Free Republic

At the unveiling ceremony of his official portrait at the White House today, former President George W. Bush got off some great one-liners!

The Franciscan University of Steubenville has announced it will drop health insurance coverage for students because the cost of the plan is expected to double under Obamacare. [...]The plan currently costs approximately $600 per year. However, Hernon said their health care provider informed them that under Obamacare, the policy would double in price to $1,200 and the following year it would triple. “We couldn’t believe the price (increase),” he told Fox News. “We had them go back and reconfirm it. They said it was dictated by coverage limits that were released by the Obama administration.” “At the end of the...

“Riding with our vets is an uplifting experience,” Bush said. “It is an awesome feeling and an honor to be here with them.” Bush spent about a half-hour speaking with riders and taking photographs before traveling in his motorcade to the Courtyard by Marriott at the Historic Fisk Building in downtown Amarillo. The three-day event is a 100-kilometer mountain bike ride aimed at honoring veterans seriously wounded in the war on terrorism as well as support groups. The ex-president pedaled along 13.3 miles of rugged canyon trails with about 20 veterans, many them riding with prosthetic arms or legs, as...

Among the speakers at the "Values Voter Conference' were the Republican Presidential candidates. Hopefully, the effort of the Republican establishment to handpick the 2012 Republican nominee is failing. The candidates are now engaged in a robust and volatile primary contest to determine who will oppose the current President, Barack Obama, in one of the most important elections in American history. Some may feel my tone is too "strident" when I refer to our current situation in the United States as a "crisis". I am simply being blunt. We are in a crisis - and anyone with open eyes will not...

DALLAS (AP) — George W. Bush says that after eight years in the White House, he's happy to be back home in Texas and out of the spotlight. But the former commander-in-chief tells The Associated Press there's one aspect of his presidency he still misses: interaction with U.S. troops. And Bush, who sent them to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says that despite his desire to remain largely out of the public eye, he wants to make sure veterans and military members know they still have his support. "I was a little concerned that our veterans don't think that I...

"The Founding Fathers got it right. The Founding Fathers got it right because of those fundamental principles: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They also got it in the right order. That wasn't an accident. "Their vision meant that you could pursue happiness in America as long as you don't infringe upon the liberties of somebody else. And you can pursue all the liberties that you want as long as you don't infringe upon the life of anybody else. And that starts with the life of the unborn." "The courts have failed the American people. Congress needs to enact...

Dear Mr. President: I write with a growing sense of urgency about recent actions taken by your Administration that both escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage. This past spring the Justice Department announced that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, a decision strongly opposed by the Catholic Bishops of the United States and many others. Now the Justice Department has shifted from not defending DOMA-which is problem enough, given the duty of the executive branch to enforce even laws it disfavors-to actively...

In a surprise move in a controversial case, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona is opposing a routine motion by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry to qualify as crime victims in the eyes of the court. The family asked to intervene as victims in the case against Jamie Avila, the 23-year-old Phoenix man who purchased the guns used to kill Terry. Such motions are routinely approved by prosecutors, but may be opposed by defense attorneys. However in this case, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke argues because the family was not "directly or proximately harmed" by the illegal...

LONDON, June 20, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Despite Britain being an officially Christian country with a majority Christian population and a Christian heritage reaching back to the 7th century AD, the UK’s equalities chief has said that Christians need to “integrate” better into Britain’s “modern liberal democracy.” Compared to Muslims, he said, Christians are “more militant” and have a harder time blending in. “There are a lot of Christian activist voices who appear bent on stressing the kind of persecution that I don’t think really exists in this country,” said Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)....

Five of the Republican presidential candidates seeking the GOP nomination to take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama in 2012 have signed onto a pro-life pledge the Susan B. Anthony List has sponsored, but Mitt Romney and Herman Cain have declined. The Susan B. Anthony List today announced its Pro-Life Leadership Presidential Pledge and said it asked all of the candidates who have officially announced a presidential campaign or exploratory committee to sign the pledge certifying they will not just check off the pro-life box but show true pro-life leadership if elected president.

Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA) says the Committee hearing on Muslim radicalization in U.S. prisons “can be deemed as racist and is discriminatory.” Richardson complained that the hearings were focusing specifically on Muslim radicalization and not others like the Aryan Nation. Rep. Peter King pointed out that the Democrats had control for four years and never once had a hearing on anything involving skinheads, Nazis, or the Aryan Nation. King said, “Suddenly this issue emerges when we start talking about Muslim radicalization…we have a judiciary committee to deal with other issues in the prison…If we find out that neo-Nazis are allied...

LIVINGSTON, New Jersey, June 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - One of America’s top conservative personalities distanced himself from his Catholic faith’s teachings on homosexuality, saying that he believes homosexuals are “born that way” and therefore it is “very difficult” to call homosexuality sinful. CNN’s Piers Morgan asked Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie in an interview that aired Tuesday night: “Is homosexuality a sin?” “Well my religion says it’s a sin. I mean I think - but for me? I don’t - I’ve always believed that people are born with the predisposition to be homosexual, and so I think if someone...

From the Santa Fe New Mexican: New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran has turned over about 64,000 cases of what she calls possible voter fraud to the State Department of Public Safety for investigation. That's more than 10 percent of the 607,700 people who voted in the 2010 general election in New Mexico -- and it's way more than the 37 cases of foreign nationals illegally voting that Duran mentioned at a legislative hearing earlier this year, the newspaper reported. Duran mentioned the 37 cases of illegal voting while testifying in favor of a bill that would have required...

June 13, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Washington Post and The New York Times are recruiting their readers to help their journalists sift through 13,000 newly released emails to find information that fits the caricature that Sarah Palin is an insane, megalomaniacal power-monger - the last person Americans want in the White House. Unfortunately for them, it looks like a bad political investment: determined to unmask a monster, they’re revealing her humanity. In these emails, Palin is shown to be a mother, who also happens to be the governor of Alaska, and who lives the challenge (and joy) of being pro-life....

(CNSNews.com) - Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) drew a sharp distinction between himself and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) in the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire Monday night when he firmly endorsed House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R.-Wis.) Medicare reform plan immediately after Gingrich reiterated his reservations about the plan. After Gingrich said Republicans should “slow down” on Medicare reform and that there were “certain things” he would do differently than Ryan in reforming Medicare, debate moderator John King of CNN asked Santorum if Republicans should slow down. Santorum said, “No.” “We have a $1.4 trillion deficit and...

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said in a 2006 speech that mandated health insurance was a "potentially helpful" -- but incomplete -- solution to the problem of the uninsured. Pawlenty described a Massachusetts-style mandate in his speech as "a worthy goal and one that we're intrigued by and I think at least open to," but suggested that the central health care problem was not forcing people to buy insurance but helping them afford it. Mandatory insurance has become the central legal and philosophical target for conservative critics of President Obama's health care overhaul, putting Mitt Romney -- whose MassCare, passed earlier...

Okay, I have had it with this President's blatant dishonesty. His speech today was appallingly deceitful and misleading. This President, has spent more money and added more debt than any other President in history. This is not political rhetoric, this is simply fact! Barack Obama's budget deficit in March of 2011 was larger than the deficit for all of 2007! According to Obama's 2012 Budget Proposal, under Historical Tables, the budget deficit under George Bush first peaked in 2004 at $412 billion dollars. Between 2005 and 2007 the budget deficit declined by $252 billion to reach its low, under Bush,...

A blog I read daily mentioned that the movie On the Waterfront would be on tonight. Rather accidentally, I came into a room--after soccer and football practices--with that movie playing. The movie is apropos given the recent back and forth about of how the Catholic church considers unions. This scene is one of the best scenes Hollywood ever gave a priest. But for some reason, YouTube is not letting me insert the scene, but it can be found here (about 5 minutes long). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDH3wvlC9pY

Sen. Scott Brown, R-MA, is one of the only Senate Republicans who favor legal abortion. So today’s news that he will vote to keep tax money for Planned Parenthood is not shocking, but it is still disappointing. Catholics, especially in Massachusetts, can let their voices be heard by calling Senator Brown’s office at (202) 224-4543. Here’s the statement that Senator Brown issued today: “I support family planning and health services for women. Given our severe budget problems, I don’t believe any area of the budget is completely immune from cuts,” he said. “However, the proposal to eliminate all funding for...

It is a curious irony that in this moment of history, when people in a number of countries in the Middle East are agitating for change from dictatorship to democracy, here in our own country, the oldest democracy with a written constitution in the world, there is a movement of the ruling class toward taking more and more power into its own hands. The flashpoint for this movement? The hot-button issue of our day: marriage. The comparison of the Middle East and the United States, though, is just irony No. 1 among many others in the ongoing saga of the...