Free Republic

February 9, 2010 Safe Schools Czar Declares That Heterosexuality Is Not The Norm. If you think it is then you are a “heterosexist”. In his efforts to “make public schools safe” GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings will introduce rules about what will not be allowed on public school campuses across this nation. Jennings has stated that if you express the belief that homosexuality is “psychologically, spiritually, or morally wrong” you are engaging in “heterosexism” which is a “prejudice” just like “racism, anti-Semitism, and sexism.” (GLSEN website) Once liberals label something an “ism” you tend to get in trouble for doing it....

The Politico had a story about Big Labor penned by Jeanne Cummings, the reporter famed for going after Sarah Palin's Party purchased wardrobe during the 2008 presidential campaign, that was an object lesson in Old Media bias. Her piece headlined "Labor helps kill its own top priority" is a great example of using language to subtly shade the arguments, in this case those of Big Labor, to elicit a positive view of the ideology contained in the issue. Her piece very subtly shades the goals of Big Labor in a positive light easily giving the reader a feeling that Big...

"It looks like the [warming] empire strikes back. Obama is attempting to engineer a global warming bailout. This is a classic response of the federal government: Bail out a corrupt and dying industry," Marc Morano, editor of the watchdog site ClimateDepot.com, tells Inside the Beltway.

"You can't be a great country without doing great things and a great thing would be to return to the Moon and build a laboratory there and open it up to the world," Hickam said on Tuesday's MetroNews Talkline. Hickam says he's angry about the cut. "It's really a foolish decision to take away the goal of going back to the Moon. I can certainly see figuring out a better way of doing it, but simply to take away the goal, I think, is so shortsighted and so foolish that it's almost breathtaking in its stupidity."

Well folks, just when you thought that there might be some hope that the anti-gun faithful members of the Maryland State Senate had learned their lesson about proposing nonsense bills like bans on so-called assault weapons, they prove otherwise. Senator Mike Lennett (D), District 19, Montgomery County, has introduced SB516, the Maryland Assault Weapons Ban of 2010. His co-sponsors are a veritable Who's Who of the anti-gun wing of the Senate. Now's the time to head this thing off before the hearing is even scheduled and let the members of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee know that Maryland citizens will...

If you’re the President of the United States or one of his political appointees and you’re ideologically opposed to new oil and natural gas development offshore, what do you do when the public registers its overwhelming support for new drilling in public opinion polls?You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.First came the dance. In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush,...

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Soros Wednesday, “Democrats have a Nazi collaborator, literally—international financier George Soros—funding their phony grassroots organizations.-Ann Coulter In a 1998 interview with Steve Kroft, George Soros acknowledged forging documents and pretending to be Christian to save himself from the Nazis, for which he feels no guilt or sorrow. “I was fourteen,” Soros said. “My character was made then.” Regarding his participation in confiscating valuables from innocent Jews, and serving death camp warrants, Soros told Kroft, “It created no problem at all.”

President Obama is losing friends left and right these days. Moderate Dems to his right are getting queasy over just how liberal and profligate some of his policies turn out to be. Ultra-liberals to his left are miffed he isn't even more liberal. ..President Obama still has one unstinting and stalwart comrade: the unions. After decades in inexorable and well-deserved decline, unions are back bigtime in the Obama-nation. It is an unholy union. It’s bad for business, bad for the economy, bad for our country. Worse, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, this alliance could lead to bigger government...

Still looming on the legislative horizon is something deceptively called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, H.R. 800), the provisions of which will make it easier for union organizers to impose union representation on a group of workers by circumventing the current secret ballot method of deciding for or against union representation with an odious mechanism called “card check.” Secret ballot voting has been a feature in US elections for more than two centuries, and that includes union elections. However, if the EFCA were to become law, the federal government will have tilted the playing field toward labor unions by...

Author Kurt Andersen came out swinging this week in New York Magazine against democracy in action! He hates the Tea Party Movement in particular. Andersen, a novelist who at one time was New York Magazine’s chief editor, prefers when “a calm club of like-minded wise men (and women) in Washington” is calling the shots, not the people. Andersen agrees with Elitist-in-Chief President Barack Obama who believes the opponents of his far-left policies should just sit down and shut up. Andersen liked the good old days when: the elite media really did control the national political discourse…Until fifteen years ago, presidents...

Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform. The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority. The share of the blame comes as cracks are beginning to show in Emanuel’s once-impregnable political armor. Last week he had to apologize after a report surfaced that he called liberal groups “retarded” in a private meeting. While Emanuel has quelled that controversy by meeting with advocates for people with disabilities, on Capitol Hill he’s under...

Obama Admin Admits It Tracked Abortion Groups in Wisconsin Madison, WI -- The Department of Homeland Security admitted today that it improperly conducted a threat assessment on pro-life groups in Wisconsin. The assessment came before an expected rally last year in response to the University of Wisconsin Hospital board decided to allow abortions. http://www.LifeNews.com/state4796.html

Voters are souring on the economy and the government’s remedies, according to February's IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index. It fell 4.1% to 46.8, matching December’s level and the weakest since July. “Persisting high unemployment and a wobbly stock market dampened January’s optimism,” said Raghavan Mayur, president of TIPP, IBD’s polling partner. Readings below 50 signal pessimism. Confidence in federal economic politics dived 7% to 38.3, the lowest since President Obama took office.

The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years. In legislation, soon to be introduced, candy and sugary beverages would be banned and many schools would be required to offer more nutritious fare. To that end, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will deliver a speech Monday at the National Press Club in which he will insist, according to excerpts provided to The Times, that any vending machines that remain in schools be “filled with...

Conservatism is about being not obstructionist, but principled. Imagine if someone told you that even though you are a Christian, in order to get along better with others, you need to put your religious beliefs on hold until 2012. Don't worry about that "salvation" thing for a couple of years. Or imagine if you were asked to love your parents a little less because your full-hearted devotion to them is getting in the way of showing your affection for others. Wait until the next election to prove your respect for your family. Diminishing these deeply held beliefs and feelings would...

No one has vested more hope in the tea-party move ment than the Democrats. For all the scorn and abuse they've heaped on the tea-partiers, they've counted on them for salvation. The tea-partiers would push the GOP out of the mainstream. They'd tar the party with their bumptious extremism. They'd stoke a Republican civil war. The tea-partiers would, in short, redeem the Obama administration's political fortunes no matter what. This was the oft-repeated theory, shot through with a perverse hopefulness and woeful misunderstanding. One wonders if Democrats can overcome their contempt for the tea-partiers -- whom they call "tea baggers,"...

GOP leaders: Don't use current health bills for summit starting point By Molly K. Hooper - 02/08/10 07:03 PM ET House Republican leaders said Monday the healthcare summit should not use House and Senate bills as a starting point. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Republicans are right to be reluctant in embracing a summit if the president is unwilling to start the talks from scratch. “If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate,” the pair...

Once upon a time former Governor, Presidential candidate, and Chairman of the Democrat National Committee Howard Dean called the GOP the “White Party.” CNN commentator Lou Dobbs took Dean to task for his language. So was Dr. Dean, and those among the Left who share his understanding of history, accurate? Is the GOP the party of white people? Let’s test the good doctor’s diagnosis. Fifteen questions follow. The correct answers are provided at the end. No peeking! Question #1. During whose administration did the signature of an African-American first appear on U.S. currency? During that of a Republican or a...

The Obama administration apparently never made or discovered a mistake not worth repeating....Stupid is as stupid does, that Richard Reid was read "his" rights was a poor example to follow; that too was an intelligence failure. Reid was arrested not three months into our invasion of Afghanistan, while the hunt was still under way in Tora Bora, and several months before Jose Padilla, Binyam Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Ramzi Binalshibh were captured. Bush 43 could have ordered Reid turned over for military detention as his November 13, 2001 Military Order proscribed and yet he at least seemed to learn from...

Iran: Incredibly, the Bush national security team's sole holdover has announced Peace in Our Time as the only hope against a nuclear Tehran. There is no defense for Secretary Robert Gates. Appearing in Paris with the French defense minister on Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made an announcement to the world that will astonish our friends and embolden our enemies. "We must still try and find a peaceful way to resolve this issue," Gates said of the never-ending defiance of the free world by Iran's Islamofascist regime as it moves ever closer to becoming a nuclear weapons power. "The...

Since the election of our first ex-community organizer as President, organizing for progressive change has declined. The reasons range from sharply reduced funding for organizers, to complacency after Democrats’ sweeping 2008 victories, to labor unions being forced to focus on protecting current workers from contract givebacks rather than organizing new members. The net result is that grassroots organizing – which prioritizes face-to-face contacts with the unconverted, empowers people rather than simply asking them to fulfill a task, and builds local coalitions for pressure campaigns targeting politicians – is being replaced by less effective e-mail mobilizations and other short-cuts. As the...

Three House Democrats are now pushing legislation that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating carbon emissions—a decision the agency announced in December — without express permission from the Congress.

Independent voters see Pres. Obama in a negative light by a nearly 2-1 margin, according to a new Marist College survey, while almost half of voters say he has failed to meet their expectations. The poll, conducted Feb. 1-3, showed just 44% of registered voters approving of Obama's job as president. 47% disapprove. But among indie voters, Obama's approval rating sits at a terrible 29%, while his disapproval rating is at 57%. Obama's 44% job approval rating is the lowest he has scored in any non-internet poll since moving into the WH, according to a review of data compiled by...

PUBLIC SERVICE ALERT The Federal government is closed today in the National Capital Area. Please let me know if you notice. END PUBLIC SERVICE ALERT Here’s how you know, if you are the President of the United States, that things are going in the wrong direction. You have scheduled a speech to the Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington, DC. It snows about 20 inches in Washington, DC weakening your arguments for cap-and-trade legislation A car spins into the press van travelling with your motorcade You do the speech and generate headlines like this one from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:...

WaPo's Howie Kurtz writes about increasing grumblings from the White House press corps over the lack of presidential news conferences in recent months: "It's a source of great frustration here," says Chip Reid, CBS's White House correspondent. "It's important for us to hold the president's feet to the fire." NBC White House reporter Chuck Todd calls the situation a "shame," saying the administration is trying to control the message rather than allowing Obama to be seen "unscripted." While the White House argues that there has been no shortage of appearances by the president on television and in print, some White...

A new poll shows just 44% of registered voters approve of the job President Obama is doing. That's down from 46 % in December. Evidently his strong rhetoric about not giving up on health care reform, cap & trade and even more deficit raising government spending is not sitting well with the American people. In another new poll, this one by The Des Moines Register, one third of Iowans say they support the Tea Party movement which advocates smaller government and fiscal control. The poll also found that Independents account for nearly half of tea party supporters, Republicans represent a...

Poll: 75% 'angry' at government By: Andy Barr February 8, 2010 11:27 AM EST Three-quarters of the nation’s voters are “angry” at the federal government’s policies, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey out Monday. Of the 1,000 likely voters surveyed Feb. 5-6, 75 percent said they were either “very” or “somewhat” angry with the “current policies of the federal government.” Forty-five percent said they were “very” angry. Only 19 percent said they were “not very” or “not at all” angry with the government, while 6 percent were not sure. Nearly two-thirds, 60 percent, agreed with the statement that “neither...

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is forming a new agency to study and report on the changing climate. Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service. NOAA recently reported...

U.S. 11% Unemployment Coming By May? Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010 Feb 08, 2010 - 08:34 AM By: Mike Shedlock Over the weekend I received an email from Irishscot2, a poster on MarketWatch, regarding seasonal adjustments to the unemployment rate. Hi Mish I believe the seasonal adjustment is no longer valid given that anticipated job creation down the road has not and will not be happening. I expect late spring to reverse the January effect heading into the elections. If so, a perfect political storm brewing because of their models! Irishscot2Irishscot2 compared the unadjusted numbers to the seasonally adjusted...

"If we can go step by step through a series of these issues and arrive at some agreements, then procedurally, there's no reason why we can't do it a lot faster than the process took," he added. Mr. Obama said that he was frustrated by special deals for legislators, such as earmarks, that got into the healthcare reform bills. "They did not help. They frustrate me," he said. "But this is a democracy. I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically-approved approach to health care, and didn't have any kinds of legislative...

Methinks the Party Doth Protest Too Much by John F. Di Leo, for Illinois Review, Feb 8, 2010 A.D. In the 2010 Illinois primary for Lieutenant Governor, the voters of the Democratic Party accepted Scott Lee Cohen’s $3 million media pitch, and gave him the nod. A businessman with interests in pawn shops, environmentally-correct cleaning supplies, and real estate, his past includes some personal imperfections – a domestic battery charge, admitted steroid use, and unpleasant allegations in a divorce proceeding. Unlike many Democratic Party candidates with such issues in their past, Cohen broke precedent by admitting them when he announced....

The Dem-only, GOP stiff-arm that the Trillion dollar President has been treating the nation to for the last year on health care is supposed to go away in one televised meeting. After forcing the end of the only bi-partisan process in Congress and insisting that Congress go the Dem-only route — here are the 19 things the Trillion dollar President is really asking the GOP to help him do:

Overall approval of Congress now 18%, the lowest in over a yearPRINCETON, NJ--Congress' job approval rating from Americans fell six points in the past month, from 24% to 18%--the lowest reading in more than a year. Nearly 8 in 10 (78%) now disapprove. This decline in congressional approval is largely explained by a sharp drop in approval among rank-and-file Democrats, from 45% in January to 30% today. The slight changes in approval among Republicans and independents are not statistically significant. In a related finding, among ideological groups, approval of Congress is down mainly among liberals (from 40% in January to...

The laundry list of Obama supporting the enemy is getting longer and longer. Three other recent articles that show us examples of this are “US Terror Blacklist Whitewashes Hamas, Enables Funding”, “Obama Welcomes Islamic Terrorist Into America”, and “Obama/Gates: We Recognize the Taliban”. Don’t blame me, I did not vote for him. United States to Donate $40 Million to UNRWA Feb/05/10

President Obama has picked to advise him on military actions inside the U.S. the Missouri governor whose state "Information Analysis Center" last year linked conservative organizations to domestic terrorism and said law enforcement officers should watch for suspicious individuals who may have bumper stickers from Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin. Missouri Gov. Jeremiah Nixon, a Democrat, is being joined on the Obama's special advisory panel by the governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuno, and Arizona Gov. Janice Brewer, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's replacement when she moved to Washington. They are among Obama's nominations for the 10 positions on Obama's...

A bipartisan effort to stop the EPA's anticarbon crusade.The Obama Administration has been moving full-speed ahead on anticarbon regulation, never mind waiting for Congress to pass a bill. But now opposition is building among senior Democrats, with two powerful committee Chairmen introducing a bill last week to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from declaring that carbon is a dangerous pollutant. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is busy writing new rules that would let her drive a tax-and-regulation bulldozer through the U.S. economy under laws never meant to apply to greenhouse gases. Ms. Jackson is expected to issue new anticarbon regulations for...

President Barack Obama is planning to host a televised meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on health care reform.

Note: The following text is a quote: Home • Briefing Room • Presidential Actions • Presidential Memoranda The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release February 03, 2010 Presidential Memorandum -- A Comprehensive Federal Strategy on Carbon Capture and Storage MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE THE SECRETARY OF COMMERCE THE SECRETARY OF LABOR THE SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION THE SECRETARY OF ENERGY THE DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY THE CHAIRMAN...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama said Sunday he has not ruled out a New York federal court trial for Sept. 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but he was taking into account the objections of the city's mayor and police commissioner. The Obama administration has come under withering attack, mainly from Republicans, for a decision by his Justice Department to try the terrorist mastermind in a U.S. court near Ground Zero, site of the attack that destroyed New York's World Trade Center. Obama said using the traditional judicial method was a "virtue of our system" in which Americans should take...

After watching her speech at the Tea Party convention, Andrew Sullivan thinks those of us who think Sarah Palin is unelectable as president of the United States should “think again.” The media, too scared be tarred as elitists, will never demand policy specifics from her; there is a huge constituency out there (rightly) outraged by Washington corruption and she now has the critical mantle of the rogue outsider; she can channel Christianism and fuse it with the slogans of phony “fiscal conservatism”; she will blame every lost job on Obama; and she will accuse him of betraying the troops and...

The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama’s decline in the polls represents a new, unexpected turn against him. But an examination of the results of the recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts suggests that what we might really be seeing is a return to the skepticism that significant portions of the electorate have showed about Obama from the beginning of his national career. For six months during the 2008 primaries, Obama and Hillary Clinton crisscrossed the country wooing voters. Obama consistently failed to win over important parts of the Democratic base, even after it became clear that he...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The realization that voters who live 15 minutes outside this city are completely disconnected from people who work and govern here has finally hit. At least it is resonating with the brains who must run the campaigns to retain the largest congressional majority ever held by a political party; the jury is still out with the Obama administration. “It’s bad. No, let me rephrase that – it’s toxic for any incumbent, especially for one that has a ‘D’ after their name,” one in-the-loop Democratic strategist admitted over coffee within the shadow of the Capitol. He’s not predicting...

MSNBC's resident token lesbian Rachel Maddow has disparagingly and bigotedly called the Tea Party Convention attendees racists with white hoods. Spewing these comments on her shameful and lowly rated, barely watched cable opinion show this past Friday, Maddow was in fact basing her slurs on the statements of former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo, who spoke on the first day of the Tea Party Convention. As with all good, liberal bomb-throwers, Maddow is a hypocrite to say the least, but what makes her especially hypocritical is her membership in the token lesbian club on MSNBC. Since she's a gay person, Maddow...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove which gives Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -17

Back in October of 2008, when the subject of Obama’s Constitutional eligibility to be president of the United States was just a blip on the radar screen of public awareness, I wrote an article about how easy it was to find my then -92-year-old mother’s birth certificate. Frankly, I didn’t think finding my mother’s birth certificate was possible, given the fact that she had been born in a farmhouse in Storrs, CT, along with nine of her 10 siblings, to parents who didn’t speak English. Despairing that she would never be “qualified” to receive the care [in a nursing home}...

The writer Rafael Sabatini once described a character as being "born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." This quotation has become my personal mantra. "Just keep repeating it, Barbara, and your head won't explode," I tell myself. Scott Brown has just been sworn in as our U.S. senator and already he a.) is being urged to run for president in 2012, b.) has inspired a new action doll and c.) was being criticized across the political spectrum before he cast his first vote. I enjoyed his ABC "This Week" interview with Barbara Walters...

For those old enough to remember "Paint Your Wagon", you might enjoy this short video done to "THE GOSPEL OF NO NAME CITY". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51z6rkjRzbg

The Brady Campaign trying to drag Starbucks Coffee into the anti-open carry debate is, like the core mission of the gungrabbers, senseless, punitive of the innocent and fundamentally unfair. The coffee giant just wants to sell its wares, and is reluctant to alienate a large market segment simply because anti-rights bluenoses get all hissy when they see anyone pushing beyond social norms they deem acceptable. Here's a company that's not innocent--in fact, they are willful leading collaborators in the global citizen disarmament movement: "American icon," Levi Strauss. Some of us have been waving that denim flag for years--here's an early...

Speaking at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting at the Capitol Hilton in snow-drenched Washington today, President Obama touted new figures from the Labor Department showing a 0.3 percent decrease in the unemployment rate and took a few shots at former President Bush. Faced with mounting national opposition to his party’s platform, the president reminded voters the real reason the trillion-dollar stimulus package still hasn’t reduced unemployment to 8 percent as promised: Bush did it, and it’ll take a lot of time to undo it. “The country cannot return to the “dereliction of duty that helped deliver this recession,” Obama...