Free Republic

(WMC-TV) – A former Boy Scout leader has been indicted, accused of molesting young boys. For the first time, an alleged victim's mother has issued a warning. MOREAdditional Links Details of William Todd Brewer's indictment were made public Monday after Brewer was served on Friday. Now we're hearing from the mother of one of the alleged victims in court documents. When former Boy Scout leader William Todd Brewer was arrested for sexual battery last July, one mother didn't want to think about what may have gone on inside Brewer's Senatobia rental home with her then 13-year-old son. "I would tell...

The reputed gang member accused of gunning down 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton last month was on the street even though he had been arrested three times in connection with break-ins and trespassing while on probation for a weapons conviction in recent months, the Tribune has learned. In two of those arrests, including one just 2 1/2 months ago, Cook County probation officials failed to notify prosecutors or the judge that Michael Ward had been arrested on the new misdemeanor charges and allegedly violated his probation.

Last week we noted that President Barack Obama has become America’s lawbreaker-in-Chief and few actions exemplify Obama’s propensity for ignoring the will of the people as expressed by the laws Congress passes than his recent executive orders and actions on same sex marriage and federal benefits for same sex couples. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) blocks the federal government from extending spousal benefits to same sex couples. However, on Monday, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expanded a list of benefits to the same sex spouses of service members as well as to the unmarried partners of homosexual service members....

Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of. "Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline." "Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."...

Fraud and abuse grow after subsidized telephone program expands A federal program subsidizing phones for the poor increased from 6.8 million to 18 million recipients from 2008 — the year it was expanded to include cell phones — to May 2012. And fraud and abuse from the expansion have been far more extensive than expected, to the extent that tougher enforcement of long-existing rules is projected to bring in enough money to finance the expansion of the program to provide low-income users with free Internet service, according to the Federal Communications Commission report released last week. Up to 15 percent...

I haven't been able to pilfer an advance copy of the president's State of the Union address, but I hereby offer some guesses as to what he'll say tonight. The president will assert, against the evidence, that the state of our union is strong. He will boast that during his first term, we averted another great depression, achieved history-making reforms of health care and banking, saved the auto industry and began to conclude two wars. He will caution though, that we face great challenges. Obama will acknowledge that our economy is not as vibrant as it could be and will...

Until recently, we knew little about the evolution, life and death of skeet. A recent article now fills that great void. A scholarly treatise by Mr. Gary Abernathy, publisher of The Times-Gazette in Hillsboro, Ohio, deals with the evolution of skeet culminating in their short and pitiful lives and violent deaths. It seemed necessary to post a link and an excerpt here as quickly as possible because of the great but previously unsatisfied longing for reliable information on the subject. I do so despite my concern that it may detract from the attention otherwise likely to be paid to President...

President Obama must have been stunned at the "audacity" of Dr. Benjamin Carson in challenging his core assumptions right to his face in front of thousands of people at the National Prayer Breakfast. Obama is not used to being challenged, especially in public, even if indirectly and without being specifically named. From the look on his face, it was obvious Obama was none too pleased with Carson's message or with his "presumptuousness" in presenting it in that forum, while he had to sit still and -- remain silent. I think we can best understand Carson's message in light of his...

"Oh, Lord, give me strength to survive the current, the hindsight to respect the formers and the sense to know the difference."

UPDATED: See Important Poll Below Our political partisanship has become so predictable that the response to the official  response to the speech that Big Guy won’t deliver until tonight is already on the wires: In preparation for President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the Democratic National Committee on Monday gathered lawmakers for a conference call with reporters to offer a “prebuttal” to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s not-yet-delivered Republican rebuttal to Obama’s not-yet-delivered national address. Just as Obama's speech and Rubio's response will likely be full of focus-grouped buzzwords, the Democratic prebuttal contained typical partisan rhetoric...

Barack Obama has a habit of identifying a supposed crisis in collective morality, damning the straw men “them” who engage in such ethical lapses, soaring with rhetorical bromides — and then, to national quiet, doing more or less the exact things he once swore were ruining the country. Washington will always be a city of hypocrisies, as one would expect when astronomical amounts of money and political power collide. What is striking about the recent disclosures about Obama’s tenure is not that his embarrassments are all that different from embarrassments of other administrations, but that they are at odds entirely...

Israel is finishing the preparations for United States President Barack Obama’s planned visit in March. Plans for Obama’s visit include a trip to Yad Vashem and to Rabin’s grave, and dinners with Netanyahu and Peres. Obama will apparently not speak in the Knesset. His staff has requested that the venue chosen for his speech be large enough for a crowd of 1,000 Israeli citizens, which the Knesset is not. Instead, Obama may speak at the Binyanei Hauma conference center in central Jerusalem. His trip will begin with an official state welcoming at the airport, complete with a red carpet and...

Sequester: In his State of the Union speech, President Obama is sure to issue dire warnings about the automatic spending cuts resulting from the "sequester." But look closer, and the cuts are far less than meet the eye. As the March deadline for the sequester draws closer, Obama's rhetoric about the cuts it will impose grows more overheated. In his radio address over the weekend, he said they would be "a huge blow to middle-class families and our economy as a whole."

No presidency is complete without a constitutional crisis, real or imagined. Political critics claimed George W. Bush committed a string of high crimes and misdemeanors, from the Iraq war, to torture, to illegal wiretaps. Bill Clinton’s impeachment was not over his horn dogging, but his mendacities regarding said activities. Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages. Richard Nixon resigned over his involvement in the Watergate cover up when he forgot the president is not above the law. And, really, doesn’t every constitutional crisis start with a president believing the Constitution is a list of suggestions best left for others to follow?...

He's gutted their healthcare, plans to cut their pay and apparently, doesn't trust them either. David Codrea over at Gun Rights Examiner points out that Marines marching in President Obama's second inaugural parade recently were caring rifles without bolts, meaning they were removed.

Full Title:The newly released “ObamaCare Survival Guide” has rocketed to the No. 2 spot on The New York Times’ bestseller list for advice-giving paperbacks. This remarkable ascendance comes just one week after the book first made The New York Times bestseller list. The first comprehensive and easy-to-read road map on the 2,700-page, the “ObamaCare Survival Guide: The Affordable Care Act and What It Means for You and Your Healthcare," has already made Amazon #1 bestseller status in multiple categories with more than 150,000 copies sold.

The U.S. government spent about $2.2 billion last year to provide phones to low-income Americans, but a Wall Street Journal review of the program shows that a large number of those who received the phones haven't proved they are eligible to receive them.

DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: There are a group of people who would like to silence everybody and have everybody go along to get along, but that's not going to be very helpful for us in the long run, in terms of solving our problems. And somebody has to be courageous enough to actually stand up to, you know, the bullies.

Harvard Law School was embarrassed recently when one of its graduates, the putative President of the United States, demonstrated that he was unaware that the supreme Court has constitutional authority to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. And after reading a recent paper by Harvard law professor Einer Elhauge, one wonders whether the academic standards (or is it the moral standards?) of that once great school have collapsed. Professor Elhauge says in “If Health Insurance Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Why Did the Founding Fathers Back Them?” (The New Republic, April 13, 2012), that Congress may force us to buy health insurance...

"Take your DACA and shove it!" - by John HillStand With Arizona Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says she won't change her mind and allow illegal aliens granted administrative amnesty by President Barack Obama to get driver's licenses. And a court ruling last week has strengthened her case in doing so. Brewer's comments Monday came after she was asked if she would change her mind following a January "clarification" by the Department of Homeland Security. That memo says illegal aliens granted "deferred action'' status ("Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals", or DACA) are "legally in the country". Brewer says that didn't impress her...