Free Republic

Democrats are facing a senior problem that could get even worse this year. The party has traditionally had trouble with older voters, losing the group aged 65 and over by 21 points in 2010 — when Republicans picked up 63 seats — and by 12 points in the 2012 presidential race. Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. A recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades; in 2013, 48 percent considered themselves Republican. That spells trouble for Democrats, who...

After NBC's "Meet The Press" host David Gregory ran an anti-ObamaCare ad targeting Sen. Mark Pryor from Arkansas featuring a couple with a southern accents questioning the confusing nature of the Affordable Care Act, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker objected to Americans for Prosperity using people with southern accents in political ads running in Arkansas: "I think you could find someone who doesn't have a southern accent who is confused by this act," Parker said. "We always seem to find the character who seems a little countrified, who can't just fathom this. You know there there are plenty of smart...

Democrats fought back Sunday against claims from a former Obama aide that the White House might delay Obamacare’s employer mandate. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi called the mandate, which requires businesses with between 50 and 100 employees to provide health insurance for workers or face a penalty, “integral.” “Of all the things I want to say about the Affordable Care Act, Robert Gibbs' opinion, I don't know who his clients are or what his perspective is, but we are celebrating the fact that we have over 7 million who have signed up,” the California Democrat said on CNN’s “State...

Roughly 1,800 New Jersey children had their insurance plans cancelled last week due to Obamacare. With the flurry of cancellation notices hitting mailboxes across the Garden State, one parent, Bob Miotla, told the NJ.com news of his son's cancellation made him "extremely angry." "Without having that safety net, if an illness arises, we will probably take him to the ER," said Miotla, who is on Medicare and disabled. Obamacare's new mandated requirements killed New Jersey's low-cost children's insurance coverage plan, FamilyCare Advantage. The plan, offered by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, was designed for children whose parents...

When I was marveling at the spectacle of Barack Obama killing six million insurance policies, then celebrating the "achievement" of selling those people more expensive coverage at gunpoint, I compared it to Obama running a tire shop with a line of tire-puncturing spikes deployed on the road outside. "Wow, shame about how your wheels just blew off! Lucky for you we sell tires here! You'd best buy a set, before the cop up the road arrests you for driving on four flats!" Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) made the same point with a reference to the classic "Broken Windows" fallacy outlined...

Lead story on Drudge The uniparty at work!

WHAT IF ALL THE STUDENTS at Notre Dame WALKED OUT, leaving Barack Obama speaking to an empty auditorium? Notre Dame is a CATHOLIC, Pro-Life university. Students will BOYCOTT Obama's commencement address this weekend, May 16-17. They have set up a website at: http://www.ndresponse.com/ and a stirring video at -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KUBdrrbF6o Demonstration Confirmed ND Response has received official permission to hold a prayerful and constructive demonstration on the South Quad of the University of Notre Dame between 11am and 4pm on the day of Commencement. The students of this coalition would like to extend an invitation to all those interested in...

Maybe Jimmy Fallon really does want to follow Jay Leno’s tradition of full-political-spectrum comedy. Earlier this week, Fallon ripped Barack Obama for his victory lap on ObamaCare, and last night he invited Sarah Palin to join him in this four-minute mockfest of Obama’s foreign-policy acumen. Palin is a good sport here, joking about the unusual names of her children at one point, but the subtext throughout this is that Palin was smart enough to see through Vladimir Putin — and Obama wasn’t. Watch for a cameo from “Obama” near the end (via Katie Pavlich): CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE...

You’re probably sourly amused at all the signalling done in these paragraphs: A new Minnesota poll, commissioned by a partisan group, finds that Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken is “potentially vulnerable” as he mounts his bid for re-election. It found that Franken has a 3 percentage lead over Republican Julianne Ortman and a 6 percentage point lead over Republican Mike McFadden. The poll was conducted by Magellan Strategies for American Encore, a group connected to the Koch Brothers that is already running television ads bashing Franken. It included 1,081 likely Minnesota voters in late March. …because you probably also suspect...

Top Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett recently granted an interview to a celebrity gossip website called POPSUGAR and revealed why she had come to Hollywood. "I'm meeting with writers of various TV shows and movies to try to get it into the scripts." The "it" is Obamacare. Conservatives are no match for liberals in this arena. The White House people know the immense cultural power the left has in popular culture. Liberals rightly credit TV and movies and pop songs for America's growing support for gay "marriage." So why not use that power for Obamacare? Jarrett told the POPSUGAR crew...

SNIP-- Support it or not, you cannot look at ObamaCare and call it anything but a huge, historic mess....utterly unique in the annals of American lawmaking and govt administration.....then-Democratic speaker Pelosi blithely, mindlessly said---but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass it to find out what's in it. .... an historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn't understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she'd done. ....for the next three years Democrats would carry on like blithering idiots making believe they'd read the bill and...

Talk about spiking the ball. Speaking in the White House Rose Garden yesterday afternoon, President Obama declared flatly that the Affordable Care Act, which he proudly referred to as ObamaCare, “is doing what it’s supposed to do; it’s working.” The president had reason to be pleased. According to the White House, 7.1 million Americans signed up, slightly more than the Congressional Budget Office had said was necessary for the law to work as planned. Considering the Web-site disaster and all other problems that we’ve seen so far, this represents a significant accomplishment. ..... But while the president basked in his...

Now that Obama has taken a victory lap and popped the champagne cork over hitting the ObamaCare enrollment goal, it looks as if it might be time to put the cork back in the bottle.Results of a RAND Corporation study suggest that barely 858,000 previously uninsured Americans – nowhere near 7.1 million, as claimed by Obama – had paid for new policies and joined the ranks of the insured by the Monday night deadline. The study also indicates that only one-third of exchange sign-ups were previously uninsured.Yes, millions of enrollees were previously insured, including those who lost coverage when...

President Obama gave House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi rosary beads blessed by Pope Francis during lunch Tuesday at the White House, according to an NBC News reporter. Carrie Dann @CarrieNBCNews Pelosi says she received a rosary blessed by Pope Francis from Obama at lunch today 12:24 PM - 1 Apr 2014 Obama met Pope Francis at the Vatican for the first time last week. Pelosi, a Catholic, has been criticized for her support of abortion — a practice which she has called “sacred ground” — by other Catholics. Last year, a Vatican official in Rome said that the California lawmaker...

Now that President Obama has completed his end-zone dance for perhaps signing up more people for health insurance than have been dropped from coverage due to Obamacare, it’s time for a sober look at the costs of his signature program. Our friend Tevi Troy, head of the American Health Policy Institute (AHPI), provides that look in a study called “The Cost of the Affordable Care Act to Large Employers.” The study is based on internal cost data from more than 100 large employers (10,000 or more employees each) doing business in the United States. It offers the first-ever look at...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Go to the sound bites coming next and you'll hear them: They think they've turned the corner. Like on April 15th, everybody's gonna file their taxes. Is Obama gonna do a Rose Garden ceremony to talk about how persuasive he's been and how many people love the income tax? "My God, look at this, folks! Look at how many have complied this year. Look how many people love the income tax, and the income tax is making our country and a transfer of wealth possible. Look at how many millions and millions and millions of people file...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Hey, somebody help me out here. I might have missed it, as I was in transit yesterday. Did any of the Republican leadership respond to Obama's despicable lies about Obamacare yesterday? (interruption) There wasn't? There wasn't any Republican response to that? You gotta be kidding me. I was flying to -- well, I was in transit. I had it on the television and I'm watching this. I'm heading up to a celebratory occasion, I'm watching this thing, and it's ticking me off, this Rose Garden thing. I mean, here you've got Obamacare, which is mandatory under penalty...

--> NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          www.nationalreview.com           April 1, 2014 2:44 PM Gosnell Filmmakers Quit Kickstarter, Claiming CensorshipFilmmakers have raised over $195,000 in five days By Josh Encinias Makers of a film on abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell say the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter singled out their project for special objections. They have ankled the massively popular platform in favor of another crowdfunding site. Ann and Phelim Media have  raised nearly $200,000 in five days on crowdfunding site Indiegogo for a planned movie about Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist who was convicted in 2013 on a host of charges including multiple illegal...

House Republican leaders got an earful in two separate private meetings Wednesday from conservatives fuming over their move last week to pass a Medicare payment fix without a full House vote. The leadership on Thursday had abruptly put up a bill to prevent a cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctor, passing it by voice vote rather than holding a recorded roll-call vote. Few members were on the House floor to object, angering conservatives who accused the leadership of subverting the democratic process. “I’m getting used to being deceived by the Obama administration, but when my own leaders do it, it’s...

Editors’ Note: This is a first-person, present-tense account of the aftermath of a sexual assault that took place in 2013. For reasons of both style and substance, we have left it in present tense. I’m writing this piece as I’m sitting in my own dining hall, only a few tables away from the guy who pressured me into sexual activity in his bedroom, one night last spring. My hands are trembling as they hover across the keyboard. I’m exhausted from fighting for myself. I’m exhausted from sending emails to my resident dean, to my House Master, to my Sexual Assault/Sexual...