Free Republic

Here’s a Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare...[SNIP]...Exemptions for religious objectors, UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS [poster's emphasis], prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS)

A convenience store clerk who was fired recently for refusing to sell cigarettes to a customer trying to pay for them with state welfare benefits has been fired, but her story has gained traction in local and national media. According to press reports, Jackie Whiton was working at a C.N. Brown Big Apple convenience store recently when a man in his 20s attempted to purchase cigarettes using an electronic benefit transfer card, which is issued to families in New Hampshire and Maine who are on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF program. Whiton, a six-year employee of the...

By now the whole world has seen the video of a group of middle school boys bullying Karen Klein, the school bus monitor in Greece, New York. The boys have been vilified, their families threatened, and the school board will decide whether the boys will be suspended for the entire 2012-2013 school year. An online site has collected more than $500,000 for Klein and she is being showered with gifts, including an expense-paid trip to Disney World by ABC, which owns the theme park. An important issue, however, is not being addressed. What were Klein’s qualifications for being a school...

Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court decided that Americans have no right to due process. Indeed, the Court not only upheld a fraud perpetrated on the public — it became a willing participant. The assessment charged for failure to comply with ObamaCare’s “individual mandate,” which requires Americans to purchase health insurance, was presented to the country by the administration and the Democratic Congress as a penalty assessed for lawlessness — i.e., for refusing to honor this new legal requirement. It was strenuously denied by proponents that they were raising taxes.

A silver lining for conservatives in the Supreme Court’s health care decision Thursday is that the court allowed the law to stand based on the idea that the individual mandate was a tax. That news has Republicans and conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh bringing out an old -- and incorrect claim -- that the health care law constitutes the largest tax increase ever.

Faced with a complex, hard-to-solve problem, there is a natural human tendency to solve a much simpler, easier one instead. Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, dubs this cognitive process “substitution.” We know our political system is broken. The signs are everywhere: knee-jerk partisanship, massive debts and unfunded liabilities, widespread citizen dissatisfaction, trillion-dollar deficits, rampant public and private corruption, and a federal government that has less support than King George III at the time of the American Revolution. But fixing the system is a staggeringly complex undertaking. The causes of its dysfunction are deep and...

Across the country, Republicans are fighting off tea party threats while Democrats are dragged down by anti-incumbent sentiment and a president who remains unpopular in many competitive states. But on Tuesday, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch is expected to defy those trends and win re-election handily, with experience and a novice challenger helping to boost his odds. Similarly, Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel certainly has years of congressional service on his side--41 to be exact--and faces lesser-known opponents, but redistricting changes could thwart the Congressman's chances of winning.

There aren’t Greek columns tall or wide enough to camouflage Barack Obama’s impending North Carolina catastrophe. In September, the campaigner-in-chief will travel to Charlotte for his party’s presidential nominating convention. For once, the incurable jetsetter may wish he had stayed home. Obama’s stage managers envision a triumphant, unifying coronation reminiscent of their 2008 DNC production in Denver. But the southern swing state is turning into a Democratic disaster zone. Start with the North Carolina Democratic Party. At the state party convention last week, Obama for America was AWOL. The glaring absence of high-level national Obama surrogates was noted “as odd,”...

(Just In Case the November Elections Don't Work Out)Video of weapon @ link.

White House press secretary Jay Carney made an “angry phone call” to a Fox News executive after the network aired a scathing video review last month of President Barack Obama’s first three years in office, the New York Times reported. According to the Times, Carney told Michael Clemente, Fox News’ senior vice president for news, that the video had crossed the line even for “Fox & Friends,” the morning show where it aired. Two unnamed Democrats reportedly told the newspaper about the call, described as a “private conversation.”

There is a school of thought among GOP party pros that Fast and Furious is a distraction, that President Obama would rather talk about anything other than the economy. Much as I admire the insight and focus of people like Karl Rove, President Obama and his coterie are showing unmistakable signs of desperation. We witnessed the President's gum chewing demeanor, and awful presser performance in Los Cabos at the G20 summit -- a televised disaster that commandeered prime time television in the East.

If you believe the headlines, President Barack Obama has gotten back into the good graces of Latino voters by deferring the deportation of tens of thousands of young people. But any reasonable voter who actually thinks this is a meaningful and substantive move by Obama is, frankly, a chump. . . . . . . . . . Obama has told Hispanic audiences time and again that he feels "very strongly" about immigration reform. But, in fact, he has never spent much of his limited political capital on it.

"Legislatively we can't do a thing, and we are going to move full speed ahead (with implementation).” -- A Democratic “congressional official” talking to the Associated Press about plans in the Obama administration to proceed with the president’s 2010 health law even if the Supreme Court strikes down its central provision requiring all Americans to either purchase insurance or be enrolled in a government program. The looming Supreme Court decision on President Obama’s 2010 health law has Washington in a state of high anxiety.

Call it a variation on a theme: Dogs have been registered to vote, and so have dead people—so why not a dead dog? Roanoke, Va., NBC affiliate WSLS reports that Tim Morris, a resident of the town of Goodview, was surprised when he opened a recent piece of mail and found it contained voter registration forms for “Mo” (h/t Matt Drudge). Morris claims that he laughed, initially thinking it was all a prank. That is because Mo was the family’s nickname for their poodle, Mozart, who has been dead for two years.

In October 1984, a 21-year-old American Airman deserted and hitch-hiked from an Air Force base in Augsburg, Germany to Stockholm. He built himself a life in Sweden – never sharing his secret with anyone, while becoming one of the U.S. Air Force’s eight most wanted fugitives. Today, David A. Hemler, 49, comes forward in an exclusive interview with Dagens Nyheter (DN), Stockholm.

Female submariners are fitting right in. Since reporting to their boats in November, 25 women who broke one of the Navy's final gender barriers have gone on patrol and been accepted among their crews. "The men adjusted to us being there, and we adjusted to them," said Lt. j.g. Megan Bittner of the USS Ohio gold crew. "It was quick. There were no big problems. No stumbling blocks along the way. It was just learning as a junior officer how you fit on the boat."

Russia must start development of a long-range bomber aircraft, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a meeting on defense orders. "We have to develop work on the new PAK-DA long-range bomber aircraft for Long-Range Aviation. I know how expensive and complex this is. We have talked about this many times with ministers, and with the head of the General Staff. The task is not easy from a scientific-technical standpoint, but we need to start work," Putin said.

A former chief petty officer who was acquitted of raping his boss but convicted of fraternizing with her has been denied clemency, according to his lawyer. Last month, John Gonzales asked Rear Adm. Tim Alexander, commander of the Navy's Mid-Atlantic Region, for clemency on the fraternization conviction, saying his federal criminal record has prevented him from finding a civilian job.

The U.S. military has completed planning for how American troops would conduct a variety of operations against Syria, or to assist neighboring countries in the event action was ordered, CNN reported. The United Nations declared earlier this week that Syria is now in a state of civil war, after months of fighting between pro-democracy Syrians and President Bashar Assad that has killed at least 14,000 people.

Imagine if a Republican candidate claimed, confidently, that she was part Native American. Imagine if she had actually used that identity to have herself listed as a minority at Harvard, qualifying her for special treatment and celebration as proof of how diverse and progressive her department is. Imagine if, many years later, it turned out that her claims to Native heritage were dubious and, when pressed for proof, she offered her “high cheekbones.” Oh, and she once contributed a recipe to a Native American cookbook called “Pow Wow Chow” (that may even have been plagiarised).