Free Republic

This should stir the pot. Looks like Obama should have read the "Obamacare" law before he signed it, OR he was so eager to get "Obamacare" that he didn't care about the "gun owners" clause that was in it! So, Obama was either stupid for not reading the bill OR knew the clause was necessary to get his "Obamacare" passed, so that his ego could soar! Wednesday, it was discovered that hidden deep within the massive 2800-page bill called Obamacare, there is a Senate Amendment protecting the right to keep and bear arms. It seems that in their haste to...

Sending additional forces into a foreign country always requires the president's approval. He was either absent, or refused "CBA". The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor — the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut. Once the alarm is sent – in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi — dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EURCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington,...

I was reading the UT's "Letter to the Editor" column (that's the San Diego Union Tribune) in the day before yesterday's newspaper, only to be thrown aback. There was one letter after another letter supporting the call for the Fairness Doctrine! Here's a sampling: "Yes, I know this is a country of free speech, but Rush Limbaugh and those fools at Fox News need to be stifled. They could incite an irrational person to commit an act of violence that our country, and indeed the world, would forever regret." -DOROTHY ANDERSEN, La Jolla Dorothy seems to have forgotten the eight...

Congressional Democrats were doing an end zone victory dance over their passage of Iraq funding legislation which included specific dates for withdrawing the troops. [This was written prior to the veto] In the House, the Conference Report for HR 1591 passed by 218-208. In the Senate it passed 51-46. Two Republicans - Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon were the only Republicans to vote with the Democrats. SIDEBAR For a brief (and probably incorrect) discussion of "Conference Reports" go to the Secret Decoder Ring page. END SIDEBAR The problem for the Democrats (who have slightly re-written history...

It's Spring Break. A time when boys and girls, pretending to be adults, go to places they know they shouldn't; do things they wish they hadn't; and pray they don't show up in a "Girls Gone Wild" DVD later on. It's one thing to be a college student, drunk on Jello shots, at the beach bar in Daytona, lifting your shirt for some dope with a video camera. It is something else to be the Speaker of the House, drunk on power, making a fool of yourself by pretending to be a diplomat and going to the Syrian desert. The...

The current projectile-sweat-the-Republic-is-in-danger-of-collapse issue is whether the President will respond to subpoenas issued by the House and Senate Judiciary committees which would require (at a minimum) Karl Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers to testify under oath about the firing of those eight previously unknown US Attorneys. SIDEBAR Let's be clear about this. The Democrats will spend some portion of their day, every day until 12:01 pm on January 20, 2009 trying to get Karl Rove to testify under oath about something so they can ask him about everything. As far as the Democrats are concerned, Karl Rove...

In moves designed to, yet again, work towards placing members of the Bush Administration (specifically the Left’s favorite whipping boy — political aide Karl Rove) in jeopardy, Democrats and their supplicant RINOs have launched their latest of an increasing number of investigations into anything and everything that is “Bush and Republican”. This time it is a Democrat attack against the firing of a number of US Attorneys in an attempt to have Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired and top Bush officials grilled by a Democrat-run investigatory committee. This seems eerily reminiscent of the old USSR politburo. First, allow me to...

It has now become official. Mexico (if not other south of the border countries) is now running US immigration policy. During President Bush?s meetings in Mexico, this week, he was chastised by Mexican President Felipe Calderon for not pushing ?immigration reform? (AKA ?amnesty? or ?open borders? ? take your pick) for illegal Mexican nationals entering the USA. Calderon continued to blast Bush on US plans to build a border fence and any other methods to curb the continued illegal aliens? immigration from Mexico into the United States. Instead, Calderon said that improving the economic conditions of Mexico ?is the only...

Perhaps enough time has passed since the last election for partisan passions to have cooled sufficiently to entertain a question with profound implications for American democracy: Is the average American voter well enough informed to vote intelligently? In the recent campaign we heard the slogans “count every vote” and “every vote counts” ad nauseam, but did most of those casting ballots know who or what they were voting for? Not according to George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin who recently wrote, “The sheer depth of most individual voters ignorance is shocking to observers not familiar with the research.” For...

With the robust economy, tax revenues are pouring in. But rising costs lie ahead. Despite the ongoing costs of US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the outlook for the federal budget has grown substantially brighter. Tax revenues are rising much faster than spending, according to Treasury Department numbers released last week. The recent trend is strong enough that, were it to continue, the budget could move into surplus in barely a year, one economist calculates. Already, the federal deficit is shrinking toward about half the size that it has averaged since 1970 ...

(AgapePress) -- A former GOP presidential candidate says the controversy surrounding two liberal bloggers for Democrat John Edwards' presidential campaign gives Americans a window into the powerful far-left blogosphere. Gary Bauer also says the controversy highlights the fear top Democratic politicians have for far-left activists within their own party. Two Edwards campaign bloggers recently resigned amid protests over their history of vulgar and bigoted comments directed at Catholics and Christians. Although Senator Edwards acknowledged the statements were offensive, he initially decided not to fire the two women saying, before they quit, that he kept them on staff to give them...

ABC's Betsy Stark highlighted applause lines in Bush speech on income gap, CEO pay. On January 31, President Bush became only the second sitting president to walk the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, just hours after the federal government released new data showing the economy grew at a healthy 3.4 percent growth rate last year. Yet network reporters downplayed the good economic news – particularly ABC’s Betsy Stark, who highlighted liberal-sounding applause lines in the president’s Wall Street speech on the “state of the economy” while leaving out the president’s defense of his tax cuts. CBS’s Katie Couric...

According to a February 1, 2007 report by the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), Maria Vanderslice, a 1997 graduate of Earlham College and head of the 2 year-old PR firm called Common Good Strategies, has much to do with recent Democrat Party success in wooing Christian voters. Vanderslice has been working behind the scenes to help Democrats convince Christians that they should vote for Democrats of “faith”. Like many Democrat efforts to sway voters and stem the large numbers of political losses suffered by liberals until the past elections, this “faith” initiative is rotten from the core and built on typical...

How much can an ambitious Congress and a bunch of journalists shake Wall Street? On Jan. 25, stock prices of several credit card companies took a beating. Shares of Mastercard tumbled 3 percent from their previous closing price. American Express dropped $1.16, and JP Morgan Chase fell 15 cents before plunging a further 51 cents the following day. In a hearing that Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee had assailed the industry for its aggressive marketing practices and the steep penalties it slaps on borrowers. The committee chairman, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)[candidate for President], delivered a warning: “I would like to...

Reinvigorated after taking control of Congress, the Left is once again seeking to dictate to businesses how they must offer Internet services to consumers. This legislation has an Orwellian name: The Internet Freedom Preservation Act, and was introduced in the 110th Congress by Senators Byron Dorgan and Olympia Snowe. The bill is supported by a who’s who of the Left, and seeks to set price controls on Internet content. The list of the bill’s co-sponsors tells you everything you need to know: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer and Barack Obama. We defeated this legislation, so-called “net neutrality” during the...

On Canadian television, yesterday [1/11/07], I was asked whether I thought the plan presented by President Bush would work in Iraq. I said (and this is pretty close): "I am not an expert in military tactics or strategy - neither, by the way, is almost anyone else who has weighed in on this. Asking me whether 20,000 additional troops is enough, is like asking me how much more power we should add to a particle accelerator." [Laughter by the anchor] I have been listening to people in elected office from US Senators down to who-knows-what; to people who were once...

Elections have consequences. The Democrats will control the US Senate, so, the President had to choose between either getting Robert Gates confirmed for Secretary of Defense or John Bolton confirmed for Ambassador to what is officially, if erroneously, called the United Nations. Interestingly, it was Senator Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island who was defeated last month in his re-election bid, who doomed Bolton's confirmation. Bolton is officially, if erroneously, a Republican. But he determined he would not vote to confirm Bolton which effectively killed any chance of confirmation because the Democrats in the Senate were not going to be helpful....

Despite concerted media efforts to paint the upcoming mid-term elections as a “tsunami” sized shift of political power in Washington, the tea leaves just don’t read like most of the lamestream headlines. Though democrat leaders have been successful in keeping the anti-Bush “culture of corruption” campaign chant alive within their party friendly press and their extreme left-wing base, it has largely fallen on deaf ears everywhere else. The shrill rhetoric has had little impact upon the average American voters who place more weight in the anti-American deeds of the left, than the harmonious chants of evil republican capitalist pigs, continually...

My son argues with me almost every time I use the word "treason" to describe the actions of liberals. His response to my use of the word in a recent column was to e-mail me the following: "Treason is very much in the realm of specific acts pertaining to the national security of the nation, and I don't think being a whiny liberal qualifies as treason." Perhaps, but it comes close. Take, for example, the senseless comments of Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks. Maines created a firestorm a couple of years ago by telling a British audience...

Today's projectile-sweat-inducing story came from USA Today with the headline: "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls" over a lede written by reporter Leslie Cauley: "The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans ..." If you didn't read the sentence in the middle of the second paragraph ... Here is the sentence in the middle of the second paragraph: "This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations." WIRETAPP ... Wait. What? Does not involve listening to or recording? What's the big deal? Don't these people...