Free Republic

Any doubt that Mitt Romney would win the Republican nomination vanished when Rick Santorum left the race. It also marked the end of Romney’s time as the defining figure in the overall contest for the White House. The GOP nomination process was seen by many as a competition between Romney and an entertaining cast of I’m Not Mitt challengers. Questions were raised about Romney’s perceived weaknesses and whether he could win over the hearts and votes of conservatives. But now President Barack Obama moves to center stage and becomes the defining figure of the general election campaign. Now it’s about...

A U.S. lawmaker says a "significant number" of Secret Service agents involved in an alleged prostitution scandal at an international summit brought women back to their hotel rooms before President Barack Obama arrived in Colombia.

-snip- “There are people who willingly went to prostitutes and other people who ended up with prostitutes,” the official said. “Either way, it’s just unacceptable.” Specifically, the official said, on Wednesday night an agent is believed to have taken a Colombian woman back to his hotel room and had then thrown her out in a dispute over money; investigators are trying to figure out whether the agent knew that she had intended to be paid. The woman apparently began causing a disturbance in the hallway, eventually bringing other Secret Service agents — as well as a small number of law...

The Presidential election if still seven months away, but so many people are concerned about where the economy is going and what that could mean for you and your family. From the economy to health care, News 4’s Larry Conners sat down with President Obama and asked some tough questions.

President Obama has issued an Executive Order establishing an interagency working group to coordinate Administration policy efforts to support “safe and responsible” development of unconventional domestic natural gas and associated infrastructure. This would include coordination of policies on fracking.

CARTAGENA, Colombia — President Barack Obama says legalizing drug use is not the answer to trafficking in illegal narcotics in the Americas, countering a growing chorus in Latin America to discuss decriminalization as a way to ease deadly cartel violence. Obama says he is open to having a debate about legalization but he doesn't believe it will lead to an agreement to legalize drugs.

HBO's Bill Maher weighs in on the Hilary Rosen controversy, dismissing it as a "non-consequential," meaningless controversy. Maher also says Ann Romney "has never gotten her ass out of the house to work." "The language here was, perhaps, inartful, or perhaps America is a society that lives to fight stupid, non-consequential, meaningless controversies and this is the new one," Bill Maher said during the panel portion of his HBO show "Real Time," last night. "But what she meant to say, I think, was that Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house to work. No one is...

Hilary Rosen is a frequent visitor to the White House. According to White House visitor logs, she has visited the president's home 35 times since he took office, but on Thursday, Press Secretary Jay Carney did his best to distance President Obama from Rosen because of her remarks about Mitt Romney's wife, Ann. Carney's claim that he knows three Hilary Rosens was a feeble attempt to defuse a ticking time bomb. Rosslyn Smith had an interesting blog in Thursday's American Thinker in which she said: Let us count the Hilary Rosens in Jay Carney's world. There is Hilary Rosen spokesperson...

Thirty four (34) is the number of Legislatures from the several States necessary to call a States Convention or a Constitutional Convention. This also known as an Article Five(5) Convention, or a Convention to Amend the U.S. Constitution. With fifty (50) States in the U.S. Federal Compact today, thirty four (34) is the Constitutional number of legislatures from the several States needed to cross the threshold for such a convention. Let's look at Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution : "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on...

Why are taxes so much higher in Europe, consuming 46 percent of economic output compared to 32 percent of GDP in America? Is it because nations such as France, Greece, and Sweden have adopted the kind of class-warfare policies that Obama wants for the United States? Surprisingly, the answer is no.As explained by Veronique de Rugy, the United States actually has a more “progressive” tax code than European nations. The corporate tax rate is higher in the United States than in any European country, and the double taxation of dividends and capital gains also is far above the European average....

MSNBC's Chuck Todd reflected on the misadventures of the Obama administration this week.

In researching Island Turtle’s article on the folly of President Obama’s agreement to buy the same horse twice (actually the third or fourth time is more accurate) with his 240 kilotons of food, for 8 months of good behavior (until the election) by Kim Jong-un, I was bowled over by the obsequious praise of The One by NY Times readers. It took only two weeks for young Kim to announce he was breaking the deal and 6 weeks to launch the rocket which ended in failure. And it now appears he will detonate a nuclear weapon to add an exclamation...

Secret Service agents sent to Colombia ahead of President Barack Obama were relieved of duty and returned home amid allegations of misconduct, a spokesman said. -snip- One of the agents did not pay one of the prostitutes, and she complained to the police," Kessler said. Calling it "clearly the biggest scandal in Secret Service history," Kessler said 12 agents are accused of involvement in the incident "in one degree or another," from allegedly interfering in the investigation to participating in other alleged misconduct.

Last February THOUSANDS of Tea Party Patriots turned out in Madison, Wisconsin, in support of Republican Governor Scott Walker. It was an amazing turnout considering the Saturday rally was only announced on Friday morning. The tea party patriots filled the state capital grounds from the steps to the street over 100 yards back. There were so many Walker supporters there that you couldn’t hear the speakers from the stage in the back of the crowd. Today we’re doing it again… Show Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker that he has support by coming out to the Wisconsin Tax Day Rally at the...

President Obama used his weekly address to continue pressuring lawmakers to pass his "Buffett Rule” proposal, saying the measure would make the tax code more fair and help fund needed investments to grow the economy. "As many Americans rush to file their taxes this weekend, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve got a tax system that doesn’t always uphold the principle of everyone doing their part," Obama said in the address posted online Saturday. "This is not just about fairness, this is also about growth,” he added. “It’s about being able to make the investments we need to strengthen...

CARTAGENA, Colombia—The Secret Service is investigating allegations that one or more agents on President Barack Obama's security detail to Colombia were involved with prostitution, a person familiar with the matter said Friday. An unspecified number of agents have been sent home and are being replaced by other Secret Service personnel, the agency said in a statement.

Unrest is simmering in some quarters of the Washington news universe regarding changes in the way the Department of Labor (DOL) manages its pre-release media “lockups” on sensitive data like weekly jobless benefits and unemployment. For years, journalists participating in the lockups have shown up at DOL at the appointed time, then entered a limited-access area to receive the new data and prepare news stories for release as soon as official embargoes end. The system insures that major news organizations get the data as soon as possible and allows journalists covering the release get a jump on providing analyses and...

President Obama and his wife, Michele, gave a total of $48,000 in tax-free gifts to their daughters, according to tax records made public on Friday. The president and his wife separately gave each daughter a $12,000 gift under a section of the federal tax code that exempts such donations from federal taxes. There is nothing illegal about the president’s taking advantage of this tax shelter, but it does raise eyebrows given that he has lamented the myriad tax exemptions used by the wealthy—“millionaires and billionaires” like himself—to pay less in taxes. He has yet to propose a comprehensive plan to...

The Obama Record: When Vladimir I. Lenin sought to remake Russian society into a "proletariats' paradise," he targeted three sectors for control: health care, banking and education. Sound familiar? Of these three, however, Lenin viewed socialized medicine as the "keystone" to building his socialist utopia. The Bolshevik leader told the Russian people everybody would be able to afford going to the doctor, not just the "greedy rich." He also claimed centralized control of the medical industry would "reduce costs" and end the "waste" from "unnecessary duplication and parallelism" in a competitive market. In 1918, the USSR became the first nation...

In the end, free societies get the governments they deserve. So, if the American people wish to choose their chief executive on the basis of the "war on women," the Republican theocrats' confiscation of your contraceptives or whatever other mangy and emaciated rabbit the Great Magician produces from his threadbare topper, they are free to do so, and they will live with the consequences. This week's bit of ham-handed misdirection was "the Buffett Rule," a not-so-disguised capital-gains tax hike designed to ensure that Warren Buffett pays as much tax as his secretary. If the alleged Sage of Omaha is as...