Free Republic

For those who are or claim to be unfamiliar with the Larry Sinclair story, let me summarize it as briefly as possible. Larry Sinclair, who now lives in Duluth, Minnesota, claims to have spent parts of the evenings of Nov. 6 and Nov. 7, 1999 with Senator Obama in Chicago. At least as far back as 1986 Sinclair has been in trouble with the law, arrested for a variety of things (fraud seemingly at the top of the list), and had been up to that time in and out of prison. He is an openly gay man, and he seems...

Larry Hunter claims he is a "lifelong conservative." Yet, in his recent New York Daily News article, he also says he is voting for Barack Obama for president. The two simply cannot coexist. One has to be obliterated in favor of the other. And, regardless of the facile reasoning Hunter gives for his apostasy, this article does nothing to support any supposed conservative cause. It does, however, give the media something to crow about. Larry Hunter begins by assuring us of his conservative credentials. A supply sider from the Reagan White House, Hunter had a 5-year-long stint as chief economist...

I'm a lifelong Republican - a supply-side conservative. I worked in the Reagan White House. I was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years. In 1994, I helped write the Republican Contract with America. I served on Bob Dole's presidential campaign team and was chief economist for Jack Kemp's Empower America. This November, I'm voting for Barack Obama. When I first made this decision, many colleagues were shocked. How could I support a candidate with a domestic policy platform that's antithetical to almost everything I believe in? The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in interview excerpts released Friday that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden should be executed, if he is ever captured alive. The Illinois Senator told CNN that the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks in 2001 should face the full weight of US and global justice. "I am not a cheerleader for the death penalty," Obama said. "I think it has to be reserved for only the most heinous crimes, but I certainly think plotting and engineering the death of 3,000 Americans justifies such an approach." "I think this is a big hypothetical, though...

WASHINGTON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain failed in reaching an agreement on Friday to hold ten "town hall"-style meetings where they are supposed to answer questions directly from a small audiences. According to McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis, Obama's team only agreed to participate one town hall meeting before the Democratic national convention in late August. The Arizona Senator suggested shortly after Obama clinched nomination last week to hold 10 joint town hall meetings with Obama at locations that both teams agree to, starting with the one in...

A crack team of cybernauts will form a rapid response internet “war room” to track and respond aggressively to online rumours that Barack Obama is unpatriotic and a Muslim. As he gears up for his general election fight against John McCain, Mr Obama and his chief advisers are aware of the danger of such rumours, amid polling data showing that a significant number of Americans believe he is a Muslim or are suspicious about his background. Such doubts were a factor in his poor showing with white, blue-collar voters during his primary battle with Hillary Clinton. In recent days Mr...

How black is too black? Millions of African-Americans celebrated Barack Obama’s historic victory, seeing in it a reflection — sudden and shocking — of their own expanded horizons. But whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as “postracial.” In other words, Mr. Obama was black, but not too black. But where is the line? Does it change over time?...

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Anyway, thank you Roger, thank you. What a night! I'm getting giggles! It's so exciting here -- Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell -- because there's news in the air.

Hell hath no fury like a feminist scorned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H11x6bMu4Y

Barack Obama’s favorability ratings among white women have significantly depreciated in recent months, particularly among Democrats and independents, posing an immediate obstacle for the likely Democratic nominee as he moves to shore up his party’s base. According to a new report by The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, half of white women now have a negative perception of Obama. Forty-nine percent of white women view Obama unfavorably, while only 43 percent hold a favorable opinion. In February, 36 percent of these women viewed Obama unfavorably while 56 percent had a positive perception of the likely Democratic...

Obama Praised Wright, Criticized Traditional Black Churches on Homosexuality By Penny Starr CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer May 29, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - In an Apr. 10 interview with The Advocate magazine, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said "homophobic" messages are coming from the pulpits of black churches because blacks attend church more regularly than other people and interpret the Bible more traditionally. In the same interview, Obama praised the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor and long-time spiritual adviser, for being on the right side of the homosexual debate. "There's plenty of homophobia to go around, but you have a unique...

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama owns a piece of T.J. Wells’ heart. And of his leg. You may have heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve, but your political convictions on your calf? That’s what Wells, a culinary arts student-to-be at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, has been doing since May 12, after the Illinois senator made a lasting impression on him during a May 4 speech at Headwaters Park. On May 12, Wells went out and got a full-color portrait of Obama tattooed on the back of his right leg – a place that was chosen, he...

The Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996, protects states from having to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in other states. Ordinarily, under the "Full Faith and Credit Clause" of the Constitution, states are required to recognize "the public Acts, Records and judicial Proceedings of every other State." "Obama also believes we need to fully repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally recognized unions,"...

LOS ANGELES — Have we gone from the "Year of the Woman" to the "Year of the Sweetie"? So it appears. It's not the "sweetie" part that gets me, and I suspect a lot of other women. It's the concern that, not to sound trite, some of the guys out there, maybe including the probable Democratic nominee for President, just don't "get it." If you can remember that far back, this was supposed to be another one of those "Year of the Woman" elections, the first time a woman was entering the race as the frontrunner for her party's nomination,...

Obama calls a Michigan reporter "sweetie" when asked what he would do for the workers at the auto plant he was visiting... odd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juy9NwI8_i0

Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago? It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical. Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media...

Several days ago, on one of the Fox News nonprimes (possibly the Kelly/Hemmer 5:00 election show), a brand new Obama-declared super-delegate (sorry, I didn't get her name or state!) announced in answer to a question about BO's elitism that he could hardly be considered elite because he went through Columbia & Harvard on the G. I. Bill. This wasn't challenged. I've found no reference to BO's military service anywhere, nor can I imagine how the G. I. Bill could have helped him otherwise.

Barack Obama, the first "postracial candidate," is heading to the Democratic nomination almost entirely because of his near-universal support from black voters in the Democratic primaries. In both states Tuesday, his share of that vote was 90% or more. If one resets the black vote to the norm of earlier elections, Hillary Clinton is the nominee. The idea that Obama was a postracial politician dates to his famous keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004. He set the postracial template himself in the speech's third sentence, describing his father born in a small Kenyan village, herding goats, etc. His...

This is an absolutely blatant attempt to rewrite history by Barack Obama, documented at ABC News Political Punch. First, I honestly don’t care much whether a person wears a flag pin, and you can certainly be a patriot without wearing a badge proclaiming it. The issue for me: Obama’s reasons for taking off that pin. Barack Obama on his refusal to wear a flag pin, now: Obama’s two radically different versions of his reasons for not wearing the pin are there for you to read. Here’s our post about it at the time. You decide who’s telling the truth.

Mayhill Fowler has more from Obama's remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser Sunday, and they include an attempt to explain the resentment in small-town Pennsylvania that won't be appreciated by some of the people whose votes Obama's seeking: You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising...

SUMMARY: He says: "Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?" Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean came under attack for speaking out against conservative gay men and lesbians as well as Republicans of color. "They can't become more diverse," Dean said Tuesday at a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?" The Log Cabin Republicans issued a statement Wednesday against...

"Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has a word with aide Huma Abedin at the start of a campaign rally at Capital High School in Charleston, W.Va."

It seems the more Barack Obama tries to explain the peculiar statement he made Tuesday concerning his white grandmother's "fear of black men who passed by her on the street," the more he's assuring attention regarding the matter. Though it remains to be seen how much focus a media clearly looking to move beyond this subject will devote to it, Obama called into a Philadelphia sports radio station on Thursday [1] making comments that, if publicized, might get him in even more trouble with white voters. As transcribed [2] by Breitbart moments ago (audio available here [3]): "The point I...

"Cherchez la femme," advised Alexander Dumas in: "When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman." In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America. We know less about Senator Obama than about any prospective president in American history. His uplifting rhetoric is empty, as Hillary Clinton helplessly protests. His career bears no trace of his own character, not an article for the Harvard Law Review he edited, or a single piece of legislation. He appears...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sought the support of voters in the homosexual community Feb. 28, telling them in a letter that if elected president he would work to pass laws important to that constituency and would use the "bully pulpit" to urge states to grant same-sex couples the legal benefits of marriage. The 770-word letter was posted on a section of Obama's campaign website devoted to homosexual issues. He and Hillary Clinton have worked for months to get the votes of the homosexual community, even appearing in August at a historic Democratic presidential forum devoted solely to...

Their tempest began well before their presidential campaigns. When Senator John McCain claimed victory for a round of primaries Tuesday, it came as little surprise that he skipped over the criticism of Senator Barack Obama's policies. Instead, he zeroed in on another long-held aggravation: A perception that Obama wears a political halo. "I don't seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness," McCain said, "that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need." A contentious relationship between McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, has...

"He's probably gone with more black women than Barack," Young said of former President Clinton,

He wants universal health care but won't require everyone to get insurance, Hillary says Hillary Clinton is drawing sharper contrasts with chief rival Barack Obama as the crucial Jan. 3 Iowa vote looms closer, telling the Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday he is "trying to have it both ways" when it comes to covering the nation's uninsured. Health care is a central issue in the Democratic presidential primary, and Obama stands apart from Clinton and John Edwards, his major rivals, because his health plan does not mandate adults to obtain insurance. » Click to enlarge image Senator Hillary Clinton speaks in Fernley,...

This is a follow-up of my post, A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

The Court of Appeals for the U.S. Ninth Circuit upheld this summer an Oakland, Calif., city government declaration that the phrase "marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values" was inflammatory and promoted harassment based on so-called sexual orientation. The phrase was also deemed to be homophobic and disruptive. It seems a few Christian women working for Oakland's city government formed a Good News Employee Association, and in promoting the club, included the aforementioned phrase on a flier. Later, a lesbian worker complained that the flier made her feel "targeted" and "excluded." Most recently, hate crimes...

So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that “everyone knows” The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate. “Everyone knows” meaning everyone in the DC mainstream media political reporting world. “Sitting on it” because the paper couldn’t decide the complex ethics of whether and when to run it. The way I heard it they’d had it for a while but don’t know what to...

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Although much of my new book, "What's the Matter With California," is humorous, this is one story from that book which is not. Steven Nary has spent the last 11 years in prison for daring to defend himself against homosexual rape by an illegal alien in San Francisco. Read "Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 for more background. This is the final of 5 parts featured this week in WorldNetDaily. Parental discretion is strongly advised.While awaiting trial in the San Francisco City Jail for the murder of Juan Pifarre, a gay man and a Hispanic activist, Steven...

After speaking to an evangelical church on Sunday in this traditionally conservative South Carolina city, Sen. Barack Obama said that Republicans no longer have a firm grip on religion in political discourse. During the nearly two hour service that featured a rock band and hip-hop dancers, Obama shared the floor with the church's pastor, Ron Carpenter. The senator from Illinois asked the multiracial crowd of nearly 4,000 people to keep him and his family in their prayers, and said he hoped to be "an instrument of God." "Sometimes this is a difficult road being in politics," Obama said. "Sometimes you...

Toronto Catholic School Board Bows to Secularism Commentary on inclusion of "sexual orientation" in Board's Workplace Harassment policy By Fr. Alphonse de Valk, editor Catholic Insight magazineFrom Oct. 2007 edition of Catholic Insight TORONTO, October 4, 2007 (catholicinsight.com) - Just before Catholic Insight went to press with its September edition, on August 15 we learned that in May 2007, the Toronto District Catholic School Board (TCDSB), in its document Workplace Harassment, had moved to prohibit all teachers and staff from complaining or objecting to "same-sex partner status." It turns out that two other unacceptable prohibitions had previously been imposed already;...

Caption time: Barack Obama rcites the Pledge of Allegiance

Toronto Police Slough Off Gay Pride-Related Criminality By Tony Gosgnach TORONTO, September 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In response to media reports of apparently criminal moral and sexual excesses associated with this year’s “gay pride” events in Toronto this past summer – and what seemed to be a police conflict-of-interest with respect to them – the Life Ethics Information Centre wrote seeking clarification to the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, Police Chief William Blair and the chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, Alok Mukherjee. In its letter, the LEIC began by referring to a “Pride Week Reception” that the Toronto...

America's 'hush' This columnist has often wondered why it is that every time al Qaeda opens its collective mouth with murderous taunts and threats against Americans that more of us don't react in kind. Apart from New York City firefighter Michael Moran, who walked onto the stage of the post-9/11 benefit Concert for New York and told Osama bin Laden to "kiss my royal Irish ass," the majority of us have chosen to go about our daily lives and ignore the terrorists' menacing barrage of forebodings. Now I'm beginning to understand why.Washington pundit Diana West, a fellow columnist at The Washington Times, among other publications, just wrote "The Death...

Clooney: Obama's like a rock star By COLLEEN BARRY, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 50 minutes ago VENICE, Italy - Barack Obama has the aura of a rock star, says George Clooney, who also had some kind words for other Democratic presidential candidates. "You've been in a room once in a while with a rock star. He walks into the world, and he takes your breath away. I'd love him to be president, quite honestly," the actor told reporters Friday at the Venice Film Festival, where his legal thriller "Michael Clayton" was premiering. Clooney, who banked a check for Obama...

I did not see this posted anywhere.. Listen to this.. and judge for youself... I think Sen. Craig is TOAST.. IMHO

Ontario Catholic School Board Approves Referrals to Gay-Activist Therapist, Censors Right to Life Material Also Approves "National Day Against Homophobia" and PFLAG pamphlets By Elizabeth O'Brien and John-Henry Westen WATERLOO, August 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Minutes of meetings of the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) Family Life Advisory Committee (FLAC) reveal that the Catholic board has undertaken activities that seriously contradict Catholic teaching. Despite Catholic teaching opposing homosexual acts, the board has approved referral of Catholic students to homosexuality-promoting therapists and organizations. In the January 25, 2006 meeting minutes, published on the WCDSB website, the FLAC approved the referral...

A prominent black Christian pastor says Barack Obama (D-Illinois) made "an inept attempt to be a theology major" in Thursday night's Democratic presidential forum on homosexual issues. During Thursday's forum, Obama was asked by one of the moderators why many black churches remain strongly opposed to homosexuality. Moderator Jonathan Capeheart of the Washington Post then referred to such opposition as "homophobia." Obama responded to the question by saying some black pastors "have elevated one line of Romans over the Sermon on the Mount." Bishop Harry Jackson Jr., who chairs the High Impact Leadership Coalition, says Obama is an intelligent man...

The L.A. Times has morphed Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama's over-the-top campaign rhetoric that he would attack Pakistan into "suggestions by U.S. politicians that American forces unilaterally strike" that country. But, no where did the story mention Obama, nor that no Administration officials are advocating such a move. How is it that Obama's absurd gaffe has suddenly become a U.S. political policy that the Pakistanis fear is impossible to know, but the way the L.A.Times wrote the story, one would cast blame on the Bush Administration instead of Obama for this slight to Musharraf and the Pakistani government. The story...

War On Terror: Sen. Barack Obama thinks troops should be sent into Pakistan. But he really wants to fight terrorism the same way liberals combat inner-city crime: with social programs financed by U.S. taxpayers. After foolishly promising as president to meet unconditionally with terrorist states, Obama, the Illinois Democrat, has gotten tough: He now wants U.S. forces to zero in on the mountains of northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden may still be alive. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans," Obama told the Woodrow Wilson Center on Wednesday. "If we...

Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama cast himself as the leader the US needed to stand up to and engage renegade nations such as North Korea. ’We need a president who’ll have the strength and courage to go toe-to-toe with the leaders of rogue nations, because that’s what it takes to protect our security,“ the Illinois senator told Democrats at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “That’s what I’ll do as your next commander in chief.� Obama and rival Hillary Clinton have had a running argument since clashing in last week’s debate over how far the US should be willing to...

 Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama told New Hampshire voters Friday that President Bush grossly misunderstands his role as commander in chief. "When President Bush says, 'I just want to give the commanders what they want, listen to the generals,' he doesn't understand how we work here in America. Civilians control the military and we are supposed to set the mission for the generals and then the generals should carry out the mission," Obama said at an outdoor town hall meeting.

Oprah Winfrey may be the celebrity steroid that catapults Democratic presidential hopeful Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to the nomination. It started in 2005 when Oprah gushed over Obama, trading stories on set about their odd names growing up (he was told become “Barack Smith” or “Joe Obama” while people told her name to change to “Suzie.”) His good looks, charming smile and idealistic language -- the stuff that empty-worded speeches ("What we've had is a shortage of hope…”) are made of -- have taken hold of some -- Oprah included. She showed her affection this week by announcing a $2,300...

CHICAGO (AP) - Standing before a church congregation that has witnessed inner-city violence firsthand, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Sunday that more must be done to end a social ill that is "sickening the soul of this nation." Obama told churchgoers at the Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago's South Side that too many young lives are being claimed by violence and more must be done to combat the problem. "From South Central L.A. to Newark, New Jersey, there's an epidemic of violence that's sickening the soul of this nation," the Illinois senator told the crowd. "The...

For four decades, Joseph Torrenueva has cut the hair of Hollywood celebrities, including Marlon Brando and Bob Barker, so when a friend told him in 2003 that a presidential candidate needed grooming advice, he agreed to help. The Beverly Hills hairstylist, a Democrat, said he hit it off with then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) at a meeting in Los Angeles that brought several fashion experts together to advise the candidate on his appearance. Since then, Torrenueva has cut Edwards's hair at least 16 times. At first, the haircuts were free. But because Torrenueva often had to fly somewhere on the campaign...