Free Republic

President Obama’s plan to transform the U.S. health-care market is once again in trouble. This time, two Republican-appointed judges on a federal appeals court have invalidated a key portion of the program. In other words, the U.S. constitutional system is functioning normally. That’s not to say that the majority of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit correctly struck down the issuance of tax credits through the federal health insurance exchanges in 36 states — though it is true, as the judges said, that the law only speaks of “Exchanges established by the State.”...

Liberal groups already enjoy a tremendous structural advantage over conservative groups in terms of foundation support, bricks and mortars institutions and a steady pipeline of youngsters eager to shape mankind to their own image. There’s another often overlooked advantage enjoyed by the left: big law firms donating thousands and thousands of hours to help leftist causes far outside of the American mainstream. There is no counterpart donation of time and money for conservative causes. Big Law’s ideological “lawfare” completes the architecture for attacks on election integrity laws, springing free Al-Qaeda terrorists and even suing conservative new media pioneers like Andrew...

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a radical pro-abortion bill (S.1696) sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct.) and promoted by major pro-abortion advocacy groups.If enacted, the law would nullify virtually all limits on abortion nationwide, including protective measures that enjoy broad public support, including informed consent laws, waiting periods and laws that protect pain-capable unborn children from excruciating abortions late in pregnancy.The bill, which has been characterized as the “Abortion Without Limits Until Birth” Act, currently has 35 co-sponsors, all Democrats.With nearly two thirds of Senate Democrats on board with Blumenthal’s plan to expand abortion, the...

Pew Research poll also shows Israel as staunchly pro-U.S. and most supportive of drones and surveillance in the fight against terrorists. The fact that Isrealis are one of the most staunchly pro-American people in thw world is not new. But that their confidence in Barack Obama's ability to handle world affairs climbed dramatically to reach an all-time high? ...

A House Democrat is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban e-cigarette flavors and celebrity marketing practices that she says target children. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) wrote to the FDA Monday warning e-cigarette makers are trying to entice children with flavors such as “chocolate, gummy bear, bubble gum and strawberry.” She also warned the industry is using “celebrity endorsements” to encourage young people to take up smoking the nicotine vaporizers. “Due to the growth in child and adolescent experimentation with these alternative delivery systems, I urge the FDA to move quickly to ban child-friendly flavorings and youth-oriented...

Bill Clinton reportedly has a buxom blond mistress who visits so often when Hillary Clinton isn’t home in Chappaqua that the former president’s Secret Service detail have given her an unofficial code name: Energizer. This is according to Ronald Kessler in “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of Presidents,” due Aug. 5 from Crown Forum. Kessler is no stranger to the controversies surrounding the Secret Service. He broke the story that Secret Service agents protecting President Obama in Cartagena, Colombia, hired prostitutes, and put the president in jeopardy.

President Barack Obama said Joe Biden would make a "superb" president, but questioned whether his vice president or potential rival Hillary Clinton would want to endure another campaign for the White House, a media report Monday said. Obama, in an interview with the New Yorker, said Biden "has seen the job up close, he knows what the job entails. He understands how to separate what's really important from what's less important. I think he's got great people skills. He enjoys politics, and he's got important relationships up on the Hill (in Congress) that would serve him well." "Joe would be...

Hillary Clinton isn’t likely ever to become president of the United States. In fact, there is a greater possibility than is generally recognized by the Washington cognoscenti that she won’t even run. If she does, though, the barriers she faces will prove overwhelming. Her 2008 campaign was her last good shot for the office, and she failed. Since then, numerous developments have conspired steadily to diminish her prospects. Those prospects are now near zero. This analytical framework holds absolutely no credulity in Washington, where thinking rarely extends beyond the conventional. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Mrs. Clinton’s nomination...

It is no surprise that young people are enamored of communism. Their teachers have been indoctrinating them for years into the utopia of “social justice,” “environmental justice,” the “evil” middle class, and the spectacular equality for all as envisioned by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Communism is “cool” in the land where wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt is a hypocritical political statement made while enjoying capitalist amenities. But we expect them to mature eventually and give up the absurdity that communism has not succeeded because the wrong people were in charge.

<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Gov. Mark Dayton challenged energy policy and business leaders Thursday to find a way for Minnesota to eliminate coal from the state's energy production.</p> <p>Dayton, who has spoken of his aim to eliminate coal before, said it's time to start talking details so that Minnesota can lead the nation.</p>

In May, Politico's reporting inside Democratic circles led them to the strange conclusion that the one thing that could sink Hillary's hopes of winning the White House was the press corps. A Clinton insider announced: “She wants to be president; she doesn’t want to run for president...The worst part of running for president for her, clearly, is dealing with the press.” In July, Politico interviewed former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who made some sense of this bizarre-sounding notion. The media has for many years defended and protected and glamorized the Clintons. But Abramson said Hillary expects the...

This year’s edition of Netroots Nation (the supposed liberal answer to CPAC) kicked off this week, in case you hadn’t heard. (And judging by the massive lack of media coverage, you might not have.) To be honest, I have not idea what was going on at the various panels and speeches, aside from the apparently well received socialist stemwinder from Elizabeth Warren. But there was, it seems, one get together which was a real hoot, whether intentionally or not. It was a seminar called (wait for it) … Only the Jester Speaks the Truth and it was all about the...

DETROIT — On the night before her Friday keynote address to a gathering of progressive activists here, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tried to slip into a hotel restaurant for a quiet dinner. But the former law professor has become a liberal superstar, and when a few admirers spotted her walking to the corner of the dining room, they cheered loudly. A moment later, more joined in the applause. Then one urged her, “Run for president!” The next morning at Netroots Nation, where Warren (D-Mass.) gave a fiery sermon for economic populism — “The game is rigged, and it isn’t right!” —...

Angry veterans protested President Obama’s visit to Delaware to show their disdain for how the administration has treated them. The 25 protesters — led by Martin Nicholson, a veteran Marine – lined the street and turned their backs to the president’s passing motorcade. “We feel he’s turned his back on us veterans, so we’re going to turn our backs on him as he drives by on his motorcade to show our appreciation that he does not care about us veterans,” Nicholson told BuzzPo.com. Obama was in Delaware to discuss a recently damaged bridge, a topic the protesters call a waste...

On Sunday John Kerry forgot the number one rule of being miked for an interview; the microphone is always on. The Secretary of State was miked and on camera waiting for an interview with Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace when he spoke to an aide about an Israeli operation resulting in the deaths of 14 IDF solders. Kerry’s reaction was a mocking: "It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation. “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.We’ve got to get over there. Thank you, John. I think, John, we ought to go tonight. I think it’s crazy to be sitting around.”...

ORLANDO – A federal judge has given a secular organization the green light to distribute more atheistic and anti-Christian materials to Florida public school students, in spite of the materials’ graphic content and offensive language. As previously reported, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) learned last year that a Christian ministry had made Bibles available to Orlando high school students on “Religious Freedom Day.” To counter the Bible distribution, FFRF sought permission from the school district to give students a variety of atheistic and anti-Christian materials. According to reports, the Orange County School Board permitted FFRF to distribute several books...

EXCLUSIVE: RINCON PENINSULA, Texas -- U.S. Border Patrol agents on the American side of the Rio Grande were forced to take cover Friday night when high-caliber weaponry was fired at them from the Mexican side of the river, sources told FoxNews.com. The weapons were fired at the U.S. side of the riverbank in the area of the Rincon Peninsula across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, Mexico, at about 8:30 p.m., sources said. Bullets ricocheted into an area where Border Patrol agents were positioned, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told FoxNews.com. Border Patrol sources confirmed Gohmert's account, and said the shots may...

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D) has some explaining to do. Although the senator has proclaimed to be pro-life, his recent support of a Democratic bill to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling on Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, suggests otherwise. This failed legislation would have reversed a decision that protects the Christian company’s religious freedom and avoid providing employees abortion-inducing drugs. Click here to sign up for daily pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com joemanchin2Manchin explained his support for the bill as such: “Today, I voted in support of overturning the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision that ruled for-profit companies can opt...

Excerpted from Campus Reform: The town of Salem, Mass., has pitted itself against Gordon College after the president of the private Christian school added his name to a public letter to President Obama asking for a religious exemption from a planned federal mandate. The expected executive order would force any organization receiving federal funds, including religiously based organizations, to hire people whose sexual conduct may not fall in line with their beliefs. Gordon says the mandate would be an “infringement on religious liberty” and “the rights of faith-based institutions to establish a set of standards and expectations for their community.”...

The Washington Free Beacon has put together a greatest hits compilation of the Democrats’ border security quotes. Why would the Democrats continuously insist that the border is secure? Perhaps because Republicans insist on having a secure border before discussing any type of immigration reform legislation. Democrats don’t think people will catch up to this at some point? The PR game that carried Obama – health care lies and all – to the White House is showing significant signs of incompetent wear and tear lately…

From reducing student loan debt to expanding voter rights to dealing with the scourge of violent crime, liberals have laid out an ambitious agenda for the waning years of the Obama presidency. At a day-long summit Wednesday organized by Generation Progress, the youth division of the influential Washington-based think tank Center for American Progress, speakers such as Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi articulated their goals to a Washington audience of more than 1,000. Here are five issues that came up again and again at the Make Progress National Summit, and the...

What may have started out as an ordinary evening in February 2012, ended with a dead teen-ager and a national controversy that is still unresolved. The fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and the subsequent not-guilty verdict of the shooter, George Zimmerman, on July 13, 2013, prompted citizens across the nation to question the "stand-your-ground" laws. Such laws, often criticized as being "shoot first" laws, make it hard to prosecute cases against people who shoot others and then claim self-defense. Kentucky, as well as the other states with such laws, should revise them so that the one who initiates a...

Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California's 14th District, sent out a tweet this morning that compared access to contraception to the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian girls by the militant group Boko Haram. Speier included an infographic from the United Nations along with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, which is a reference to the kidnapping of 230 girls from the Chibok Government Secondary School.

The tell-tale sign Republicans expected to lose the Senate in 2006 appeared June 28 of that year. That was when the GOP turned to stunts to save themselves. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., brought to the floor a constitutional amendment banning the burning of the American flag. Flag-burning had not been a serious issue for years. But after Hurricane Katrina, and with the Iraq War going poorly, Republicans were desperate to change the subject. “Flag burning is a form of expression that is spiteful or vengeful,” said the late Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., whose chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee...

Polling the public on policy preferences is an inherently tricky issue. Changing the precise wording and framing of questions can elicit dramatically different results. Even the same poll can yield contradictory sentiments from the same people. Voters can say they support entitlement cuts, yet cherish their Social Security and Medicare benefits at the same time. Or support more-limited American engagement overseas, while being dissatisfied with President Obama's passive leadership on foreign policy. The list goes on. It's remarkably easy for any interest group to cherry-pick findings that match its policy preferences, or worse, tailor poll questions designed to elicit a...

The impossible just got legs for a potential possibility; and not a good one at that. In a bare-faced political move, forty-six elected Democrats in our United States Senate; that’s EIGHTY-SEVEN PERCENT of all Democrats, are willing to make a change to our most predominant, most revered and oldest established legal document, the United States Constitution, all for their desire for more political power in our government.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren now says that last year’s government shutdown was about birth control. Warren did not make the remark in an off-the-cuff setting. She made it in a prepared speech. Warren said it on the floor of the Senate while supporting a bill that she knows has absolutely zero chance of becoming law. “Remember last year’s government shutdown that nearly tanked our economy?” Warren asked. “That fight started with a GOP effort to hold the whole operation of the federal government hostage in order to try to force Democrats and the president to let employers deny workers access to...

Ladies and gentlemen, an idiot. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday asserted the southern border is secure despite the massive surge of illegal minors from Central America that has overwhelmed federal agencies. “The border is secure,” he told reporters after the Senate Democrats’ weekly policy lunch. “[Sen.] Martin Heinrich [(D-N.M.)] talked to the caucus today. He’s a border state senator. He said he can say without any equivocation the border is secure.” Pay no attention to what the border patrol agents say, to the tens of thousands swamping detention centers. Marty said it’s secure. Reid said lawmakers...

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley wants to be the next President of the United States, and he’s just brazenly hypocritical enough for the job. O’Malley recently won praise from the left with a bleeding heart speech before a group of reporters over the scale of the humanitarian crisis at the southern border. “We are not a country that should send children away and send them back to certain death,” O’Malley said to reporters attending a National Governors Association conference last week. “I believe that we should be guided by the greatest power we have as a people, and that is the...

Senate Democrats’ effort to reverse the Supreme Court’s “Hobby Lobby” ruling on birth control could not overcome a Republican filibuster Wednesday, exposing the partisan divide over how to balance women’s health rights with religious liberty ahead of November’s congressional contests. The chamber’s 56-43 vote was not enough to green-light the “Not My Boss’ Business Act” for final consideration, even though Republicans Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska broke party ranks and voted to put the bill on the floor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, changed his vote to “no” at...

"As Senior White House Advisor Defies Congressional Subpoena, Committee Releases Audio Recording of Cabinet Secretary Making Illegal Campaign Solicitation" Then Labor Secretary: “Off-the-record here—Wanted to ask you if you could help us get folks organized to come to a fundraiser that we’re doing for Organizing for America for Obama campaign” As Director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, David Simas, in defiance of a congressional subpoena, failed to appear today to testify before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on taxpayer-funded political campaign activity by government officials, the Committee released an audio recording of...

LUBBOCK, Texas—An illegal immigrant who was released by U.S. authorities with a Notice to Appear has been arrested for the alleged murder of a woman and kidnapping of children on U.S. soil. The alleged crimes occurred after the man was released. The man, Pedro Alberto Monterroso-Navas, entered the U.S. illegally with children and turned himself in to U.S. Border Patrol agents. He was processed and released, as are all illegal immigrants who come as unaccompanied minors or incomplete family units from Central America. The alien is from Honduras. The arrest was first reported by the Associated Press (AP), but Breitbart...

US taxation of corporate profits is the highest in the world, and hobbles American companies competing on world markets, thereby costing American jobs. Just last month, medical equipment giant Medtronic announced plans to move its headquarters from Minneapolis to Dublin, via the acquisition of a company located there, and taking the new company’s domicile as its own. Now, it is being followed by a company run by the daughter of a US senator. Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times: Heather Bresch grew up around politics. Her father is Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia and a...

Senate Democrats held a hearing today on a bill that wipes out virtually every pro-life law across the country, including state laws that came into play in Pennsylvania that held late-term abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell accountable for killing babies who were born alive and killed during a gruesome late-term abortion procedure. S.1696 is deceptively titled the “Women’s Health Protection Act” even though it revokes protections for women and their unborn children. Instead, the bill would be far-reaching in how it would topple virtually every pro-life law passed in states across the country. gosnell52During the hearing, Carol Tobias, president of the...

“Choking,” “whipping,” and “tying up” are a few of the sadistic sexual behaviors Planned Parenthood staffers in Denver were caught on camera promoting to underage girls as part of Obamacare-supported “sex education” inside their facilities. >>> This report and video contain graphic language about disturbing practices. Today, in two undercover videos released by the pro-life group Live Action, counselors for Planned Parenthood are seen offering advice about “BDSM”— a practice in which sexual partners beat, lash, or otherwise inflict pain on each other — to girls who the staffers think are 15- and 16-year-olds. The videos, “Sex-Ed Two: Planned Parenthood’s...

Senate Democrats held a hearing today on a bill that wipes out virtually every pro-life law across the country, including state laws that came into play in Pennsylvania that held late-term abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell accountable for killing babies who were born alive and killed during a gruesome late-term abortion procedure.S.1696 is deceptively titled the “Women’s Health Protection Act” even though it revokes protections for women and their unborn children. Instead, the bill would be far-reaching in how it would topple virtually every pro-life law passed in states across the country.During the hearing, Carol Tobias, president of the National Right...

Why Mississippi matters to the GOP’s future By Sal Russo - 07/14/14 08:08 PM EDT If the recent Mississippi Senate primary was a GOP establishment bellwether, the Republican Party is in deep trouble. By resorting to a disingenuous and morally bankrupt campaign to win at all costs, the establishment exposed itself to be into politics only for the power. In order to grow the GOP and consistently win at the ballot box in November, Republicans need to start earning votes with conservative ideas, not government handouts. Since the Republicans’ dismal showing in the 2012 elections, party leaders have been working to...

The economy might play a role in presidential politics, but its impact is near nil in the midterms. This month's surprisingly strong jobs report elicited fresh optimism that at long last, the economy was poised to recover its full strength. And in Washington, naturally, the question quickly became: Would Democratic candidates receive an unexpected boost from a late-in-the-election-cycle economic surge? The short answer? Don't count on it. Even if job gains do spike—and there's plenty of reluctance to predict an accelerating recovery after years of stop-and-start growth—it's unlikely voters will feel demonstrably better about the economy in time for November....

The number of foreigners who successfully filed asylum claims in the United States almost tripled from 2012 to 2013, up to 30,393. That’s 10 times the number from 2008, when President Barack Obama was elected, and it is evidence his immigration officials are approving most of the asylum requests from the growing wave of Central American migrants. If you came illegally to the U.S. seeking asylum in 2013, you had better than a four-in-five chance of successfully filing an asylum claim. That’s up from a three-in-five chance in 2008. The migrants include mothers with children, and youths who have been...

As the nation’s midsection has grown more conservative and Republican, Democrats have sometimes had to rest their hopes on well-positioned GOP contenders imploding with their own politically off-key statements. It worked like a charm for Democrats in 2012 when Republican candidates in Indiana and Missouri blew winnable Senate races after provocative comments on rape and abortion. But with less than four months until the 2014 election, Democrats are still waiting for new bombshells and growing more anxious about the lack of incendiary material as they try to hold enough Senate seats to keep control of the chamber. Party researchers are...

The White House on Sunday stood by President Obama's position that he continues to be the most transparent president in U.S. history, despite widespread complaints from journalists and other Americans about a lack of information or apparent misinformation. “I have a responsibility in this job to try to help the president live up to his commitment to be the most transparent president in history,” new White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Earnest said he “absolutely, absolutely” sticks by Obama’s line about having the most transparent administration, after continued criticism about apparent attempts to not make...

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is proposing several pieces of gun control legislation this Wednesday to City Council. And as WKSU’s Kabir Bhatia reports, people on both sides of the issue were in Public Square over the weekend. Mayor Jackson’s proposals include a registry for anyone convicted of gun offenses, as well as prohibitions and regulations related to the sale of firearms. Jonathan O’Connor is with grassroots group Ohio Carry, based in Columbus. He was among the roughly 60 people milling around in Public Square Sunday afternoon, some with handguns holstered openly at their waists or assault weapons slung over their...

Obama is the Antichrist, Republicans are heretics, and compromise is unholy. Politics can’t explain how the right acts.America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. Only one of them, Mormonism, has taken root and flourished as a true religion sprung from our own native ground. Today, however, we have a new faith growing from this nation’s soil: the Tea Party. Despite its secular trappings and “taxed enough already” motto, it is a religious movement, one grounded in the traditions of American spiritual revival. This religiosity explains the Tea Party’s...

Roughly 50 people lined up in front of Hobby Lobby’s new Totowa store Saturday to protest the company’s role in a recent Supreme Court decision that says the company can choose not to cover contraception for its employees through the Affordable Care Act.The Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain is owned by a Christian family that says it tries to run the business applying its religious beliefs. One of the parties in the decision by the high court, the family had argued that the Obamacare requirement that all contraception be covered violated a 1993 federal law that protects religious...

<p>Michelle Obama privately denied any ­alleged “Blood Feud” with Bill and Hillary Clinton as described in the current best-seller at a private Park Avenue meeting with Democratic ­donors on Thursday.</p> <p>At the event to raise funds for the DNC at the home of Evercore Partners’ Charles Myers, the first lady addressed major issues from the midterm elections to education as well as her clothing collection, recent trip to China and whether she might run for office.</p>

France's political and business establishment has hit out against the hegemony of the dollar in international transactions after U.S. authorities fined BNP Paribas $9 billion for helping countries avoid sanctions. Michel Sapin, the French finance minister, called for a "rebalancing" of the currencies used for global payments, saying the BNP Paribas case should "make us realize the necessity of using a variety of currencies". He said, in an interview with the Financial Times on the sidelines of a weekend economics conference: "We [Europeans] are selling to ourselves in dollars, for instance when we sell planes. Is that necessary? I don't...

Democrats are changing out their immigration mix tape. Before, twas Ted Kennedy singing 'Jalisco' . If you don't remember that, Yahoo it – it's a hoot. Then it was 'Don't Fence Me In (or out)'. Both have been replaced by 'Vaya Con Dios My Darling'. Nancy Pelosi is still on board with failed policies and Mooooochelle is still dog whistling to LULAC that “we have to keep up the fight on immigration�. But House Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer is signaling the troops to retreat: “We have an immediate humanitarian crisis that confronts this country. We also have a crisis...

Outraged by what they characterized as the Supreme Court’s improper application of the Constitution’s freedom of religion clause in the Hobby Lobby case, Senate Democrats are drafting a bill to overturn the Court’s ruling. Sponsor of the bill, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash) declared that “a boss’s role in health care is confined to paying for it. He has no business deciding that he won’t pay for certain medical therapies because they offend his sense of morality. My bill restores the full authority over which medical treatments will or won’t be covered to the government where it belongs.” Senator Charles Schumer...

It has been a while since former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) embarrassed herself, but staying out of the news isn't good for her livelihood, which relies on lucrative speeches, television appearances and a regular stream of news accounts of her Facebook posts where she offers up her special brand of leadership. So since things have been a bit quiet for her, this week she insisted that everyone who resists impeaching President Obama must go. In her words, "we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment," and this other...

We know this is a planned invasion... But Boehner (Boner) has beat the drum of 'Obama does not uphold or enforce the law." Hint hint: Obama really, truly doesn't... But... The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act Of 2008 will either be "upheld" and "enforced" by Obama - or it won't. Under it, certain children under this Act are placed under the care of the Dept of Health and Human Services, are given the least restrictive environment, are given an attorney and can plead their case before a judge to stay in the U.S. And GWB signed this into...