Free Republic

A health insurance company headed by an old friend from Obama's days as a community organizer got a $340 million federal loan to establish Obamacare co-ops in New York, New Jersey and Oregon despite having a chronic record of consumer and regulatory complaints. The New York-based Freelancers Insurance Company has been rated the "worst" insurer for two straight years by state regulators, and data compiled by a national insurance association show an extremely high rate of consumer complaints. The firm was founded in 2008 by Sara Horowitz, who worked with Obama before his career in elective politics to launch Demos,...

For two days Rush Limbaugh has been explaining a recent epiphany of his. His epiphany is that he now understands BO’s Modus Operandi. To summarize that revelation, Rush is making the point that BO does not lead, he does not govern, that all he does is campaign. As he campaigns, he attacks those who oppose him ideologically, typically Republicans but now the TEA Party and any other group (such as the NRA) that opposes any of his many radically leftist pet projects. I’m surprised it took Rush this long to make that observation, and it surprises me even more that...

Radio Talk Show Host Charged with Mortgage Fraud Warren Ballentine, 41, Durham, North Carolina, and formerly of Country Club Hills, Illinois, a lawyer who hosts a national radio talk show, was indicted on federal charges for allegedly engaging in two mortgage fraud schemes that defrauded lenders of a total of approximately $9.7 million. The defendant allegedly schemed with others to obtain more than two dozen fraudulent mortgage loans and represented buyers at multiple closings, knowing that they were fraudulently qualified for loans to purchase homes in Chicago, Illinois, and various southern suburbs. Ballentine owns the Law Office of Warren Ballentine,...

President Obama hit the road Monday on a nationwide gun-grabbing tour. His show doesn’t have many fans inside the Beltway, since being seen favoring gun control can be the kiss of death for senators with rural constituencies. So Mr. Obama is trying to shore up fence-sitting members by bringing his community organizing skills to their districts. --snip-- On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will be in Annapolis to address the Maryland Democratic Senate Caucus retreat on the same day that the state Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee holds a hearing on expanding existing gun restrictions. Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley is pushing the General...

The White House is pulling a tactic out of its campaign playbook – and President Obama’s own community organizing past – using the organs of government to enlist average Americans to help Obama advocate for his priorities. In an email sent to people who signed up to receive official updates from the White House, recipients are told to forward the message to their friends, asking them to help promote what is in effect White House propaganda. The White House email list, which government officials began compiling earlier in Obama’s term, is separate from the famed Obama campaign email list, but...

Letters signed by Barack Obama 25 years ago and obtained by The Daily Caller, show the future president approaching Chicago’s then-mayor Harold Washington in 1987 about a community organizing project whose advisory board would include his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright; the controversial leftist Catholic priest Father Michael Pfleger; and the brother of Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. When Obama later ran for president, he sought to distance himself from Rev. Wright, although the letters obtained by TheDC indicate a working relationship between the two men on a political level when the future president was just 26 years old.

(CNSNews.com) – Steven Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, said on Monday that he was sitting on his thumbs with over a billion dollars tied up because he was unsure what government program the Obama administration would unveil next, and stressed that he was "afraid of the president." In an interview, Jon Ralston, host of Ralston Reports on NBC-affiliate KSNV MyNews3 in Nevada, asked Wynn: “You called him [Obama] a socialist. You called the president a socialist. And you used this memorable phrase that business leaders quote, ‘were sitting on their thumbs until he’s gone.’ But they’re not really. I mean,...

In a curious column the Sun-Times' Mark Brown denies that President Obama has much to do with Chicago Politics. Curious because the preponderance of evidence that Brown offers is that President Obama is a typical Chicago politician, working in league with donors and other politicians to fleece their consituents and taxpayers. Here’s Mark Brown arguing against himself

ALBERT LEA — About a hundred people marched on Monday evening to protest a sign that calls for the deportation of illegal immigrants. The rally and march through Albert Lea were organized by the Owatonna-based immigrant rights group Centro Campesino to denounce a scrolling LED sign that reads "check dictionary, illegal is criminal." The sign was put up on the outside wall of a local business. The recent shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin heightens the need for discussions about race and ethnicity across the country, said Jeffrey Jurewicz, Centro Campesino community organizer. "It made me a little...

Harlem pastor Rev. James David Manning delivered a stem-winder sermon to his flock with such passion he was overcome with so much emotion he had trouble catching his breath! He called out his Black flock to regain honor. “Fifteen people killed while Obama was in town (Chicago)” he screamed out recently from his video pulpit. “Only a N (word) would do that. . .no other word describes such lack of honor!” In the stellar tradition of Jonathan Edwards, America’s “most important and original philosophical theologian,” Manning exemplifies the man of the cloth who so loves his people that he exhorts...

Exclusive: Joseph Farah admits how much his youth matched that of Barack Obama I have a confession to make. It might help explain why I fear a second term of Barack Obama so much. I understand what Obama is and what he is doing because I was once like him: I am a former communist. As a youth growing up during the Vietnam War, I was influenced by some of the more extreme, anti-American opposition to that conflict and began to identify with the enemy. I became convinced the U.S. epitomized all that was evil in the world. During high...

Jim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons “Season of the Witch,” the new book by Salon founder David Talbot, tells the story of the wild and bloody birth of “San Francisco values.” The following excerpt – Part 1 in a three-part series -- recounts one of the darker dramas before the ultimate triumph of those values. Jim Jones, the strange and charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, proved a master at politically wiring San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The driven preacher had begun his climb up the political...

I was contacted privately with large portions of this information, and the doors that it's opened I find to be absolutely fascinating. This was published in 1878, but I can find references to this 9 point list as early as 1872. In a magazine called "The Index", this is listed as their demands:(Page 85) "THE DEMANDS OF LIBERALISM "1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempt from just taxation. "2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in State legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other...

PHILADELPHIA -- A neighborhood activist who spoke out about the vandalizing of dozens of cars near his home now has been arrested in the case, police say. David Toledo is accused of slashing tires in the neighborhood, Northeast Detectives Capt. John McGinnis told NBC10. At a press conference Wednesday evening, police said Toledo had been arrested and charged with two counts of felony mischief, 47 counts of criminal mischief, false reports and other related offenses. Police say they questioned Toledo extensively on April 16, the same day the most recent vandalism was reported on Aldine and Teesdale Streets as a...

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign website has removed several videos that pitched alarmist messages to African-American voters, following reporting by The Daily Caller and the Fox News Channel. In one video that the campaign yanked from the “African-Americans for Obama” section of its website Tuesday, actress Tatyana Ali seemed to predict that a second Obama term would bring a host of benefits to African-Americans once the president no longer had to concern himself with campaigning.

Gingrich Archives Show His Public Praise, Private Criticism of Reagan By Jerry Markon February 19 CARROLLTON, Ga. — In an unnoticed 1992 speech, Newt Gingrich in a single utterance took aim not only at a beloved conservative icon but also at a core tenet of the conservative movement: that government must be limited. Ronald Reagan’s “weakness,” Gingrich told the National Academy of Public Administration in Atlanta, was that “he didn’t think government mattered. The Reagan failure was to grossly undervalue the centrality of government as the organizing mechanism for reinforcing societal behavior.” A review of thousands of documents detailing Gingrich’s...

Chicago area has most corruption convictions in nation, UIC study says The Chicago area logged the most public corruption convictions of any federal jurisdiction in the United States during the past 36 years, according to a report released today by the University of Illinois at Chicago. Federal prosecutors secured a total of 1,531 public corruption convictions in the Northern District of Illinois since 1976, said Dick Simpson, head of the university’s political science department. Meanwhile, Illinois logged 1,828 public corruption convictions, the third most of any state, according to the report. Only California and New York had more. But those...

"But the objective fact is [Obama] believes in a very radical vision of America's future that is fundamentally different from probably 80 percent of this country. And nobody in the elite media has ever wanted to dig into it, ever wanted--why would he veto the Keystone pipeline? Why would he kill jobs in America? Why would he have a National Labor Relations Board attack Boeing? Because it fits the model of Alinsky radicalism."

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was Beirut in the nineteen seventies. But, in reality, it's the current state of the housing for which Barack Obama claims responsibility as a "community organizer." It turns out the developers enriched by his government-funded subsidies did a heck of a lot better than the folks who once lived here. As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a...

No wonder President Obama adopted some of the language of the Occupy movement in his class-warfare speech this week. It's led by the likes of Alfredo Carrasquillo, a fellow "community organizer" with whom the president perhaps identifies. Carrasquillo specializes in breaking into foreclosed homes to dole them out to others--beginning with himself--to live in. Chris Hayes gave Carrasquillo a sympathetic platform on his weekend show this morning. Making it clear that he was speaking as a "devil's advocate," not, God forbid, expressing his own opinion, Hayes gently inquired of Carrasquillo whether, you know, it could be said he has no...