Free Republic

Bill Daley tells ABC News that he resigned last week as chief of staff, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times. Senior administration officials confirm that Jacob “Jack” Lew, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, will be the new chief of staff. Daley was brought in to replace Rahm Emanuel, but in November his role was “changed,” with more power given to senior adviser Pete Rouse. At the time White House officials insisted the move was in no way a demotion, but it certainly wasn’t a vote of confidence. [...]

"Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise."

Bloomberg News’ Christopher Palmeri recently wrote of the legacy of Proposition 13 still hovering over California. It has far too often been said that “As goes California, so goes the nation.” 33 year old Proposition 13 has become a broad generic term for tax revolt. Palmeri reports that at least 20 states have followed the 13 lemming. Tax reform was needed, but it has become apparent that 13 was not the right formula. However, there was far more to that 1978 election than Proposition 13 – its evil stepsister was Proposition 10 promoted by the banking industry. I wised up...

There’s no celebrity chef tasked with whipping up Thursday night’s state dinner honoring President of South Korea Lee Myung-bak, but the menu is still mouth-watering. For the dinner held in the East Room, Executive Chef Cris Comerford and Pastry Chef William Yosses will serve the following, according to the White House via POLITICO 44: First Course Butternut Squash Bisque, Honey Poached Cranberries, Virginia Cured Ham, Pumpkin Seed Praline, Crème Fraiche Second Course Early Fall Harvest Salad on Daikon Sheets, Masago Rice Pearl Crispies, Rice Wine Vinaigrette Main Course Texas Wagyu Beef, Orange-Ginger Fondue, Sauteed Kale, Roasted Kabocha Squash Dessert Chocolate...

Throughout our history Americans have used petitions to unite around issues they care about. We the People provides you with a new way to petition the federal government to take action on a range of issues. And if your petition attracts enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it is sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response. Learn More | Be the First to Know When We the People Launches Step #1 Create or Sign a Petition Anyone 13 or older can create or sign a petition on WhiteHouse.gov asking the Obama Administration to...

This Is What Democracy Looks Like?: Hating America and Rejecting Peace with Israel Portrayed as Virtuous It’s fascinating to see not only the Middle East going backward but Western analysts and officials cheering on a return to even more war and terrorism. A good example is “In Tumult, New Hope for Palestinian Cause” by Anthony Shadid and David D. Kirkpatrick in the New York Times. Let’s take one paragraph and see what it tells us: In all the tumult of the Arab revolts, one of the most striking manifestations of change is a rejuvenated embrace of the Palestinian cause. The...

On Mexico, Guns, Drugs and Borders Posted by Ann Barnhardt - July 30, AD 2011 5:49 PM MST This is speculation, so take it as such. It is impossible to know for certain what another person or people are going to do until they do it, but when Vanna turns enough letters around on the board, you don’t need to buy any more vowels. I think the Obama regime is intentionally trying to get the Los Zetas drug cartel to overthrow the Mexican government, and do it fairly soon. This thesis is nothing new. If you want citations, do a...

There is one more loose end that needs to be tied together regarding Gunwalker. In the last 2 1/2 months I have heard from very credible sources, who are unconnected, the same thing repeatedly - so frequently that it is truly frightening. There have been numerous, and I mean NUMEROUS, muslim plots to wage Mumbai-style attacks against churches and synagogues that have been foiled and thwarted in the U.S. within the last several years.

COLUMBUS, Ga. - Starting at 10 o'clock Friday, two senior non-commissioned officers from Fort Benning will be on courtesy patrol. The soldiers will be wearing arm bands that read, "Courtesy Patrol."

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett has “exciting announcements” about small-business investments, but the Obama administration doesn’t want anyone reporting on it. The Energy Department sent out advisory of a conference call Thursday afternoon with Jarrett and other officials “for an update on our inter-agency collaboration on small business procurement and exciting announcements on upcoming events around the country.” DOE encourages recipients to “circulate this call information widely” to businesses in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Colorado. Even to New York and Washington, D.C. But the kicker: The “exciting call” itself is “off-the-record and is not for press...

A rush of recent reports on energy has much to say about the fundamental foolishness of the green vision of energy production -- the vision long regnant in academia and the one that informs the Obama regime. The green vision -- really, the green dream or delusion -- is that the world is running out of fossil fuels, and we need to switch to so-called renewable/sustainable sources such as solar power, wind power, and biofuels. (These "renewable," allegedly low-pollution green options never include nuclear or hydroelectric power, both of which are proven to be cost-effective and clean -- an interesting...

In response to a legal challenge by conservation groups, the Obama administration today launched a process to reconsider — and probably rewrite — a Bush-era plan for developing oil shale in the West. At issue are decisions by former President George W. Bush’s Interior Department to open roughly 2 million acres of land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to commercial oil shale leasing, while also approving regulations setting royalty rates for eventual production that critics blasted as too low. Under a court settlement filed today, more than a dozen groups, including the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense...

Although Saudi King Abdullah warned Barack Obama not to push Mubarak over the edge, according to reports by the Times of London, CIA director Leon Panetta believed the Egyptian president would step down.Just a few minutes ago, the New York Times reported that Mubarak refused to step down. Not only did the speech prove U.S. estimates wrong, it casts doubt over whether their game plan was ever working at all. Even as Mr. Mubarak spoke, angry chants were shouted from huge crowds in Cairo who had anticipated his resignation but were instead confronted with a plea from the president...

A year after the US economy stopped falling, we are still mired in "the worst labor-market crisis since the Great Depression," writes Laura Tyson in The New York Times. Voicing the consensus of the left-liberal economic establishment -- she's reportedly a leading candidate to head up President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers -- Tyson argues that the US unemployment rate, still stuck at 9.6 percent, is reason to try "a second fiscal stimulus" to raise "aggregate demand." She's wrong in a number of illuminating ways. First, the highest unemployment rates are highly A year after the US economy stopped falling,...

"Ideas may be cut loose from experience in two senses: either they have no roots in experience, or they are not submitted to the test of experience. Either way, they are free to be foolish." So wrote Jeane Kirkpatrick in the Introduction to her landmark book, Dictatorships and Double Standards (New York, 1982, p. 10). Kirkpatrick's statement applies perfectly to the band of naïve idealists now in change of our government. The youthful dreamers guiding the Obama administration have almost no private-sector experience. Like Obama himself, the Cabinet and host of czars who direct policy have spent their lives in...

It's not sufficiently divisive, apparently, that a controversial imam wants to erect a mosque near Ground Zero; now the Obama folks have him conducting "outreach" to Arab countries on behalf of the United States -- and on the taxpayers' dime, no less. Can anything be more ill-considered? As Claudia Rosett first reported at Forbes.com, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is headed to the Arab world for a month-long "outreach" tour, courtesy of the State Department. His wife, Daisy Khan, is to make a similar trip. Just what they'll be doing -- their scheduled stops include Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain...

The free press has all but disappeared. The news is often little more than a means of controlling the message. Entire areas of the country have experienced an information blackout. Many frightened citizens rely on bloggers, face book, twitter and text messages as their only source of news and information. Open warfare rages below the Rio Grande. The Houston Chronicle reports that. "After years of relative calm, the gangland nightmare is back-and yet, barely a single mention of the clashes here has been made by local radio and television or newspapers. The city's journalists, having lost some of their own...

NEW ORLEANS — BP allayed last-minute government fears of making the disaster worse and began testing the new, tighter-fitting cap Wednesday that could finally choke off the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the disaster, said the government gave the go-ahead after carefully reviewing the risks. "What we didn't want to do is compound that problem by making an irreversible mistake," he said at the end of a 24-hour roller-coaster of hopes raised, hopes dashed and hopes raised again along the Gulf Coast. The cap - a...

If anyone wonders why we so strongly support Sarah Palin, in every way possible, one look at this powerful interview should answer that question for all time. Appearing on Fox Business News’ Money Rocks, with Eric Bolling, Sarah gets right into the issues we are facing courtesy of the Obama regime. Pointing out Obama’s total absence of business experience, and lack of enough wisdom to surround himself with people who have any, Sarah talks about the destructive effect Obama’s policies are having on our nation. Not only are Americans about to be hit with the largest tax increase in world...

The American government, over the last decade, has been notoriously remiss in keeping illegal aliens from crossing our border with Mexico. The Arizona Legislature recently passed a “controversial” law requiring that the existing federal immigration laws be enforced — prompting a threatened lawsuit from the federal government (for enforcing its own laws.) Ten years ago, however, President Clinton ordered a draconian enforcement of our immigration laws, and Clinton enforced our laws not against a career criminal but rather against a minor child. Elian Gonzalez and his mother sought desperate measures to leave the Workers’ Paradise of Castro’s Cuba to seek...

The financial reform that is about to be passed is a farce. Like so much in Washington, it is strictly for the tourists. The following article from Sox First provides commentary on the legislation: "You think the Obama administration's legislation to fix US financial regulation is going to change Wall Street? You're dreaming! Nothing has changed, investment banks are a protected species in the US. Hailed by some sections of the media as something that will put banks on a bigger leash, the reality it does nothing of the sort. It's just a massive con because of the way the...

Contrary to what the Obama administration would have you believe, the biggest recipients of taxpayer funds during the financial crisis have not been Wall Street banks -- but the toxic twins, mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the House and Senate are now finalizing legislation to reform the financial sector -- yet the bill will leave the biggest bailout recipients untouched. In fact, Fannie and Freddie are guaranteed to continue siphoning money from American taxpayers. That's right: The Democratic majority in Congress has made no attempt to reform these two entities, which have already cost us $145 billion....

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill. Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium. President Barack Obama's administration has halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf. Feldman says in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the...

Obama’s speech on Tuesday night was widely disparaged, even by his fan base in the media, MSNBC , where thrills typically run down their legs when he speaks. But the speech is a vivid illustration of Obama’s personality. He’s cold, reptilian. The fact is that he doesn’t give damn about people. He’s in love with idea, concepts, and goals. The people who get hurt as he hurdles in the pursuit of his objectives are collateral damage. They’re expendable, in Lenin’s famous phrase, the eggs you break to make an omelet. The oil gushing into the Gulf from the broken BP...

Washington (CNSNews.com) – Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) said Tuesday that President Barack Obama is exceeding his legitimate constitutional authority in telling BP it must set up an independent fund, not controlled by the company, for compensating victims of the Gulf oil spill. She described the administration's policy as an action "that's all about extortion." "Private companies need to be held accountable but not necessarily to the executive branch," said Bachmann. "It seems to me there’s a misreading of the Constitution and a misunderstanding of jurisdictional limits from this White House on what the extent of executive power is. They don’t seem to understand that and it—now it seems that it’s all...

Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem? If the 80-year-old vet living on the city's West Side didn't have the gun the city said he shouldn't have, he and his 83-year-old wife and 12-year-old great-grandson might have joined those victims of gun violence about whom gun-control advocates constantly chirp. The vet obtained the gun in violation of the city's handgun ban after a prior incident in which the couple was...

The United States is sending a succession of envoys to engage with Hamas but lacks the bravery to talk to the Islamist movement openly, its leader, Khaled Meshal, said in an interview with the Guardian. Meshal praised President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia for meeting him in Damascus and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, for hosting the discussion 10 days ago. He told Medvedev that the US was also talking to him. "I thanked him for that meeting and told him the Americans contact us, but are not brave enough to do so openly," said Meshal. "I am confident that in...

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

Laughter is one of the most powerful political weapons, and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is taking advantage of that principle in a new television ad. In it, a frog puppet, reminiscent of Kermit from Sesame Street, extols the virtues of reading - with specific regard to the Arizona law. The ad is far more than merely clever. It hits the Obama administration critics where they live - in their inflated image of their own intelligence.

There they go again -- bashing America on the world stage. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reports that in recent talks with China, US officials put America's human-rights record on a par with Beijing's. "Part of a mature [US-Chinese] relationship is that you have an open discussion, where you not only raise the other guy's problems, but you raise your own, and you have a discussion about it, about your own [problems]," Posner said. "We did plenty of that." Moreover, he said, "experts from the US side" talked about America's "treatment of Muslim Americans in an immigration context." They...

Free Speech: President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up. The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of...

In Federalist 5, John Jay continues to discuss the need for a United States vs 13 individual states, or several groups of states. This time Jay brings us practical lessons from the nation American had just won it’s freedom from, Great Britain. Here he speaks of the time when a union was being formed between England and Scotland, and how many issues and conflicts were solved through this union. Jay rightfully warns that a divided America would experience these troubles, and then some. One must remember that trouble was already brewing at the time, with the several states often arguing...

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was asked in a Feb. 26, 2010, letter from Western Caucus Chairman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, and other representatives from western states for the missing pages from a leaked government memo that “contained detailed information about the administration’s plans to designate as many as 14 new national monuments and lock up as much as 13 million acres in states throughout the West.” Bishop and his colleagues asked Salazar to provide the missing pages by March 26, or a month after their letter went to the Interior chief. More than two months later and Bishop...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it would provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents. After days of negotiations, the Pentagon and Justice Department informed a Senate committee that they would not comply with congressional subpoenas to share investigative records from the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., which killed 13 people.

National Security Advisor James L. Jones: Iran won't use nukes if they have them [Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: What's the danger if Iran has nuclear bombs? "A nuclear-armed Iran could transform the landscape of the Middle East, precipitating a nuclear arms race, dramatically increasing the prospect and danger of local conflicts, fatally wounding the global non-proliferation regime, and emboldening the terrorists and extremists who threaten the United States and our allies." National Security Advisor James L. Jones So here is what National Security Advisor James L. Jones thinks the downside is if Iran has nukes: #1. Nuclear arms race...

Regime change. Generally it's a term and tactic reserved for America's enemies. But what if the Obama administration is developing a more nuanced version for one of the United States' closest allies -- Israel? As the brouhaha between Israel and the United States over settlements and Jerusalem continues to simmer, you have to wonder whether President Obama is focused on changing the behavior of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or changing prime ministers instead. The absence of a clear strategy to move the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations forward, highlighted by the administration's repeated calls for a settlements freeze -- which neither...

President Obama Sunday seemed to shrug off the brouhaha after he broke with White House tradition and ditched his press pool earlier this weekend to watch one of his daughter’s soccer games. Prior to Obama’s bilateral meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, Obama told his colleague, “apparently I caused quite a problem," , adding something about his secretary not telling the Secret Service, according to, ironically enough, the pool report.

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Monday claimed that allegations of wrongdoing surrounding the community group ACORN are bigger than the Watergate scandal that brought down the President Richard Nixon. King, a long-time critic of ACORN, told the conservative American Spectator that the ACORN scandals have been worse because they affect state, local and national politics. THE HILL comment E-mail Print share Rep. Steve King: ACORN scandal bigger than Watergate By Jordan Fabian - 12/21/09 11:14 AM ET Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Monday claimed that allegations of wrongdoing surrounding the community group ACORN are bigger than the Watergate scandal that...

The Obama administration is planning to repatriate six Yemenis held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a transfer that could be a prelude to the release of dozens more detainees to Yemen, according to sources with independent knowledge of the matter. The release is a significant first step toward dealing with the largest group of detainees at the prison -- there are currently 97 Yemenis there -- and toward meeting President Obama's goal of closing the facility. But Yemen's security problems and lack of resources have spawned fears about its ability to monitor and rehabilitate returnees. Critics...

Americans remain opposed to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and moving some of the terrorist suspects being held there to U.S. prisons: 30% favor such actions, while 64% do not. These attitudes could present a significant roadblock for President Obama at a time when he seeks congressional approval to move terrorist suspects from Guantanamo to a converted state prison in northwestern Illinois. President Obama signed an executive order after his inauguration that called for the closing of Guantanamo, and he recently reiterated his commitment to doing this in his West Point speech on Afghanistan. The plans announced this...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, frustrated by the Justice Department's failure to explain the dismissal of charges against New Black Panther Party members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's elections, has subpoenaed the department demanding records showing how the case was handled. David P. Blackwood, the commission's general counsel, said Tuesday in a letter to the Justice Department that efforts since June to obtain an explanation had proceeded "without any success" and the "dearth of cooperation" had prompted the commission to issue subpoenas. "We are both mindful of the sensitivity of the subject matter involved and...

A White House spokesman dismissed polling that shows President Barack Obama's approval rating at a new low. A Gallup poll released Monday showed Obama’s overall approval rating dropped to 47 percent -- the lowest during his presidency. On Tuesday morning White House press secretary Robert Gibbs compared the poll to a child's art work. Gibbs was specifically referring to the trend line, which shows Obama's approval ratings declining. Gibbs noted "a six year-old with a crayon could do something a lot like that."

In yesterday’s New York Times, there was an article about White House social secretary Desirée Rogers. In it, reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote: “When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a ‘non-religious Christmas….’” This same participant said that “the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display” (this was confirmed by the White House). Indeed, as Stolberg wrote, “there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the crèche.”Catholic League president Bill Donohue...

Nancy-Ann DeParle, one of President Obama's chief advocates for the health care reform bill wending its way through Congress, earned more than $6.6 million as a paid director for health care firms, some of which were targeted in government investigations or whistleblower lawsuits on suspicions of billing fraud and other legal problems.

Who needs tanks on the lawn when you have the Environmental Protection Agency? Barack Obama’s use of the EPA to pressurise the Senate to pass his climate change Nuremberg Decrees shows his dictatorial mentality. He wants to override Congress, which is hostile to his climate gobbledegook because it is representative of the American electorate, and sideline the nation’s elected Senators by ruling by decree, courtesy of the EPA. This is a coup d’état. And what is the justification for this undemocratic action? The allegedly imminent threat from “Anthropogenic Global Warming”. There is always a supposed threat, when tyrants take the...

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans.  Click [1]here [1] to read earlier articles.]In a move by the Obama administration that is gallingly cynical and would be considered treasonous in a less progressive era, a message sent by Code Pink [2] and an article published [3] by the left wing online publication AlertNet indicates the White House is working with the left wing terrorist support group Code Pink to agitate the public and undermine President Barack Obama’s newly announced Afghanistan war policy. Top Obama funder, Code Pink co-founder and...

When President Obama entered office in January, the greatest problem America faced was neither the war in Afghanistan nor the recession. It was the imminent crisis of the welfare state. Not only has Mr. Obama failed to deal with this crisis, he is pursuing policies that will bankrupt America. In March, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, led by former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, calculated the total value of the federal government's "unfunded liabilities" as they stood at the end of fiscal 2008. These liabilities include the publicly held portion of the national debt plus the amount the government must...

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters in his West Wing office Friday that the Republican Party's approval rating is "only slightly above the national drinking age." Gibbs was criticizing GOP efforts to delay Senate passage of the healthcare bill. With only two amendments being voted on so far, Gibbs was asked if a more realistic deadline for the healthcare bill is somewhere around the State of the Union address in late January. "I'm not going to wiggle on the date," Gibbs said. He said the president still wants a bill he can sign this year, and Obama "would...

The Bush administration was repeatedly accused of “politicizing” federal agencies. So it’s interesting to note a press release by the Office of Special Counsel, the independent agency that investigates prohibited political activity by federal employees. The press release announces the settlement of a discrimination complaint against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) filed by a job applicant for the general-counsel position, a career civil-service job. The EAC is a relatively new federal agency created by Congress in 2002. It was tasked with (1) distributing grant funding under the Help America Vote Act to improve state election administration, and (2) serving...