Free Republic

Just before the weekend, the National Park Service informed charter boat captains in Florida that the Florida Bay was "closed" due to the shutdown. Until government funding is restored, the fishing boats are prohibited from taking anglers into 1,100 square-miles of open ocean. Fishing is also prohibited at Biscayne National Park during the shutdown.

The grossly obese Syrian officer was coming in the door of the King Khalid Military City exchange while I was coming out. I saw instantly that this was no soldier; this was a thug, a threat only to the unarmed civilians that are his kind’s prey. My eyes fell downward from his cruel face to the piece of flair gracing his olive green fatigues. “Nice Assad button,” I sneered. Real warriors don’t wear pictures of dictators on their uniform. He glared back at me with his dark, rat eyes, not understanding my words but fully appreciating my contempt. Though Syria...

Obama May Be Walking Into an Impeachment Trap Posted on Aug 30, 2013 Beth Rankin (CC BY 2.0) By Kevin Zeese, PopularResistance This article originated with PopularResistance.org. The irony of the Obama presidency may hinge on whether he attacks Syria. He began his presidency prematurely winning the Nobel Peace Prize and could end it being impeached for starting an illegal war without congressional or UN approval – violating both domestic and international law. Yesterday 163 Members of Congress sent letters to President Obama telling him that under the US Constitution he is required to get congressional approval before beginning a...

Slowly at first, then all of a sudden, the Obama administration has devolved into the Obama regime. Obama does whatever he wants. Those pesky impediments on his predecessors — namely, federal law, the separation of powers, and the Constitution — have proved as tough as tissue paper in containing Obama’s ambition to impose statism on America. From Obamacare to unions to telephones, it’s basically another day, another decree. “I have to figure out what I can do outside of Congress through executive actions,” Obama reportedly told the Congressional Black Caucus last month. In Jacksonville on July 25, Obama announced, “Where...

I'm in them middle of a discussion with some folks who want me to list incidents where people have been arrested for disagreeing with Obama. I know there have been incidents where people have had things happen to them, because they go against this administration, but can anyone give me some backup (links, etc) that show whether anyone has been arrested, and/or worse, because of disagreeing with Obama? I know the IRS is a big one...although no one has been arrested, or have they?

The Obama administration announced last month via blog post that the president was unilaterally suspending ObamaCare's employer mandate—notwithstanding the clear command of the law. President Obama's comments about it on Aug. 9—claiming that "the normal thing [he] would prefer to do" is seek a "change to the law"—then added insult to constitutional injury. It also offers a sharp contrast with a different president who also suspended the law. As for Republican congressmen who had the temerity to question his authority, Mr. Obama said only: "I'm not concerned about their opinions—very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less...

The Obama administration faced a backlash from congressional Democrats on Friday following revelations that the National Security Agency broke privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times since 2008. The details were reported late Thursday in The Washington Post, based on an audit and other secret documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. The report challenged claims by President Obama just last week that the NSA was not abusing its authority, and complicated his effort to reassure Americans and Congress that -- with a little more oversight and transparency -- the surveillance programs are nothing to be worried about....

As a reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, many federal drug laws carry strict mandatory sentences. This has stirred unease in Congress and sparked a bipartisan effort to revise and relax some of the more draconian laws. Traditionally — meaning before Barack Obama — that’s how laws were changed: We have a problem, we hold hearings, we find some new arrangement ratified by Congress and signed by the president. That was then. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder, a liberal in a hurry, ordered all U.S. attorneys to simply stop charging nonviolent, non-gang-related drug defendants with crimes that,...

BOULDER, Colo. | EPA chief Gina McCarthy said Wednesday that the Obama administration is finished waiting for Congress to act on climate change and plans to bypass the legislative branch in developing a federal response. Ms. McCarthy, who was confirmed last month as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, cited President Obama’s June 25 speech at Georgetown University, in which he unveiled his Climate Action Plan and vowed to make combatting climate change a priority of his second term. Mr. Obama gave “what I really think is a most remarkable speech by a president of the United States,” said Ms. McCarthy in...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department's application for a waste site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was "simply flouting the law" when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of...

President Barack Obama has found a way to cater to his obsession with pre-K programs while the rest of his education agenda stalls: Skip Congress and spend the money anyway. Hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary funding for early learning are funneling into states although Congress hasn’t seriously considered paying for President Barack Obama’s universal preschool proposal. Race to the Top early learning awards and Affordable Care Act money are helping states carry out their pre-K and early childcare plans. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is traveling the country to deliver what amounts to an early childhood stump speech, and...

TWO beliefs continue to shape debate on Obamacare. First, pre-existing medical conditions shouldn’t prevent people from obtaining affordable health insurance. And second, people who don’t want health insurance shouldn’t be forced by the government to purchase it. These may seem to be reasonable positions. But they are incompatible. That’s been shown by historical events, and it’s now being strikingly confirmed by recent experience in the emerging Obamacare insurance exchanges. The crux of the matter is what economists call the adverse-selection problem. Uninsured people with pre-existing conditions often face tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical costs...

Obama threatened the GOP this week that “racial tensions may get worse” if he does not get his way with the economy.The White House Dossier reported: President Obama said that if economic prescriptions of the type he supports to increase economic growth and reduce “income inequality” are not adopted, then race relations in the United State may deteriorate further. “If we don’t do anything, then growth will be slower than it should be. Unemployment will not go down as fast as it should. Income inequality will continue to rise,” Obama said in an interview published Sunday by the New York...

Politico’s Glenn Thrush reports that after President Obama won re-election, he tried to find out ways of pushing his second term agenda without the Republican-led Congress. “Guys, I don’t want politics to be a limit of what you recommend to me,” Obama told senior aides David Plouffe, Lew, Dan Pfeiffer and Pete Rouse a couple of weeks after his reelection, according to a White House aide with direct knowledge of the meeting. “Let’s come up with an agenda, then let’s figure it out from there as best we can,” he said, prodding them to adopt a more muscular approach to...

Katie covered the breaking news last evening -- a classic bad news dump on the front end of a long holiday weekend. The administration is out of luck if it hopes their major announcement will disappear amidst hot dogs and parades; we'll be talking about this move for the next year-and-a-half: The Obama administration will delay a crucial provision of its signature health-care law, giving businesses an extra year to comply with a requirement that they provide their workers with insurance. The government will postpone enforcement of the so-called employer mandate until 2015, after the congressional elections, the administration...

DAKAR (AFP) – Senegalese authorities on Sunday detained former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre, who faces trial for crimes against humanity during his eight-year rule, judicial officials said. "Hissene Habre has been taken into custody as part of the probe," said a prosecutor with a special court set up to try the former leader. One of Habre's lawyers, El Hadji Diouf, said he had been arrested at his home in Dakar and taken to an unknown destination.

President Barack Obama will attempt to kick-start a global climate agenda on Tuesday with proposals including a plan to limit carbon emissions from existing U.S. power plants that is sure to face opposition from the coal industry, many business groups and Republican lawmakers. None of the president's proposals, including plans to reduce emissions from heavy duty trucks after 2018, require congressional approval. The White House plan includes measures to tackle HFCs as well as emissions from methane, another potent greenhouse gas.

Yup. His daddy was a communist. His mommy was a communist. His mentor was a communist. He admitted in his book before running for the presidency that he himself was a Marxist. And that may be part of the misunderstanding and confusion. It may be that many people do not understand what a Marxist is. "Marxist" is just a fancy word for a communist. And Obama is a self-admitted, constitution-hating, spread-the-wealth-around Marxist/communist. And no one can deny that. It's a self-evident, self-admitted fact. And he wants to transform America. Transform it to what? Transform it from a free country to...

The unfolding story of the Obama administration monitoring not just telephone records but Internet usage has drawn media coverage with adjectives like "astonishing." No doubt about it, even the pro-Obama press acknowledges it is a scandal. Still, it is laughable that the media would label him a "dictator" or discuss the "I word." That's not what greeted George W. Bush at the end of 2005. Just eight years ago, journalists openly discussed tyranny and the possibility of impeachment. On Newsweek's website on December 19, 2005, Jonathan Alter went ballistic: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license...

Obama: 'I Don’t Have Much Patience for People Who Deny Climate Change' "My only interest is making sure that when I look back 20 years from now..." Daniel Halper May 30, 2013 7:02 AM At a fundraiser last night in Chicago, President Barack Obama signaled that he's interested in his legacy as a president and insisted that he's willing to work with anyone. "My only interest is making sure that when I look back 20 years from now, I say I accomplished everything that I could while I had this incredible privilege to advance the interests of the broadest number...