Free Republic

President Barack Obama announced Friday that John Podesta, his new "counselor" and the political operative responsible for creating the institutional left in Washington, will be the appointed "to lead a comprehensive review of big data and privacy" in the aftermath of revelations about the National Security Agency's electronic spying programs. When he joined the White House last month, Podesta's focus was said to be "climate change." The president's speech contained little news. It was a classic Obama set-piece, designed to demonstrate that he understands both sides of a complex argument, while delegating

Obama Aides: He Didn't Know Extent of NSA Surveillance "I think it was disturbing to most people, and I think he found it disturbing.” President Obama doesn’t merely claim ignorance of the IRS’ targeting of politically conservative groups or the Department of Justice’s targeting of journalists: according to The New York Times, Obama was also ignorant of the extent of NSA surveillance. According to the Times, “aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how far the surveillance had gone.” David Plouffe, Obama’s advisor, said, “Things seem...

In a Tuesday night debate over the Kirk-Menendez bill to add sanctions against Iran and its nuclear program, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Ca) sparked controversy when she announced that "we cannot let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war." The bill includes a provision that would support Israel in the event that it carries out a preemptive strike against Iran. Feinstein chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence and is considered pro-Israel, but her remarks, which echo those of anti-Israel critics, have provoked outrage. The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) called on her to apologize, noting that the...

(CNN) - It may have been the least productive year for Congress in history, at least in terms of passing laws – fewer than 60 of which made it through the House and Senate and were signed by President Barack Obama. Across the country, however, state lawmakers were busy getting more than 40,000 bills passed, ones that tackle everything from drones to food stamp benefits. In Illinois for example, teenagers will no longer get to use tanning beds without a doctor's note. If you live in Delaware, visit the shark fin buffet while you can, a new law will make...

Freedom: It's bad enough that the president's health insurance takeover costs more, breaks his pledge of letting you keep your plan and diminishes choice. It actually restricts your travels too. 'We have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in." Those words from President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, standing at the Berlin Wall, neatly illustrated the moral superiority of the free West over the Soviet bloc. But Americans are now about to find themselves grappling with their own bureaucratic Berlin Wall. The American Thinker's Stella Paul has exposed the virtually unnoticed fact that within...

CNN's Piers Morgan admitted that he is fighting U.S. gun laws despite it being "not my country" and "not my constitution." In an interview with TV Newser, the CNN host explained, "It's not my country, it's not my constitution, but I'm a resident here, and I'm therefore governed by the same constitutional rights as anybody else." He also went on another mini-gun control rant on Tuesday night:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and many other works of literature. It is one of the great mysteries that, for progressives, also called liberals,...

A plan to squeeze most residents of the San Francisco Bay Area into multifamily housing offers a test case of whether land-use bureaucracies nationwide, encouraged by the Obama administration, should be allowed to transform American lifestyles under the pretext of combating climate change. Currently, 56 percent of households in the nine-county Bay Area live in single-family homes. That number would drop to 48 percent by 2030, under a high-density development blueprint called Plan Bay Area, recently enacted by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the region’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Plan Bay Area has already drawn several legal challenges, and...

h/t Kirby

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have "contributed $25,000 apiece" to Washington's Initiative 594, which would effectively ban private gun sales in the state. The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR) is pushing the initiative, claiming it "makes sure anyone buying a gun in Washington State passes the same background check, no matter where where they buy the gun and no matter whom they buy it from."

Sometimes, when I write about Obamacare and the catastrophic effect it's going to have on the economy, the healthcare system and society itself, I get correspondence from people who say things like, "In your position, you don't have anything to worry about." In the first place, nobody in America, except Congress and Obama's chosen ones, are going to be exempt from the ruinous ramifications of this ill-conceived bit of socialism, myself included.

Did you know that the Obama administration is negotiating a super secret “trade agreement” that is so sensitive that he isn’t even allowing members of Congress to see it? The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the “NAFTA of the Pacific” and “NAFTA on steroids”, but the truth is that it is so much more than just a trade agreement. This treaty has 29 chapters, but only 5 of them have to do with trade. Most Americans don’t realize this, but this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, health care, the trading of derivatives, copyright issues, food...

<p>Journalists attending the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia will be forbidden from using everyday technology to take pictures and share information -- the mobile phones and tablets that have woven themselves into the fabric of daily life, the Olympics committee said.</p>

".......[snip]........ But still I must be. And so must you. Your impatience cannot be made patient unless you are still. I speak from personal experience. You cannot control what you do not control, but you can be still and know that God controls. Friends, I realize this is an esoteric topic to start your Thursday. But I have friends demanding strategies for this, that, and the other, I have things I myself want to move forward and can’t, some of you have similar things in life and are frustrated, and all of us just need to stop. We will not...

There are numerous alarming reasons why the US government and the military have been buying up all the ammo. Here’s one of them. Obama and the EPA just shut down the last lead smelting plant in the US. They raised the EPA regulations by 10 fold and it would have cost the plant $100 million to comply. You can own all the guns you want, but if you can’t get ammo, you are out of luck. Remember when Obama promised his minions that he was working on gun control behind the scenes? Welcome to it. Now, all domestic mined lead...

WASHINGTON — As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car. The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.

It looks like the days of trading half of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich for half of your best friendÂ’s ham sandwich may soon be over if the federal government has anything to do with it. A Richmond, Virginia mother received the following note, telling her not to pack a lunch for her pre-school age child. (source: Momdot.com) Dear Parents, I have received word from Federal Programs Preschool pertaining to lunches from home. Parents are to be informed that students can only bring lunches from home if there is a medical condition requiring a specific diet, along with...

A Democratic member of Congress is using the government shutdown to pressure the Department of the Interior to prohibit oil and gas exploration on federal land. Energy companies should not be able to use federal lands if those lands are closed to hikers and campers, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Grijalva started an online petition to demand that Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “stop mining [on] public lands while visitors are locked out.” “Fossil fuel and logging companies shouldn’t have special access to our federal lands while...

Remember when the media rushed to talk about transparency in the Barack Obama “Hope and Change” era? Good times, good times. Leonard Downie, who once worked as the executive editor of the Washington Post and wrote a novel about Washington corruption and the Iraq War, finds a bigger and non-fictional problem in the successor to George W. Bush. Downie gives the Post a preview of his report from the Committee to Protect Journalists which outlines the Obama war on reporters and their sources: “A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and...

An Australian climate change body scrapped by the new government has been relaunched as a non-profit organisation reliant on public donations. Prime Minister Tony Abbott axed the Climate Commission, set up by the previous government, last week. But the group resurrected itself as the Climate Council, saying it hoped "Obama-style" public donations raised online would keep it open.