Free Republic

There is no evidence that there were problems with the work of Dr. Neal Palafox, who had been chosen by Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie to replace Chiyome Fukino, the woman best known to the rest of the nation as the guardian of Barack Obama's birth certificate. That's according to an attorney representing Palafox, Brook Hart. WND reported earlier that the minority leader in Hawaii's state Senate accused Abercrombie of politicizing the health department by nominating, then apparently asking for the resignation, of Palafox. Sen. Sam Slom, the only Republican in the state Senate, said he is convinced Abercrombie asked Palafox...

Senate conservatives are split over a strategy for reducing federal spending over the long-term future, an issue they plan to force when Democrats attempt to increase the national debt ceiling later this year. Some are concerned that a deficit reduction package being negotiated by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), two of the chamber’s leading conservatives, could include hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax hikes. Coburn and Crapo, members of President Obama’s fiscal commission, voted last year for a proposal to cut spending, reform entitlements and overhaul the tax code. The fiscal commission’s proposed tax reforms...

What have we learned recently from a couple of embarrassing disclosures recently involving elected officials? Put down the BlackBerry. Move gently away from the keyboard. At least, for heaven’s sake, think before you hit “send.” Former Rep. Chris Lee learned this when a woman decided to forward to a gossip website messages and a shirtless photo the married former congressman had sent. The motivations of the woman, who cowardly remained anonymous until the Washington Post outed her, were overshadowed by the impact on the congressman, who quickly resigned. And now we have Sarah Palin, the subject of a gossipy tell-all...

Wisconsin Democrats may have left town to prevent Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican majority from having a quorum but they've still been able to cast votes in the legislature this week. Wait, what? According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, state lawmakers have “routinely” been allowed to cast votes by fax or phone in recent years rather than actually appear in the statehouse. Apparently it is a courtesy extended by the majority. A few Democrats were even able to do it Tuesday. But some Republicans are beginning to rethink that practice. To get the Democrats to return the Republicans moved this...

Some conservative bloggers and talk-show hosts act like the short rib in Michelle Obama's dinner entree was, like Adam's, extracted from them personally. The first lady, in Vail with her daughters and some friends for the Presidents Day weekend, dined at Restaurant Kelly Liken in Vail Village Saturday night, enjoying a pickled pumpkin salad with arugula and a braised ancho-chile short rib with hominy wild mushrooms and sauteed kale. So, of course, some people are taking the short view of the short rib. A braised short rib is a relatively lean cut of beef, braised with most of the fat...

The Republican National Committee raised $5.7 million in January, and new Chairman Reince Priebus said Sunday that $3.5 million of the total came in after his election Jan. 14. “We owe a lot of our success to major donors who helped us reach 180 percent of our monthly major donor goal, and we were able to accomplish that in the last two weeks of January,” Priebus said in a statement. “I am thankful for the outpouring of support I’ve seen over the past month, from both long-time and first-time donors, but we have a lot of work to do.” Priebus...

It has been almost a month and a half since the Obama family returned from 10 days in Oahu. With all the breastfeeding advice she's been giving out lately, an exhausted First Lady is long overdue for some R & R. Relinquishing her role as tireless workaholic, Michelle decided to revisit last year's mother/daughter ski trip to the Ski Liberty Resort in Carroll Valley, Pennsylvania. Only this year, the Obama women have taken to the slopes in Vail, Colorado on a "private family trip" accompanied by "several close friends." When unveiling his budget, Michelle's husband reminded Americans, "Everybody's going to...

Hundreds of protesters continue to occupy the capitol, and 14 Democratic state senators remain roosted in Illinois, stalling consideration of his budget-repair bill. But Gov. Scott Walker, a first-term Republican, tells National Review Online that he will not blink. “By the end of this week, we will have a bill passed,” he pledges. Walker is confident that he can pressure the on-the-run politicians to return and secure passage of his plan, which would drastically reduce the collective-bargaining power of public-sector unions and force state employees to put 5.8 percent of their salaries toward their pensions and pay 12.6 percent of...

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle have not been invited to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding. The Queen personally invited 40 heads of state, who received the gold-embossed invitations over the weekend to the April 29 wedding of the future king. The Obamas, however, were not among them. But they can take solace in the knowledge that they will be the guests of their very own state visit to the UK in May. There have been suggestions that the state visit – the first for a US President since 2003 – was set up in return for Obama...

Wisconsin is one of the most heavily-taxed states in the country, and its government employees are paid much better than the state’s taxpayers. Like many states, it's facing a budget deficit. But when the state’s newly-elected Republican governor, Scott Walker, attempted to place reasonable limits on government-employee pay and collective bargaining, liberal commentators like Rachel Maddow falsely claimed that the state’s budget crisis was manufactured, and that Wisconsin was running a budget surplus. This claim has now been debunked even by the liberal Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which endorsed Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004: “Our conclusion: Maddow and the...

Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms. More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he's in favor of the idea. Texas has become a prime battleground for the issue because of its...

The "Where's The Birth Certificate" billboard campaign has obtained a return engagement in Pennsylvania, and the historic message is not far from some historic landscapes. The newest billboard in the long-running campaign intended to encourage the release of information documenting Barack Obama's eligibility to be president has been erected along Route 15 southbound just two miles south of Dillsburg. The location in York County is just 10 miles from the capital and some 20 miles north of the battlefields of Gettysburg. The message arrived within days of a poll from Public Policy Polling that confirmed only 3 in 10 members...

Quiz: Which of the 2012 presidential aspirants delivered the following words at the Conservative Political Action Convention, now underway in Washington? We have seen tax-and-tax spend-and-spend reach a fantastic total greater than in all the previous 170 years of our Republic. Behind this plush curtain of tax and spend, three sinister spooks or ghosts are mixing poison for the American people. They are the shades of Mussolini, with his bureaucratic fascism; of Karl Marx, and his socialism; and of Lord Keynes, with his perpetual government spending, deficits, and inflation. And we added a new ideology of our own. That is...

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who served at the Pentagon under two Republican presidents, says the “time has come” time for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the US military. Two months after President Obama signed a law that will lead to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Rumsfeld told ABC News Radio that the nation is ready for open service. “First of all, we know that gays and lesbians have been serving in the military for decades with honorable service,” Rumsfeld said. “We know that [repeal of a ban on gays serving openly] is an idea whose...

Part of the mystery behind an 'alien' book no one can read has at last been unraveled. Found in a chest of books outside Rome by a dealer in antique books, the Voynich manuscript is among literature's great mysteries. The book of aging parchment is written in alien characters, some resembling Latin letters, others unlike anything used in any known language, and arranged into what appear to be words and sentences -- except they don't resemble anything written or read by human beings. And for decades, the manuscript has mystified scientists. "Is it a code, a cipher of some kind?"...

Twenty-five persons were injured, including a young woman who had her leg severed, when a cabdriver drove onto a sidewalk and smashed into a crowd in San Diego's Gaslamp District entertainment zone early Saturday, police said. Twenty-three were taken to hospitals, six reportedly in critical condition. The cabdriver was pulled from his vehicle by the crowd and beaten, suffering a broken nose, police said. The incident occured about 2 a.m. at 6th and Island avenues, in the heart of the restaurant and nightclub zone, close to the San Diego Convention Center. The cab crashed into a crowd outside the Stingaree...

California reinstated three teams Friday that were slated to be eliminated in a cost-cutting move after an aggressive fundraising campaign to keep the programs, while going ahead with plans to get rid of the baseball and men's gymnastics teams. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau partially reversed a decision announced in September when he said that enough money has been raised to keep the men's rugby, women's lacrosse and women's gymnastics teams. The two women's teams had been slated for elimination, while men's rugby was going to be reclassified as a "varsity club sport." "We're three-fifths of the way there and we're not...

Democratic leaders said Tuesday that they intended to hold symbolic votes in the House and Senate on President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad, forcing Republicans to take a stand on the proposal and seeking to isolate the president politically over his handling of the war. Senate Democrats decided to schedule a vote on the resolution after a closed-door meeting on a day when Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced legislation to require Mr. Bush to gain Congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq. The Senate vote is expected as early as next week, after an...

The Democratic majority in the Senate late Wednesday voted down a GOP measure to repeal the health care law. The vote was 47-51, largely along party lines. Senate Republicans, who are unified in their desire to repeal the bill, have known all year they had virtually no chance to pass a repeal measure. But Republicans campaigned in the midterm elections on a promise to "repeal and replace" the law, and they have been eager to show they are trying to follow through on their promise. The Republican-led House passed a repeal bill last month. With a Democratic president and Republicans...

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) currently leads the pack of rumored Republican presidential hopefuls in his home state of South Carolina — a crucial early primary contest for the GOP. New numbers out Tuesday from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found DeMint leading among Republicans in South Carolina with 24 percent support. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came in just behind DeMint at 20 percent, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 17 percent and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at 12 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) garnered just 10 percent support. DeMint has stirred some presidential speculation given...