Free Republic

U.S. Term Limits, the nation’s oldest and largest term limits advocacy group, praised Virginia U.S. Senate Candidate Robert Sarvis for promising to support and co-sponsor an amendment to the U.S. Constitution limiting congressional terms. Sarvis signed the USTL pledge at the Term Limits Summit in Richmond last week. USTL President Philip Blumel commented on Sarvis’ pledge, saying, “Of the three candidates in this race, only Robert Sarvis has made a commitment to stand with the 75 percent of Americans who support term limits on Congress.” “The people of Virginia must be asking ‘where are Ed Gillespie and Mark Warner on...

Time to inject another set of data points into the "Obamacare is working well in the real world" debate. The president and his loyalists insist that their signature law is working as intended. The general public -- yet again -- disagrees, according to a new poll from Politico. A plurality believes the quality of their care will deteriorate under Obamacare (perhaps due to access shock, doctor shortages, and government rationing decisions), while less than one-in-five expect improved care. On costs, a pitiful seven percent believe the 'Affordable' Care Act will reduce the amount of money they'll personally pay will decrease...

The Obama administration has funded a new study by top consulting firm RAND Health that startlingly finds that if taxpayer subsidies are eliminated, Obamacare exchanges will fall into a “death spiral.” The study comes in the wake of a number of lawsuits which are challenging the Obama administration’s implementation of Obamacare subsidies. Three lawsuits have made it to U.S. Circuit Courts, just one step from the Supreme Court, arguing that the text of the Affordable Care Act allows premium subsidies for state-run exchanges only. The report was sponsored by HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, which,...

It has been a stunning reversal of fortunes for Mr Obama, whose celebrity status helped get Democrats elected in several Republican states in 2008 – states which the party is now desperately struggling to defend. With less than two weeks to go until the November 4 polling day, we track the travails of the man who once walked on political water. Indeed, so toxic has Mr Obama’s name apparently become that when Ms Lundergan Grimes was asked if she had ever actually voted for Mr Obama, the 35-year-old lawyer declined to answer. The president’s sheen may have faded for the...

When presidents become unpopular, they are no longer welcome on the campaign trail. They're trapped in Washington, watching their party abandon them. Now, the same oppressive walls are closing in on President Barack Obama. He is welcome only in the palatial homes of Hollywood stars and hedge-fund billionaires or the well-kept fairways of Martha's Vineyard. The contrast with 2008 is striking and painful. Six years ago, his acolytes fainted as he read from the teleprompter. What went wrong? Ideology, say the true believers and their staunchest opponents. The left says he compromised too much, desperate to pass his agenda. The...

In the recent months, I have been engaged in political debates with liberals mostly under the age of 40 (I am over the age of 40). These debates have taken place in person, via email and political discussion blogs. In each occurrence, I was contacted or confronted by the individuals who wanted to engage in discussions with me. I was personally contacted and invited to participate in discussions on a blog that repost some of my articles. However, after each round of discussions, I am saddened with the realization that our great country is in deep trouble if today’s young...

... Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover...

Republicans have the wind at their backs this year. But not every GOP nominee is taking advantage of that dynamic. As usual, some candidates are under-performing, proving once again that candidates and the campaigns they choose to run actually matter. That should come as no surprise to anyone who watched Republican Senate nominees Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana implode in 2012 or Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell and Colorado Republican Ken Buck lose in 2010. But this year, the problem children are not candidates foisted on the party by the Club for Growth or tea party groups....

Suppose you were the President Obama, in the Oval Office, or more likely at the golf course, wondering how to save the Obola administration before Ebola flushes it down the toilet. You would think: I need someone who is a cool head in a bad situation. He would be someone that has a history of turning around failing operations. He needs to be a man that inspires trust, and he needs to be the kind of person that would be prepared to set everything aside to help his country. “There is only one man in public life who fits the...

So Karl Rove was involved in a cover-up. Well, leave it to Karl -- the “boy genius” and the “architect” -- to orchestrate a cover-up that actually hides information exculpatory to his President and his party. He did just that on the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. This is not an outlier either -- this is just Rove being Rove. And ‘Rove being Rove’ has sown the seeds of destruction that gave us Barack Obama in 2008, and again in 2012, and has scattered political germs that still haunt Republicans to this day. This goes back...

Where are all the atheist freedom lovers we always hear about? It's time for them to start standing up for religious liberty. The left and militant gay movement are getting bolder and bolder, and too many Christians are stewing in their apathy. It seems that with each passing month, this senseless tyranny advances. The latest is that two Christian ministers in Idaho, Donald and Evelyn Knapp, have allegedly been ordered to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies at their chapel or face fines or jail sentences. This nightmare began Oct. 7, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated Idaho's marriage...

It all started in September, when Houston Mayor Annise Parker and City Attorney David Feldman issued an "overly broad" subpoena for the sermons of select ministers who opposed the city's equal rights ordinance. Because of intense national opposition from even Texas' attorney general, this past Wednesday, Parker and Feldman appeared to recant or at least reduce their flagrant overreach and disregard of the ministers' legal protections under the First Amendment. By the weekend, however, the truth came out that they were only using political smoke and mirrors to try to simmer the patriotic fury; they were not changing course to...

Ferguson protesters and football fans fought in the street after the St. Louis Rams game against the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The protesters were outside the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis yelling and chanting about the killing of Michael Brown, the black 18-year-old who was fatally shot by a white police officer from Ferguson, Missouri, in August. As the protesters and football fans began arguing, the Post-Dispatch reported that a fan appeared to spit on one of the protesters and he was then struck on the head, which sparked a large fight. There...

October 27, 1964. Fifty years ago. It was a Tuesday night, one week from election day. As the Johnson-Goldwater campaign wound to its end, with Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society liberalism he was championing poised to win in a landslide over GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater, Americans turned on their television sets to see one last political commercial. They quickly discovered a very familiar face in a very unfamiliar setting.Actor Ronald Reagan, longtime movie and TV star, newly the host and occasional star of Death Valley Days, a weekly TV series based on the old West, was introduced by...

Several male mountain lions have been killed trying to get across a log-jammed freeway to breed Conservationists are trying to raise $4 million to build a special freeway overpass for mountain lions in Los Angeles. A population of the rare and secretive big cats live in the Santa Monica Mountains but are split in two by the city's busy 101 freeway. There is a shortage of males and that has led to inbreeding on both sides of the road, with several males being killed as they try to make the dangerous crossing to breed. Only one big cat - known...

WASHINGTON – The danger posed by ISIS to Americans has come to the homeland for Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and a national publication may be making the ominous threat even worse. Politico has reported federal officials are taking an online threat to the congresswoman so seriously she in now under 24-hour protection by a security detail. However, Politico may be adding fuel to the fire by incorrectly reporting that the congresswoman had called on President Obama to declare war on Islam. “Bachmann has been publicly critical of not only ISIL, but also Islam, calling on President Obama to declare war...

Anyone see this AD????

Deputies responded to a home in the 1900 block of Woodside Drive (map) at 5:45 a.m. after a caller reported that the woman had been stuck in the chimney, about 8 feet from the top, for two hours, said Capt. Renee Ferguson of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. The county Fire Department’s urban search and rescue team was called to the scene. Photos posted on Twitter by the department showed firefighters on the roof of the house as they worked to reach the woman, who was conscious during the rescue. The flue was lubricated with dish soap before she was...

<p>The likelihood of a Republican Senate takeover continues to increase with all three major election models giving the GOP at least a six in ten probability of winning the six seats the party needs to win take back control.</p> <p>The trend lines in both the LEO and FiveThirtyEight models highlight movement over the past week toward Republicans -- with a slight tick back toward Democrats in the last few days."</p>

....Arizona Attorney General Tim Horne just cited a rule of civil procedure in refusing to defend his state's ban on same-sex marriage. And if his theory is correct, opponents of marriage equality may be procedurally barred from ever getting a gay marriage case to the Supreme Court again.