Free Republic

Will there be a scandal if the new political appointees at the IRS sic their auditors on Moveon.org? What will the Washington Post say should the new president keep Guantanamo Bay open for five more years, quadruple the number of drone missions, or decide to double renditions? Will it say that he was shredding the Constitution, or that he found the terror threat too great to honor past promises? Will NPR run an exposé on our next president should she tap into Angela Merkel’s cell phone, or monitor the communications of Associated Press reporters — and their parents? Will investigative...

KHON-TV reported that Hawaii Department of Health Director Loretta Fuddy died when the Makani Kai Cessna Grand Caravan crashed half a mile off the north shore of Molokai. Fuddy was one of eight passengers on board the plane in addition to the pilot, and the only one who did not survive. The plane took off at approximately 3:35 p.m. Wednesday from the Kalaupapa Peninsula bound for Honolulu. In addition to Fuddy, the department's deputy director, Keith Yamamoto, was also booked on the flight, department spokeswoman Janice Okubo told the Associated Press. Makani Kai Air has said that the pilot did...

One of President Obama's chief political assets has been his ability to excite young people like almost no politician in history. But the days of America's youth fawning over the president are over.A new Harvard University Institute of Politics poll released Wednesday confirms what other surveys have shown in recent months: Millennials have soured on Obama so much this year that their opinion of him largely mirrors the American public's.

At the end of September, the federal government's fiscal year was drawing to a close, the threat of a shut down was increasing, and the State Department was shopping for art. Four contracts were awarded in the last two weeks of September, including $1,000,000 for a granite sculpture by Irish-born artist Sean Scully to be installed at the new U.S. Embassy in London. Notice of the awards was posted Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend on the Federal Business Opportunities website.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama celebrated a quiet Thanksgiving at the White House Thursday and called several members of armed forces to thank them for their service to the country.

Remember President Barack Obama's mother? Though the airwaves currently echo with his vow "If you like your plan . . ." I keep remembering Obama's account of his mother being denied coverage by her insurance company as she lay dying of cancer. The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a "pre-existing condition" and refused to pay for her treatment. In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: "For my mother to die of...

"If this is not an impeachable offense, then what is?," Mark Levin asked his audience after playing clips of President Barack Obama repeatedly telling Americans they could keep their health care plans under Obamacare. On his Friday radio program, Levin proposed the question after playing a clip of Obama saying "You can keep your plan" on 36 separate occasions:

I don’t get it. Sebelius claims that “the marketplace is working.” What is there to talk about? Actually, I can think of two items on the agenda. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday will convene a special meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus and senior White Officials to discuss the troubled rollout of ObamaCare…The Senate leader said President Obama called him Tuesday evening to discuss healthcare and other issues.Several Democrats have signed onto a proposal sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) that would force insurance companies to let people keep their health plans if they like them.Sen. Tim...

A former childhood acquaintance of Barack Obama is claiming that during his high school years in Hawaii he would often trade sexual favors with "older white gay men" to support his rather severe cocaine habit, as reported by the Microsoft Network (MSN.com) news portal on Nov. 12, 2013. Appearing on the controversial right-of-center on-line talk show The Manning Report, Mia Marie Pope claims to have been a personal acquaintance with Barack Obama during their shared teen years in Honolulu during the mid-late 1970s. Referring to Obama by his younger years moniker of Barry Soetoro, Pope forcefully stated she personally didn't...

It’s been a tough month for President Obama. His beloved healthcare scheme is a slow-motion train wreck and he wasn’t able to trick Republicans into a tax hike as part of budget fights. So let’s pile on with some humor. We’ll start with some NSA-related material. We’ve already shared some amusing cartoons, so now it’s time for a photo from Europe. I don’t know if this is a real pic, but it’s still funny. Not quite as good as this set of images portraying Obama as a voyeur, but worth a chuckle. And it may be a very positive development...

You Millenials voted for Obama by a margin of 28 percent, which will make it a lot easier for me to accept the benefits you will be paying for. We warned you that liberalism was a scam designed to take the fruits of your labor and transfer it to us, the older, established generation. Oh, and also to the couch-dwelling, Democrat-voting losers who live off of food stamps and order junk from QVC with their Obamaphones. You didn’t listen to us. Maybe you’ll listen to pain. I have been told that being hard on you Millennials will turn you against...

Is there an idiom in Arabic for cutting off your nose to spite your face? Saudi Arabia's abrupt rejection on October 18 of the UN Security Council seat to which it had just been elected was described as "bizarre" and "baffling," a "perplexing" decision that that left diplomats "gasping" and was "met with incredulity." No member of the United Nations had ever done such a thing, and the Saudi government's explanation was about as subtle as an uppercut. "The … double standards existing in the Security Council prevent it from performing its duties and assuming its responsibilities," the Foreign Ministry...

Don’t donate to the tea party or to evangelical Christian groups — that was the message soldiers at a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood said they received from a counter-intelligence agent who headed up the meeting.If you do, you could face punishment — that was the other half of the message, as reported by Fox News.The briefing was Oct. 17, and about a half-hour of it was devoted to discussion about how perceived radical groups — like tea party organizations and the Christian-based American Family Association — were "tearing the country apart," one unnamed soldier said, to Fox News.Among the...

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." -- The White Queen, "Alice in Wonderland" The more President Obama talks about the supposed joys of his Affordable Health Care law, the more he resembles a political Mad Hatter, devoid of reason, absent logic and ignorant of facts. At a Rose Garden event Monday, the president's theatrics were on full display. With a chorus of supporters behind him, Obama blamed the "slow, wonky" rollout of health insurance enrollment on too many people trying to log on to the government's new marketplace website at the same time. He...

Yes, really. As you read this morning, I was expecting a some perfunctory contrition and token acceptance of responsibility from President Bystander during his Obamacare remarks in the Rose Garden today. I was wrong. The appearance was more of a pep rally, replete with upbeat promises and applauding supporters. Aides might as well have hung a large "mission accomplished" banner over Obama's head. The fact that the Obamacare websites -- a core element of the law functioning -- are in total shambles and won't be fixed for many weeks or even months were all but shrugged off as an afterthought....

Anyone old enough to remember Viet Nam can remember how the country felt toward the man and women who were sent to Southeast Asia to prosecute that war. They were treated like [as this is a family column] garbage. We have discussed before how, in the National Guard during those days, it was suggested that we wear civilian clothes to and from drills. Of all the dumb things the federal government has done during this partial shut down was to have shut down national parks, and national monuments. Some of the national monuments that have been shut down are the...

Behold the Hollywood bubble. This week, actress Olivia Wilde starred in an Obamacare propaganda video targeting young people. "You can sign up for health care online in 10 minutes," her co-propagandist chirped as she cheered. Cue the laugh track. Back on planet Earth, Americans nationwide are still struggling with the $634 million online health care exchange nightmare. One reader asked me to share his story. Like me and 22 million other citizens in the private individual market for health insurance, he recently received his You Can't Keep It cancellation notice. Here's what happened when he went online to find alternatives....

So far Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's peace ruse is still bearing some fruit. President Obama was eager to talk with him at the United Nations -- only to be reportedly rebuffed, until Obama managed to phone him for the first conversation between heads of state of the two countries since the Iranian storming of the U.S. embassy in 1979. Rouhani has certainly wowed Western elites with his mellifluous voice, quiet demeanor and denials of wanting a bomb. The media, who ignore the circumstances of Rouhani's three-decade trajectory to power, gush that he is suddenly a "moderate" and "Western educated."...

The Obama administration has prohibited the Kennedy family from practicing its Catholicism, and the Kennedys now intend to ask the Supreme Court to restore their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Their case could become one of the most consequential in our nation's history. The issue: Will the most fundamental liberty of all -- freedom of conscience -- survive in post-Obama America? John Kennedy serves as president of Autocam and Autocam Medical, Michigan-based companies that produce automobile components and medical devices. He and his family own the companies, which employ 661 people in the United States. The...

As AEI's President Arthur Brooks recently pointed out in an op-ed, the key to any great leader’s success is taking responsibility for one’s actions. Something, he argued, this president doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot of lately: A vast scholarly literature spanning more than six decades exists on the subject of leadership. The characteristics of effective leaders have been pored over, cataloged and debated. Among them, one trait stands out as axiomatic: Effective leaders take responsibility for problems around them; they do not shift blame to others. As Winston Churchill put it, "The price of greatness is...