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FOX NEWS ALERT! The barricades are back up!

On the seventh day of the shutdown, President Obama called on House Republican leaders Monday to allow a vote immediately on a short-term measure to reopen government operations. Mr. Obama said he strongly suspects “there are enough votes” in the House to reopen the government today. “The truth of the matter is, there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end this shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached,” Mr. Obama said during a surprise visit to FEMA headquarters in the district. “The House should hold that vote today.” The president said he...

Leadership: From the closing of national cemeteries to the blocking of public roads to deny access to scenic overlooks of Mount Rushmore, the list of federal shutdowns shows a president whose pettiness knows no bounds. We have witnessed the shameful spectacle of the administration placing barricades — "Barackades" and "Barrycades," as they've come to be called — around the World War II Memorial to prevent those who stormed the beaches of Normandy and Ronald Reagan's honored "boys of Pointe du Hoc" from seeing the monument built with public funds to honor their service and sacrifice. As the Associated Press reports,...

WASHINGTON, DC - So far, the National Park Police don't seem to be targeting visitors jumping over barricades to see the monuments or use federal parks. But violators could technically be ticketed and fined $50. Fox 5 found many out-of-town tourists ignoring signs that say parks and attractions are closed. Dozens of locals who normally play beach volleyball in a section of West Potomac Park were there enjoying the weather and some games this afternoon. Some didn't realize the park was closed. Others aware of the government shutdown thought a $50 fine was too steep. We called the Park Police...

Obama has had the Highways partially closed so you cannot stop and look out the windows to see Rushmore. Will it stop there? Nope! Rushmore blockage stirs anger in S.D. The whole Highways system will not be shut down, but to make it painful he will have the Highways cordoned off to single lanes to bring the Economy to it's knees. You can bet your ass this is in the works. What happens then? You guessed it, a national Emergency from his own creation. Obama will have his Economic Shutdown as predicted by Mark Levin on 10/3/13. If the Republicans...

A Gannett company newspaper. Title and link only allowed on FR:http://www.argusleader.com/article/20131004/UPDATES/310040047/Rushmore-blockage-stirs-anger-in-S-D-

The Pisgah Inn is closed compliments of the federal government. It's a private business that is located on government property. One of many businesses that are shutdown across the country. Some totally privately owned and operated. This will not stand. The order to close came from US Park Service National Director, Mr. John Jarvis. He has been contacted. As citizens of these United States, we will exercise our freedom to assemble. We are assembling at noon Saturday, 10/4. Please be at Pisgah Inn.

Just before the weekend, the National Park Service informed charter boat captains in Florida that the Florida Bay was "closed" due to the shutdown. Until government funding is restored, the fishing boats are prohibited from taking anglers into 1,100 square-miles of open ocean. Fishing is also prohibited at Biscayne National Park during the shutdown.

Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday the U.S. government filed a $5 billion fraud lawsuit against it in "retaliation" for its 2011 decision to strip the country of its "AAA" credit rating. In a filing with the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, S&P said the lawsuit filed on February 4 attempts to punish it for exercising its First Amendment free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution, but also seeks "excessive fines" in violation of the Eighth Amendment. It said the government's "impermissibly selective, punitive and meritless" lawsuit was brought "in retaliation for defendants' exercise of their free speech...

The U.S. government is looking to recruit members for what some are calling a “Behavioral Insights Team,” a panel of experts that will study human behavior so as to “design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” according to a document describing the program...

From the time Abraham Lincoln entered the White House nearly a century and a half ago, there has been an anti-Lincoln tradition in American life. President John Tyler’s son, writing in 1932, seemed to speak for a silent minority: “I think he was a bad man,” wrote Lyon Gardiner Tyler, “a man who forced the country into an unnecessary war and conducted it with great inhumanity.” Throughout his presidency Lincoln was surrounded by rivals, even among his own cabinet. Outside the White House, his many enemies included conservative Whigs, Democrats, northern copperheads and New England abolitionists. Wisconsin editor, Marcus M....

Via the Examiner, a short but noteworthy clip insofar as it exposes a potential fault line between Cruz and Rand Paul. McCain lumps them together as “wacko birds� but I’m not so sure that’s true of Cruz on national-security issues. His alliance with Paul interests me because it strikes me as a personification of the uneasy libertarian/tea-party alliance. The groups overlap heavily on spending issues, and both are deeply suspicious of Obama’s expansion of government. The master stroke of Paul’s drone filibuster was that he found a sweet spot for both, making the philosophical case for due process while humiliating...

The Associated Press scandal just keeps getting worse, and we haven't even started yet. AP CEO Gary Pruitt informed staffers Wednesday that the Department of Justice monitored, not one, not twenty, but "thousands and thousands" of phone calls made by reporters and editors. Associated Press president and chief executive Gary Pruitt told staff at a Wednesday town hall meeting that the phone records obtained by the government included "thousands and thousands" of calls in and out of the news organization, according to a staffer who attended. Pruitt said Wednesday that the Obama administration acted as "judge, jury and executioner" in...

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Friday urged congressional leaders to raise the debt limit and insisted that the White House is not going to negotiate over the increase because lawmakers have "no choice." "We will not negotiate over the debt limit," Lew wrote. "The creditworthiness of the United States is non-negotiable. The question of whether the country must pay obligations it has already incurred is not open to debate." Lew said that while President Obama is willing to discuss plans to reduce the nation's deficit with Congress, those talks must be kept separate from any effort to raise the nation's...

Kim Jong Un building 'mini world' with replica Big Ben and Eiffel Tower Chubby tyrant Kim Jong Un is building a “miniature world” in North Korea – with a replica of London's Big Ben at its heart. The dictator is set to open the theme park in capital Pyongyang – and has included the iconic clock tower. The new attraction, which opens this year, will also boast a copy of Paris’ Eiffel Tower. The secretive state famously doesn’t allow its citizens to leave the country – so it appears Jong Un has decided to bring the world to his people....

<p>The Democrats scoff when we remind them that the second amendment was intended by the founders for the people to defend against government tyranny.</p> <p>"What? Are we tyrannical?," They innocently exclaim.</p> <p>And the answer is yes.</p> <p>When you elect an admitted Marxist to the presidency who claims the constitution (that he is supposed to uphold) is a flawed document and pledges to "transform America" by importing European spread-the-wealth around Marxism to ensure "economic justice," that is tyranny!</p>

Chinese archaeologists said that a tomb unearthed in east Jiangsu Province might be the final resting place of an emperor known for his tyrannous reign about 1,500 years ago. The 20-square-meter tomb in Yangzhou City might belong to Yang Guang, or Emperor Yang of Sui, the second and last monarch of the short-lived Sui Dynasty (AD 581-618), according to the city's cultural heritage bureau. A gravestone excavated from the tomb confirmed the emperor's identity, while an inscription about the year of his death concurred with historical accounts, said Shu Jiaping, head of Yangzhou's institute of archaeology. "But we're still not...

Joe Biden says the president of the United States is preparing to take "executive actions" to deal with guns. BuzzFeed reports: Vice President Biden told White House allies in the gun control fight Thursday that President Obama will be announcing new executive actions on gun violence in the days after the Senate voted down a gun violence bill. On a conference call with "stakeholders," Biden told gun control advocates that the fight is not over and that eventual action on gun control will come. Press were not invited to the conference call; a participant provided BuzzFeed with access. "Look I...

The executive order will direct the commission to produce a report for Obama within six months of its first public meeting, principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said. The panel will be tasked with considering "a variety of ways to shorten lines and promote the efficient conduct of elections" and its findings will be "intended to serve as a best practices guide for state and local election officials to improve voters' experience at the polls under their existing election laws."

In Stalin's Russia, genetics and cybernetics were treated as the cat's paw of imperialism and officially branded as "whores." But it was another branch of Soviet science, history, that was a far more deserving candidate to bear that not exactly honorific moniker. Russian historians loyally served the regime, meeting its propaganda needs in full compliance with a thesis propounded by the titular head of the Soviet school of history, Mikhail Pokrovsky: "History is the present telescoped into the past." Some American liberals have been faithfully following Pokrovsky's precept, reinventing the past in keeping with the progressive view of the world....

A 22-carat dictator: Robert Mugabe has gold coins minted to celebrate his 89th birthday in poverty-stricken Zimbabwe • Four-tier cake made in his honour at Zimbabwe's state house party • Opposition accuses his party supporters of killing 12-year-old boy Zimbabwe is one of the poorest country's on Earth, but clearly despot Robert Mugabe doesn't seem to care on his 89th birthday. The president celebrated it by immortalising himself in freshly minted gold coins and held a lavish party with a giant cake. Guests, including his wife, first lady Grace, tucked into the four-tier treat made in his honour at the...

...Did he exert features of moral grandeur and heroism necessary to steer the country through its deepest political crisis? Or was he an aspiring tyrant, especially in his use of executive power? A recent example of how not to think about Lincoln’s leadership comes from the historian and television commentator Doris Goodwin. Goodwin wrote a book called “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” showing how Lincoln drew his cabinet from his personal and political competitors. In a subsequent discussion of Lincoln’s leadership titled “The 10 Qualities That Made Lincoln Great... If all of these sound a little...

In January 1863, Abraham Lincoln made a remarkable confession. He was, he told a senator, more worried about “the fire in the rear” than he was about the Confederates to his front... Disgusted Republicans termed them “Copperheads,” after the poisonous snake... By January 1863, their assaults on Lincoln, combined with the poor performance of the armies, were taking a toll on civilian morale. Midwesterners spoke openly about seceding and establishing another new country or aligning with the Confederate States of America. Lincoln’s critics were harsh, uncompromising and relentless. They said Lincoln was a tyrant, bent on amassing power and ruining...

Group with enormous influence on White House issues specific plans A progressive group with enormous influence on White House policy has issued specific recommendations to the Obama administration on how to push sweeping gun control, including suggestions for executive orders. The Center for American Progress released an 11-page proposal, reviewed by WND, calling for a full ban on the sale of assault weapons and magazines with a capacity for more than 10 bullets. CAP suggests legislation to require licensing and transfer restrictions on new and existing assault rifles. The CAP paper, delivered to the White House last week, recommends that...

Top Two Reasons to Own a Gun: Thank God and Sam Colt … My right to own a gun, to stroke it, to use it, and to pass it on to my children is not a matter of pragmatism, so I’m not going to argue statistics or polls, even though they’d be in my favor. And this list is in no particular order because, after the top two reasons, it really doesn’t matter how you order the rest. It’s like the top musical acts of the twentieth century; there’s Elvis and the Beatles and where you rank The Stones, The...

Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime. ~ snip ~ The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an...

A New Mexico couple has been warned by the federal government not to touch trash – tin cans, broken glass and the like – that has accumulated over the years on the 20 acres of desert land they bought for their retirement home near Santa Fe because it could hurt the Rio Grande River, 25 miles away. Huh? The dispute over the Obama administration’s claim to jurisdiction over desert land belonging to Peter and Francoise Smith is heading to court now. Their lawsuit alleges Washington is over-reaching in its claim that their land, which does not contain any “relatively permanent,...

For months, federal agencies and the White House have sidetracked dozens of major regulations that cover everything from power plant pollution to workplace safety to a crackdown on Wall Street. The rules had been largely put on hold during the presidential campaign as the White House sought to quiet Republican charges that President Barack Obama was an overzealous regulator who is killing U.S. jobs. But since the election, the Obama administration has quietly reopened the regulations pipeline. In recent weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rules to update water quality guidelines for beaches and other recreational waters and deal...

With only a limited theatrical release last week, Steven Spielberg’s latest work of imaginative fiction is scheduled for wide release today. I know Hollywood plays fast and loose with history, but when they go out of their way to get the wallpaper in Lincoln’s office exactly right, and use a recording of his actual watch as the sound effect for his movie watch, but pay little deference to his actual statements or opinions… something must be said. People are seriously calling the Lincoln movie a “much needed civics lesson.” In reality it’s essentially a 2.5 hour courtroom drama about slavery...

Have any fellow FReepers seen this movie yet? If so, what did you think and would you recommend it?

New Movie Propagates Lincoln Historical Myths If you are planning to see the new, Steven Spielberg directed, Lincoln movie you might want to invest in an accurate history book instead. While it is successfully dramatic, the movie rehashes several 150 year old myths about the Lincoln presidency and America’s most horrible war. First, to the movie’s credit, the script avoids a key, blatant lie that is currently being taught throughout American public schools today. The script focuses correctly on explaining how slaves were freed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation did...

(Reuters) - Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee's call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade. U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge Washington denies. The month-long talks at U.N. headquarters broke off after the United States - along with Russia and other major arms producers - said it had problems with...

On this day in 1861, Lincoln imposes the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Strapped for cash with which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32 in 323 B.C., his once unbeatable army began a 2,900-mile withdrawal from India and headed home to Macedonia. As they retreated, the empire they had created collapsed behind them. To prevent pursuit, Alexander's royal cavalry and infantry dealt viciously with all internal dissent, destroyed cities and burned bridges. The Russians employed a similar scorched-earth tactic against Napoleon in 1812, as did the Red Army when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It's a maneuver now being employed both domestically and internationally by Barack Obama. The...

Appearing as a guest on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recommended that America's police officers should go on strike and refuse to protect people until gun control legislation which would allegedly make them safer is enacted. Bloomberg: (Video can be found here.) Well, I would take it one step further. I don't understand why the police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say we're gonna go on strike, we're not gonna protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what's required to keep us safe.

Exclusive: Joseph Farah has good laugh over prez's 'Bart Simpson-like juvenile appeal' Sometimes Barack Obama cracks me up. That’s not easy to do for a wannabe tyrant with no respect for the Constitution, one who has systematically concealed every meaningful document about his personal history, one who has “fundamentally transformed America” into something much less than the shining city on a hill Ronald Reagan envisioned, one who personally directed his White House and Justice Department to run guns to Mexican drug cartels so they could be used to kill at least U.S. law enforcement agents and probably hundreds of U.S....

It's becoming increasingly clear that President Obama is not burdened with too heavy a commitment to honesty. This is hardly a shock about any politician, but revelations of dishonesty hurt some more than others. Announce that Bill Clinton has been speaking falsely, and it hits the ears with as much force as the news that birds fly, fish swim and dogs lick their own nether regions. But Obama was supposed to be different. He was a "lightworker," an ocean tamer and cynicism slayer. In short, he was supposed to be too good to be true -- and it turns out...

President Obama returned Friday to a trusted tactic — satisfying his political allies by not doing something. Conservatives were angry when Janet Napolitano announced the administration would stop deporting certain undocumented immigrants but they should have seen it coming. On issue after issue – gay rights, drug enforcement, Internet gambling, school achievement standards – the administration has chosen to achieve its goals by a method best described as passive-aggressive. Rather than pushing new laws through a divided Congress to enact his agenda, Obama is relying on federal agencies to ignore, or at least not defend, laws that some of his...

This reporter has been told that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has metastatic rhabdomyosarcoma, an aggressive cancer that has "entered the end stage". The information and the quote come from a highly respected source close to Chavez and who is in a position to know his medical condition and history. This source says the prognosis is dire and that Chavez is now not expected to live "more than a couple of months at most." Chavez is running for re-elec tion in Venezuela but several sources--including the one who revealed the exact kind of cancer-- have told me that they believe it...

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves. The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land. Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

President Obama today fired his opening salvo in an unprecedented attack on the Constitution of the United States. Regarding the impending Supreme Court ruling on the health control law, the President said, “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” His factual claims are false. His principle is a direct assault on the Constitution’s creation of an independent judicial branch as a check on constitutional violations by the other two branches. It is certainly not...

Russia's opposition said on Tuesday they feared Vladimir Putin had decided to use force to smother their protests after riot police detained hundreds of demonstrators challenging his presidential election victory. After three months of peaceful anti-Putin protests, police hauled away more than 500 people, including opposition leaders, who attended unsanctioned protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Monday or refused to leave after a rally that was permitted. The police intervention sent a clear signal that Putin is losing patience with opponents demanding more democracy, openness and political reforms, and will crack down if they step out of line. "Fear...

Timeless words...written 149 years ago but could have been penned yesterday, but not by the current Imposter-in-Chief: "Insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and...

In the uproar over President Obama’s unconstitutional “recess” appointments (Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members of the National Labor Relations Board), one fact has gotten too little attention . Attempting to justify the president’s violation of the Constitution and 90 years of legal precedent, presidential spokesman Dan Pfeiffer claimed that the president can exercise recess appointment powers because the Senate’s pro forma sessions—conducted since mid-December—are merely “a gimmick” during which “no Senate business is conducted and instead one of two Senators simply gavel in and out of session in a matter of...

But when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them.

President Barack Obama says he won't take "no" as an answer from Republicans, so he's going around them to appoint the head of a new consumer protection agency. Obama says Republicans would just keep holding Richard Cordray's nomination hostage—and the president says that's inexcusable and wrong. He says Cordray must be in place in order for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to start helping consumers deal with unscrupulous mortgage companies, dishonest payday lenders, and others. Obama announced the appointment of Cordray during a stop Wednesday in Ohio, where Cordray once served as attorney general. Republicans are outraged but Obama says...

An Obama-fied parody of my all-time favorite comic... ________________________________________________ Via email - h/t Speedunque

WASHINGTON -- In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico, the Justice Department announced Monday that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles. The new policy comes amid criticism of a failed federal probe aimed at dismantling large-scale arms trafficking networks along the Arizona border with Mexico. In the probe, called Operation Fast and Furious, several agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say they were inexplicably ordered by superiors to stop tracking some small-time "straw" buyers who...

...Obama will hold a news conference on Wednesday morning at 11:30am EDT, giving reporters the chance to ask....

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa. Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western...