Free Republic

If you like your doctor, HHS will create a rating system to show you that your doctor isn’t covered under the new, narrower network. That’s what the President promised us, right? HHS is moving to make it easier for consumers to find out the size of the network of doctors and hospitals they are joining when they sign up for a health plan on the Obamacare exchange. The New York Times reported on the changes being made Sunday: The Obama administration, responding to consumer complaints, says it will begin rating health insurance plans based on how many doctors and hospitals...

resident Obama makes no secret of his eagerness to visit Cuba, but as recently as December he insisted that there would be no such trip until human rights and civil liberties on the island had improved. "What I've said to the Cuban government is, if . . . we're seeing some progress in the liberty and freedom and possibilities of ordinary Cubans, I'd love to use a visit as a way of highlighting that progress, "Obama told Yahoo! News. "If we're going backwards, then there's not much reason for me to be there." Cuba is going backwards. By all accounts,...

GOP senators, if you give whichever Constitution-shredding libfascist Obama nominates a hearing, much less a vote, we are gone.  Out of the GOP.  Finished.  And that means you're finished too.             The "we" is us conservatives, and we are not in the mood for any pompous, delusional Senate-speak about how you can't do what we elected you to do and defy Obama.  You need to take a stand and shut him down.  And we don't care how much heat you have to take from the mainstream media and your distinguished commie colleagues across the aisle.            Man the hell up.            Our...

When President Bill Clinton's affair with intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed, it was a new low for the office of president. It wasn't the first affair by a president (or Clinton), not by a long shot. But the fact it was with an intern and he committed perjury behind it demeaned the office in a way that hadn't been done before. It turned the 2000 election partially into a referendum on restoring the dignity, or at least the veneer of it, to the office. Thanks to the words and deeds of Barack Obama, that dignity needs to be restored yet...

Looking at the case of Sergeant First Class Charles Martland, the highly decorated Green Beret who refused to stand by and do nothing when he was confronted with pure evil, one would think that as a result of how he faced down evil in Afghanistan that he would be given another medal to pin on his uniform. Unfortunately quite the contrary is the case. Instead of being rewarded for having the courage to do the right thing, Sergeant First Class Martland may well be facing the end of his military career. Martland, along with his former commander Captain Daniel Quinn...

It's surprising how time slips away: Five years ago next month, President Obama proclaimed a "responsibility to act" when American "interests and values are at stake." He made that statement in a major address at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. Within days, a no-fly zone was established over Libya, and the forces of longtime dictator Muammar Kaddafi were stopped in their tracks. In April, Mr. Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a joint letter congratulating themselves for having prevented a “bloodbath.” They emphasized: "Tens of thousands of lives have been protected." It...

So you thought plummeting gas prices were going to free you up to get better health care, more education, a little home improvement, or maybe some nicer clothes for your kids? Not if Barack Obama has his way. Watching oil prices fall as American ingenuity floods the market, the president figures he can't let you get too much of a good thing. So he wants to slap a $10 per barrel "fee" on oil, which, with West Texas crude (the benchmark) trading at $21 per barrel on the world market, would make the fee roughly a third of the total...

If you read The New York Times "conservative" columnist David Brooks, you might better grasp the chasm between true and phony conservatives, between Reagan conservatives and establishment Republicans. In his piece "I Miss Barack Obama," Brooks unwittingly humiliates himself in his latest paean to the president, just as when he revealed his perverse attraction to Obama's "perfectly creased pant." Let me just share Brooks' words rather than trying to characterize them, for he does much more damage to his own credibility than I could. He writes, "As this primary season has gone along, a strange sensation has come over me:...

In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae. The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or "Trotskyized," all the images of any past kingpin who became politically incorrect. The Obama administration seems obsessed with doing the same to retired Gen. David Petraeus. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is now thinking of retroactively taking away one or two of Petraeus' four stars. The potential demotion in rank, opposed by the Army, is intended as further punishment for the misdemeanor to which he pleaded guilty last...

resident Obama's inspiring message of hope and change seven years ago is lacking in the "hope" part - especially when it comes to the issue of racial tension. If the latest Rasmussen Reports survey is any indication, it seems that when Obama stepped into office, race in America took about 10 steps back. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of American Adults now think race relations in this country are getting worse, up from 44% a year ago and 30% as recently as January 2014. Only 20% believe race relations are getting better, a new low that compares to 38% five years ago....

The speed of the news cycle and the media obsession with the presidential horseraces have crowded out a crucial development in the war on ISIS and related Islamic jihadist groups. House Speaker Paul Ryan has been sounding out colleagues for a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The current AUMF, which was written in 2001 and targeted groups connected to 9/11, has not been renewed. Believe it or not. Bravo for Paul Ryan's statesmanship. But a new AUMF must be accompanied by a clear U.S. declaration of war against ISIS. We will never destroy them without a full-blown...

If you missed the president's final State of the Union message Tuesday night, don't worry. It might have been billed as historic, but you didn't miss much. There were no surprises. No shocks. No awe. Nothing historic or memorable. It was the usual Obama setup -- "We have to find a way to come together, end the government gridlock and make America better and stronger" -- followed by the implication that Washington isn't working the way it should because Republicans in Congress are mean, stubborn or stupid. In seven years Obama hasn't changed the country, not for the better anyway....

On Tuesday, President Obama delivered his final State of the Union Address. Yes, go ahead and smile. Aside from a random press conference and his farewell address, and baring an unforeseen horrible event (fingers crossed), he won't be in our faces again. Thank God! That said, it's time we re-evaluate the concept of the State of the Union speech. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution says the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress information on the state of the union..." Were it not for television, this would be a non-event. But since we can't rid...

It is a testament to the precarious state of the world today that in a week that saw North Korea carry out a possible test of a hydrogen bomb, the most frightening statement uttered did not come from Pyongyang. It came from Pakistan. Speaking in the military garrison town of Rawalpindi, Pakistani Army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif said that any Iranian threat to Saudi Arabia's territorial integrity will "wipe Iran off the map." Sharif made the statement following his meeting with Saudi Arabia's defense minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to media reports, Salman was the second...

On Tuesday evening, amid much splendor and spectacle, the president of the United States will be welcomed by a joint session of Congress, there to be cheered and applauded like a homecoming conqueror, and, before an audience of lawmakers, diplomats, military officers, and dignitaries, to deliver his State of the Union oration in a live nationwide broadcast.It is the most preposterous and gaudy ritual in American political life. Thomas Jefferson will be turning in his grave.Like Moses, Jefferson was burdened with a speech impediment and disliked public speaking. Unlike the Hebrew lawgiver, Jefferson wasn't compelled by Heaven to preach to...

When I was a kid my father gave me three rifles and a shotgun. First he gave me a single-shot .22 rifle. I was about eight. Then in 1958, when "The Rifleman" came on, my father gave me a rapid-fire lever-action .22 Winchester rifle like the one Chuck Connors had. I was about 12. Later, when I was a teenager my father gave me a .243 hunting rifle to hunt deer in Arizona and a 12-gauge shotgun to hunt birds. He bought all the guns legally. But he gave them to me without first doing a background check to see...

Even in boom times, any president can expect candidates from the opposing party to subject his record to pitiless scrutiny. The economy under Barack Obama isn't exactly filling voters with confidence, so it's not surprising that presidential hopefuls are pretty severe in their critique. Listen to the kinds of things being said as candidates assure voters that they understand how shaky the economy is, more than six years into the current recovery. "Our middle class is shrinking," one candidate warned during a debate. "Our poor families are becoming poorer, and 70 percent of us are earning the same or less...

On the Monday night edition of MSNBC's All In, longtime liberal columnist Jonathan Alter reacted to President Obama's executive actions on gun control by comparing it to President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and remarking how heartbreaking it was for Obama to have met with the families of Sandy Hook victims and "see those six-year-olds stacked up like cord wood." Host Chris Hayes began the segment with a number of soundbites from the President and Republican presidential candidates opposed to the move before remarking: "While the substantive reason to be concerned about guns seems clear, in a country where...

While it is unlikely that anybody will ever toss a shoe at Barack Obama, and the media still treats him more gently than it ever did his predecessor, even Democrats know it: this presidency is ending badly. Most of us are already beginning our countdowns not for Santa Claus but for the end of the Obama years. "It's been a long eight years," a friend sighed the other day. It has indeed. A country can stand only so much of this kind of hope and change. One of the reasons that things are turning bad for the Obama presidency is...

Editor's Note: This piece was coauthored by Tim Graham.After seven years of media adoration, President Obama was stunned and prickly. At a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, American reporters kept asking him why he was declaring his anti-ISIS strategy was working, when clearly it isn't. NBC's Chuck Todd found Obama "extremely defensive and almost not yet realizing that many of the reporters in that room, they're channeling the public in this case." For seven years, we've watched the White House press corps channel Obama back to Obama. But this time, on the heels of the Paris massacre, they were in...