Free Republic

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Even his best friend betrayed him. Stelian Tanase found out when he asked to see the thick file that Romania's communist-era secret police had kept on him. The revelation nearly knocked the wind out of him: His closest pal was an informer who regularly told agents what Tanase was up to. "In a way, I haven't even recovered today," said Tanase, a novelist who was placed under surveillance and had his home bugged during the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's regime. "He was the one person on Earth I had the most faith in," he said. "And...

Government regulators threatened to remove top Bank of America executives if they backed out of a buyout of failing brokerage giant Merrill Lynch, and offered to provide taxpayer funds to compensate for Merrill's poor performance, according to company records obtained by The Washington Times. The documents - e-mails between bank executives and their outside attorneys as well as board meeting "talking points" prepared for then-Bank of America Chief Executive Ken Lewis - offer new insight into the hardball tactics that produced one of the biggest deals negotiated during the late 2008 global financial crisis, one that is still reverberating on...

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the...

*snip* When the Constitution of the United States was framed it placed the exclusive legislative authority in the hands of Congress and with the President. Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution is concise in its language: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” That is no longer true. The Bill of Rights protected Americans against loss of freedoms. That is no longer true. The Constitution provided for a balanced separation of powers. That is no longer applicable. Perhaps it...

The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel headline for Sunday, October 25th screams:  "Swine flu a national emergency." Oh, really. Looks like President Obama has gone ahead and declared that the swine flu outbreak is indeed a national emergency.  And we know that Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel,  has stated in the past that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."   Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius now has more power and authority to bypass federal rules regarding the operations of hospitals and alternative care sites.   And the government has taken another step towards grabbing more power in controlling the population of America because of Obama's...

Much has been made by the political left of Richard Nixon's infamous enemies list. The reality is most of those named were people who did not receive presidential Christmas cards or White House reception invitations. In contrast, Barack Obama has a real enemies list the peace prize-winner and his proxies have attacked during the past year, including the minority of news outlets that do not worship the media's latest false idol. In August 2008, the Obama campaign implored the Justice Department to levy criminal charges against those funding an American Issues Project commercial that proved embarrassing to Obama. Days later,...

Legislation to be introduced in Congress will make it easier for the US government to seize control of troubled financial institutions that are considered too big to be allowed to fail, The New York Times says. The bill will be introduced in Congress by a key ally of President Barack Obama - Representative Barney Frank - who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, the Times said, citing a senior administration official. The legislation would make it easier for the government to throw out the financial company's management, wipe out the shareholders and change the terms of existing loans held by...

"I came from where we are heading, I grew up in a Communist country. Unfortunately I see a lot of parallels between the then and there, and the here and now. I look at this national emergency as a manufactured crisis that provides the government with everything to do whatever they please. There are many rumors, and they may just be rumors about something brewing in DC. This administration has worked very hard to begin a takeover of the government, and I don’t see them stopping. If they make the decision to go that route, no law, not even the...

A Fox News executive refuted on Saturday reports that the White House didn't make the administration's "pay czar" available for an interview because the network didn't ask. "Of course we requested the interview," Fox News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said, responding to reports citing the White House as claiming it had excluded Fox News from a series of interviews Thursday with Kenneth Feinberg set up through the five-network TV pool. Clemente also said that the White House had acknowledged that an employee at the Treasury Department made a mistake in initially excluding Fox. The pool is the five-network rotation...

There's little doubt that at hand is an ongoing effort by the Obama White House to marginalize the Fox News Channel - especially after the administration attempted to leave Fox out of the White House pool last week. That is something conservative columnist Cal Thomas said is eerily comparable to Cold War tactics of the old Soviet Union. On the Fox News Channel's Oct. 24 "Fox News Watch," Thomas alluded to an Oct. 21 column he wrote, which he compared what the Soviets did with radio signals that penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver a message of freedom from Western...

President Barack Obama declined to participate in a celebration of the 20th anniversary of fall of Communism in Europe, saying he has “mixed feelings” about the event and “too little time to spare.” “On the one hand, Communism did some brutal things,” Obama acknowledged. “On the other hand, they had some noble goals and made some important progress toward achieving them.” Among the noble goals achieved according to the President were “the provision of universal health care, free college education, and the elimination of capitalistic greed. We can only hope to do as well in our country.” The president cited...

According to the CDC, swine flu infections have already peaked, and the pandemic is on its way out. Peak infection time was the middle of October, where one in five U.S. children experienced the flu, says the CDC. Out of nearly 14,000 suspected flu cases tested during the week ending on October 10, 2009, 99.6% of those were influenza A, and the vast majority of those were confirmed as H1N1 swine flu infections. Even though the H1N1 pandemic appears to have peaked out, U.S. President Barack Obama has now declared a national emergency over swine flu infections. The reasoning behind...

The U.S. government should abolish its sanctioning of marriage, argued Cass Sunstein, President Obama's regulatory czar. Sunstein proposed that the concept of marriage should become privatized, with the state only granting civil union contracts to couples wishing to enter into an agreement. Sunstein explained marriage licensing is unnecessary, pointing out people stay committed to organizations like country clubs and homeowner associations without any government interference. "Under our proposal, the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government," wrote Sunstein and co-author Richard Thaler in...

How much access can a possible agent of influence for state sponsors of terrorism buy from President Barack Obama? For Jodie Evans, a progressive Hollywood activist, the going rate appears to be $30,400 for dinner and a conversation. Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group...

“Thought crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for awhile…but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” George Orwell, 1984 “The fact is we are witnessing an all-out drive to impose thought control that seeks to ban the ability—the right—to think or speak for one’s self. Thinking is becoming a crime.” (Globally Acceptable Truth and the Crime of Thinking, Tom DeWeese, Address to the 10th Annual Freedom 21 Conference, 10/16/09) In an article entitled “Dems Undermine Free Speech in Hate Crimes Ploy,” the Washington Examiner exposes the insidious machinations of House...

President Obama and "the other side of Barack's brain," Valerie Jarrett -- whose stepfather coincidentally maintained close ties with the President's adolescent mentor and Communist, Frank Marshall Davis -- handpicked the following bureaucrats and placed them in positions of great authority, power, and visibility: Van Jones, "Green Jobs Czar," self-defined Communist. Ron Bloom, "Manufacturing Czar" cites Chairman Mao as a political guide. Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, who stated in an address to high school students this past June that Chairman Mao Tse-tung was one of the two "philosophers" she most often turns to. President Obama handpicked and placed...

CNSNews.com) – When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance--a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill--Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Pelosi's press secretary later responded to written follow-up questions from CNSNews.com by emailing CNSNews.com a press release on the “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform,” that argues that Congress derives the authority to mandate that people purchase health insurance from its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. The exchange with Speaker Pelosi...

How many times have you heard Barack Obama talk about "the fierce urgency of now"? The president has used the quote, from Martin Luther King Jr., to call for quick action on the war in Iraq, on global warming, on homelessness, on education -- you name it. Now, Obama and his fellow Democrats are trying to convince the nation of the fiercely urgent need to enact national health care reform this very instant. "We have been waiting for health reform since the days of Teddy Roosevelt," Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in September. "We cannot wait any longer....

By drastically increasing demand while doing little to increase primary care physician supply, ObamaCare will turn health care into a consumer nightmare: longer wait times, shorter visits, higher prices, and decreased customer satisfaction. The U.S. will have to rely increasingly on nurse practitioners and physician assistants to meet patient demand. According to the WHO, the nurse-to-physician ratio in Canada and the U.K. are 5.3 and 5.6, respectively, compared to 3.6 in the U.S. And as fewer bright young people pursue medicine due to the profession's general malaise and oppressive bureaucratic regulations, we're likely to see an even greater physician shortage---not...

Health Reform: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has "broad authority" to make us buy things to provide for the "general welfare." Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a "living Constitution," where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute. (snip) We've been down this road before. In 1994, Hillary Clinton's secretive health care task force was trying to nationalize health care. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of...

WASHINGTON — The government zeroed in on corporate excess and recklessness Thursday with deep, unprecedented cuts in executive compensation at companies living on taxpayer money and a move to wield veto power over pay policy at thousands of banks to limit risk-taking. The Treasury Department ordered seven big companies that haven’t repaid their government bailout money to cut their top executives’ average total compensation — salary and bonuses — in half, starting in November. Under the plan, cash salaries for the top 25 highest-paid executives will be limited in most cases to $500,000 and, in most cases, perks will be...

USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party. The story of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov is required reading. Pavlik reported his father to the secret police for disobeying government regulations. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to serve their government. From the first year in school, all of us are made aware of our ethnicity (ethnic Russian, Jewish, Asian, etc.) and class (proletariat, intelligentsia), around which society is structured. This inherent divisiveness makes it...

President Obama and his administration do not want you watching Fox News. According to them, Fox News is not really a news organization. But, they feel CNN, MSNBC, and Univision are real news organizations, so you are allowed to watch them.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve for the first time would police banks' pay policies to ensure they don't encourage employees to take reckless gambles like those that contributed to the financial crisis, according to a proposal unveiled Thursday. Unlike a Treasury plan to slash pay at certain companies that were bailed out with large sums of taxpayer money, the Fed proposal would cover thousands of banks, including many that never received a bailout. The Fed would not actually set compensation. Instead, the central bank would review — and could veto — pay policies that could cause too much risk-taking by...

Poll asks if Obama should be able to tell companies that took bailout money how much to pay executives. Link only due to copyright.

START 'cheating' Republicans in the Senate are gearing up to battle the Obama administration over the high-priority plan to finish a new arms-control treaty with Russia before the end of the year.

The British Broadcasting Corporation in England has deemed it necessary to try and absolve Darwinism from any responsibility for the Holocaust and the many other atrocities committed in the name of evolutionary progress ever since Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859. To achieve this, BBC2 produced a TV “documentary” entitled Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,[1] written and presented by their journalist and political commentator Andrew Marr. This 3-part series...

Amid the worst recession in generations, Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people�, got a thumbs up from the Vatican overturning a century of Catholic hostility to his creed. Marx, who predicted that capitalism would be destroyed by its internal contradictions, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church, The Times newspaper said on Thursday. The British daily, quoting the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, said Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation� felt by...

As he returns to New Orleans today after a six-day junket in Cuba, Mayor Ray Nagin almost certainly will face questions about the latest addition to his collection of controversial comments. Nagin told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he thinks Cuba's repressive regime does "a much better job" than U.S. officials of identifying citizen needs and deploying resources in the face of hurricanes, which routinely batter the Caribbean nation. Though Hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma all struck the island last year, only seven Cubans were killed, in part because authorities use soldiers to close highways and enforce evacuations. Harking...

COPAN RUINAS, Honduras (CNS) -- Oscar Garcia used to sell 100 pounds of tomatoes every day in the municipal market of this colonial town near the Guatemalan border. Since the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zeyala, Garcia sells just 40 pounds of tomatoes and has to moonlight as a hotel security guard to support his family. "I'm working day and night and it's barely enough," said Garcia, the father of four. "There are people here starving to death because of the political crisis." The June 28 coup plunged Honduras into a political crisis, but also deepened long-standing economic problems...

Pay Czar ordering deep cuts in exec comp for those in companies receiving "exceptional assistance" from govt. Feinberg -- officially called "Special Master" -- will be slashing the salaries of the top 25 execs at those cos by an avg of 90%. yep: 90%.

"Propaganda is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. If the means achieves the end then the means is good.........the new Ministry has no other aim than to unite the nation behind the ideal of the national revolution." Joseph Goebbels President Obama is a bully, he doesn't like being questioned or crossed. Like most of the bullying kind, if you disagree with him he will go after you with personal attacks full guns blaring. Just look at some examples of the people who have crossed the President and got smack down by the Bully-in-Chief or his...

Hoyer Says Constitution’s ‘General Welfare’ Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance Wednesday, October 21, 2009 By Matt Cover (CNSNews.com) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that the individual health insurance mandates included in every health reform bill, which require Americans to have insurance, were “like paying taxes.” He added that Congress has “broad authority” to force Americans to purchase other things as well, so long as it was trying to promote “the general welfare.” The Congressional Budget Office, however, has stated in the past that a mandate forcing Americans to buy health insurance would...

Oct. 20: President Obama shakes hands with Capt. John Poindexter in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. For Army Capt. John Poindexter, being awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for heroism Tuesday marked an "opportunity to close a chapter" in his life. "The general feeling is a pretty intense level of excitement," Poindexter told Foxnews.com just before he and 85 other Vietnam veterans were honored at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. "It will mean to me that I've filled an important duty to the men who I literally owe my life to, men who...

If Americans want a glimpse of all of the good that can be done for children if our Senate decides to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), we need look no further than 90 miles off the coast of Florida. For a shining example of the success of internationalism, Cuba is the United Nation’s latest poster child. In articles released this week by official Cuban news agencies, UNICEF representative José Juan Ortiz praised Cuba for being “able to apply the UN Convention on Children’s Rights in a way which is truly a model.” Cuba? --...

Now is the time like no other for Americans to make their voices heard throughout the halls of government. We cannot continue to buy into this con that is being perpetuated on us. We have all of the power and the government only has the power we relinquish to them. It is time to stand up, unite and tell Washington we are not blind. We see what you are doing and we will stop you. Read full article http://newsflavor.com/opinions/isolate-obama-take-back-america-2010/

You Tube has shut down without warning the most subscribed Michael Savage video channel. Imitator777,a You Tube member since August of 2007 had over 350 videos and over 2,500 individual subscribers..this morning we awoke to find everything completely erased..they deleted all his videos and his channel without warning or reason. You Tube has been well known to censor or delete channels in the past (let's face it, they are owned by Google), but this is the first time (to my knowledge) that they have specifically targeted a channel predominantly dedicated to a radio talk show host. Imitator has created a...

This seems so obviously correct that I feel embarrassed for not having figured it out sooner. The rationale of the White House offensive against Fox News has been a topic of much puzzlement lately. Is this just the White House lashing out? Are they trying to rally the base? But I think Mike Allen and Josh Gerstein nail the real explanation in their story today: The White House is working to prevent stories born on Fox from crossing over into more widely-viewed media. Most Americans still haven’t heard of Van Jones, for instance; and the strategy is now all about...

The sub-headline over the September 16 article says it all: "The investigation into a cop killing in the '70s leads to a law professor who helped launch Barack Obama's political career." The law professor is former Communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, a leader of the Weather Underground known for praising mass murderer Charles Manson.

The ABC's of Media Bias By: Lowell Ponte FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, October 14, 2004 IS THE ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA BIASED against conservatives? Dan Rather remains in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News despite his involvement in recent news stories based on dishonest reporting, fabricated documents and even Internet gossip falsely alleging that President George W. Bush secretly intends to begin the military conscription of students. These stories were obviously designed to damage Mr. Bush in the final weeks before a national election. And now ABC News has left in place its Political Director Mark Halperin. ABC has done this...

Click through on the link below, no posting allowed.

Click the link above, also, Glenn Beck has been talking alot about this on his show. The internet is about to be taken over by the FCC, freedom of speech will now be ensured by the Government (right, uhuh ...)

Not later than February 1, 2014, the Comptroller General shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report on . . . (ii) the availability of affordable health benefits plans, and (iii) the ability of individuals to maintain essential health benefits coverage . . . Not later than April 1, 2014, the appropriate committees of Congress shall report legislation implementing the recommendations contained in the report . . . [or] any member of the House of Representatives or the Senate, respectively, may introduce legislation implementing the recommendations contained in the proposal and such legislation shall be placed on the...

The harsh, therapy-inducing reality that's going to slap the hardcore Hopeandchangeys upside their heads and shatter their thoroughly Oprahfied worlds is this: Barack Obama isn't ever going to do anything for them because this presidency is all about him. President Facetime is relentlessly focused on redefining narcissism and nothing else. In the latest example that his vaunted Ivy League intellect may just be a rumor, he's decided to take a pass on going to Berlin to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism. Don't worry, little Lightbringers, the Nobel ass-kissing party in Oslo is still SO on. You...

Bill McKibben '82 has founded 350.org, a worldwide action group that this weekend (Oct. 23-25) will promote demonstrations on every continent. McKibben was at Harvard's Memorial Church for a 90-minute "climate convocation" sponsored by 17 groups. Author and climate activist Bill McKibben '82 ascended into the pulpit of the Memorial Church at Harvard University on Oct. 18, a stage so grand that legend puts it "10 feet above contradiction." McKibben's message is that the Earth is warming rapidly, that climate change is too late to stop, but that it is not too late to act. Acting means getting humankind, with...

From Section 6002 on page 1435: INCLUSION OF COST OF EMPLOYER-SPONSORED HEALTH COVERAGE ON W–2The definition of taxable income is revised to include "the aggregate cost of applicable employer-sponsored coverage". . . "The amendments made by this section shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2009."

Obama Czar Agrees With Mao, Too, and Thinks Free Market is "Nonsense" http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-czar-agrees-with-mao-too-and-thinks-free-market-is-nonsense/ Breitbart.TV and Naked Emperor News

<p>WASHINGTON – The level of poverty in America is even worse than first believed.</p> <p>A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government's official figure.</p>

It is pretty clear why the president is refusing to accept the personal invitation of the German chancellor and attend festivities marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would smack of American triumphalism - our success in defeating perhaps the most odious of all the odious ideologies of the 20th century. Obama doesn't do "triumphalism." That would place America above other nations - something that he has explicitly condemned. So he will be conspicuous by his absence. And another European ally has been embarrassed by this president.

Yet another Obama Czar thinks that Mao Tse Tung had it right. This time Ron Bloom the Manufacturing Czar says that We Kinda Agree With Mao Tse Tung That Power Comes Largely From The Barrel Of A Gun.This was said at the 6th Annual Distressed Investing Forum. Union League Club, New York. On Feb 27-28, 2008. He was talking about the unions role in bankruptcy and restructuring.