Free Republic

The recent revelation that the head of Media Matters walked the streets of Washington with a Glock-toting bodyguard may make it a little awkward for the group the next time it seeks a donation from a gun control advocacy group. Media Matters reportedly took more than $400,000 from the Joyce Foundation specifically earmarked to promote a $600,000 initiative on "gun and public safety issues." At the same time, Media Matters' gun-guarded boss David Brock reportedly obsessed over his own security. ....Brock reportedly told confidantes that he feared for his safety and needed hired guns to keep him safe.

San Francisco philanthropist Susie Tompkins Buell, one of the Democratic Party's most generous benefactors, is keeping her checkbook closed when President Obama holds high-priced California fundraisers this week."I want to look him in the eye and say, 'Thank you so much' " for his work, said Buell, who expresses deep disappointment in the president's leadership on environmental issues, especially climate change. With Obama's 2012 re-election campaign in full swing, "I would just love to write my big check ... or have a high-dollar dinner here" on his behalf, she said. "I can't."Buell, a co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, has...

I knew a long time ago that Jones was a serious player, who was going to be with us for the long haul, that's one of the reasons why this is being done. Now, Nancy Pelosi has confirmed what I knew a year ago: But as 3,000 Democrats met this weekend in San Diego for a three day convention here, Jones was lauded by Burton and Pelosi, who even described herself as “a fan” of Jones - a positive statement also once echoed by 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. Here is how the source article itself opens: Van Jones,...

A Commission has recommended many fixes. Here is an excerpt dealing with Healthcare. Note "End of life discussions for middle age folks". TORONTO - Ontario’s public health care system — the single largest expense in the government’s budget — needs major surgery. “Canada has one of the costliest health care systems in the world which may surprise people who are too accustomed to comparing our record only to that of the United States... . “Despite its high cost, our system does not produce superior results on a value-for-money basis relative to other countries.” Drummond is recommending significant changes — increased...

ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have a credibility problem with conservatives and Middle America. And it seems to be getting worse. It’s not just that ABC News hired Bill Clinton’s White House spokesman and counselor George Stephanopoulos as a journalist; it’s that the pack mentality at ABC News doesn’t see it as a problem. “The planning meetings [at ABC News] have little political diversity. Everyone is left of center and at ease with their liberal ideals. The other viewpoint is rarely raised and never fully represented,” a current ABC News producer told me last week. ,,,,, But the bias at...

RUSH: This is from Rayford, North Carolina. Carolina Journal. I'm gonna read it to you exactly as it printed out here: "A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet US Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day." Again, let me read this to you again: "The...

It is certainly no surprise for gun owners to see the New York Times run a story belittling the United States Constitution. After all, the Times has worked for decades to devalue our founding document. "[I]ts influence is waning," opines the Times. It is "terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights." The paper faults the Constitution for being difficult to amend and reflective of the times in which it was written. While the Times does not go so far as to claim the U.S. Constitution has been bad for America, it does lament that it is of "little...

A left-wing freebie newspaper in Toronto, called NOW magazine, has published a photoshopped picture of the conservative mayor, Rob Ford, pointing a gun to his head. This from a magazine that claims to be against guns and gun violence. NOW magazine is unimportant to most people, but there is an important point buried amidst its smut: Liberals don’t mind promiscuous suggestions of gun crime, if it’s someone they hate in the crosshairs. It’s like when the movie, Death of a President, came to the Toronto International Film Festival. It wasn’t about a historical assassination. It was a Hollywood liberal fantasy...

When Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), spoke at CPAC on February 10th, he predicted that if Barack Obama wins a second term it will usher in an all-out attack on the Second Amendment. In so many words, he said the same people who brought us Fast and Furious, “a criminal enterprise” for which there has yet to be prosecutions, will use four more years to gut constitutional protections on the right to keep and bear arms. And anyone who wonders what this assault on the Second Amendment might look like need look no further...

The same presumptions of superior wisdom and virtue behind the interventionism of Progressive Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the domestic economy also led them to be interventionists in other countries. Theodore Roosevelt was so determined that the United States should intervene against Spain's suppression of an uprising in Cuba that he quit his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to organize his own private military force — called "Rough Riders" — to fight in what became the Spanish-American war. The spark that set off this war was an explosion that destroyed an American battleship anchored in...

"Often wrong but never in doubt" is a phrase that summarizes much of what was done by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the two giants of the Progressive era, a century ago. Their legacy is very much alive today, both in their mindset — including government picking winners and losers in the economy and interventionism in foreign countries — as well as specific institutions created during the Progressive era, such as the income tax and the Federal Reserve System. Like so many Progressives today, Theodore Roosevelt felt no need to study economics before intervening in the economy. He...

Although Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States, he is by no means unique, except for his complexion. He follows in the footsteps of other presidents with a similar vision, the vision at the heart of the Progressive movement that flourished a hundred years ago. Many of the trends, problems and disasters of our time are a legacy of that era. We can only imagine how many future generations will be paying the price — and not just in money — for the bright ideas and clever rhetoric of our current administration. The two giants...

At a protest "Occupying CPAC" in Washington DC, a protester admits that it would be legitimate to abort a baby because it was gay, all for the woman's "Right to Choose".

And we're the ones, the old-fashioned conservatives, we want to deny people a good time, we want to deny people fun, we want to deny people all these things in life. So we have yet another example of life in America under the thumb of an ever-expanding state with central planning, otherwise known as "well-intentioned liberalism." From violating religious rights where there is no power permitted to do so, to mandating the purchase of products, to now mandating insurance companies sell certain products at a price that's also mandated, from czars, to denying the right to travel, it's all here....

With all that's going on with the Catholic Church and the President right now, this has become a huge hot button topic. But why is this so important to progressives? Rush keeps saying that "abortion is the sacrament of liberalism." What makes this so? Let's ask Margaret Sanger. In her book "Woman and the new race", Sanger explains the purpose of birth control:(Page 229) Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Think about how far we've come, folks, in just three years. Just three years. We've gone from, "Birth control and abortion is a matter of conscience that we cannot impose on anyone," to, "Birth control and abortion is a human right that everybody must get for free if they want it." Now, what other benefits are we entitled to for free, even if we have the means to pay for them? Let me tell you... (interruption) Cell phones? That's true. But this just shows what the sacrament to the religion of the Democrat Party is. It's abortion....

Occupy Albany has announced an event in March called, The Weather Underground Meets Occupy Wall Street. The event will be held March 3rd, and is co-sponsored by The Sanctuary For Independent Media and the Albany Social Justice Center. It is described as, “A book event and multi-generational dialog to celebrate U.S. political prisoner David Gilbert’s new memoir, “Love and Struggle.” Gilbert is currently serving time in the Auburn Correctional Facility and is described as “an American radical leftist organizer and activist.” He was imprisoned for his role in the Brinks Robbery of 1981, a botched effort that led to the...

This health hazard and social menace is what the Left regards as America's next great political cause? As the tents were coming down at McPherson Square, the dead rats and mice being retrieved, the urine and feces and filthy bedding disposed of by District of Columbia employees dressed in hazardous-materials suits like their contemporaries at Fukushima, I thought of the left-wing press. You see, I read the left-wing press. Not the urban throwaway rags, but I read the Nation, the Progressive, the American Prospect, and more -- I read them all. They have been raving for months about the exciting...

If abortion rights advocates are feeling their oats this week, they have good reason. In just two-and-half a weeks, they've claimed two major victories, forcing the Susan G. Komen Foundation to back off its policy change denying grants to Planned Parenthood clinics and convincing the Obama administration to maintain only a very limited exemption for religious employers in the new contraceptive coverage mandate, which is set to go into effect on August 1. Part of Obama's health-care reform bill, the new mandate will for the first time require most employer-provided private health-care plans to cover birth control without a co-pay...

The age-old hobby of tossing a football or Frisbee on the beach on a beautiful summer day in Los Angeles will cost you a cool $1,000 thanks to a new ordinance passed by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday. Claiming that such activity could be dangerous to other beachgoers, the Supes outlawed "any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll any ball, tube, or any light object other than a beach ball or beach volleyball” on or over a beach.

Doctors who handed out sick notes to protesters while on the corner of Mifflin and Hamilton streets last year claim protestors received more thorough examinations on the street in public than they would have at an office visit. This revelation was discoverd in an examination of documents obtained by the MacIver News Service through an open records request. The Medical Examining Board issued reprimands to seven doctors in October, who had given hundreds of sick notes to protesters last February so they wouldn’t get in trouble for skipping work. The MacIver News Service was the first to report on the...

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation. The conservative think tank's annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were "traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families." The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show. The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an...

US Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg tells Egyptians: Don’t look to the “OLD US Constitution” for guidance in drafting a new constitution. Justice Ginsburg holds in high esteem the constitution of South Africa and Canada.

The “Occupy DC” protest group is planning to disrupt the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference using a range of potentially illegal tactics that could even include violence against participants, Scribe has learned. The planned disruptions at CPAC come only days after U.S. Park Police raided Occupiers’ tent cities at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., confiscating a number of tents, and prohibiting Occupiers from camping out there any longer. During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the protests, Occupiers brainstormed tactics for shutting down or disrupting the conference, according to a source who...

Pelosi: 'I Don't Want To Pay For It...Surcharge' The Rich For Doctors Visits and Unemployment Benefits http://www.breitbart.tv/pelosi-on-unemployment-benefits-extension-id-rather-not-pay-for-it/

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Susan G. Komen bunch, the Race for the Cure, whatever? They have caved big time to the feminazis at Planned Parenthood. It is stunning! Yesterday everybody was holding firm, and today Nancy Brinker who runs the Susan Komen group (I think it was her sister) made a big time cave. Biiiig time. Abortion is the sacrament to the religion of liberalism. Nobody is gonna mess with that money's flow. Nobody is gonna mess with that pile of money. Nobody's gonna mess with that at all. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to talk about this Susan G....

On Tuesday, director Joe Carnahan announced on Twitter that he had embarked on a remake of the Charles Bronson vigilante classic Death Wish. The main question, for any director approaching such a topic, especially with source material as infamous as Death Wish, is “Have you read any reviews lately?�Vincent Canby, in the New York Times, dubbed the original Death Wish “a despicable movie, one that raises complex questions in order to offer bigoted, frivolous, oversimplified answers.� Dirty Harry, whose 40th anniversary passed in December, attracted similar distaste. Pauline Kael savaged the film’s “fascist medievalism,� and described it as a...

Actual title is : It’s baaack! The plan to kill talk radio. Group advising White House wants to restore controversial policy An organization that helped to craft President Obama’s environmental policies has recommended the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, purportedly as a method of silencing critics of the theory of global warming. The Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, last year released an extensive list of recommendations for the White House in a 75-page paper entitled, “Building the Obama Administration’s Climate Legacy.” Primary among the PCAP’s recommendations is that the Department of Energy should join the U.S. Department of Housing...

Tonight, the Soros Twins of Romney & Obama, the Media, Social Justice advocates & David Axelrod, rejoice. Patriotism, my friends, is about the noble defense of our national values, principles and liberties. It has nothing to do with "going along to get along." For all that elect to prioritize the media spin and GOP elite's hypothetical "electability" polls over conservative constitutional principles, you are 9 short months away from once again learning the terrible lesson of "live by the sword (poll), die by the sword." Mr. Plastic's hollow core will be easily crushed under the massive weight of Team Obama's...

A few days ago, an article titled "Is it morally wrong to take a life? Not really, say bioethicists" appeared in a journal for bio ethics. More than anything, note the context. This is being discussed by those who are "the experts" of ethics, by researchers from Duke University and the National Institute of Health. So we're supposed to take this seriously, that this is an enlightened and reasoned discourse on the matter. All of that gets shattered if you look at the verbage they use at the bottom: This radical conclusion may shock some readers, but the authors are...

NEW YORK, January 30, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After years of renting the property, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America has purchased its headquarters in New York City for $34.8 million. The nation’s largest abortion provider has rented the commercial condominium where its headquarters are situated since 2002, and had reportedly originally signed for a 20-year lease for 104,000 square feet of the property at around $35 per square foot, according to The Real Deal, a local real estate news source. Although legally a nonprofit organization, Planned Parenthood reported over $1 billion in net assets in 2009-10 according to its...

Occupy Oakland is aptly named. When forces occupy a city, they know that occupied turf is not their home. They can maraud, loot, vandalize, abuse the locals, and then leave. They can treat other people's property as their own. The occupiers don't have to clean up after themselves. They don't have to worry about paying for the workers who clean up after them, either. Occupiers don't have to exert self-control. They can freely act upon their rage, while defenders of occupied territory must concentrate on protecting what others want to harm. Occupiers do not have to fear that they will...

PROVIDENCE, RI, January 30, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week. About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday. The...

Constitutional Work Around: New Jersey Legislators Move To Ban Ammunition Mac Slavo January 30th, 2012 While the second amendment protects our right to bear arms, some anti-gun advocates think they may have found a loophole. This afternoon the New Jersey Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee is set to consider two bills (Assembly Bill 588 and Assembly Bill 1013) that would essentially ban all handgun ammunition in the state, as well as some (or potentially all) rifle ammunition.Sponsored by Assemblyman L. Grace Spencer (D-29), A588 is cleverly disguised as police safety legislation aimed at armor piercing ammunition (which is already...

People are funny about some things. A person who believes he controls his own destiny is sometimes the same person who won’t get involved in politics. He literally bristles at the suggestion that he can’t have it both ways. An occasional theme running through BizPac Review’s pages highlights the puzzling logic of such people, who sit back and let the political train run them over. To me, such people have their heads stuck so far in the sand that only their behinds are visible. They’re part of the problem. Here’s why: The function of politics -- and its highest form,...

Police were in the process of arresting about 100 Occupy protesters for failing to disperse Saturday night, hours after officers used tear gas on a rowdy group of demonstrators who threw rocks and flares at them and tore down fences. Police Sgt. Christopher Bolton said the arrests came after protesters marched through downtown Oakland a little before 8 p.m. Saturday, with some of them entering a YMCA building. Meanwhile, about 100 police officers surrounded City Hall while others were swept the inside of the building to see if any protesters broke in.

BOISE -- With a bill aimed at getting rid of the Occupy Boise encampment making its way through the Idaho Legislature, new pictures of people identified as Occupy members may not do much to help their cause. The pictures don't reveal any crimes, rather the Department of Administration says they are violations of the good neighbor policy, meaning it shows Occupy members taking things and using things they shouldn't. Since Occupy Boise set up camp in early November, the Director of the Department of Administration, Teresa Luna, says they have dealt with vandalism, violence, trespassing and theft. Earlier this month,...

"The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional." -- Samuel Adams

Hat Tip to Michigan Capitol Confidential: Teachers' Union Manual Shows How to Organize Illegal Strikes, Use Children During Bargaining This is evil, evil stuff. You want to know just how deep down the rathole that the school systems have gone? Take a look inside this crisis manual. On page 17 of the manual(searchable alternative link here) it says "Pick a target - personalize - and polarize the opposition" which is right out of Saul Alinsky. It was Horace Mann who said it best: We, then, who are engaged in the sacred cause of education, are entitled to look upon all...

Starbucks was targeted by a well known anti gun rights group recently because they took “No position” on firearms in their stores. They couldn’t coerce Starbucks into banning guns in Starbucks for everyone except criminals who don't care about "No guns" policies. Again, Starbucks is the target of a boycott beginning on Valentine’s Day by The National Gun Victims Action Council. Starbucks has the right to run their business as they see fit. They call themselves “A force for sane gun laws.” They cite England’s gun laws as a model to follow. But, English criminals are stealing guns, converting starter...

Its called the open carry law, and its now the law in California - when it comes to handguns. Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law that bans 'unloaded handguns in public.' It went on the books on earlier this month. (January 1st.) With the new law, California residents can no longer carry an unloaded handgun in public. Now, Democratic Assemblyman Anthony Portantino wants to expand that ban to rifles. Portantino says he wants another law because some California residents are now showing up in public with unloaded shotguns and rifles. So, he wants another law...

The news spotlight has moved elsewhere, but Oakland continues to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for the Occupy protests. Every week for the past month, more than 100 cops, or roughly one-fifth of the city's patrol force, are called in to work the Saturday night Occupy demonstration held downtown. Estimated cost: about $50,000 a week. City officials now estimate their overall Occupy tab is up to $3 million and counting - this at a time when up to 400 city workers will likely be laid off Feb. 1 for lack of money.

President Barack Obama, today, release a statement celebrating the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that allowed for 54 million abortions. The decision, handed down on January 22, 1973, overturned pro-life laws offering protection for unborn children in most states across the country, and made abortions legal and virtually unlimited. The statement Obama release says: As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I remain committed...

Barack Obama’s 2008 Iowa New Media Director was arrested Friday for attempting to use the identities of Secretary of State Matt Schultz, and/or his brother Thomas, with the intent to falsely implicate the Secretary Schultz in illegal or unethical behavior. Zach Edwards, 29, of Des Moines, currently works for Link Strategies, a Democrat-affiliated organization with ties to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. Edwards is the Director of New Media for Link Strategies. The Secretary of State’s office discovered the alleged crime and reported it to authorities. Edwards turned himself in to the Iowa DCI agents Friday afternoon. He was charged with...

From Washington Blade: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Friday he wouldn’t rule “in or out” the possibility of President Obama endorsing same-sex marriage in the upcoming State of the Union address. Carney made the remarks on whether Obama would announce support for marriage equality during the State of the Union address, which is set to take place Tuesday before a joint session of Congress, in response to a question from the Washington Blade. “I will not rule anything in or out,” Carney said. “I’m just not going to talk about — beyond pointing at his words —...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A class reading assignment infuriates the parents of a 14-year-old Valley Traditional High School student. They said their daughter's questions about the book left them speechless. The book is called "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." "She was masturbating and (describing) how to masturbate and how she did it and also giving a boy a (expletive) and going into great detail of how to perform it," said Vincent. Vincent took the book to her daughter's step-father, who became speechless. "Her being the age that she's in right now, you just freeze up. You don't know...

Newt Gingrich instantly brought the crowd to its feet last night at the last debate before Saturday's all important primary in South Carolina. What was the multitude cheering? Not his stance on tax policy, or on abortion, but rather his acid assault on the “elite media.” Gingrich expressed outrage that moderator John King of CNN would lead off the evening by asking about potentially damaging charges made by the Speaker’s second wife in an interview with ABC News's "Nightline." The audience howled its approval as Gingrich tore into the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media…” As...

The Obama Administration has decided to allow one more year for religious groups to comply with a regulation that forces them to make an impossible choice: either provide health-insurance that includes coverage of birth control and some abortion-inducing drugs to their employees, or provide no health-insurance and face stiff and escalating fines from the government. ... Belmont Abbey College, has sued the Obama administration, and its president, Bill Thierfelder ... has said that he will close the school before he complies with the Obama administration's requirement that purchase health-insurance for its employees inclusive of contraception. “This is a shameless attempt...

Liberals are crowing about what they see as a huge victory for them — and they are right — because this victory comes at the expense of religious liberty. Welcome to the Obama 2012 reelection plan: ignore and marginalize people of faith, pander to the far-left’s sexual-political priorities. This via the far-left site ThinkProgress Today, in a huge victory for women’s health, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans, along with other preventive services, with no cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles. This means that after...

The Obama administration is expected to reject the controversial Keystone Pipeline this afternoon, according to Fox News. The State Department is expected to vote against the pipeline this afternoon. Transcanada will however be allowed to reapply with an alternate route going through Nebraska. The administration will be unlikely to approve the pipeline under the timeline for the payroll tax cut extension law which requires a decision by February 21 The project has been extremely controversial for two main reasons. Those in favor of the pipeline point to the 8.5% unemployment rate, and point out that the pipeline could create much-needed...