Free Republic

Then-candidate Sen. Barack Obama: "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

Of many strange moments in President Obama’s Cairo speech, perhaps the strangest is the conclusion: The Holy Quran tells us, Mankind, we have created you male and a female. And we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another. The Talmud tells us, The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace. The Holy Bible tells us, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. What does the idea of gender and tribe distinction have to do with peace? The answer is nothing, except that Obama’s speechwriters...

Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, joins the ranks of several Republicans, including Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, who are criticizing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s quote on ethnicity and judgment. On today's “Washington Unplugged” with host Bob Schieffer, Cheney said she found the quote “troubling.” In yet another, Schieffer – Cheney interview, the mother of five said, “if you switched around the designations in the quote, you know somebody's career would over.” The Sotomayor quote in question came from a 2001 speech where the court nominee said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography. For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians...

An aide to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Keith Urbahn, e-mails to contest a widely discussed GQ article by Robert Draper, which suggested that Rumsfeld "appreciated" the practice of quoting Biblical quotations on the cover sheets of classified briefings, and that Rumsfeld brought the briefings to President Bush. Urbahn e-mails that the briefings in question were not routinely sent to Rumsfeld, and that Rumsfeld considers the cover slides "harmful and counterproductive to the war effort." Urbahn's full e-mail: The slides in the “World Intelligence Update” were prepared on a daily basis by military personnel serving on the Joint Staff, which...

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography. For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

Donald Rumsfeld covered Iraq briefing papers with Biblical texts According to a report in GQ magazine the religious texts were imposed over pictures of the US armed forces engaged in the war. Shown to only a small circle of senior advisers, the pages were first used on the eve of the 2003 invasion and were designed to provide support and encouragement to Mr Bush, a Christian who often cited the Bible while in office. Some Pentagon officials feared that if the documents were leaked at the height of the conflict, the use of Christian language to justify the invasion of...

A series of cover sheets for intelligence reports written for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials during the early days of the war in Iraq in 2003 were adorned with biblical quotations, and appeared Sunday, six years later, on the Web site of GQ magazine. The daily briefings were called the “Worldwide Intelligence Update,” one of several intelligence reports compiled overnight and presented in a folder for Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials as they came to work. In the selection of the cover sheets that GQ placed on its Web site, photographs of soldiers praying...

President Thomas Jefferson's own words (the right-wing extremist that he was!):"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." "Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state." "I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." "No free man shall ever be debarred the use...

On the occasion of President Obama’s first 100 days in office, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) highlights five memorable quotations from the Obama Administration:

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. George Orwell "In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains; and they protect you against outrage and violence from your fellow prisoners. In a school you have none of these advantages." George Bernard Shaw “It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones. Alexander Solzhenitsyn “Violence can only be concealed by a...

The video speaks for itself. No additional commentary is necessary. So, instead of commentary, I merely provide some of Thomas Jefferson's wisdom to introduce this fine piece: "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases." "The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." Video after the jump.

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to...

Political commentator and TV host Bill Maher won “Quote of the Year” at the Media Research Center’s annual Dishonors Awards for his remarks about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign. Maher – on HBO’s “Real Time” in September 2008-- questioned whether Palin’s infant son Trig was her child or that of her teenage daughter, Bristol. “I’m not that convinced that that’s her baby,” Maher said. “It’s not like they’re not willing to lie about everything else.”

Could the Vatican press office possibly be more useless? The Times reports that the Pope did not say the use of condoms "risks" aggravating the problem of Aids, as the Vatican record published today insists. Instead, he said what the world's press quoted him as saying: that it "even" aggravates the problem.As they say online, WTF? Did some moron in the press office add the words "il rischio" to take the edge off Benedict XVI's comments? Looks like it: the journalists on the plane to Cameroon didn't pick up that caveat in their transcripts.So, let's get this straight. The same...

The Proper Function of the Law And, in all sincerity, can anything more than the absence of plunder be required of the law? Can the law -- which necessarily requires the use of force -- rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right. This is the most fatal and most illogical social perversion that can possibly be imagined. It must be admitted that the true solution -- so long searched for in the area of social relationships -- is...

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is ashame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress. -- John Adams 2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. -- Mark Twain 3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain 4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying...

In my reading tonight, I discovered several quotes that seems to describe perfectly how Obama has governed. Scroll to the bottom of the list to see who said them, no it is not Bill Ayers or Marx. A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise. A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests. Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better. It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil...

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe Thomas Jefferson The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. Thomas Jefferson It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which, if acted on, would save one-half the wars of the world. Thomas Jefferson I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense...