Free Republic

In November the Obama Administration had already granted 111 Obamacare waivers to special US companies… And, they hid this information from the American public. It took 6 clicks to find out this information on the government’s health care website. By January the number of companies granted Obamacare waivers jumped from 229 to 729 covering over 2.2 million employees. At least three SEIU Chapters, including one in Chicago, were included on the list.

Palin tells Obama to stop kowtowing to Mexican President Calderon. In a late-day interview on Fox News, Sarah Palin expressed her dismay at Barack Obama’s constantly slavish and deferential behavior towards Mexico’s Felipe Calderon. In an interview that touched briefly on border security and the problem of illegal aliens from Mexico, Palin also took exception to the blame-America attitude that the Mexican president always exhibits. Her comments were in reference to Calderon’s visit this past week, during which he continued his long-standing policy of blaming America for all of the problems that stem from inside of Mexico.

The March 7 Newsweek (NewsBeast) features an article titled "David Brooks Wants to Be Friends," but there's more bridge-burning than friend-making in this interview with James Atlas. Of course, he came up in Washington through conservative opinion journalism from the National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and The Weekly Standard, but "something has changed." Conservatives are now more uncivil. Well, either that -- or his paychecks are now signed by PBS, NPR, and The New York Times: But Brooks insists that something has changed in the past decade. Political discourse had grown coarse, he laments. Gone is the...

Democrat raises fears about GOP budget cuts forcing kids to become criminals. As the fight about cutting federal spending in the budget gets nastier and the GOP and the Democrats dig in their heels, some politicians are getting more extreme in their rhetoric. One of them, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in particular is using fear mongering tactics to make an emotional appeal to whomever is out there in the public and will lend her his ear. According to the Florida congresswoman, if cuts to childcare are made, then moms everywhere all of a sudden won’t be able to send their kids...

A total reversal from yesterday. But first, the scoreboard: Dow: -96.04 NASDAQ: -15.30 S&P 500: -10.23 And now the top stories: The day was dominated by two stories: Libya and the Non-Farm Payrolls report. First we'll talk payrolls. After three straight months of massive disappointment, we FINALLY got a solid number -- 192K net new jobs created -- that was bang-on in line with expectations. It's not amazing, but the unemployment rate fell below 9.0%, so The White House will take it. Naturally, there were some internals that weren't so hot, including the continued exodus of folks from the workforce.

Rumsfeld and O’Reilly in shootout over Iraq War. On his tour to promote his new book, “Known and Unknown,” and also defend his handling of the Iraq War, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made an appearance on the O’Reilly Factor last night. In a wide-ranging interview that covered Afghanistan, the Secretary’s experiences, and the Iraq War, Rumsfeld did his best to defend his involvement and planning with regards to Iraq, but O’Reilly was having none of it. The Factor host essentially gave Rumsfeld hell on the issue of his apparent failure to be more forthcoming with the American public...

Glenn Grothman says lots of anger coming from left, unsure if Obama is the cause. Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman was the target of Democrat union-backer hatred as he tried to make his way into Wisconsin’s state capitol building two days ago. Many people have seen the now-shocking videotape of him being mobbed by a hate-filled, Democrat crowd that got in his face and kept shouting at him to intimidate him. Reflecting on the mistreatment of the Wisconsin crowd, Grothman now says that their misbehavior is a great example of the extreme amount of anger on the left today. While...

For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action - unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful. Each of these instances can be explained on its own terms, as matters of legislative strategy, geopolitical calculation or political prudence.

Continuing to face down questions as to why the U.S. Justice Department went easy on prosecuting members of the New Black Panther Party who stood armed with nightsticks outside a Philadelphia polling location during the 2008 presidential election, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed his personal frustration over the criticism that race played a role. During a hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee Tuesday, Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, accused Holder’s DOJ of failing to cooperate with a Civil Rights Commission investigation into the decision to dismiss the case. Holder seemed to take personal offense when Culberson read comments from former Democratic...

AWOL WI Dem admits parents financially supporting him in lieu of paycheck. AWOL Wisconsin Democrat State Senator Jon Erpenbach is admitting that his mom and dad are now financially supporting him because he refuses to go back to Wisconsin to pick up his paycheck for being a state senator. In a TV interview from an undisclosed location in Chicago, the absent Erpenback also admitted that he was basically running out of money to support the hotel stay in Illinois that he has chosen for himself due to his refusal to come back to Wisconsin. He also confessed that he lives...

A video believed to feature Pashtun school children in south-east Afghanistan recreating a terrorist attack has been posted on social networking sites. The 84-second clip appears to show a veiled boy bid farewell to his friends before approaching a group of children nearby and blowing himself up. Sand is tossed in the air to simulate the detonation as children fall to the ground. As the dust settles, their playmates gather round and pretend to identify the dead.

Holocaust survivors say Obama betrayed them to side with insurance companies. A group of Holocaust survivors has plans to protest against Barack Obama as he makes an appearance in Miami Beach this coming Friday. The Holocaust survivors also have Democrat Senator Bill Nelson in their sights at the same time, as Obama will be in town to attend a fundraiser for the senator. The Holocaust survivors assert that both Obama and Nelson betrayed them by siding with insurance companies who failed to pay them their entitled money from life insurance policies their families took out just before World War II....

Iran is taking advantage of chaos in post-Mubarak Egypt to bolster its weapons-smuggling capabilities in the Sinai Peninsula, Israeli defense officials say. Tehran's goal is to build a new infrastructure there to enable it to smuggle advanced weaponry into Gaza. "Iran wants to take advantage of the current anarchy in Egypt and establish a stronger foothold in Gaza," a senior Israeli defense official told the Jerusalem Post. "They are building new capabilities, upgrading smuggling mechanisms and studying the new military presence there to see how it will affect them."

WI union protester threatens to break Fox News reporter Mike Tobin’s neck. In another confirmation of how threatening, prone to violence, and bullying the union protesters are, Fox News’ Mike Tobin was threatened with the breaking of his neck while making a live report. This occurred late yesterday during the opening minutes of Fox News’ Fox Report, which even prompted the host to exclaim how surprised she was that union thugs were making threats on live TV. This kind of maltreatment by the Democrat-voting union crowd in Wisconsin has been par for the course for Tobin, who has been reporting...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Friday amazingly asked, "Since when does Scott Walker represent 'the people'?" Such happened during a heated discussion on PBS's "The McLaughlin Group" about the goings-on in Wisconsin (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Wisconsin union protesters hold up “O’Reilly is sex predator” sign, shout “Fox lies.” Another day of Democrat-voting union people protesting in Wisconsin, another day of hatred and slurs hurled against Fox News Channel. Yesterday was yet another day of union people acting like a bunch of rioters, all because they’re finally being asked to pay just a little bit of their fair share to help the state budget. Fox News reporter Mike Tobin was right among the crowd, trying to get the perspective of some who appeared to have legitimate reasons for protesting. However, every time Fox News broadcasts a...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Republican Tim Pawlenty, gearing up for a possible White House run, criticized President Barack Obama Saturday for "coddling" labor and praised a Wisconsin drive to curb the power of public sector unions. In a speech to conservative Tea Party activists, the sometimes mild-mannered Pawlenty took a combative tone with Obama and backed Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker in his confrontation with the labor movement. "It says in the Constitution: 'In order to form a more perfect union.' Mr. President, that does not mean coddling out of control public employee unions," the former Minnesota governor told activists packed...

Florida university lets imam who was involved with ’93 WTC bombing speak. A radical Muslim imam who was named as an unindicted coconspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing spoke last night at the University of Central Florida, a guest of the Muslim Student Association’s Islam Awareness Month celebrations. Despite complaints all week long, UCF did not ban the terror-supporting imam from speaking and instead bowed down to the pressure from its Muslim Student Association and its schedule of events for this month. Imam Siraj Wahhaj is an African-American convert to Islam, who has been criticized repeatedly for being a hatemonger...

Attorney General Eric Holder informed Congress yesterday that President Obama had ordered the Department of Justice to cease all efforts to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts. The announcement came without public warning, even as the administration was dealing with an international crisis in Libya and a political showdown over unions in Wisconsin. The Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] emerged in 1996 as at least one state — Hawaii — indicated the very real possibility that it would vote to approve same-sex marriage. The Act makes clear that no state can require any other state to recognize...

Rand Paul pledges to cut deficits by going after Social Security. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul says he is committed to raising the retirement age for Social Security to 70. Paul’s dedication to attacking one of the so-called third rails of modern politics is because of his belief that the US cannot meaningfully address and lower deficits without going after the huge problem of entitlements in the US budget. This makes him a rarity among those in the Republican Party in the Congress since even many in the GOP are downright scared of addressing entitlement spending, due to the possible negative...