Free Republic

Associated Press CANTON, Ohio— A former top Romanian spy who defected to the United States in the 1970s has endorsed a U.S. House candidate in the closely watched race for Ohio's 16th Congressional District. Ion Mihai "Mike" Pacepa, now an American citizen, is backing conservative Republican Paul Schiffer because he believes Democrats are turning America into a socialist dictatorship like the one he escaped. Pacepa's longtime translator, Wayne Barnes, confirmed the endorsement after Schiffer's campaign released it.

For Release: January 5, 2010 Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org or Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org Spying on Icebergs Instead of Terrorists?Obama Program Diverts Intelligence Assets to Climate Research Washington, DC - As terrorists continue to infiltrate America, the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation's most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming.Experts with The National Center for Public Policy Research are decrying this practice as a distraction from important counterterrorism duties.  They further question if it is a possible avenue to renew climate change subterfuge...

Paul Sims, of the Starkville Daily News, reported from the Starkville Rotary Club meeting on comments from Professor W. Martin Wiseman director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. Could Gov. Haley Barbour share the Republican ticket with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in the 2012 presidential election? It’s a theory Mississippi State University political science professor Marty Wiseman suggested to Starkville Rotary Club members as he spoke to them Monday. [...]

NEW YORK (Commodity Online): In 2009, what was the most interesting and valuable proposal from billionaire global investor George Soros? Soros made a passionate plea for clean tech sector, saying that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should part with its gold reserves to promote carbon cutting projects in the developing countries. George Soros’ comments have invited criticism and applause. But will his suggestion that IMF should dispose of some $100 billion out of its gold reserves to spend on green loans in carbon-cutting projects to the developing countries come true in 2010? What promoted George Soros to come out with...

Fur-Free, Fabulous And Fuming: White House Objects To PETA's Image of Michelle Obama In New Anti-Fur Ad January 5, 2010 [Pic in URL] People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals certainly meant it as a compliment when the group called First Lady Michelle Obama "Fur-Free and Fabulous" in its latest ad campaign. But the group's intentions apparently don't matter much to the White House, which says Mrs. Obama's image was used by PETA without her permission. The ad, which features the first lady alongside Oprah Winfrey, Tyra Banks and Carrie Underwood -- all famous women who have refused to wear...

President Obama’s team has scared the nation over the past week with pronouncements so crazy they leave you breathless. But worse still are the decisions they’ve made, decisions that show America is in danger, and that those charged with protecting us are failing to treat this life-and-death struggle as the war that it really is. First, after a terrorist attack was thwarted only by a detonation malfunction and brave airline passengers, a blissfully-clueless Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told an incredulous nation that our “system worked.” That comment was so absurd that no further comment is necessary. She should have...

Pressure On Barack Obama To Reveal What Britain Said About Detroit Bomber Barack Obama is under pressure to disclose what information MI5 passed to the American authorities about the Detroit bomber after Downing Street disclosed that a file had been "shared" with the CIA in 2008. Robert Winnett, Toby Harnden and Duncan Gardham 05 Jan 2010 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab Photo: EPA After initially denying that they had received British intelligence, senior American sources confirmed last night that they were "reviewing" what British information had been received on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The admission is embarrassing for the White House and threatens...

The Boy screwed up but points fingers at all others who screwed up. And so America “dodged” another calamity by the skin of its inept Oval Office occupant and criminal-stained shadow government of amateurs spinning the country.

I Know What Keeps Obama Awake at Night Submitted by madhedgefundtrader on 01/04/2010 09:14 -0500 While Obama relaxes in Hawaii, sipping Mai Tai’s adorned with little umbrellas and hooking up with distant relatives, a potential nightmare is giving him sleepless nights. Let’s say we spend our $2 trillion in stimulus and get a couple of quarters of decent growth. The “V” is in. Then once the effects of record government spending wear off, we slip back into a deep recession, setting up a classic “W.” Unemployment never does stop climbing, reaching 15% by year end, and 25% when you throw...

WASHINGTON – As part of a slew of new and drastic airport security measures unveiled today, pResident Barack Obama made the swift move of replacing Janet Naplolitano as head of Homeland Security with the NBA’s empty pistol packing Gilbert Arenas. “When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives on Christmas Day, the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way,” the pResident said, “and that is why I have decided to take bold action and replace Mr. … I mean … Ms. Napolitano with Gilbert Arenas.”

In a big speech today, the POTUS cited "unacceptable" failures in the American intelligence system that allowed an accused terrorist to board a U.S.-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, and promised changes to avert future plots. He also said that officials in some unnamed federal agencies have taken "responsibility for what went wrong" in their operations while avoiding blame for any one individual or department in particular. He said of the slip-ups "That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it," Obama said. "We have to do better, and we will do better. And we have to do it...

Don’t be fooled by the tougher talk coming out of the mouth of our president the past few days. In Obamaland, the rhetoric may be laced with a little more acid – a little more, mind you – but it’s still the same pacifist president running the show. Obama needs to learn that what he does will impress us more than what he says. Consider the way Obama danced around calling would-be plane bomber Abdul Mutallab a terrorist. The first time he spoke about the incident – three days after it happened – the president kept using careful wordage (“alleged...

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and...

Barack Obama has been compared to almost every American President of the last hundred years--favorably to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan; and unfavorably to Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. I want to put another name in the hat: Herbert Hoover. It might seem ludicrous, or unfair, to compare Obama to one of the most vilified presidents of the last century, but that’s because Hoover’s reputation is largely, or at least somewhat, undeserved--the product of Democratic attacks and Hoover’s own strident responses to these attacks. To his contemporaries, Hoover had been the American most suited to be...

With enactment of their policies, liberals never fail to accomplish the opposite of their stated goal. It’s been said before, and here’s more proof. Richard Cloward and Frances Piven are known for their strategy to overwhelm the welfare state with impossible demands in order to establish a crisis that would eventually bring down the entire government. At the point of collapse, an imaginary “better” government would be able to take over. Of course, their agenda was nothing more than another leftist scheme to establish a utopia… So they activated themselves and trained many underlings—one of whom now occupies the White...

January 04, 2010, 0:00 a.m. Will the American People Finally Revolt?Federal indulgence and incompetence are too vast to catalogue. By Deroy Murdock Where is Nelson Mandela when we need him? In an especially memorable moment in Clint Eastwood’s fine new film Invictus, South Africa’s first black president (exquisitely portrayed by Morgan Freeman) inspects his first official paycheck. “This is terrible,� Mandela says. He decides he earns too much money and subsequently donates a third of his salary to charity. Thus was born the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. Mandela’s humility and fiscal restraint would be as exotic in the nation’s...

The March of bad news for the Democratic party continuances. On Sunday Rasmussen reported the number of people identifying themselves as Democrats was at a seven year low and that drop has happened every since Barack Obama was elected. Currently, 35.5% of American adults still admit that they are Democrats. It is still 1.5% more than the GOP but last December the number was. That’s down from 36.0 a month ago and from 37.8% in October. Last December the numbers were 41.6% for the Democrats and 32.8% for the GOP an 8.8% difference. Growing faster than the republicans are the...

Iran denies entry to Sen. Kerry By Bridget Johnson - 01/03/10 01:48 PM ET Iranian legislators on Sunday decided to not allow a visit from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), according to Iranian media. "Members of the Iranian parliament's Foreign Relations Committee (a subcommittee of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission) voiced opposition to the request after studying the issue," Hassan Ebrahimi, head of the committee, told the semi-official Fars News Agency. Several Iranian news outlets reported last week that Kerry had submitted an official request to visit Tehran in an emissary role. Kerry spokesman...

Donald Young,Nathan(Nate)Spencer and Larry Bland were members of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago,Ill. Donald Young "grew up" in TUCC under the auspices of Rev.J.Wright and eventually became ChoirMaster he was murdered point blank with a bullet to the back of his head the Chicago CI Division to the best of my knowledge has SHELVED the investigation for a later date.

In his breakthrough 1973 smash, Charlie Rich crooned memorably: "No one knows what goes on behind closed doors." But he also expressed his gratitude that behind closed doors his gal made him glad that he's a man. In other words, he gave us a pretty good idea what was going on behind closed doors. Andrew Malcolm reports that the Democrats are going (behind closed doors) to cobble together the final Obamacare bill that they intend to ram through Congress without needless procedural detours. Today C-SPAN's Brian Lamb wrote a letter to the leaders of Congress asking them to allow cameras...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin railed against President Obama today, saying "his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed" and that "the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor." The same day the president met with his national security team to discuss the security reviews he ordered after the alleged attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas Day, Palin posted a note on Facebook criticizing the administration's response to the event. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly attempted to blow up the plane headed for Detroit, Mich., "is an enemy of the United...

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress's powers to tax and spend do not apply because the mandate neither taxes nor spends. The only other option is Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. Congress has many times stretched this power to the breaking point, exceeding even the expanded version of the commerce power established by the...

Blog for Iowa stumbled upon an interesting video Monday that features, among others, Republican strategist and Johnson County Supervisor candidate Lori Cardella donning a Catholic school girl outfit and singing a song bashing President Barack Obama. In September, a video clip of school children singing a song praising President Obama became public, and conservatives became outraged. Apparently, a school teacher had some kids sing a song praising the country’s first black president for Black History Month, something many conservatives decried as “socialist indoctrination.” The new clip, which was uploaded in November by the conservative blog Coralville Courier, features five women...

A photograph circulating on the Internet has raised new questions about the officially accepted account of President Obama's birth and early childhood. The photo shows Barack Obama Sr. at a dock, apparently arriving in Hawaii in 1959, welcomed by Stanley Dunham without his daughter, Ann Dunham. The photo raises the question whether Barack Obama Sr. had a connection to Stanley Dunham before Ann Dunham supposedly met him in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii. Undated photo shows Barack Obama Sr., with leis, and Stanley Dunham, immediate right, President Obama's grandfatherBarack Obama Jr. admitted in his autobiography "Dreams...

Former High Ranking Soviet Spy Warns of Dem’s Marxist Reshaping of America Tuesday, January 5, 2010, 11:44 AM Red Horizons Ion Mihai Pacepa, who wrote about the brutal Romanian Marxist Nicolae Ceausescus, fears the Marxism invading our shores.As democrats continue their backroom deals and billion dollar buyoffs to reshape the American economy and culture a former high-ranking Soviet spy sent out a warning this week on the dangerous Marxist policies of the majority party. Christian News Wire reported, via Transsylvania Phoenix: The highest-ranking Soviet and Eastern Bloc Intelligence Official ever to defect to America (in 1978) — who went on...

Peter Schiff predicts a recession worse than the one we just came out of, due to Obama's stimulus. Furthermore, he points out that Ben Bernanke didn't see the housing buble, and that the Fed caused the recession that we are still in/just coming out of.

Some Tea Party activists from across the country are planning a 'national strike' on January 20, the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's inauguration. The idea of holding an economic protest sprung up during the holidays as the result of a conference call held by various Tea Party group leaders, according to Allen Hardage, a conservative grassroots organizer from Georgia. Hardage says the idea of the one-day strike is to focus attention on the businesses that support the most liberal members of Congress as well as groups that advocate "big government" policies.

America Held Hostage- the Obama Files... With a hattip to Rush ( His idea during the Clinton plague upon America ) I am starting a file on “The One,” mostly starting from the election date. Older stuff- links, quotes, quips, and sometimes pointed graphics can be found by scrolling back from these two posts: -Hillary Clinton- archives, comments, and opposition research---Sarah Palin- links, from the beginning--There is some good material in those posts that raises a lot of uncomfortable questions that everyone ought to be asking, and probably will once the “new” wears off, and we are stuck with four...

I just watched Obama's speech about the Christmas day bomber. He did not use the eye level teleprompters. I also noticed that he did not use them for the speeches he gave from Hawaii. He appeared to be using a prompter in the podium. You could see him looking down to read but he did not turn any pages. I assume that he has taken so much grief (and rightly so) for his teleprompter that he is trying to change. He is not doing a good job. His looking down to read makes him loose eye contact with the audience....

Fat chance of Dems letting the public see what really goes on behind closed doors!The Washington Times reports that Democrats are planning to circumvent normal legislative procedure and hold the conference to reconcile House and Senate versions of the health care bill in secret. This won't surprise anyone as Dems have negotiated so much of this and other bills in secret. On December 30, Brian Lamb, CEO of C-Span sent this letter (PDF) to leaders of both houses of Congress asking that they live up to Obama's pledge: "President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and...

President Obama's freshman-year foreign policy was the worst in living memory. At the dawn of 2010, the United States finds itself noticeably weaker in international affairs than it was when Mr. Obama took office, and there are no signs of improvement in the year ahead. Mr. Obama was elected with almost no national security experience, but he counted on two principle sources of leverage on the world stage: his personal charisma and the fact that he was not George W. Bush. The year began with much swagger and self-assurance, but the result was a foreign policy with the naive enthusiasm...

WASHINGTON -- First it was delu sion. Now it is denial. Let's just hope the Obama administration works through this vexing 12-step program they're in before al Qaeda decides to launch another attack. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano assured us that the "system worked" when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly blew up an American jetliner on Christmas Day with a bomb smuggled in his loin. And just when you thought "Big Sis" had easily retired the award for Biggest Turkey in the Global War on Terror, up steps John Brennan.

The narcissist-in-chief thinks of no one except himself. His body language reveals as much.

President Obama to speak about national security: Watch live

Government employees are about to get screwed on their pensions. The money isn't there to pay out. They'll tax the rest of us , but there are many, many other government priorities for the tax money. Government-employee pension benefits are going to be cut. According to the chairman of New Jersey’s pension fund, the US public pension system faces a higher-than-expected shortfall of more than $2 trillion. State and local governments are correctly perceived to be in serious difficulty,” Orin Kramer told the Financial Times. “If you factor in the reality of these unfunded promises, their deficits will rise exponentially.”...

President Obama has yet again summoned Democrats from House and Senate leadership to the White House to determine their final strategy to pass some bill that reconciles the disparate healthcare “reform” measures passed by each congressional body. Republicans were not invited to today’s meeting. Among those expected at the White House either in person or by teleconference are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). If the majority leadership cannot agree to try to strong-arm the Senate-passed bill through the House without changes...

Black men in TN have hard time finding jobs, Stiff competition hurts their odds... pushing for a local green jobs training program.

Now it turns out that there was a third uninvited guest at the White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, this one a member of the Indian delegation. It was enough of a shock that the would-be stars Tareq and Michaele Salahi had crashed. But a third? The Salahi story may have been delicious, but the implications of the appalling breach of security are immense. The president could have been assassinated. And had that happened, the Office of the White House Social Secretary would have been as culpable as the Secret Service. One of the first lessons...

Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not...

Appointee to the Commerce Department has ties to gay activist groups. Amanda Simpson, a former test pilot for Raytheon, has been named to the Bureau of Industry and Security as Senior Technical Advisor by President Barack Obama. Simpson, who now identifies as a female, was nominated by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE). In a news release from NCTE, Simpson expressed hope to "soon be one of hundreds (of transgender presidential appointees)." "Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama administration?" asked Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth. "How far does this politics of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The fur is flying over a new ad campaign by an animal rights group the White House says is using first lady Michelle Obama's image without her permission. The president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ingrid Newkirk, said her organization wouldn't have sought Mrs. Obama's consent for the anti-fur ad because it knows that she can't make such an endorsement.

Recovery.gov, the Obama administration’s supposedly transparent attempt to let citizens know how every dollar of the $787 billion stimulus package was spent, is turning out to be a lot more comic fiction than fact. Not only have fake jobs been reported in phantom congressional districts, Steve Allen Adams of NewMexicoWatchdog.org discovered that some of the $27 million of federal money his state received also went to nonexistent zip codes: http://newmexico.watchdog.org/2010/01/03/federal-stimulus-funds-reportedly-spent-in-nonexistent-zip-codes/ “Closer examination of the latest recovery.gov report for New Mexico shows hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to and credited with creating jobs in zip codes that do not exist...

Digital News Report – Besides collecting taxes and going after tax cheats, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will be going after Americans who do not purchase private health insurance. The new health care legislation being debated in Congress will put the IRS in charge of making sure Americans purchase a health insurance policy. Those who don’t pay will be penalized because all Americans will be forced to purchase a policy. Besides making sure citizens do buy insurance, the IRS will assess penalties on those who do not. They will also collect new fees from businesses and oversee enforcement. Already understaffed...

The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests. The collaboration restarts an effort the Bush administration shut down and has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like...

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

On Jan 4th, 2010 at 9am I have thousands of patriots that are demanding Beck answer why this matter is being banned from his show and Fox news entirely. This is called Operation “FLOOD IT” We will all call (888) 727-2325 and demand to know: Why there are pending lawsuits in the courts and Fox news is not talking about them? Why have the lawyers and plaintiffs never appeared ONCE on Fox News? Why is Fox News protecting Obama with this issue? Why did Fox News hide this story PRIOR to the 2008 election? Why are the Fox viewers not...

The White House has accused Downing Street of making a mistake over allegations that Britain told American intelligence agents more than a year ago that the Detroit bomber had links to extremists. The Prime Minister's spokesman had indicated that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was named in a file of people based in Britain who had made contact with radical Muslim preachers. The file was said to have been sent to the US authorities in 2008. However, White House sources disputed the Downing Street account, stating that it was a mistake and no such intelligence information was passed by Britain before the...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will not resume talks with Israel, suspended for the past year, until it halts all settlement activity in line with a 2003 peace plan in which the Palestinians pledged to rein in militants. Israel and the United States have called on him to return to negotiations without preconditions. "As far as the municipality is concerned, building can begin," said Stephan Miller, spokesman for Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, after its planning committee gave the go-ahead on Monday for the 24-unit complex to be erected on the Mount of Olives. Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman...

<p>WASHINGTON - House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass the traditional joint conference committee when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said yesterday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and limit their ability to force votes that might delay action.</p>

President Barack Obama will visit Lorain County outside Cleveland on Jan. 22 to talk about his administration’s work to create jobs. The White House said the president will meet with Ohio workers, executives and small business owners as part of his White House to Main Street Tour. He’ll be soliciting ideas for growing the economy and replacing the more than 7 million U.S. jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007.