Free Republic

Republican candidates listed on my local ballot Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Charles Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum

Georgia Ballot Challenge News February 3rd, 2012Swensson-Powell-Farrar-Welden vs. Obama - Judge Michael Malihi's Final Order - Georgia Ballot Access Challenge - 2-3-2012We caught up with Swensson/Powell's counsel, Mark Hatfield, late this afternoon to get his initial take on the ruling. Here is what he stated “obviously we are disappointed w/the decision, but there are a couple of items in the ruling that we are looking at. First, the Judge never made any ruling on who has the burden of proof even though he indicated in chambers prior to the hearing that making the determination of the burden of proof laid...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Blending politics and religion, President Barack Obama said his Christian faith is a driving force behind his economic policies, from Wall Street reform to his calls for the wealthy to pay higher taxes.</p> <p>Obama's remarks Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast were his most explicit account of how his personal religious beliefs factor into his decision-making on the nation's pressing problems. The comments came amid election-year criticism from Catholic groups and some Republicans that the president is waging a war on religion following his decision to require church-affiliated institutions to cover free birth control for employees.</p>

The Capitol architect wanted to reanimate George Washington’s dead body George Washington may have been America's first president, but was he nearly America's first zombie-in-chief? If William Thornton, physician and designer of the US Capitol, had had his way, Washington's body would have been subjected a scientific experiment designed to bring the deceased former president back to life. In December 1799, 67-year-old George Washington took a ride through the wet winter rain and, shortly afterward, developed a fever and a sore throat. When his condition became so bad that Washington could no longer swallow the concoctions of vinegar, molasses, and...

Huntington Bank discovers original checks signed by Lincoln, Washington, Edison, Twain and others (photo gallery) President Abraham Lincoln made out this First National Bank printed check to "self" for $800 on April 13, 1865, two days before he died. BROOKLYN -- Dozens of personal checks -- some 150 to 200 years old and signed by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, George Washington and Thomas Edison - have been unearthed by Huntington Bank. Some of the historic checks, all signed by U.S. presidents, were unveiled Tuesday and are on display at Huntington's newest branch in Brooklyn. The display is...

Even those who believe themselves devoted patriots (including devout Christians) may foolishly be enticed by the powers that be, into violating Americans' sacred and essential Popular and national Sovereignties. It has been happening for a long time, now. People who believe in a Sovereign nation called the United States of America are being duped into not only violating the mandates of our Constitution, but even worse, into nullifying our own Declaration of Independence from the control of foreign, kleptocratic power. This is the tragedy for all, of those who foolishly follow the stratagems of those seeking hegemony over us via...

Barack Obama must be stopped. Never in my life would I have dreamed that America would see a man in the United States presidency who is distinctly at odds with this country. Never could I have imagined that an enemy of America and the American people would be wormed into the highest position of power in the free world. At this awful point we can dispense with all niceties and undeserved respect for this man who is clearly a danger to the survival of this great nation as it was founded. To say that he is a communist enemy of...

Spoke Jed Babbin re the Obama appearance at the Pentagon to announce the sharp troop reductions for all services, especially for the Marine Corps. POTUS Obama's speechifying is re-election palaver and not of interest. POTUS claims he knows history. History says that after wars, the US reduces the troop levels until the Devils come calling, and we are short hundred of thousands of troops the first months of a new crisis. Mobilization follows in catch-up fashion. Jed Babbin and I told stories about the Marines in WW2 and Korea. Jed has a photo of his dad on Guadalcanal in 1942...

“We need Hillary in the White House in 2016 or on the ticket in 2012,” an elderly man told Bill Clinton at a recent book signing here. The former president smiled, signed a copy of “Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy,’’ and assured the man he’d let his wife know: “I’ll pass that along to Hillary.” Arkansas Democrats have been whispering for months that President Barack Obama would be smart to put Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the ticket as vice-president. After all, it’s no secret Hillary is tired of logging miles as...

[...] And yet, here we are at the end of 2011, with Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and discussion boards still teeming with intemperate quick takes. President Obama has taken considerable heat this year, but isn't it too soon to accuse him of being an ineffectual leader? Isn't that one lesson from the Tucson incident? On a Christmas Day episode of "GPS" on CNN, Fareed Zakaria interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, who reminded us that it's too early to cast Obama's legacy in stone. Here's an excerpt from their interview: I admire him very much, and I think that his...

I was thinking about writing a novel about what might happen if a man who hates America and wants to bring it down is somehow elected president. What would he do? I sketched out a few plot elements, and you can decide whether this will fly. First, the Trojan Horse president would initiate unprecedented spending, driving the debt up by more than $4 trillion just in the first three years. Much of the money would go into the pockets of political supporters and people who donate heavily to his campaigns. He would ram through an unreadable law allowing the federal...

Secret Service has arrived, street barricades are in place, and the U.S. Coast Guard has stationed itself in the waters surrounding Kailua, Oahu. That is a sure sign President Barack Obama’s security team is preparing for the first family to arrive in the small beachside community as early as Friday night for what is expected to be a 17-day vacation. The President and his family are traveling separately to Hawaii because he wants resolve the payroll tax cut issue before leaving Washington – and his wife does not want to wait. But the advanced trip and the cost that comes...

President Obama’s appearance last night on “60 Minutes” confirms how severely out of touch he is with political reality. He has become entirely predictable, and his insincerity is unrestrained. There is the phony familiarity, a strained attempt to bond with working-class voters he’s lost. We therefore have an epidemic of missing “g’s”: He tells Steve Kroft: “Look, the — everybody’s at — concerned about inequality. Those folks in there, who were listenin’ to the speech, those are teachers and small-business people, and probably some small-town bankers, who are in there thinking to themselves, ‘How is it that I, we’re workin’...

In his extraordinary book, “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century”, the historian, Dr. Paul Kengor, stated in his introduction that “We now know that American Communists and their masters in Moscow were acutely aware that they could never gain the popular support they needed to enlist the support of a much wider coalition that could help them push their private agenda.” Most threatening, however, was Dr. Kengor’s discovery that “it was nothing short of stunning to research this book during the presidential bid of Barack Obama and hear so many of the names in my research...

ROCK HILL, S.C. - After her victory in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll last August, Michele Bachmann went from front-runner to back-in-the-packer faster than any candidate in this volatile political season. First Rick Perry, then Herman Cain, and now Newt Gingrich have risen to challenge establishment choice Mitt Romney, while Bachmann's support has been stuck in the single digits, not only here in South Carolina but in Iowa, New Hampshire and across the country. But now there's something happening with the Bachmann campaign. It's not a boom, not even a boomlet. But many Republican voters are recognizing Bachmann's sheer determination...

Virginia has a history that caused her to become the mother of FF presidents.That history still shows within the extraordinary beauty of Virginia’s constitution and statutes. Virginia’s law is still enables her to save the constitutional republic of the United States if she will first save herself from the custom of cavalier conceits of authority whose toxic culture came to the ‘Old Dominion’ with refugees from the English Civil War.Virginia appears to be the only state that has a law equivalent to VA18.2-481(5) where ‘Resisting the execution of the laws under the color of its authority’ is defined as ‘Statutory...

On Faith asks: Dr. Richard Land recently suggested that “people who campaign as traditional moral individuals are asking to be judged by different standards. If you’re going to stand up, you have to walk the walk.” What kinds of ethics, values and morals should we expect from our candidates? A: From my perspective there are baseline non-negotiable qualities and characteristics that anyone must first embody in order to be considered worthy of holding a position of leadership – at any level. These same standards apply whether or not you’re leading a Boy Scout troop, a Fortune 500 company or serving...

One of the digs at Ronald Reagan before he was president was that he lacked a keen grasp of foreign policy. The former actor and California governor had never had to grapple with those questions firsthand. Surely, critics argued, he couldn’t match the abilities of people with real-world experience like George H.W. Bush or John Connally. Once in office, Reagan demonstrated that principle and vision could more than make up for inexperience. He had a good plan and stuck to it; the rest was just a matter of details. Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is taking a page from the...

Psychiatrist Karl Menninger, founder of the Menninger Clinic, raised the question, “Whatever became of sin?” in his 1973 book title. There was a time when U.S. presidents made certain that our sin didn’t fade from our national conscience. Not this year. The Huffington Post reviewed the Thanksgiving Proclamations of 26 U.S. Presidents from Washington to Barack Obama, and concluded that they’re “strikingly the same”: "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor..." With these words,...

WASHINGTON, November 21, 2011 ― On November 19, 2011, Carter Lee wrote an article titled, "Mr. Cain on David Letterman: Cain Simply Can't Cut It." Others who heard the same interview thought, unlike Lee, that Herman Cain handled himself well. We remain inspired by his life story and ideas. A tit-for-tat analysis of Lee's opinion would be pointless, as it is obvious from his article that he has complete disdain for Cain, with biases so complete that he couldn't find even one thing that he liked. I would just request that he comment on something more relevant in assessing a...

For some time now, many conservatives have thought that President Obama is the Second Coming of Jimmy Carter. They think that chronic 9% unemployment, creeping inflation, and a foreign policy of self-abasement and weakness will doom Obama to a single term, and that he'll slink off with his tail between his legs in disgrace, just like Carter did after 1980. Maybe they should be thinking about the election of 1996 instead. Does anyone remember the disaster that was Bill Clinton's first term? The first attempt to put gays in the military, the first attack on the World Trade Center by...

Using photoshop, can a savvy Freeper assemble my "gay Obama" photos into a single, low-rez MONTAGE photo? (to go easy on our servers) ------------------------------------------------------------ Cain is getting pounced on for made-up stuff. Meanwhile Larry Sinclaire's amazing allegations regarding fellatio & crack cocaine go completely ignored. That's unfair. Fair is fair. Last night some radio journalists re-interviewed Larry Sinclaire regarding his story, and I must say he was WAAAAY more believable than I'd thought (when I first heard the story I simply paid it no attention). I'm no closer to endorsing Larry Sinclaire's lifestyle than I was then, but now I...

Using photoshop, can a savvy Freeper assemble my "gay Obama" photos into a single, low-rez MONTAGE photo? (to go easy on our servers) ------------------------------------------------------------ Cain is getting pounced on for made-up stuff. Meanwhile Larry Sinclaire's amazing allegations regarding fellatio & crack cocaine go completely ignored. That's unfair. Fair is fair. Last night some radio journalists re-interviewed Larry Sinclaire regarding his story, and I must say he was WAAAAY more believable than I'd thought (when I first heard the story I simply paid it no attention). I'm no closer to endorsing Larry Sinclaire's lifestyle than I was then, but now I...

In this cycle, that question applies to, well, everyone except Mitt Romney, whose support has been consistent if not impressive in primary polling. Romney has clearly failed to engage the enthusiasm of the Republican base, which wants a more conservative candidate, as well as hoping for another quality they find missing in Romney. In my column for The Week, I point out the common thread of the boomlet candidates, and explain why Newt Gingrich’s rise might be the candidate that fits that quality best: One might be tempted to just dismiss the latest boomlet for Gingrich as a simple matter...

It was cold standing outside the "Big Sky Diner" in Ypsi, but it was well worth standing their for just over an hr this morning. The wait staff came out a served us coffee, which helped warm up many. While we thought we got their early the "Dr" and I just missed getting inside, but that is ok.When Herman Arrived the bus pulled in and it took a while for Herman to exit the bus. Music played on a loud speaker outside that doubled as a speaker for his speech, once he made it up the receiving line. The throngs...

Hi, folks. Here's a collection of some of the better Occutard political cartoons I've come across. Hope you enjoy! 17 Occutard 'Toons

Boots-on-the-Ground to stand in the Gap - Agreement with God in prayer support of "Constitutional Reset"IMH observation "The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries."  from http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php is entirely within the heart’s desire of "God & Country".  Is this so?IMH observation it appears that the Constitution Party is entirely in agreement with the 912 Project's  9 principles and 12 values.  Is this so?IMH observation it appears that the Republican Party of Virginia has a large enough constituency that is mostly in agreement with the Project's 9 principles and 12 values that it is moving...

The Republican Party seems to be struggling to find a candidate it can unite around. One impediment may be a mindset common among some of my fellow Tea Partiers, a false dichotomy that if you are in government you are part of the problem, and if you are not in government, you are part of the solution -- whatever those problems or solutions may be. Herman Cain says, "The folks in Washington have held public office. How's that working out for you?" It's a catchy comeback. But is government tenure, whether recent or not, the reality of the problems in...

While Mitt Romney has remained a constant in polling for the Republican presidential nomination at around 25-28%, inconstancy has been the constant among his opponents. Michele Bachmann became the first to ride a wave to Romney’s relative polling position, only to fade when Rick Perry entered the race. Now Perry has faded after a series of awful debate performances and Herman Cain has taken his place for the last six weeks. If Cain can’t maintain his momentum, who will be the next Not-Romney? Byron York reports from Iowa that it may well be Newt Gingrich: For days, there’s been talk...

Washington was all a-Twitter (literally) Monday over Politico’s story about the sexual-harassment charges against Herman Cain — and about Cain’s serial self-contradictions. Faithful Fox News viewers saw him in the afternoon saying he didn’t know the terms of a settlement reached with the complainants and then saw him tell Greta Van Susteren in the 10 p.m. hour that he did. The Politico story, quoting no named sources, described Cain’s alleged misconduct as “conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature” and “physical gestures that were not overtly sexual.” That sounds bad but not horrible. A...

The College Board and News Corp. sponsored a forum on education with four GOP presidential candidates last week, and the runaway winner was Newt Gingrich. (Truth in advertising: I moderated the session along with Joel Klein, the former New York schools chancellor who now runs an educational unit for our employer, News Corp. Each candidate received 30 minutes, which was refreshing after the 30-second trivial pursuits of the debates.) Michele Bachmann (local control), Rick Santorum (moral values) and Herman Cain (business principles) stuck mainly to their talking points, but Mr. Gingrich kept the crowd of 1,000 or so engaged and...

If the 2008 POTUS election were based upon a "proportional electoral college" what would of been the final EV total? State breakdowns and overall total. One EV for each congressional district you win. Two EVs for the overall state vote winner.

Call this post “the good, the bad, and the ugly� for Rick Perry today to start off a new week for his campaign. He clearly wanted to start with a boost, and had fiscal-conservative icon Steve Forbes on Fox News yesterday with an endorsement of the Texas governor, tied to the upcoming release of Perry’s economic recovery plan based on the Flat Tax that Forbes himself championed in the 1990s: On Tuesday, Rick Perry will unveil his economic plan which includes measures to drastically reform the tax code and lower the corporate tax rate. It will also, he says, provide...

In late September of 2009, this column observed that James Grant’s economic exuberance was very much overdone. Specifically, Grant had penned a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in which he proclaimed that the looming economic recovery would “be a bit of a barn burner.” Notably, Grant’s general presumption about recessions/rebounds was correct. With U.S. recessions having historically acted as cures for them ridding the economy of all the malinvestment and labor mismatches that had brought on the downturns to begin with, logic spoke to a major rebound from the horrors of 2008. Grant cited a research report from economist Michael...

After Herman Cain began making a big splash with his 9-9-9 plan, boldness seemed to be the recipe for this cycle’s presidential election. Ron Paul delivered his own bold plan this week to reform the federal budget and “Restore America,� as Paul titled his new plan. In my column for The Fiscal Times, I take a look at Paul’s blueprint and find some provocative and intriguing concepts — but very little explanation, and even less common sense.Paul proposes to immediately zero out funding for five Cabinet-level agencies: Energy, Education, HUD, Interior, and Commerce. Conservatives have long wanted to eliminate the...

The volunteer contact for the Herman Cain campaign in VA is: Laura Ricketts laura.ricketts@hermancain.com 540-514-1607

After months of languishing on the sidelines of the GOP presidential race, Herman Cain has skyrocketed to the top of the national polls and now looks like he might actually be a real contender for the Republican nomination in 2012. Until Cain and his "9-9-9" tax plan dominated Tuesday's presidential debate and vaulted into the national spotlight, few outside of the Tea Party know much about Cain, other than that he is black and likes pizza. That is largely because, until this week, Cain's presidential campaign was virtually non-existent. Eschewing the fundraisers and early voting state visits typical of most...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry outlined plans Friday to dramatically increase U.S. energy production and create 1.2 million jobs, taking aim at federal regulations he said are strangling the economy. Perry's announcement at a U.S. Steel plant in a suburb near Pittsburgh came as the Texas governor seeks to shore up his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination after a series of shaky debate performances and distractions knocked him out of the front-runner position. Perry said if elected in 2012 he would sign a series of executive orders in the first 100 days of his administration to roll back...

Herman Cain's days of running a shoestring operation may be coming to an end. Responding to concerns about the lack of significant staff, Cain promised that his campaign would shortly begin hiring to meet the demands on a front-running candidate: Seizing modest momentum in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, businessman Herman Cain promised to invest in additional staff and campaign more aggressively in New Hampshire and Iowa.“We have run this very lean by design. We are now going to ramp up,� he told reporters near the New Hampshire State House Wednesday afternoon. “We now have the money to...

Two polls published today show Herman Cain leading the GOP presidential candidate field. The NBC/Wall Street Journal and PPP polls give the Georgia businessman his first poll leads of the season: PPP: Yesterday PPP released numbers showing Herman Cain leading Mitt Romney 30-22 in Iowa and our monthly look at the national picture finds the exact same numbers. Cain is up 30-22 on Romney with Newt Gingrich sneaking past Rick Perry for 3rd place at 15% to Perry's 14% with Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul tied for 5th at 5%, Jon Huntsman 7th at 2%, Rick Santorum 8th at 1%,...

In 1972, Brazilian biologist Francisco Varela introduced the concept of “autopoiesis,” which explains the process by which cells regenerate and replace themselves. According to the theory, human cells die and are replaced; so every ten years or so, you are literally an entirely different person than you were before. So if you called your car-insurance company to tell them the speeding ticket you got in 1998 wasn’t you, you’d actually be right. Seeing as how I’m reaching the end of my 30s, I figure I’m due a new body. I hope model 4.0 will be taller and skinnier; if it’s...

First, folks couldn’t identify the meaning of the acronym “GOP.� Now, they can’t name a single GOP presidential candidate. Forty-seven percent of those polled in a recent Pew Research Center survey couldn’t identify one Republican competitor for the GOP nomination. Twenty-eight percent could name Rick Perry, 27 percent could name Mitt Romney and 15 percent could name Michele Bachmann. All of the other candidates drew only single-digit name recognition. That’s not necessarily surprising. After all, I’m not sure why registered Democrats would follow the Republican primaries closely enough to be able to name all the candidates. But, at the same...

Barack Obama is so doomed politically that he sits behind his desk in the Oval Office with a vulture on each shoulder. And every day at noon, Joe Biden comes in dressed as the Grim Reaper and they all play gin. I know this because the poll gods tell me this. A recent McClatchy/Marist poll says that 49 percent of voters say they definitely plan to vote against Obama in 2012. In addition, 52 percent of Americans think the Republican candidate will win (even though they don’t know who the Republican candidate will be). And nearly one out of every...

On Wedesday, we took a closer look at Herman Cain, who is spiking in recent polls — and taking a lot of his newfound support from Texas Guv Rick Perry. “Flavor of the week,” as Sarah Palin refers to her pal, “Herb Caen.” But Herb would trade in all those temporal poll numbers for what Perry has: Lots of cold, hard campaign contributions. Perry will report $17 mi miiiiiiiiiiiiiilllion in contributions over the past three months. That’s $17 million in 49 days — and THAT keeps Perry as an A-list candidate who can afford (for now) bad debate performances and...

Herman Cain is likable, but is that enough for him to grab the Republican nomination? Meghan McCain on why the party needs to rally around a candidate soon—before it’s too late. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As soon as the last Republican debate ended, my mother called me and asked what I thought. I told her my opinion on the candidates was pretty much unchanged with just one exception: the more I see Herman Cain, the more I want to grab a beer and slice of pizza with him. The recent Florida straw poll results show that I’m not the only one who is...

First things first: There is no 9-9-9 plan in This Is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House. But other than that notable omission, which is due to the fact that the book was written before the campaign developed the 9-9-9 tax-reform plan, the book reads exactly like the optimistic, sunny speech that brought down the house at Florida’s Presidency 5 straw poll. Sprinkled throughout the 167 pages of This Is Herman Cain! are numerous interesting tidbits for those fascinated by the pizza mogul–turned–presidential candidate: He wears gold ties because “gold is my power color,” he can see his...

Is Herman Cain a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination? It’s a question no one in the pundit world was asking until the past week. Cain has never held public office. When he ran for the Senate in Georgia in 2004, he lost the primary by a 52 percent to 26 percent margin. He has zero experience in foreign or defense policy, where presidents have the most leeway to set policy. When questioned about the Middle East earlier this year, he clearly had no idea what the “right of return” is. His solid performance in the Fox News/Google debate...

The White House hit back Wednesday against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's contention that President Obama has been a "bystander" to the nation's problems. "There were no bystanders in the Oval Office," presidential press secretary Jay Carney said. "In the past two and a half years that Barack Obama has been president, it has been one of the most substantial periods in our history." Mr. Carney went on to cite the "enormity" of the challenges that faced Mr. Obama when he took office, including a deep recession and global financial crisis. He said Mr. Obama made "a series of incredibly...

Bill Christie, Gov. Chris Christie’s father, tells National Review Online that his son will make the final decision about a presidential bid. But as the governor mulls, he can count his father as one of many Republicans who would support him, should he jump into the presidential primary. “I know he’d be a great president,” Mr. Christie says. “He has always been a leader. I think he would beat [President] Obama.” But don’t get too excited. “I’ve never asked him if he’s going to run,” Mr. Christie cautions. “I trust if it’s going to happen, I’d be hearing it from...

Yesterday, I wrote that Rick Perry needs to stop worrying so much about his competitors in the Republican primary fight and start laying out his own plans for a Perry presidency in order to claim the mantle of a front-runner. Jill Lawrence at the Daily Beast decided to take a look at Perry’s website to see what kind of argument that might be, and discovered why Perry might be a little too focused on attacking Romney: In public at least, Rick Perry is among those writing off his stumbling debate performances as a verbal problem—as in, he’s not a slick,...