…” ... Aristotle You’d think ole “Ari” might have been peering through some sort of cosmic window into modern day America some 2300 years ago with comments such as those above. There’s another way to look at it, as well. One can grudgingly admit that the Greeks, of 2300 years ago, were smarter than modern Americans. In my estimation—you’d...

Backing down on a threatened veto, President Obama has signed into law a $633.3 billion defense bill with an attached a statement in which he serves notice to Congress that he’ll interpret the law as he sees fit on issues ranging from the transfer of terrorism detainees to objections of military chaplains against the new policy on gay service members. Mr. Obama said in a “signing statement” late Wednesday that he agrees with the “vast majority” of provisions in the 680-page law. But he added, “I do not agree with them all.” He earlier had issued a veto threat to...

With Benghazi still burning in the rear-view mirror of its wobbly foreign policy, the Obama administration is set to ship the Islamic Brotherhood government of Egypt 10 F16 fighter jets and 200 Abrams tanks and charge it to U.S. taxpayers... ...the Islamic Brotherhood is not a U.S. ally. Nevertheless, the Obama administration is prepared to arm them to the teeth with cutting-edge tanks and planes

Thank God, we finally have the fiscal cliff behind us. President Obama finally got his highly-touted tax increase, the one that is supposed to make the rich pay their fair share and help reduce the budget deficit. Conservatives aren't exactly happy about that, but we did manage to make the majority of the Bush tax cuts permanent, so that may count for something. As for the tax increases reducing the deficit, National Review Online has a well-written piece that debunks that myth, but most of us already knew how false it was. Even though most conservatives are not happy with...

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“But resist we much… we must… and we will much… about… that… be committed.”That was Al Sharpton’s eloquence-challenged statement against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s campaign to get a grip on outrageous union costs to the state’s economy. For some reason, that unfortunate stumble has been echoing in my head lately, even though it has been almost a year and half since Sharpton said it. Resist, we much! What else can we do at this point but resist? It is astonishing to watch your country fall. It is a gut-twisting, sickening thing to see craven cowards (redundant, perhaps, but true) in...

Taxes: Anyone who thinks the fiscal cliff deal will end President Obama's soak-the-rich campaign isn't paying attention. Even before the ink had dried on his $620 billion tax hike, Obama was talking up his desire for more. Obama hinted at this on Sunday on "Meet the Press," when he told David Gregory that "you are not only going to cut your way to prosperity" and that "one of the fallacies" was that "deficit reduction is only a matter of cutting programs." But as the fiscal cliff agreement looked increasingly likely, Obama started talking more specifically about additional tax hikes.

Stick To Your Guns Justin Giles, Sergeant US Marine Corps (former) Imagine you are walking through the woods on a dark cloudy night. You are startled by a vicious, snarling beast concealed in the blackness. Not knowing what else to do you scramble up a tree, afraid and unsure what to do next. This is a natural human response to an encounter with an unknown foe. Because of this weak human tendency, military commanders throughout history have studied their potential enemies in minute detail. One man who understood this well was 6th Century B.C. Chinese General Sun Tzu.“It is said...

In this powerful documentary produced by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (http://jpfo.org), you will learn how governments have historically deprived people of firearms ... and then wiped them from the face of the earth. This is the true story of Gun control from around the world, especially in the 20th century. It details how governments have ALWAYS BEEN the biggest threat to the safety, security and prosperity of the people. While Americans can see how this could happen in other countries, most can't EVER imaging it being able to happen here because there are so many rights guaranteed...

The national debate over gun control may have been pushed to the back burner in favor of the “fiscal cliff” battle, but President Obama remains committed to confronting the issue no matter the resistance from gun owners and the National Rifle Association. In a rare appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mr. Obama expressed strong support for a reinstatement of the federal ban on assault weapons, outlawing high-capacity clips and a better system of background checks for those seeking to buy firearms. He’s long supported those ideas, as have many Democrats, but the mass shooting at Sandy Hook...

A federal judge in Manhattan refused on Wednesday to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret,” she wrote. “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not...

Certain parties may be taking more political heat than others, but I think it's safe to say that nobody but nobody is going to walk away from the fiscal cliff deal completely unscathed --- and we only have even more similarly piddling but surely melodramatic standoffs on deck for the near future. Ergo, no doubt the White House will be eager to have a few bright-'n-shiny political items on hand with which to tout President Obama's go-gettin', even-handed know-how. It would be a darn shame to miss the chance to lament what amazing victories President Obama could achieve, if only...

Speaking at a campaign event on September 22, 2008: "I'll make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people's business. As Justice Louis Brandeis once said, sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. As President, I will make it impossible for Congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork-barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one is looking because when I am president, meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. No more secrecy."

As reported here Attorney Larry Klayman filed a motion seeking an emergency rehearing in the Florida electoral challenge. The case was originally dismissed last month by Judge Kevin Carroll. On Monday Klayman filed a notice of newly discovered case authority that shows the Florida court has jurisdiction to rule on Obama's eligibility and fraud. EXCERPT: NOTICE OF NEWLY FOUND CASE AUTHORITY AND SUPPLEMENT TO MOTION FOR REHEARING Plaintiff Michael Voeltz, by and through his undersigned counsel, hereby files this Notice of Newly Found Case Authority and Supplement to Motion For Rehearing. In conducting further research, Plaintiff has come across the...

President Barack Obama will go for immigration reform and gun control this month, the White House tells the left-leaning Huffington Post. Obama's actions will reportedly be done "quickly." Obama glowing "An Obama administration official said the president plans to push for immigration reform this January. The official, who spoke about legislative plans only on condition of anonymity, said that coming standoffs over deficit reduction are unlikely to drain momentum from other priorities. The White House plans to push forward quickly, not just on immigration reform but gun control laws as well," reports the Huffington Post.