Free Republic

Am I the only one outraged by the misinformation that has been spread around the internet as Obama's Exhibit "A" for healthcare reform??? The issue is the staged so called kidney cancer patient with no health insurance who supposedly had health insurance when she was again supposedly diagnosed with Renal Cell Carcinoma and rather than have her kidney removed which is the only effective treatment for kidney cancer, she was treated with radiation therapy which caused her more health issues now that she has no insurance. She claims that she did not have her kidney removed because she was caring...

Photo illustration by Matthew Sheffield Key Republicans in both the House and the Senate are accusing the White House of giving “incomplete and misleading” information to investigators probing the president’s abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. In return, the White House is hinting that documents concerning its actions in the Walpin affair may be protected by executive privilege. Both developments are part of an escalating conflict between GOP lawmakers and the Obama administration. Republicans are deeply skeptical of the White House explanation for the June 10 firing of Walpin, a tough investigator who had been probing misuse of...

Nearly 150 prominent attorneys, of all political stripes have banded together to support one of their own who went to Washington, D.C., to serve as a government watchdog, only to be unceremoniously dismissed by the Obama Administration earlier this month.

Ever since Barack Obama declared his candidacy for president, it’s been easy — and great fun — to spotlight when his promises and statements come with “expiration dates.” The list is long: Public financing. Renegotiating NAFTA. His promise to support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. His inability to disown Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The release of detainee photos. Denouncing Turkey for genocide. Flip-flops are nothing new in politics, but every once in a while, a president breaks a promise or an important pledge on such an epic level that it defines him, at least...

Gerald Walpin, the former AmeriCorps inspector general who was fired after appearing confused at a meeting, has some pretty important friends coming to his defense. Some 145 of them, including political foes, have written Congress and the White House to refute attacks on his integrity in the controversy over why he was fired by the Obama administration. "We have never seen Mr. Walpin to be 'confused, disoriented, [or] unable to answer questions,' " wrote the 145, who include former federal judges and even Democrats like Bernie Nussbaum, former President Clinton's first White House counsel. Walpin was a Bush pick who,...

The cap of an entertaining, wide-ranging press conference that included a spirited defense of the public health care option: A carefully-framed, detailed question from Obama on his smoking habit. "You just think it's neat to ask me about my smoking," he told the reporter, before conceding that he has "fallen off the wagon sometimes." "Am I a daily, a constant smoker? No," he said. "I don't do it in front of my kids. i don't do it in front of my family." Obama said he was "95% cured" and compared himself to a recovering alcoholic. "Once you've gone down this...

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it. The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. “When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent...

An official responsible for monitoring how federal funds for volunteerism are spent told FOX News he was fired by President Obama for doing his job, and suggested it was payback for investigating the alleged misuse of grant money by the Sacramento mayor, an Obama backer. Gerald Walpin, who until last week was the chief internal watchdog for AmericCorps and other service programs, suggested "political pressure" was behind his ouster. He said he worried the action will have a "chilling effect" on other inspectors general. Obama gave little explanation for the decision, writing in a letter sent Thursday that he no...

In a move that puts a cloud over transparency, White House officials are blocking access to the lists of the names of visitors to the White House. The practice, carried over from the Bush administration, argues the public does not need to know who comes calling at the Executive Mansion, even for policy purposes. "We are deeply disappointed," said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington spokeswoman Anne Weismann, whose group is suing to get the records. "The president, who has committed his administration to transparency and accountability, now takes the position of the Bush administration that the public is...

Let’s say that you are President Obama. You’ve inherited a health care system that is the insane spawn of a team of evil geniuses from an alien power. Pay is divorced from performance. Users are separated from costs. Rising costs threaten to destroy your nation and everything you hold dear. Because you have a lofty perspective on things, you know there are basically two ways to fix this mess. There is the liberal way, in which the government takes over the health care system and decides who gets what. And then there is the conservative way, in which cost-conscious consumers...

In the first six months of the Obama administration, we have witnessed an assault on the truth of a magnitude not seen since the Nixon Watergate years. The prevarication is ironic given the Obama campaign’s accusations that the Bush years were not transparent and that Hillary Clinton, like her husband, was a chronic fabricator. Remember Obama’s own assertions that he was a “student of history” and that “words mean something. You can’t just make stuff up.” Yet Obama’s war against veracity is multifaceted. Trotskyization. Sometimes the past is simply airbrushed away. Barack Obama has a disturbing habit of contradicting his...

Eloquence and good intentions exempt no one from the truth of the past — President Obama includedIn his speech last week in Cairo, President Obama proclaimed he was a “student of history.” But despite Barack Obama’s image as an Ivy League-educated intellectual, he lacks historical competency, in areas of both facts and interpretation. This first became apparent during the presidential campaign. Candidate Obama proclaimed then that during World War II his great-uncle had helped liberate Auschwitz, and that his grandfather knew fellow American troops that had entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. Both are impossible. The Americans didn’t free either Nazi death...

The biggest obstacle President Obama faces in selling his health care agenda could be the albatross of his own economic stimulus package. During its last major sales push, the Obama administration promised the $787 billion stimulus legislation would create up to 4 million jobs over the next two years, serve as a model of transparency, and be free of earmarks. But those claims haven't held up so well. In the months since Obama signed the bill in February, more than 1.6 million jobs have been lost. His own vice president, Joe Biden, tasked with overseeing the implementation of the stimulus...

Barack Obama refuted reports in the American media that Germany had balked at taking the Uighers from Guantanamo Bay, saying that he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had only talked in general terms about Gitmo and German assistance. Der Spiegel reports today that Obama didn’t tell the entire truth. In fact, the German government has made clear its conditions on accepting any Gitmo prisoners as Obama tries to find ways to close it, and the terms constitute a de facto refusal: During his brief visit to Germany last week, US President Barack Obama told the gathered press in Dresden that,...

"As I've often said, in the short term, as we transition to renewable energy," President Obama stated in April, "we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas... . We still need more oil, we still need more gas. If we've got some here in the United States that we can use, we should find it and do so in an environmentally sustainable way." Does anyone believe Obama was serious about this? Given his practice of misdirection--saying one thing, doing another--no one should have. Now, nearly five months into the Obama presidency, it's clear he didn't...

Nearly four weeks after President Obama met with health-industry officials touting a "watershed" cost-cutting agreement, the goal of slowing the sharp rise in medical-care spending is elusive as ever. Appearing with executives of six industry groups on May 11, Obama announced what he called a "historic" and "unprecedented commitment" by the medical-care industry to "cut the rate of growth of national healthcare spending by 1.5 percentage points each year" that would yield $2 trillion in savings over 10 years. The story got front-page play and nightly news coverage across the country. However, after American Hospital Association president Richard Umbdenstock returned...

President Obama's scheduled visit to a former Nazi concentration camp is being done for "political reasons," the president's great-uncle -- who helped liberate that camp -- said in a recent interview. Obama plans to visit Germany's Buchenwald site as part of his multi-country tour, which begins this week. Charles Payne, Obama's great-uncle who helped liberate a sub-camp of Buchenwald during World War II, spoke frankly about the visit in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine. Asked if Obama would be traveling in his footsteps, Payne said: "I don't buy that. ... This is a trip that he chose, not...

“Now, some have suggested that this represents a reversal on my part,” President Obama declared last week in the soaring rotunda of the National Archives, a snippet of self-defense tucked into a far-reaching philosophical address on terrorism and the rule of law. “They should look at the record.” Mr. Obama was speaking, in particular, of his decision to revive George W. Bush’s practice of trying terrorism suspects in military commissions. True, Mr. Obama said, he fought Mr. Bush on the commissions. But, he went on, he had always said that with reforms he would support them. With “meaningful due process”...

"I ran for president promising transparency, and I meant what I said. And that is why, whenever possible, my administration will make information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable." That was Barack Obama last Thursday morning at the National Archives. We have heard this tune before. On January 21, his second day in office, Obama released a memorandum on government transparency. It quoted Louis Brandeis on sunlight. It directed executive agencies to operate with a strong "presumption in favor of disclosure." It spoke of our "national commitment" to open government...

... Now that there is a new team at the White House, guess who is knocking down straw men left and right? To listen to President Obama, a veritable army of naysayers has invaded Washington, urging him to sit on his hands at the White House and do nothing to address any of the economic or national security problems facing the country. “There are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not more,” Mr. Obama told a town-hall-style meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., on March 18. “Well, I say our challenges...

President Barack Obama Friday warned America risked its security when it compromised its values, seeking support for his bid to sketch a new legal framework for anti-terror policies. Obama used the backdrop of the US Naval Academy graduation ceremony to argue that founding US ideals must guide the future battle against terrorism, a day after trying to quell raging debate over Guantanamo Bay in a major speech. "We uphold our fundamental principles and values not just because we choose to, but because we swear to -- not because they feel good, but because they help keep us safe," Obama told...

Washington D.C., May 21, 2009 / 11:40 am (CNA).- Two Catholic commentators are lamenting the “sorry ignorance of recent American history” displayed by L'Osservatore Romano—the newspaper published by the Vatican—in its favorable reaction to President Obama's recent commencement speech at Notre Dame. However, they caution, readers should not make the mistake of thinking that the newspaper speaks for the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II's official biographer, George Weigel, wrote in an article for National Review Online that the pieces published by L'Osservatore Romano have caused pro-administration American journalists and activists to leap with “barely concealed glee” on the...

When Notre Dame, the nation's best-known Catholic university, asked resolutely pro-choice President Barack Obama to receive an honorary degree and deliver the commencement address this year, it caused intense controversy in Catholic circles. About 50 U.S. bishops publicly opposed the president's planned appearance, which violated their 2004 directive that Catholic universities "should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." On Sunday, graduation day came to Notre Dame, and so did Obama - who was overwhelmingly welcomed. In a warm, conciliatory speech, he didn't shy away from abortion, saying that the two sides' views are fundamentally...

Hospitals and insurance companies said Thursday that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending.

President Blasted McCain on This Issue, but Experts Say It Could Help Pay for Reform During last year's campaign, Barack Obama poured millions of dollars into television ads attacking John McCain for wanting to tax employer-provided health care benefits. But now that Congress is beginning to consider ways to fix the health care system, a concept once pilloried by Obama is being placed on the agenda by a key member of the president's own party. Under current law, any money spent on employer-provided health plans is excluded entirely from employee's taxable income. "That tax provision should be on the table,...

Remember when candidate Obama said, “Lobbyists won’t find a job in my White House”? Apparently, he doesn’t. And really, no one who opposed his presidency to begin with is surprised. Even AP and the NY Times is noticing the lobbyists in Washington. And this piece is from the Washington Times:Obama’s lobbyists Their ranks grow in the new administration Thursday, May 7, 2009 During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared that, “lobbyists won’t find a job in my White House.” Now President Obama takes a different view of lobbyists.The Senate is expected soon to approve anti-tobacco lobbyist William Corr for the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped a budget so out of balance. And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still. Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance...

New York, New York – April 29th, 2009 - The National Leadership Team of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition (http://www.nationwideteapartycoalition.com) today accepted President Obama`s invitation "to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.” The invitation was extended by the President at a Town Hall Meeting held in Arnold, Missouri today (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21870.html). Michael Patrick Leahy, a member of the National Leadership Team of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, said " We want to broaden the scope to address the President`s...

In tonight's news conference, President Obama said he wanted US to produce an electric "plug-in" car. Actually, he said a "hybrid plug-in car" and that is a contradiction in terms, but let’s go with what he probably wanted us to believe, (which is what the MSM does all the time....) Obama says he wants GM to produce an electric car, but at the same time his Presidential Task Force on Automobiles says "GM has devoted significant resources to the Chevy Volt." and that "while the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in...

“If you got health insurance, then you can keep it . . . and we won’t do anything about that,” at least that was what President Obama promised during the campaign last year. Well, add that to a very long list of broken campaign promises, including: cutting government spending, reducing the deficit, and “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.” Just as bad, on Friday it was revealed that Obama and the Democrats have no problem pushing through Senate votes on these radical health care changes that strip away normal procedural protections...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's Democratic allies in Congress have agreed to let his signature $400 tax cut for most workers expire after next year but are moving to give him a better chance at passing his health care bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday that most issues have been resolved in trying to combine different House and Senate approaches into one budget bill. That measure will set the rules on how Congress considers Obama's agenda for the rest of the year.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama paid tribute Thursday to the memory of Jews murdered in the Holocaust and said it is the duty of the living all over the world to make certain there will be no more atrocities. Speaking at a Holocaust Days of Remembrance ceremony at the U.S. Capitol, Obama warned against what he called the dangers of silence. Every day, he said, people should fight the impulse to turn away when scenes of horror unfold across the world. He called for people to embrace a "habit of empathy." "We know," the president said, "that evil has...

The Obama administration said on Monday that it has no plans for reopening negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement to revise its labor and environmental provisions, as then-Senator Barack Obama promised to do during his presidential campaign. “The president has said we will look at all of our options, but I think they can be addressed without having to reopen the agreement,” said Ronald Kirk, the United States trade representative. Mr. Kirk spoke in a conference call with reporters after returning from the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad over the weekend. He said President Obama conferred there...

Book a train from Washington, D.C., to Chicago, and you’re in for a ride that takes 17 hours, 35 minutes. Given the choice between that and a two-hour plane trip, it’s little wonder that most Washingtonians prefer to fly, despite the security searches and the long lines at Reagan National. It is also little wonder that some airlines still make money, whereas Amtrak, America’s near-monopoly provider of inter-city passenger rail service, requires huge annual subsidies. But what if inter-city train service became much faster? President Obama wants to offer Americans such an option, and to that end he has promised...

Last Election Day, Barack Obama had most Americans convinced they could trust him as much as anybody with their taxes. Today, we know better. The president and his allies have postponed or altogether abandoned his promised tax cuts, and are instead laying the groundwork to raise taxes on everybody. In retrospect, Obama's campaign to win the mantle of tax-cutter was well conceived and executed. He repeatedly rebuffed John McCain at the presidential debates: "We both want to cut taxes; the difference is who we want to cut taxes for I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of...

President Obama marked Tax Day with a speech touting his tax policies. He made several claims about how his policies will improve the economy, most of which don’t hold up under close scrutiny. Here are a few of the more egregious examples: * President Obama claimed the tax cuts in the mis-labeled “stimulus” bill are the most progressive in history. This is true because the so-called stimulus created the Making Work Pay Credit and expanded the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. All these credits are refundable, so they send checks to tax filers who pay no...

Maybe he just doesn't know that there are people who disagree with his massive tax and spend agenda. That would explain a lot. Perhaps the network media's near silence on the "tea party" phenomenon has kept President Obama from realizing that hundreds of tax day protests will happen today? "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties and will hold his own event today," ABC's Dan Harris said on "Good Morning America" on April 15. Harris's story was the first ABC News report specifically about the tea parties since Rick Santelli's of CNBC's famous rant calling...

President Barack Obama's gift of a dog to his two daughters has angered animal welfare activists who argued that he broke a promise to adopt a dog from a shelter. Bo, the six-month-old black and white Portuguese water dog who was a gift from Senator Edward Kennedy, was due to have his official unveiling at the White House last night. Though he was given up by his first owners, the puppy spent no time in a rescue shelter and instead was treated to a month with the senator's dog trainer before being handed over to the White House. Dr Jana...

President Obama talking tough to a group of voters in Miami before the election, yet President Obama must have forgotten this speech. Is there any evidence of a tough policy towards Cuba? Any?

In the brief "Closing Arguments" segment on Wednesday's "Nightline," ABC's Terry Moran credulously repeated the White House contention that Barack Obama didn't bow to the King of Saudi Arabia last week at the G-20 summit. As video of the incident played, Moran narrated, "He sees King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Goes in for the hello. There's a hand shake. Obama bends at the waist. But was it a bow?" [Audio available here.] He then recited, "The White House called it a lean, pointing out the King's shorter than the President." Inviting people to respond on his Twitter page, Moran wondered,...

WASHINGTON -- Words count, as President Barack Obama once said. Words spoken truthfully count even more. The president's triumphal eight-day six-country overseas tour, ending with his emotional visit to U.S. troops in Iraq, will go down in history as an opportunity for us to collect Obama's words and save them in our computers so we can match them with the administration's future actions. It's refreshing to hear words of optimism, courage and determination aimed at solving long-standing problems and threats. As the president said in Turkey, "If we don't reach high, then we don't make progress." So let's firmly assign...

... President Obama is the master of misdirection. His skill in using this tactic is a key to his success as a candidate and to his popularity as president. He is a great salesman, marketing his product--the liberal agenda, plus a few add-ons--in a manner that disguises what he's really up to. ... Misdirection is different. It is meant to deceive. When Obama intervened last week to prop up General Motors, he said he was merely helping the company get through a rough patch. "Let me be clear," he said. "The United States government has no interest or intention of...

The RedEye gang discusses.

One of the defining features of the Obama administration so far is its almost pathological inability to make hard choices--or even to acknowledge that hard choices need to be made. A prime example is the administration's insistence that making energy more expensive will somehow benefit our economy. This proposition is so foolish as to be almost self-refuting: in my view, anyone who doesn't understand that you can't create wealth by subsidizing the inefficient production of energy shouldn't be voting. In particular, Barack Obama has trumpeted the creation of "green jobs" as somehow offsetting the obvious damage that will be done...

I've been away for awhile and I'm looking for all the best FR research on Obama. Who can help?

President Barack Obama says he's not ready to comment on a proposal from some Senate Democrats to scrap his middle-class tax cut after 2010. Obama says he hasn't yet seen what changes are coming out of the House and Senate. But he delivered his bottom-line on the budget at a Tuesday evening news conference. Obama said the budget must move toward health care reform and include an energy policy that frees the nation from dependence on foreign oil. He also says he's looking for investment in education and a reduction in the deficit.

The Obama administration is privately expecting the economy to get much worse next year, contradicting rosy scenario public pronouncements from their 2010 budget and officials like White House Council of Economic Advisors chairwoman Christina Romer who was recently quoted by AFP as saying, "(by the second half of th(is) year) we're going to start seeing the job loss moderate and finally start to see GDP (gross domestic product) growing again."The Politico, in an article published today about Barack Obama's failing communication skills, buried the dire secret predictions of the Obama administration toward the end of the article in a section...

While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd unexpectedly added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax. The amendment is in the final version and is law.

http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/17/obamas-stimulus-bill-explicitly-grants-aig-the-legal-right-to-hand-out-bonuses/From page H1412 of the Final Stimulus Bill, ``SEC. 111. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: "(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a writte employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary." This amendment provides an exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009, which exempts the very AIG bonuses Obama is condemning every single chance he gets. The amendment is in the final...

<p>Most students at Columbia do not have firsthand knowledge war. Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds to television, film, and print.</p> <p>The more sensitive among the struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves where parents were time memories, or incorporating into our framework of reality as depicted by a mailer or a Coppola. But the taste of war-the sounds and chill, the dead bodies-are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experienced down and tour hearts, and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task. Two groups on campus, Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM) work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Through the emphasis of the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy. These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.</p>