Free Republic

Forcing Americans to vote under threat of legal penalty would help to fundamentally transform America Forcing Americans to vote under threat of legal penalty would help to fundamentally transform America, President Obama told a town hall-style meeting in Cleveland yesterday. It is the latest radical leveling scheme that flows from the president’s totalitarian impulses. It is also consistent with his support for “Net Neutrality,” which is a form of censorship and his opposition to the landmark Citizens United decision that affirmed a conservative activist group’s constitutionally guaranteed right to make a movie critical of Hillary Clinton. It is an assault...

The president whose major policy achievement is mandatory health insurance thinks maybe voting should be mandatory, too. Asked how to offset the influence of big money in politics, President Barack Obama suggested it's time to make voting a requirement. "Other countries have mandatory voting," Obama said Wednesday in Cleveland, where he spoke about the importance of middle class economics, and was asked about the issue during a town hall. "It would be transformative if everybody voted -- that would counteract money more than anything," he said, adding it was the first time he had shared the idea publicly. The clout...

President Obama, whose party was trounced in last year’s midterm election due to poor turnout among Democrats, endorsed the idea of mandatory voting Wednesday. “It would be transformative if everybody voted,” Mr. Obama said during a town-hall event in Cleveland. “That would counteract [campaign] money more than anything. If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.” Mr. Obama raised the subject during a discussion of curbing the influence of campaign donations in U.S. elections. The president said he had never discussed the idea publicly before, but said Australia and some other countries have compulsory...

Congress’s two top tax chairmen warned President Obama on Wednesday not to claim unilateral executive powers to raise taxes on his own, saying it violates the Constitution and ruins chances for a lasting deal. Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said they were troubled by White House’s announcement earlier this month that Mr. Obama is “very interested” in exploring what options he has to raise taxes without going through Congress. “This would be a mistake, both constitutionally and politically,” the two lawmakers said, adding...

Washington (CNN)At the time in his tenure when most presidents fret over their waning clout, Barack Obama is redefining the concept of the lame duck. His administration has been energized by his aggressive use of executive power. Some of the most hard-won achievements of his early years in office are beginning to pay off. And his political luck seems to be turning. With a term and a half behind him, Obama's prospects are brighter than they have been for years. "We are on offense," said a White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, noting with satisfaction that...

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Monday that President Obama is "very interested" in the idea of raising taxes through unitlateral executive action. "The president certainly has not indicated any reticence in using his executive authority to try and advance an agenda that benefits middle class Americans," Earnest said in response to a question about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action. "Now I don't want to leave you with the impression that there is some imminent announcement, there is not, at least that I know...

As with so many other things, when it comes to finding ways to pad the government’s pockets, President Obama prefers to skip over that whole Congress thing. Just ask Josh Earnest! According to him, forcing corporations to pay more in taxes through executive action is an option the president would like to keep on his table:

Pres. Obama is daring Republicans to vote on whether or not his executive actions are legal. Discussing opposition to his executive amnesty orders at an immigration town hall Wednesday, Obama said he would veto the vote because his actions are “the right thing to do”: “So in the short term, if Mr. McConnell, the leader of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, want to have a vote on whether what I’m doing is legal or not, they can have that vote. I will veto that vote, because I’m absolutely confident that what we’re doing is the...

A confident President Obama said Wednesday he won’t be stopped by “one federal judge,” telling a Miami crowd he’ll move ahead with his controversial executive action on immigration and vowing his administration will become even more aggressive in the weeks and months to come. At a town hall meeting hosted by Telemundo and MSNBC, the president also threatened to veto GOP-backed legislation that would undo his immigration action. That measure is expected to come up for a vote later this week. Mr. Obama took executive steps last year to halt deportations for millions of illegal immigrants, but a federal judge...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton complained that “different media” are dividing the country, making it impossible for people to even have a conversation with each other. Clinton made her remarks yesterday in an interview with Re/Code’s Kara Swisher. She criticized America’s “partisan bunkers” for getting in the way of confronting tough issues like racism, sexism and homophobia. “Nobody wants to associate with anybody who doesn’t agree with them politically,” she said. “You can’t have a conversation, people won’t listen to each other, they listen to different media, and those different media (outlets) tell different stories about the very same...

The discovery that the Obama’s administration will now allow undocumented immigrants to apply for deferred action and advanced parole simultaneously — opening a path to citizenship — is a “scandal,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said Friday. “Our laws have been dismantled, stripped bare,” Sessions, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, said. Friday House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte revealed that the Obama administration is now allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for deferred action and advance parole at the same time. According to the House Judiciary Committee, once granted advance parole, the DACA beneficiaries may be able...

Welcome to Obama's Department of the Internet help line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnY3roP-oJI

FDR, the man who studied Mussolini, who birthed the current intrusive state, who started the drug war in earnest, who put Japanese Americans into concentration camps, who extended the Depression years longer than it needed to be and thereby contributed to the genesis of the Second World War, who tried to pack the Supreme Court, who gave away half of Europe to the Soviets at Yalta, and who confiscated the gold – the real wealth – of the American people. What a guy. And he still has his face on the dime. There is a reason why my grandmother, a...

Title only:"Obama Signs Executive Order Closing Congress" But that says enough

Regulation: Cures for cancer and Ebola having been found, the federal ubernannies have decreed that sprinkles should no longer adorn kids' ice cream because they contain the trans fat that liberal groups once pushed for. Come the New Year, the Food and Drug Administration, ignoring the principle that in most cases it's the dose that defines the poison, will issue new regulations designed to remove even trace amounts of hydrogenate oils, commonly known as trans fats, from our diets. Trans fats have been in our foods since the 1950s to increase shelf life and improve taste. A small amount appears...

I have long been reporting on Castro-ruled Cuba and, indeed, was there not long after Fidel Castro had taken over the country. What became clear, as the number of Castro’s political prisoners increased, was that his revolutionary Cuba was a dictatorship, like the regime he had ousted. After I wrote that, a member of his administration rebuked me for my rank ignorance. I responded by saying that he knew that if I were a Cuban in Cuba, I would be in prison. Later, at the United Nations, I was one of a number of reporters interviewing Che Guevara, the young,...

President Obama continues to embrace low-tier, go-it-alone executive actions to pad the last two years of his mistake-filled, empty-agenda presidency in a hopeless hunt for a legacy. His arrogant decision this week to re-establish diplomatic relations with communist Cuba is the latest example of a president desperately searching for something do without having to deal with Congress. You can comb through all of the polling data for the top concerns of the American people, and renewing U.S. relations with Cuba's evil Castro dictatorship is not among them. With his job approval ratings in the basement and his political party toppled...

The New Year worry for a watching world is if Obama can open up channels for drastic policy changes in Cuba without the knowledge of the American population and Congress, when will he do the same for Iran? Just as Fidel Castro became Cuba’s dictator when he and his guerrillas triumphantly entered Havana on January 7, 1959, President Barack Obama became America’s dictator on Dec. 17, 2014. Swaggering into Havana dressed in army fatigues with his signature cigar, Castro claimed the island as his own. Like a thief making off with a nation in the middle of the night, Obama...

Imagine living your entire life using the name that was given to you at birth and then having the government tell you that you have to change it. We’re not at that point in the United States (yet), but in North Korea, that’s exactly what everyone with the name “Jong-Un” is being forced to do. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un apparently loves his name so much that he’s decided that no one else can use it. Since Jong-un is quite a popular name in the country, it looks like a lot of people are going to have to look for...

Procedure: (1) Gain control of the “purse”; (2) Buy lots of votes; (3) Be the dictatorial ruler. Chavez: (1) Controlled Venezuela’s oil & oil revenue; (2) Created entitlements for the masses; (3) Became dictator for life. Obama: (1) Remember the nearly $1T stimulus legislated to Obama to use, which he gave as bailouts & required repayment be made to “his” stimulus fund & NOT to the US treasury (thus purse created & under his control); (2) Exec Order “amnesty & entitlements (paid for from his purse, thus bypassing Congress) to the massive number of illegal immigrants so they become a...