Free Republic

One thing often heard in media commentary on the shutdown: what must the Chinese think when the US can't even keep its government open? The correct answer: who cares? China's a communist state – its government never sleeps. America's a democracy – if it has an honest disagreement with itself then it debates it openly within the context of law and the Constitution. If things must shutdown for a bit, so be it. The Founding Fathers divided the US government in order to keep it limited. No, they never thought things would break down quite this way, but then they...

<p>President Barack Obama summoned congressional leaders to the White House on the second day of a partial government shutdown that has furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers and closed military cemeteries as far away as France. Republican leaders welcomed the Wednesday afternoon meeting but questioned whether Democrats were ready to deal.</p>

On Tuesday, Julia Ioffe, senior editor for the liberal New Republic publication, all but suggested that President Obama needed to use military force against Tea Party conservatives in Congress. Ioffe likened the current federal government shutdown to the 1993 constitutional crisis in Russia, where then-President Boris Yeltsin ultimately ended the impasse by dissolving the parliament, and had tanks shell the legislative body's "White House". The writer asserted that both the "old Soviet conservatives" in Russia 20 years ago and the Tea Party representatives in the House were "intransigent, bull-headed faction[s]".

Boehner released this statement today:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) released a statement Wednesday faulting the Obama administration for the closure of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Cruz's full statement: President Obama is so fixated on forcing Obamacare on the American people that he's even willing to deny World War II veterans the right to access the memorial they have earned through their heroic service. This scenario encapsulates the bigger problem in Washington. President Obama is so set on imposing his destructive, far-left ideology that his government is literally barricading World War II veterans out of their memorial and blocking funding to the...

Above: National Park Service workers setting up new barricades this morning, around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.- Yesterday, the Obama Administration got real petty over the partial government shutdown, sending employees to barricade memorial sites around Washington that are normally open 24/7. Thankfully, one group of WWII vets wasn't having ANY of it - removing barricades, with the help of fantastic GOP Reps. like Steve King (R-IA) and others - and refusing to be denied access to THEIR World War II Memorial. Well today, another group of WWII vets plan to do the same thing at the Lincoln Memorial,...

TOLEDO -- Locally in the Glass City, we can see the affects of the government shutdown at our museums, monuments, and national parks. The gates are closed and locked, denying access completely to the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge. TSA employees were still working at Toledo Express Airport, but when WNWO called the TSA to find out if they would be affected, there was a message that said the public relations representative did not have access to her voicemail or email due to the government shutdown. In a letter from Marcy Kaptur's office in the 9th District, it read, "...only services...

Twitter photo by Charlie Spiering, the Washington Examiner.The Obama administration is adding more barricades at the World War Two Memorial in Washington, D.C. this morning, according to reporters on the scene.The reinforcements are being put in place apparently to prevent a repeat of yesterday when WWII veterans aided by several Republican Congressmen pushed aside barricades to visit their memorial.Buzzfeed got no response from the White House last night when queried about the administration closing the memorial to veterans.A report last night claimed that the Park Service would arrest veterans who attempt to visit the WWII Memorial.

Because the American military swears an allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, and not to the President, could Obama’s strategy be to strip our Armed Services and cost shift their dollars into an all powerful civilian Army under his command? Two tips coming into CiR this week surprisingly connect just these dots and link these machinations to Obamacare funding. On page 496 of H.R. 3590 is this quote: ” Assimilating Reserve Corp Officers Into the Regular Corps. . .Effective on the date of enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, all individuals classified as officers in the Reserve (civilian)...

I sat down and watched President Obama's speech today on Obamacare and wondered if he was going to lash out at Republicans for the (non) government shutdown. As I fought the rising bile and oncoming nausea I always experience hearing our liar-in-chief, I was not disappointed. Obama's speech is a textbook example torn from the liberal progressive handbook. He started off with a painful "is this on?" bit about the microphone, just showing how much of an amateur he is on the big stage. He then immediately launched into attacking the Republicans for the government shutdown (I like the term...

At an event in Birmingham, Ala. Monday night, former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson revealed that he had received a visit from the Internal Revenue Service following his much-noted remarks at a National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year. “I had my first encounter with the IRS this year, unsurprisingly after the prayer breakfast,” Carson told an audience that at the annual Business Council of Alabama Chairman’s Dinner, according to a report from Cliff Sims of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Yellowhammer News Carson’s February speech February made him a conservative darling for criticizing President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care reform law, while...

<p>There certainly is no question that Barack Obama wants to change the United States. And there clearly is no doubt that such fundamental transformation is difficult, given our tripartite system of government — even though Obama entered office with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, an enthralled media, and a closely divided Supreme Court.</p>

During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term. But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama's vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey. Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 — 24% — from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370. What's more, premiums climbed faster in Obama's four years than they...

A federal proposal to impose strict new rules on emissions from new coal-fired plants has drawn the ire of critics who are determined to stop regulatory effort from affecting coal-producing states such as Colorado. Last Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule for new coal plants: large plants can emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour while smaller plants can emit the slightly higher figure of 1,100 pounds. ... war on coal... Shovel-ready jobs apparently don’t apply to those who work in coal,” Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) quipped, referring to President Obama’s description...

Obama told Republicans Friday that it’s a fool’s errand for them to use the threat of a government shutdown to gut his signature healthcare law, decrying what he called “political grandstanding” that is hurting the American economy. With Republicans seeing both the looming expiration of government funding and the need to increase the country’s borrowing limit as pressure points to extract political concessions on the healthcare law, the president said bluntly: “I said that yesterday and I’m gonna repeat it: that’s not gonna happen.” “A lot of what is taking place right now is political grandstanding,” Obama told reporters at...

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My health insurer, Kaiser Permanente, has finally calculated what our family’s new health insurance rates will be under the grotesquely misnamed Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare.) The upshot: my premiums are about to rise by 114.6%. My wife’s rates? Up 109%. Our kids? Don’t ask. Yes, it’s time to say goodbye to my current plan, with its $232-a-month premium. That plan is being discontinued, I’m told, because it “does not meet the requirements of the ACA.” It was a nice plan, with low premiums, free physical exams, a high deductible and eligibility...

‘It’s the law of the land.” This is rapidly becoming the preferred shorthand argument for why criticism of Obamacare is just so, so wrong. It also serves as the lead sentence of a larger claim that all attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act are really symptoms of a kind of extremist right-wing lunacy. For instance, here’s Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who walked out of the painting American Gothic to deliver this homespun wisdom: “We’re not going to bow to tea-party anarchists who deny the mere fact that Obamacare is the law. We will not bow to tea-party anarchists...

Barack Obama has 36.9 million Twitter followers, 19.5 million of whom, it turns out, are fake. This is a very disturbing sign

President Obama: "And part of what I think the resistance that we've seen ramp up particularly over the last couple of months is all about is the opponents of health care reform know they're going to sign up. In fact, one of the major opponents, when asked, well, why is it that you'd potentially shut down the government at this point just to block Obamacare, he basically fessed up. He said, well, once consumers get hooked on having health insurance and subsidies, then they won't want to give it up. (Laughter.) I mean, that's — you can look at the...

President Barack Obama lashed out at Republican opponents of the healthcare law he pioneered on Thursday. In a feisty speech at a Washington-area college, Obama defended the 2010 Affordable Care Act against Republican critics who say it is an example of government gone too far. Obama said Republicans fear Americans will come to like the healthcare law, saying their strategy is basically, "'We've got to shut this thing down before people find out that they like it.'" "Don't you think that's a strange argument? And the closer we get, the more desperate they get," he said.