Free Republic

Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010. With the IRS admitting it gave extra scrutiny to conservative political organizations, Graham says he now believes that the review was part of an Obama administration effort of “targeting and attempting to intimidate us.” ~~snip~~ “While these audits not only wasted taxpayer money, they wasted money contributed by donors for ministry purposes as we had to spend precious resources servicing...

Politico reports that Marco Rubio is prepared “to go all in to support sweeping immigration legislation, offering himself up as the public face of the bill.” This isn’t much a surprise. In all likelihood, Rubio has been prepared to be the front-man in the push for amnesty and path for citizenship for illegal aliens from the get-go. His sponsorship of reprehensible efforts to demonize critics of amnesty have shown him to be every bit as much of a ruthless pro-amnesty ideologue as Chuck Schumer, for whom he is fronting.

--snip-- The ever-growing U.S. government has an edgy social, ethical, and political character. It is distasteful to a majority of persons who vote Republican and to independent voters, as well as to perhaps one fifth of those who vote Democrat. The Republican leadership’s kinship with the socio-political class that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has chosen candidates for office –...

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says no law empowers any judge to stop it from conducting illegal scientific experiments on seniors, children and the sick. That astounding assertion will be tested Friday, when a federal district court in Alexandria decides whether it has jurisdiction to hear claims made by the American Tradition Institute that EPA researchers are exposing unwary and genetically susceptible senior citizens to air pollutants the agency says can cause a variety of serious cardiac and respiratory problems, including sudden death. Although the lawsuit only addresses ongoing, purportedly illegal experimentation being carried out at an EPA laboratory...

Mike Harris is contributor to a publication called VeteransToday.com. If you peruse through it closely, it’s basically a website for former military officers turned Ron Paul types or “vast Zionist conspiracy” kookoos for Cocoa Puffs. Here he is on Iran’s state-run PressTV blaming Israel for the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre.

BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) — Two people died and more than 80 people were hurt Thursday when at least 100 vehicles collided in Southeast Texas in a pileup that left trucks twisted on top of each other and authorities rushing to pull survivors from the wreckage. The collision occurred in extremely foggy conditions at about 8:45 a.m. Thanksgiving Day on Interstate 10 southwest of Beaumont, a Gulf Coast city about 80 miles east of Houston. A man and a woman were killed in a Chevy Suburban SUV crushed by a tractor trailer, the Texas Department of Public Safety told KFDM-TV. Officials...

“If the election was held today, President Barack Obama would lose the state of Wisconsin because where his base is, we have not turned out the vote early," Mayor Michael Hancock told a Democratic rally. "The suburbs and rural parts of Wisconsin – the Republican base – are voting. President Obama’s base has yet to go vote. "We've got to get our people to go vote," Hancock said. Early voting, which began in Wisconsin on Oct. 22, is a central component of Obama’s strategy to win the state. The president won Wisconsin four years ago by 14 percentage points, but...

When the shocking ObamaCare ruling came from the Supreme Court Thursday morning, the reaction from the conservative pundit class started with befuddlement -- then worked through confusion, shock, and of course anger. Later in the day, however, the pundit elites started to furrow their brows and dust off their elbow patches -- and proceeded to try to convince us rubes that we had overreacted. They treated us to all kinds of contorted rationalizations and justifications full of pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook. snip Sorry, folks. As we say in flyover country, "that dog won't hunt." We just saw the Court sanction unlimited taxation...

Only four days after former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline filed a blistering motion asking that two Kansas Supreme Court justices recuse themselves from deciding whether to suspend his law license, the Supremes announced yesterday that FIVE of the seven would be doing so. Their rationale, according to the The Topeka Capital-Journal: The five justices voluntarily stepped aside, citing the Kansas Code of Judicial Conduct rule that requires recusal when a judge “previously presided as a judge over the matter in another court.” Without ever mentioning Kline’s motion, the five stated it “would not be possible” for them to give...

The U.S. Department of Labor is withdrawing a rule that would have limited the sorts of work that children can do on farms.

CBS News' Bill Plante to White House press secretary Jay Carney on the matter of President Obama's attack on the Supreme Court: "You're standing up there, twisting yourself in knots because he made a mistake and you can't admit it." Plante repeated himself after Carney accused him of righteous indignation.

With Sunday's news that a US soldier massacred 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, in their sleep and then burned the bodies, the little that the US can claim to have achieved in Afghanistan, at great cost over a decade, is now likely to be lost. No American, and probably no westerner, will be safe in Afghanistan for a decade after the soldier's murderous rampage. Really, if they're willing to murder people over burned books, imagine the intensity of Afghan hatred for a truly heinous crime against sleeping civilians, with one man losing all 11 members of his family....

Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who for 33 years in Congress has personified an increasingly unfashionable Republican centrism, said she won't seek re-election, taking a final shot at the Senate's partisanship. "I do find it frustrating...that an atmosphere of polarization and 'my way or the highway' ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions," she said Tuesday. The decision, which took members of both parties by surprise, transforms this year's battle for the Senate. Democrats hold a 53-47 advantage in the chamber. But because they have to defend 23 seats to the Republicans' 10, most analysts have...

<p>Former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) has changed his mind and plans to run for the open Senate seat in Nebraska, according to a senior Democratic aide.</p> <p>The aide said Kerrey has called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to inform him of his plans.</p>

"I believe today's hearing is a sham," said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., of the first of two session held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee during the day. His tone sharp and finger pointed, Connolly went on to declare the witnesses -- who included a Catholic bishop, a Lutheran reverend, an Orthodox rabbi, and two Baptist theologians, all opposed to the administration's recent ruling -- "complicit" in the Republicans' "trampling" of House traditions that would, if observed, have produced a more balanced panel. "You are being used for a political agenda," Connolly told the holy men, after Republicans...

MONTERREY, Mexico – Imprisoned members of the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel stabbed and bludgeoned 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel to death and then staged a mass escape, apparently with the help of prison authorities, officials in northern Mexico said Monday. Rodrigo Medina, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, said the prison's director and three other officials have been fired and are under investigation for purportedly helping in the escape. The same was done with 18 prison guards. "Unfortunately, a group of traitors has set back the work of a lot of good police," Medina told a...

Walt Disney Co. and Univision Communications Inc. are in talks to create a new 24-hour cable-news channel that will broadcast in English, in an effort to keep pace with changing demographics among U.S. Hispanics and reach a new audience of English speakers, people familiar with the negotiations said. ~~snip~~ If a deal is done, the companies' goal is to get the network—a joint venture based in Miami, where Univision has studios—up and running before the November elections, the people said.

~~snip~~ The Girl Scouts have a cross-dresser in the front office. Ten years ago, Girl Scouts media relations officer Joshua Ackley was frontman for the “homopunk” band the Dead Betties. In publicity shots, he’s dressed in women’s clothing, and in music videos, he appears to be naked and feigning masturbation. The video for “Hellevator” portrays a woman being strangled in an elevator shaft while Mr. Ackley flashes a menacing grin. Today he issues press releases, posts news and views on the Girl Scouts’ blog, and tries to mollify moms who are concerned about Girl Scout ties with Planned Parenthood. In...

snip... Customers of the bankrupt firm are starting to complain about getting checks that bounced, having requests to transfer funds denied and receiving inaccurate account statements. The growing litany of woes is adding to the tasks for the receiver assigned to liquidate MF Global and causing some investors to voice concern about the basic plumbing of the financial services system. Steve Meyers, an independent futures trader in Florida, said he asked for $500,000 from his MF Global account to be wired back to him on October 28 because he was concerned about the firm filing for bankruptcy. The money never...

--snip-- .. Labor Dept. announced proposal that would help ensure the safety of youth on farms. But,...as farm advocates claim (they) are far too restrictive. “Here’s what the government thinks is common sense,” says Craig Anderson, Agriculture Labor and Safety Services division manager at the Michigan Farm Bureau. “Eliminate work to protect workers. If you don’t work, you can’t be hurt on the job. Who can argue with that?” --snip-- “The DOL assumes that youth under age 16 lack the ‘cognitive ability’ to herd animals on horseback, use battery-powered drills, put hay bales on a bale elevator or use any...

Word has come that FReeper gulfcoast 6 has passed away. Toby was a regular member of the America The Right Way thread, and was a FReeper in good standing since 1999. Toby had many friends on this forum and his wise, gentle posts and warm humor will be sorely missed. He has gone to his glory in Christ and joins his wife Treva who preceeded him in death and whom he lovingly posted about after her death. Toby loved God, his dear family (who he proudly posted about often) and his friends. We will all miss him and look forward...

Pacific Investment Management Company co-founder Bill Gross is starting to talk about what "financial repression" means for the bond markets, which America has not seen since the darkest days of the 1930's when the term was first used. I'm starting to talk about what financial repression means for Americans. ~snip~ There would be no cash left in the vaults and no cash left in the drawers. Without cash reserves, banks would not be able to fund credit card purchases, debit card purchases, or supply ATM machines with dollar bills. They would not be able to underwrite small business loans either....

Yesterday, despite the defection of 59 Republican votes, the House of Representatives passed the budget for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year as negotiated between John Boehner and Harry Reid. The Senate passed the bill 81-19 shortly thereafter. This after a Congressional Budget Office report suggested that only $352 million will be saved this year, versus the claimed $38.5 billion of savings in the budget. That CBO report is a blessing for fiscal conservatives. My original reaction to the deal was that Tea Partiers should be pleased about the outcome; some fiscal hawks seem to have forgotten who controls...

..snip..But as dangerous as are Obama's self-delusions and extremist ideology, those aren't the only reasons to fear for the country. We also have reason to fear because his opposition cannibalizes itself. It spends more time arguing over whether its leaders are being "tough" enough with regard to one seventy-fifth of the budget than it does in figuring out how to evict Obama from office. It spends more time arguing over whether a cut in budget authority is a real cut (it most certainly is) or a "fake" cut than it spends explaining and publicizing why its own budget, the Ryan...

When the U.S. Supreme Court is in session, each Wednesday and Friday afternoon is set aside for an esoteric conclave known as the Justices' Conference. During these private meetings, the justices discuss cases they have recently heard or might decide to hear. The first order of business usually involves the latter, requests from various litigants for the high court to review cases that have been adjudicated by lower courts. Typically, these cases have already been through the appellate process, but occasionally the justices receive a "petition for certiorari before judgment" asking them to consider the decision of some District Court...

As the dust settles in Madison, Wisconsin Republicans face a troubling coda: Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill is being tripped up in the courts. Union heavies smell blood. And the unruly parade of lefty activists and hulking Teamsters that occupied the state capitol for weeks is back for a bruising final round. On paper, at issue is whether senate Republicans violated the state’s open-meeting laws. In mid-March, after a three-week stalemate, GOP lawmakers hustled Walker’s bill to the floor. The senate clerk approved the maneuver. But 14 Democratic state senators, on the lam in Illinois, howled in absentia. So did...

CAIRO — A protest by hundreds of Egyptian women demanding equal rights and an end to sexual harassment turned violent Tuesday when crowds of men heckled and shoved the demonstrators, telling them to go home where they belong. ~~snip~~ But crowds of men soon outnumbered them and chased them out. "They said that our role was to stay home and raise presidents, not to run for president," said Farida Helmy, a 24-year old journalist. Sexual harassment remains widespread in Egypt, where women often are afraid to report sexual assault or harassment for fear they and their families will be stigmatized....

Liberal nonprofit Common Cause is asking the Department of Justice to investigate Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in relation to the Citzens United Supreme Court case, arguing that their decision in the case raised "serious questions about the impartiality of" both justices. "It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision," writes Common Cause President and CEO Bob Edgar in a petition to the Justice Department filed this week. The organization contends that the justices should have recused themselves from the...

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is known for sparring with White House reporters, making for what often seems an antagonistic mood in the press briefing room. But during President Obama's trip to India, Gibbs assumed the role of press advocate and threatened to pull Obama out of bilateral talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh because three U.S. reporters were blocked from covering the meeting. Indian officials would let only five reporters into Hyderabad House in New Delhi instead of the agreed-upon eight. The Washington Post's Scott Wilson—who was on White House pool duty Monday and filed the report for the...

Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences. Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition. The roughly 750,000 arrests they make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana represent more than 40% of all drug arrests. Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs,...

....Ryan says that his GOP colleagues on the Budget Committee are stalwart in their commitment to entitlement reform. “The culture on the Budget Committee is great,” he says. “Anybody who studies this problem or digs deep into the numbers is seriously frightened about the future of this country. They realize the urgency of the moment. After a sober review of the fiscal condition of this country, most people just put politics aside.” snip Repealing Obamacare is another important, and popular, measure. “We should look at every option we have available to us to try to repeal and replace this law,”...

Imagine if you ran a business, and one day the government told you that you would be fined if you: (1) minimized unnecessary expenses; (2) hired workers to specialize in customer service; (3) invested resources in order to ensure you wouldn’t get victimized by fraud. What would you do? Think quickly: because three months from now, this very system will be the law of the land for our nation’s health insurers. Last Friday, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners—the association of the 50 state insurance commissioners—issued its draft guidelines for how insurers will need to calculate “medical-loss ratios,” or MLRs....

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — An American tourist was shot in the back of the head in Mexican waters on Thursday after being ambushed by armed boaters, a Texas sheriff said. It happened near the U.S. boundary of a lake where run-ins with pirates already had fishermen and Texas officials on alert. Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez identified the victim as David Michael Hartley, 30. Hartley and his wife were riding personal watercrafts back from Mexico on Falcon Lake when about six gunmen approached in two boats, Gonzalez said. The sheriff said Hartley was shot as the couple sped away at...

The economy didn’t grow as much as the Obama administration first claimed in the initial quarter of 2010, the Commerce Department reported today. The Q1 GDP was first announced at an annualized growth rate of 3.2%, down from the previous 5.7% in 2009Q4. Later, the number got revised downward to 3.0%. Today marks the third revision in the Q1 GDP growth rate, and the third reduction, this time to 2.7%: The U.S. economy grew at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the first quarter, less than previously calculated, reflecting a smaller gain in consumer spending and a bigger trade gap....

Only able to link.

An interesting e-mail below. Any tax lawyers/accountants want to confirm for me the impact of Obama's new benefit? hugh@hughhewitt.com I've heard you talking about one of the "benefits" of Obamacare being the ability to add dependents to insurance until they are 26 years old. This has been the law in Illinois since June 2009. There is a catch to this. If the dependent you are adding doesn't qualify as an "IRS qualified dependent" this is considered a taxable benefit for the individual that owns the insurance. So, for those employees who fall into this category, each payday, we have to...

With uncharacteristic bluntness, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Congress on Wednesday that the United States could soon face a debt crisis like the one in Greece, and declared that the central bank will not help legislators by printing money to pay for the ballooning federal debt. Recent events in Europe, where Greece and other nations with large, unsustainable deficits like the United States are having increasing trouble selling their debt to investors, show that the U.S. is vulnerable to a sudden reversal of fortunes that would force taxpayers to pay higher interest rates on the debt, Mr. Bernanke...

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown took a swipe at Vice President Joe Biden today -- saying that President Obama's No. 2 was “off base” when he said the Republican get his facts straight when it comes to military tribunals and whether he is aware that terrorists have the right to a lawyer. “It was insulting,” Brown, a critic of Obama during his recent Senate campaign, told Politico.com. The comments came a day after Biden blasted Brown during an appearance on CBS's “Face the Nation" when he said he didn't “know whether the new senator from Massachusetts understands: When you get tried...

The tea partiers are enjoying their day in the sun, but coffee is the beverage preferred by most Americans, and we don't have time to gang up and holler and wave our arms -- we prefer to sit quietly with coffee in hand and read a reliable newspaper and try to figure out what's going on in the world. Great heaps of dead bodies are moved by front-loaders and dumped, uncounted, unidentified, into open pits in a stricken country while people feast and walk treadmills on enormous cruise ships sailing a hundred miles off the coast en route to the...

WASHINGTON – Americans would see only a modest rise in health care costs under the Senate's plan to extend coverage to 34 million people who currently go without health insurance, government economic experts say in a new report. The study found that health spending, which accounts for about one-sixth of the economy, would increase by less than 1 percent than it otherwise would over the coming decade even with so many more people receiving coverage. Over time, cost-cutting measures could start to reduce the annual increases in health care spending, offering the possibility of substantial savings in the long run....

~~snip~~ But Republicans see a chance to claim a victory if the president signs a bill that does less than he'd asked for. "A win for us is anything that improves the current situation without damaging the good things about our system," said Price, adding that any bill that does not include a public option, employer mandates and the rationing of care could be looked at as something of a success for his party. Giuliani offered a narrower definition of a Republican win, telling POLITICO earlier this week that if the president signs any bill that does not include a...

President Barack Obama assured the nation his recovery plan was on track Monday, scrambling to calm Americans unnerved by unemployment rates still persistently rising nearly four months after he signed the biggest economic stimulus in history. Obama admitted his own dissatisfaction with the progress but said his administration would ramp up stimulus spending in the coming months. The White House acknowledged it has spent only $44 billion, or 5 percent, of the $787 billion stimulus, but that total has always been expected to rise sharply this summer. "Now we're in a position to really accelerate," Obama said. He also repeated...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is asking Congress to close the big gap in prison sentences for dealing crack versus powdered cocaine, a law that critics say is unfair to blacks. Such sentencing reform efforts tend to focus on lowering the mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine possession, but in prepared testimony to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer did not spell out exactly how the administration hopes to make the law more fair. "The administration believes Congress' goal should be to completely eliminate the disparity in prison sentences between crack cocaine and...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan warned India against accusing of it links to the Mumbai terror attacks Thursday, saying doing so would "destroy all the goodwill" between the two nuclear-armed rivals. The remarks by Pakistan's defense minister came hours after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said militants based outside his country carried out the atatcks. Singh did not single out Pakistan, which New Delhi has accused of complicity in terror attacks on its soil before, but his remarks are likely to be taken as a sign here that India suspects Pakistani links somewhere in the plot. A serious deterioration in relations...

“With the economy in bad shape and the possibility of a deep recession looming, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to levy new taxes—on cows and pigs,” American Farm Bureau Federation Director of Regulatory Relations Rick Krause told Wyoming Farm Bureau members at their annual meeting. Krause spoke in Sheridan on Nov. 7. “This is no laughing matter,” Krause said. “The cow tax and the pig tax are parts of a larger scheme by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.” “Under the proposal, if a state charged the “presumptive minimum rate” from...

The Wall Street Journal dedicated an op-ed page today to the question, "What Does the GOP Do Next," with brief essays from various conservatives, including former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. Steele's prescription for the GOP: Become the party of the future by emulating Ronald Reagan. Essentially, Steele says, the party's problem is that it betrayed its principles in order to win and ended up losing instead. So the party needs to follow the example of Reagan, who "made it cool to be a Republican." "It wasn't just his specific policies, but the timeless truths he so eloquently gave voice...

Gov. Sarah Palin denounced anonymous criticisms leveled at her by former John McCain aides as lies, including allegations that Republican lawyers were traveling to Alaska to reclaim her high-priced wardrobe and that she didn't know Africa was a continent. "Those accounts are not true," the former Republican vice presidential candidate said in her first public comments on the matter since the election Tuesday. Palin returned Friday to her Anchorage governor's office and said she had no immediate plans to build on her newfound national name-recognition and popularity with the Republican base for a possible 2012 presidential run. Instead, Palin said,...

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton puts the chances of her running for president again at near zero — slightly higher than the chances she gives for becoming Senate majority leader or a Supreme Court justice. In an interview aired Tuesday on "Fox&Friends" on the Fox News Channel, Clinton, D-N.Y., was asked the chances, on a scale of 1 to 10, that she would be the next majority leader in the Senate. "Oh, probably zero," she said. "I'm not seeking any other position than to be the best senator from New York that I can be." Being nominated to the...

A federal grand jury in New York is probing the accounting shenanigans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ~~snip~~ Remember the early 2000s, when companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Tyco and Xerox suddenly and spectacularly were revealed to have been cooking their books? Remember the glee expressed by Washington politicians, especially Democrats, as they watched CEOs and their underlings get perp-walked out of their buildings and into federal custody? ~~snip~~ Here's how James B. Lockhart III, head of the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, described the two companies back in 2006, before the meltdown occurred: "The result of (Fannie's and Freddie's)...

A grainy YouTube video surfaced Wednesday showing Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church three years ago by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office. The video shows Palin standing before Bishop Thomas Muthee in the pulpit of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, holding her hands open as he asked Jesus Christ to keep her safe from "every form of witchcraft." "Come on, talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan," Muthee said as two attendants placed their hands on Palin's shoulders. "Make her way...