Free Republic

A new app wants to help get the word out to vote in the upcoming midterm elections — but there's one feature that could feel a little invasive. The app, called Vote With Me, provides helpful information about the elections taking place in your district, lets you know whether a race is tight, and shows you how to prepare for Election Day. But the app also pulls your voter registration and voting record, and that same information from anyone in your phone's contacts, ---SNIP--- Vote With Me is providing a window into your friends', family's, and coworkers' voting habits,

Here is something almost all Americans agree on: we’re divided.Nine out of 10 Americans say political divisions in our country are a serious problem, according to a recent poll. Six in 10 say it’s a very serious problem. One doesn’t have to look very far to find examples.In a New York Times editorial, Paul Krugman wrote“hate is on the ballot next week.” Why is that? Because Republicans are on the ballot and they are “peddling hatred.” Krugman blames the recent massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue on a “climate of paranoia and racism deliberately fostered by Donald Trump and his allies in Congress.” And...

(CNN) - During a conversation with David Letterman on his new Netflix program, former President Barack Obama issued a stern warning for the current commander in chief: "One of the things that Michelle figured out, in some ways faster than I did, was part of your ability to lead the country doesn't have to do with legislation, doesn't have to do with regulations, it has to do with shaping attitudes, shaping culture, increasing awareness." Although Obama was extremely hesitant about directly commenting about President Donald Trump, the message he sent was clear. And it comes in the wake of the...

Former President Barack Obama will make his first post-presidential public appearance on Monday, heading to the University of Chicago to discuss civic engagement and community organizing. Obama’s talk at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E 60th St., at 11 a.m. Chicago time will be a “conversation,” as he is flanked by six younger activists — from Kenwood Academy High School to college students and a bit older, Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis told the Chicago Sun-Times. This event is part of Obama’s commitment to “engage the next generation of leaders,” Lewis said.

As President Donald Trump plans a slew of policies that could dismantle key parts of Barack Obama’s presidential legacy, the former president seems to be returning to his roots as a Saul Alinsky-style radical community organizer. This time Obama and his associates’ objective is to stop Trump’s domestic and foreign policy agendas on virtually all fronts – immigration reform, border security, the roll back of the controversial Obamacare system and more. According to some accounts, Obama and his associates may be seeking no less than Trump’s impeachment. The strategies for disruption seem to include everything from nonprofit front-group activism and...

Despite public images of getting along and pledges of support, President Obama is raising money for a war chest to fight President-elect Donald Trump after he leaves office. "Help Democrats fight back," said the president in an fundraising email sent a week before Christmas. "Stand with me, work with me, let's finish what we started," he adds.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be transitioning from being players to coaches. The soon-to-be former president and ex-first lady plan to stay involved in the Democratic Party — and, in an interview with NPR, are now pledging to develop talent as scouts and coaches. “I’m less likely to get involved in all the nuts and bolts of electioneering. In that realm, I’m much more likely to just give advice,” President Obama said in the radio interview. “What I am interested in is just developing a whole new generation of talent,” he said, citing people who worked...

While it might be a heretical admission coming from a conservative blogger, but there are many reasons to believe that Barack Obama’s post-presidency will be an industrious and ultimately beneficial one. Though it’s a low hurdle to clear, surely Obama’s time out of office will be spent pursuing more productive pursuits than were his years in the Oval Office. Early last year, the president began preparing for life outside of the White House when he revealed that he would launch a program aimed at addressing the struggles encountered by young, black men. Calling the program “My Brother’s Keeper,” Obama will...

Ever wonder what Big Guy did before he figured out how to get elected to public office? When he was still just some guy in the neighborhood, “organizing” the community and agitating for justice? If so, allow the  Rev Bobblehead to demonstrate what the fine art of street agitatin’ involves: Agitatin’ Al…agitatin’Boy, I hope all the outside agitators pack up and go home for the Thanksgiving holiday so Ferguson/St. Louis can reach a truce in the race war and begin to return to normal:If all you agitators go away, maybe we can stand tall again.Because like Big Guy said the...

Fox News panelists A.B. Stoddard and Steve Hayes argued Wednesday that Obama brought on his plummeting approval ratings by giving Americans the impression that he has given up on his job.In a new Quinnipiac poll, Obama came in first as the worst president since World War II.“The president is giving Americans the sense that, as he gives up on Congress, he’s kind of giving up on his job,” The Hill’s Stoddard said. “They know he’s bolting from the building to go to Starbucks and Chipotle. He’s getting bored in the cocoon, he’s planning his post-presidency.”Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti made...

Department of Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson suggested Thursday he would not block the growing wave of illegal immigrants who are crossing the Texas border until the GOP agrees to pass the Senate immigration rewrite that is backed by President Obama. He twice refused to set any limit on the number of foreign youths who would be given the opportunity to ask the administration’s immigration judges for permission to live in the United States. Johnson and several deputies delivered the threat to GOP legislators during a brief June 12 press conference. The threat was offset by statements........

The president has a new theory as to why he’s not as popular as he once was:

Foreign Policy: The latest U.S. ally to openly sneer at us is a senior British defense adviser who says President Obama has "devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability" in the world. In his first campaign for president, in April 2007, Barack Obama complained George W. Bush's war in Iraq cost the U.S. "in influence and respect." Because of Iraq, he said, "many around the world are disappointed with our actions, and many in our own country have come to doubt either our wisdom or our capacity to shape events beyond our borders. Some have even suggested that America's...

In April, Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), spoke to the tea party of Hood County, which is southwest of Fort Worth, and made a bold declaration: The United States is a "Christian nation." The septuagenarian businessman turned evangelical pastor did not choose to use the more inclusive formulation "Judeo-Christian nation." Insisting that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution "were signed on the knees of the framers" and were a "divine revelation from God," he went on to say, "yet our president has the gall to tell us that this is not a Christian nation…The...

Last week the king declared it illegal for a large number of Catholic priests to enter upon HIS royal military bases and celebrate mass which is the central ritual of Catholicism. According to His Majesty’s edit, priests who have been hired as “Contract workers” to minister to the 25% of our military forces, who are Catholics, were declared non-essential workers the same as the goat herders who guide their hungry weed eating animals around some government lands. With this edict the king has again reminded us of just how over his head he is as he runs around our house...

“If I had son, he'd look like Trayvon.” Barack Obama, When members of the New Black Panther Party stood menacingly with night sticks, intimidating white voters at polling places in Philadelphia, Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, turned a blind eye. Nothing to see; nothing to investigate. But when a mouthy Harvard professor was stopped and questioned by police as he attempted to break into a home that later turned out to be his own, the President of the United States thought it was somehow appropriate for him to opine to the media that the police had “acted...

IowaPresidentialWatch.com

Obama is giving a "press conference" now on TV. This is an epic adventure in gasbaggery. He is refusing to answer questions he doesn't like. He is answering questions about Libya with incoherent bursts of temper. The highlight so far is his insistence that the meager budget cuts proposed by Repubs is "unacceptable and dangerous" and that he will not consider signing a bill that contains them. He insists that all government spending is "investment." This is pretty clear. He will not or cannot accept reality. Expect CRs to continue for the rest of the FY.

The controversy over the 'Ground Zero mosque' has portrayed the United States as a land of bigots. Toby Harnden wonders why the US President has helped fuel this myth. It took a Manhattan taxi driver called Ahmed Sharif to speak out for America, which is being vilified as bigoted and Islamophobic because of the controversy generated by opposition to the so-called "Ground Zero mosque". The United States was his dream country, he enthused, and he loved New York City. "I feel like I belong here. This is the city actually [for] all colours, races, religion, everyone. We live here side...

Obama aides said before the Massachusetts trip that the president would travel light, with a skeleton staff. Accompanying him on Air Force One were senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan. Brennan, who wants to give the president his space while on vacation, briefed Obama on national security issues during the first day on the trip. Brennan also said he would rely on the phone and e-mail to provide other updates not requiring a visit to Blue Heron Farm, the 30-acre property the Obama family was using. "Communication systems are very robust. We can move information at...