Free Republic

Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz says that Obamacare will be a vote-winner for Democrats in 2014. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the same thing. Perhaps they really believe that. But the numbers in polls conducted since Oct. 17, when the end of the government shutdown put the spotlight on the rollout of Obamacare, tell a different story. Democrats currently hold a 55-45 majority in the Senate. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to win a majority there. This looks to be within reach. Seven Democratic-held seats are up in states carried by Mitt Romney. And four...

<p>The densely populated coastal corridors from Boston to Washington and from San Diego to Berkeley are where most of America’s big decisions are made.</p> <p>They remind us of two quite different Americas: one country along these coasts and everything else in between. Those in Boston, New York, and Washington determine how our government works; what sort of news, books, art, and fashion we should consume; and whether our money and investments are worth anything.</p>

I haven’t heard much from (or about) Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst since he came in second in his Senate primary race with Ted Cruz. But he’s still on the job in the Lone Star state and taking an active role in state politics. He probably raised eyebrows yesterday when he issued a potentially dire warning to his fellow Texas Republicans. AUSTIN, Texas — Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said here on Saturday that Texas could turn blue if Republicans get “complacent.”“If we’re complacent, yeah, it could happen,” said Dewhurst, who last year lost to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The nearly broke Philadelphia schools will open on schedule next month thanks to $50 million in emergency aid. But will they be worth going to? That's the question parents are asking as the district begins to rehire about 1,000 pink-slipped workers, from assistant principals to guidance counselors. Many say the cash infusion is a paltry bandage on a district hemorrhaging red ink, and that the buildings will simply be shells — without sufficient resources or staff to offer students a safe and adequate learning environment. About 2,500 workers remain laid off. "We're all just kind of stunned...

More than a dozen Maryland state prison guards helped a dangerous national gang operate a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scheme from behind bars that involved cash payments, sex and access to fancy cars, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Thirteen female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders, prosecutors said. The officers were charged Tuesday in a federal racketeering indictment. The indictment described a jailhouse seemingly out of control. Four corrections officers became pregnant by one inmate. Two of them got tattoos of the inmate’s first name, Tavon — one on her neck, the other on a...

President Obama is slated to fly to Texas Wednesday to attend a memorial in West, TX for the victims of the plant explosion there. On Thursday, he will attend the dedication of George W. Bush's Presidential Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.  This will mark the President's third trip to a so-called "red state" since being re-elected. In contrast, he has made 18 trips to states that voted for him in the last election, what we are calling "blue states."  http://bit.ly/11ydMu4 To be fair, several of these blue states qualify as purple, such as Virginia...

A Pennsylvania man is facing several charges after wildlife officials say he went deer hunting in a Wal-Mart parking lot, according to CBS Pittsburgh station KDKA-TV. The Indiana Gazette reports 40-year-old Arcangelo Bianco Jr. fired several rounds from a handgun at a 10-point white-tailed deer from within the Burrell Township store's parking lot, and then bagged the animal. The alleged shooting happened last November, while Bianco was shopping at the store and then saw the buck in the parking lot. The deer ran around a corner of the store, and Bianco hopped out of his truck, gun in hand, and...

Being a native of Atlanta, I always resented media depictions and popular culture images of Georgia as a state where everyone wore overalls, had three teeth in their head, and liberally used terms like "ain't" and "gonna" in their daily vocabulary. The problem is when reality programs like "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" depict exactly that, well, it starts to become a losing battle. In the past, I would have written how metropolitan Atlanta has a population of nearly 6 million, many of whom are from somewhere other than Georgia. I would have noted that race relations in the state...

Republicans hold a weak hand in Washington but a stronger grip in states where voters have entrusted them with power. Performances there can boost not just the Republican image but bring the party back to power in Washington. More importantly, they can show conservative principles work. The "Red State Model" can, in the Wall Street Journal's words, "Drive Republican Revival." Walter Russell Meade, one of our most brilliant thinkers, has written quite perceptively about the collapse of what he calls "the blue model." These are states that have been firmly in the hands of the Democratic Party and their allies...

"Most people are law-abiding citizens and may go ahead and sell those or turn those over, but you're going to have a fraction of people that are going to take a stand, and I can just predict a Waco-style standoff in some rural area and it's not going to end well," Gloversville, New York Mayor Dayton King (R) said about New York state's new gun control laws that Gov. Cuomo recently signed into law.

One of the most fascinating characteristics of government borrowing - whether at the local, state, or federal level - is that debts contracted over time are obligations tied to specific geographical boundaries but not to the citizens living there when those debts were incurred. For example, while it's customary to say that each of the 210,000 residents of Stockton, California, are on the hook for their share of the bankrupt municipality's estimated $700 million in unpaid bills, the day one of them picks up and moves, personal responsibility for that debt drops to zero.

Benefit to fall $50 a month starting in January Ohio families receiving food stamps could get an unwelcome surprise come January: $50 less every month in assistance. For the 869,000 households enrolled in the program for the poorest Ohioans, that could amount to about $520 million annually out of the grocery budgets. Because of the way the federal government calculates utility expenses for people receiving the benefit, a mild winter nationwide last year, and a lower price for natural gas, many families could experience a significant cut in aid, those familiar with the program say. Recipients should get a letter...

As local employees sign up for their 2013 benefits, many are learning that they’ll lose a bigger chunk of their paychecks to health-care costs. For the first time, central Ohio employers will deduct, on average, more than $2,000 from their workers’ paychecks next year to help pay ever-pricier health-care premiums, according to a recent survey by benefits consultant Aon Hewitt. The survey included 113 employers in the Columbus area that represent 79,000 employees. Cost-shifting is just one way that employers have long tried to handle higher health-care costs. Local health-benefit experts say they’re seeing several other strategies emerge, too. For...

The excremental liberal press is boycotting coverage of this to protect Obama but Fox is covering it. Staten Island has received zero help after four days. Bloomberg has stolen three huge generators to power marathon tents and given no help to the people of Staten Island. The entire borough is a ruined disaster. No food, no water, no gasoline, the homeless wandering across the island with no shoes, no socks, injured, starving, crying for help from camera crews. People fighting one another over dumpster garbage. Death toll rising. Another Liberal success story.

<p>Hurricane Sandy brought out the worst yesterday in some sleazy New Yorkers, who looted stores and homes across the city.</p> <p>Some posed as Con Ed workers to dupe their victims.</p> <p>Police arrested more than a dozen looters in the Rockaways and Coney Island, which had been evacuated, and stood guard outside ravaged stores at the South Street Seaport. “This morning when they told us the water receded, I walked back to the house to feed [my pets],” said Eric Martine, 33, a cabby who lives in Brooklyn’s Gerritsen Beach. “Guys were looting, pretending they were Con Ed and holding people up. It was sick.” Residents said police warned them to beware of crooks pretending to be utility workers...</p>

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic argues that it’s getting easier, but more alarming, to differentiate Blue from Red America. The one “looks more and more like Scandinavia, while the other increasingly resembles a social Darwinist’s paradise.” In TNR’s current issue, Cohn examines, with the help of some academic researchers, the strength of the safety nets in blue and red states. The former he defines as those states carried by the Democratic presidential nominee in each of the past three elections. (That roster comprises California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey,...

When an incumbent Democratic president is virtually tied in a congressional district he carried by high double digits in 2008, and is losing in the suburbs of his hometown, there could be trouble brewing. In August, a poll by the Joliet, Ill.-based polling firm of McKeon and Associates, found President Obama leading challenger Mitt Romney in Cook County, which includes Chicago and its suburbs, by a 12-point margin 49-37. That would seem to be a comfortable edge, but it is significantly smaller than traditional margins needed to outweigh the more Republican downstate vote... Now comes a new poll from WeAskAmerica...

The 32½-point margin of victory in Danville Mayor Candace Andersen's win Tuesday over college board President Tomi Van de Brooke in the Contra Costa supervisor election is a stunner. Internal polling reportedly showed Andersen's strong ballot designation -- mayor and attorney -- gave her a boost but "not 30 points worth," one political consultant observed wryly. Some of those points were undoubtedly due to Andersen's higher name recognition in the San Ramon Valley, where she has held public office for nearly a decade and where the population outnumbers the northern part of the district in Lamorinda. But other than a...

The other day, I called a friend and interrupted her mid-cry. She'd just returned from putting her only son on a plane to China, where he was moving after giving up on getting a job here. The next day in the supermarket, I bumped into another friend, looking downcast. She told me her only son was planning his move to Hong Kong, after a fruitless year-long search for a job in the financial sector. "Obama's destroying the economy," she told me; then she looked nervously around at our hyper-Blue State neighbors. "I feel like I have to whisper, or they're...

A new Survey USA Poll shows President Barack Obama only leading Gov. Mitt Romney by four-points in the very blue state of Oregon. The new poll puts Obama ahead 47%-43% over Romney, in a state where Obama won in 2008 by 16%. In a Survey USA Poll done in Oregon in mid-March 2012, Obama held an 11-point lead, 50%-39%.