Free Republic

Hatred for Charles and David Koch is now so pervasive among the far-left that unions are actually protesting a hospital that committed the cardinal sin of accepting a $100 million donation from the infamous billionaires–even though the money will likely create jobs for unionized employees of the hospital. The donation, made by businessman and philanthropist David Koch, is the largest in the New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s history, and will be used to build a new wing at the facility, according to The Washington Free Beacon. The Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles pointed out that the donation “will presumably create a fair number...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The recent Conservative Political Action Conference provides a forum for big names. But it’s also a platform for the murmurs and asides from political strategists who’ve been everywhere and done everything, and like to speculate. Such is the case when the potential presidential candidacy ofHillary Clinton was parsed by a pair of insiders. Would she run? Maybe, if her health and vigor remain strong. But is she holding a place for someone else? Could be. The take-away suggestion: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is seriously being groomed as a White House contender. “Maybe in the lead role, maybe the running mate....

In a Breitbart column insisting that Ronald Reagan was not as assertive as commonly believed on military and foreign policy issues, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) mentions, in passing, “I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976.” . But his father, Ron Paul, is hardly a Reaganite today. Indeed, he is now claiming that Crimea has a right to leave Ukraine and join Russia, and that U.S. sanctions against the Russian regime are “criminal.” “That’s just people looking to start a war,” Paul said. “This is criminal, it’s stealing and will just aggravate...

There is another roadblock on the Democrats' plan to turn Texas blue. On Monday Michael Barone belatedly noted the unexpected showing of Ray Madrigal indicates possible dissatisfaction by Hispanics with the pro-abortion feminists beloved by Democratic Party leadership. What hasn't earned more than a couple of brief mentions, however, is the unexpected development in the US Senate race in Texas. The Democrat plan was to have an attractive, well financed candidate ready for after the Republicans pulled themselves apart in a battle between the establishment and the Tea Party. The reality is the Republican primary was tame but there is...

Democrats took to the Senate floor Monday night to talk about global warming and planned not to let up until morning. At least 28 senators were expected to participate in the dusk-to-dawn event, which was led off by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. Several Democrats who face tough reelection fights in the fall planned to skip it. Democratic leaders have no plans to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor this year, so the speeches were about little more than theatrics.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Enforcement issues surround two Northern California cities' bans on high-capacity magazines. The Oakland Tribune (http://tinyurl.com/lvtufr3 ) reported Saturday that since Sunnyvale's ban went into effect midnight Thursday, not one of the now-illegal magazines has been turned in. San Francisco police report that they have no system to track whether any magazines have been turned in for destruction under the new ordinance. San Francisco residents must surrender their high-capacity magazines to police by April 7....

LANSING -- The Service Employees International Union will pay almost $200,000 to settle alleged campaign finance violations from a failed 2012 ballot proposal seeking collective bargaining rights for home health workers. The settlement was announced Monday by Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, whose office investigated a complaint that the union skirted campaign finance laws. The complaint was filed by political advocacy group Michigan Freedom Fund The complaint accused the principals behind Home Care First and Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care of intentionally delaying required filings with Johnson's office to conceal that SEIU had made substantial contributions to support the...

The Health and Human Services inspector general (IG) will launch an investigation into the failed ObamaCare exchange in Maryland, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) announced Monday. “Maryland officials ignored early warning signs and chose to waste and abuse federal taxpayer money by opening up what they knew was a flawed exchange to the public,” he wrote in a statement. “I have confidence that the nonpartisan and independent HHS Inspector General will thoroughly investigate and bring to light how hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted on one of the worst exchange roll outs in the country,” he added. An official with...

Democratic Senate candidates, facing withering criticism on the national health care law, are gambling they can turn voters against two billionaire brothers funding the attacks—even if few Americans would recognize the pair on the street. In an accelerating counteroffensive stretching from the Senate chamber to Alaska, Democrats are denouncing Charles and David Koch, the key figures behind millions of dollars in conservative TV ads hammering Democratic candidates and their ties to President Barack Obama. Democrats depict the Kansas-based Koch (pronounced “Coke”) brothers as self-serving oil barons who pay huge sums to try to “buy” elections and advance their agenda of...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) denounced the latest GOP efforts to intervene in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The former Speaker’s remarks followed a House vote to delay the individual mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. “When will these people recognize that this is the President’s law?” Pelosi asked. “They’re the ones that insist it be called Obamacare, for heavens sake. Shouldn’t it be clear that if any changes are needed that the President be the one to enact them?” That changes might be needed seems readily evident. Problems with the website, complaints from...

Jermalle Brown and Douglas Bufford were gang members hired to combat violence on the South Side through a program hatched by Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration. Paid with taxpayer funds to hand out anti-violence pamphlets, the teens were part-time foot soldiers in the governor’s $54.5 million Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, a program described as “a comprehensive and concerted effort to keep our young people safe, off the streets and in school.” Quinn launched that program a month before his 2010 election as an answer to gun carnage in the city — even though murders that year dipped to a nearly 50-year low....

<p>Harvey Weinstein revealed on Saturday that he wasn't sure how he felt about Barack and Michelle Obama when Hillary Clinton -- a longtime friend -- was defeated by Obama in the Democratic primary.</p> <p>"I strongly support Hillary. When she lost, Michelle invited me back in ... but I thought I was going to sit that one out," Weinstein said during his keynote speech at the 38th annual UCLA Entertainment Symposium, hosted by the UCLA School of Law.</p>

Harry Reid is under a lot of job-retention stress these days, so Americans might forgive him the occasional word fumble. When he recently took to the Senate floor to berate the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch for spending "unlimited money" to "rig the system" and "buy elections," the majority leader clearly meant to be condemning unions. It's an extraordinary thing, in a political age obsessed with campaign money, that nobody scrutinizes the biggest, baddest, "darkest" spenders of all: organized labor. The IRS is muzzling nonprofits; Democrats are "outing" corporate donors; Jane Mayer is probably working on part 89 of...

Illinois offers grants to boost school security By The Associated Press Posted Mar. 9, 2014 @ 7:57 am Public schools, colleges and universities in Illinois have a few more days to apply for state grants to help pay for security improvements. Under the program, schools can get financial help for things such as installing reinforced doors, locks and shatter-proof glass.

A daylight street fight in the Back Bay turned bloody yesterday when a man stabbed two women, leaving one of them in critical condition before fleeing, a witness and police said. Nigel Stone, 18, of North Attleboro said he was on the other side of Hereford Street, about 70 yards away, when two women fighting caught his eye. The women were punching each other and pulling each other’s hair when a man intervened, stabbing the woman winning the scuffle along with a second woman — who was not involved in the fight — but was at her side, Stone said.

"When Aretha first told us what R-S-P-E-C-T meant to her," he began, causing the crowd to laugh.....

The big takeaway from the 2012 election was the limits of the modern Republican electoral coalition. It increasingly appears that the big takeaway from 2014 will be the limits of the modern Democratic electoral coalition. Each side's dilemma fits neatly into a bookend. Republicans can't attract enough minorities to consistently capture the White House. Democrats can't win enough whites to consistently control Congress. The 2012 election crystallized the Republican presidential dilemma. Mitt Romney won more than three-fifths of both whites over 45 and blue-collar whites, and a higher share of the total white vote than Ronald Reagan did in his...

Gov. Mark Dayton wants to use half of the state's $1.2 billion budget surplus for tax relief, and the Minnesota House gave him most of what he's after by passing a $503 million package of tax cuts on a 126-2 vote Thursday. Hours before the vote, Dayton proposed a supplemental budget that calls for cutting taxes by $616 million, stashing most of the rest of the surplus in a rainy-day reserve account and providing a relatively small sum for "essential" new spending. "Our improving economy has greatly improved the state's budget forecast, giving us the opportunity to put more money...

Three people were charged Wednesday in connection to an extensive welfare fraud scheme. The scheme involved using EBT cards to purchase products in the Twin Cities and then ship them overseas for sale in Africa. According to the Ramsey County Attorney's Office, 39-year-old Noni Shanita Snider of Eden Prairie was charged with one count of wrongfully obtaining public assistance and one count conspiracy to commit a felony; 38-year-old Walter Carr Cooper of Plymouth was charged with one count of wrongfully obtaining public assistance and one count conspiracy to commit a felony; and 40-year-old Nyla Jean Newburgh of Minneapolis was charged...

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. The radical Marxist-progressives (communists) took control of the democrat party some time ago. They’ve only become more emboldened with the election of Barack Obama, who was raised as a communist from birth. With their new found leader, Barack Obama, the Socialist Party of America felt secure enough to announce the names of 70 democrats in Congress that belong to their caucus. Other than Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who openly ran as a socialist, the rest of this lot ran as “moderate democrats.” I think it’s time we put the myth...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he knows his recent comments about the Koch brothers -- wealthy Republican donors -- have stirred controversy. "But I will continue to shine a light on their subversion of democracy," Reid promised in another vituperative speech on the Senate floor Tuesday. "This is about two very wealthy individuals who intend to buy their very own Congress -- a Congress beholden to their money and bound to enact their radical philosophy."

ladimir Putin has put President Barack Obama’s vacation plans on hold. Obama’s headed to Coral Reef High School in the southern part of the city for an event about education and the economy Friday, which first lady Michelle Obama had been expected to attend as well. What hadn’t been known was that Obama’s daughters were planning to come with them, and that the four were going to extend the trip for a brief family getaway. Now the White House tells POLITICO that he’s reconsidering. “The president had planned to stay in South Florida with his family for the remainder of...

President Obama is planning to break the law, once again, in an effort to protect vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. According to news reports, “the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet Obamacare’s minimum coverage requirements.” In the absence of this “directive,” health insurance companies would have to cancel millions of health policies just a few weeks before November’s congressional elections. Obama’s edict would theoretically forestall, until after those crucial midterms, a tsunami of voter outrage that would inevitably drown the reelection prospects of many Democrats. It’s not clear,...

Throughout history, killing Jews – especially Jewish babies – has been a national pastime for some countries. Ancient Egypt killed Jewish male children to keep the slave population under control. King Herod killed all of the Jewish boys under the age of two in an attempt to get rid of the newborn Jesus. Russia has killed a lot of Jews over the last few centuries. Germany killed over six-million Jews in just six years. Arabs live to kill Jews. It’s amazing that there are any Jews left to kill! You would think that with so many people out to murder...

MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- A debate Tuesday over a bill to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected turned to race after Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, R-Indian Springs, compared her bill to Brown vs. the Board of Education. But during the debate, Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said that his Republican colleagues would support abortion if their daughters were impregnated by black men.

(CNN) -- Democratic governors are working every day to grow and strengthen a middle class that's been under assault from global economic forces and failed, trickle-down policies for decades. In furtherance of that mission, we will be proud to stand with President Barack Obama, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee at Central Connecticut State University this afternoon to announce actions we're taking to raise the minimum wage in our states to $10.10 an hour by 2017.

Once in a blue moon you come across somebody in the service industry who does such a good job that you think to yourself, "That guy or girl is going places." And if they are going places, they are the first ones to understand that they aren't going there on a minimum wage. No, they are getting their feet wet by working and interacting with the public, and their big dreams have nothing to do with a lifetime plan of working for $9.50 an hour. That's the number, $9.50 an hour, that's being kicked around by DFLers in the Legislature....

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texans went to the polls on Tuesday in primary elections where the top candidates for governor were expected to post easy wins and favorites of the conservative Tea Party movement are trying to topple established Republicans in several races. U.S. Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, will win his race easily, opinion polls show. Attorney General Greg Abbott, the leading Republican candidate for governor, and state Senator Wendy Davis, the top Democratic Party candidate, were also expected to win by wide margins. Voting closes at 7 p.m. U.S. Central Time. Run-off elections will be held on May...

A judge has granted a temporary protective injunction against U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, after his wife filed paperwork accusing the Orlando congressman of shoving and injuring her during an incident this weekend. Lolita Grayson's petition for the injunction, dated Monday, says her husband pushed her against a door, causing her to fall to the ground, during a confrontation Saturday at their home on Oak Park Road, near Windermere. /snip After she refused, retrieved his mail and asked him to leave, Alan Grayson "then deliberately and with force pushed [Lolita Grayson] very hard against the front door, causing [her] to fall...

According to the New York Post, New York City’s mad cap Sandinista Mayor Bill de Blasio is about to find out a truth that conservatives have known all along, that bashing the rich can only go so far. It seems when he is not throwing little children out of charter schools or banning carriage rides in Central Park, de Blasio is on full class warfare mode and is going after New York’s one percent with a vengeance. It seems that the wealthy elite are starting to have had enough and are getting ready to decamp en masse, to Florida it...

I posted this picture of an astronomically high price for a bag of fake pennies earlier. It reminded me of this piece by me also involving the penny.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds says he is in hiding in South Africa following his deportation from Zimbabwe because he believes his life is in danger. He told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he believes he is being pursued by a secret Zimbabwean death squad because of information he has on American businessmen, especially from Chicago, who are doing business illegally with Zimbabwe.

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects behind Obamacare, is now claiming that “insurance companies as we know them are about to die.” Critics of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law have long alleged that one of the real goals of law was to put private insurance companies out of business.

The winners have accepted their statuettes at the 86th Annual Academy Awards show at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. This is the complete list of Oscar award winners:

On Thursday, the Obama administration quietly announced it will allow consumers in states with busted Obamacare websites to retroactively bag taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies, even if they purchased health insurance outside the Obamacare marketplace. The move by the Obama administration will help Democratic candidates facing voters irate over Obamacare by now retroactively cutting checks to citizens in states with broken Obamacare websites. As CBS News reports, "Those who stand to benefit the most are Democratic governors who plunged ahead and ran into problems" because "Republican governors basically defaulted to federal control of online sign-ups in their states." Democratic Oregon Gov. John...

Last year, Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option in the Senate in order to get Barack Obama’s appointees confirmed over Republican opposition. His latest appointee might be doomed anyway. Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) announced on Friday that he will oppose the confirmation of Debo Adegbile to run the Civil Rights Division at Justice on account of Adegbile’s activism for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal: Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) said Friday he will vote against Senate confirmation of Debo Adegbile, an Obama administration nominee who has been criticized for his role in trying to overturn the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal,...

WASHINGTON — If Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 — and there’s one chance in five of that — the party could have a nervous breakdown. On the national level, the Democratic bench is weaker, or more overshadowed, than at any time in the past several decades. There are several reasons. The election disaster in 2010 wiped out many possibilities, especially at the gubernatorial level. More important, with two heavyweight camps — President Obama and the Clintons — there is no political oxygen for anyone else. Suppose, for example, that upon taking over as...

Hillary seems like a fighter in the Tenth Round of the match.Alternative title: Is Hillary sick in the head? FWIW, I’ve notice Hillary lately having a vacant, sickly appearance. Not enough to have done a post about it, but I noticed. Alex Pappas at The Daily Caller writes that others have noticed, too. Whispers persist that Hillary won’t run: Health may be worse than disclosed. "If you listen to the chattering class in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton is a virtual certainty for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and the front-runner in the next presidential race. But in private, rumors persist that...

Money — it’s the root of all evil. Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Or at least an unfair advantage. That’s the gist of the liberals’ creed and justification for their war on wealth. The other half of their view holds that the poor are innocent victims of life’s rigged game. Their narrative of evil winners and noble losers clears the way for self-heroic redeemers. They will deliver social justice by meting out punishment and spreading the wealth around. Their virtue entitles them to power. It sounds like a comic-book view of life, but it’s the reality of...

The entire flap over SB 1062 in Arizona has left a lot of people scratching their heads, particularly given the virtual media explosion over the fate of the bill and what it means going forward. As it turns out, there is similar legislation pending in Georgia even as we speak, and even though public clamor has already led to the bill being taken off the calendar, the rampant hyperbole which marked the coverage of Jan Brewer’s decision is not in short supply. One of the leading shots across the bow was penned for CNN by the two person team of...

2016: If Democrats really mean it when they say global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, why settle for President Hillary Clinton? This is a job for superman Al Gore. Secretary of State John Kerry calls climate change "perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction." A billionaire hedge fund manager and Obama donor plans to spend $100 million this year on attack ads against Democrats who don't agree. If a warming climate is so important, why give Hillary the Democratic nomination? The only climate-linked achievement Clinton could cite in her 2008 campaign was an obscure 2007 amendment...

My mistake. I thought the White House might try to make all of this go away by accepting Putin’s phony pretense that it’s a domestic uprising among ethnic Russians in Crimea, not an invasion by Russia. In fact, says the White House, there is a foreign element to the new troop presence — but it’s all good so far because Crimea isn’t resisting. In other words, to save face over the fact that there’s nothing much we can do to stop this, the official U.S. line is that this can’t be an invasion if the Russians are being … greeted...

If two-term Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick wants to be a candidate for president in 2016, he’s faced with one problematic detail: We’ve already had a black president. Patrick, who’s the Bay State’s first African-American chief executive, is openly chewing on a bid for the White House, answering “maybe” in a recent Politico interview when asked about a possible run. “That’s a decision I have to make along with my wife of 30 years, and she’s a tough one to convince,” he said. “Let’s just see what time tells.” The problem, though, isn’t so much convincing his wife—who’s probably attracted now,...

Despite Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's claim earlier this week that ObamaCare "horror stories" weren't true, there are plenty of real people out there with real problems. Reid managed to ignite a firestorm when he accused those who complain about canceled policies and higher rates under ObamaCare of flat-out lying. "There's plenty of horror stories being told,” he said. “All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America." Tell that to Linda Deright, who told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto,"There must be six million of us, then. I think we should just call ourselves the liars' club." Tom...

Attorney General Eric Holder’s call to restore voting rights to felons after they’ve served their time in prison has split Senate Democrats. Liberal Democrats who are not facing tough re-elections this year say it’s the right thing to do, but vulnerable incumbents are steering clear of the proposal. Holder has become increasingly outspoken recently. This week he declared that state attorneys general are not obligated to defend laws that are discriminatory. Political experts say barring ex-felons from voting impacts African Americans disproportionately. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who faces a competitive challenge from former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, is...

Video at the link.This should be interesting. Palazzo is an establishment GOP goober. The TEA Party candidate, Joe Tegerdine, lost the primary to him. Palazzo's dad is big buds with Halley Barbour. Rumor has it his crooked a snake.

Striking a decidedly partisan tone, President Barack Obama sought Friday to define this year’s elections as a stark choice between Republicans pushing failed policies from a bygone era and Democrats advocating freedom and opportunity for all Americans. Rallying the party faithful at a Democratic National Committee summit, Obama rattled off a list of issues where he said Republicans were stuck in the past: gay rights, women’s equality, wages and health care, to name a few. Driving the midterm election campaigns across the country this year, he said, is a fundamental disagreement between the parties about the best way to secure...

Gun-grabbing Democrat Representative Joseph S. Almeida introduced deceptively titled “Safe Firearms Act” (H 7583) yesterday to the Rhode Island General Assembly yesterday. The citizen control law (PDF) is more restrictive than controversial laws in New York and Connecticut in some respects. It bans the purchase of so-defined “assault weapons” immediately upon enactment, and requires registration of all firearms that meet the definition. The bill, referred to the House Judiciary Committee, targets selective-fire and semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols, both rimfire and centerfire, and adds a constructive possession clause that would deem any otherwise compliant firearm an “assault weapon” if the...

In the midst of the Obama Administration's efforts to “reform” IRS regulations, the Senate Democratic majority rejected language proposed by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would have blocked the IRS from acting to penalize dissent against government policies and programs. The specific text of Senator Cruz's proposed language would have made it unlawful for the IRS to “willfully act with the intent to injure, oppress, threaten, intimidate, or single out and subject to undue scrutiny any person or organization in any state.” As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) explained, “whether intent is malicious or scrutiny is undue is a...

This feels like old times. Across the pond at the Telegraph, Tim Stanley and Daniel Hannan are having a friendly disagreement on the question of whether the Nazis were in fact socialists. I don’t usually wade into these arguments anymore, but I’ve been writing a lot on related themes over the last few weeks and I couldn’t resist. Not surprisingly, I come down on Hannan’s side. I could write a whole book about why I agree with Dan, except I already did. So I’ll be more succinct. Fair warning, though, I wrote this on a plane trip back from...