Free Republic

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...

Reid continues to say that the nuclear option in the Senate is on the table: I'm speaking @CAPAction to discuss why changing Senate rules is good for the institution. #EndGridlock Watch here: http://t.co/aVwisuCrjy— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) July 15, 2013 End the gridlock eh? I seem to recall a time when the Democrats were in the minority during Bush's tenure and during that time Reid and pals made gridlock a household name. Senate Democrats mounted an unprecedented filibuster campaign against Bush’s judicial nominees. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Todd Gaziano, the average number of days a Court of Appeals nominee...

Carney on Obama’s erstwhile opposition to Senate filibuster changes: Yeah, but that was different posted at 6:01 pm on July 12, 2013 by Erika Johnsen In the Green Room this afternoon, Guy highlighted now-President Obama’s adamant opposition to the “nuclear option” of altering Senate procedures to limit minority rights back in 2005, and his bizarre reversal from said position in the present day and age. Invoking the nuclear option, said 2005-era Sen. Obama, would have marked the “end of democratic debate”; indeed, the “fighting and the gridlock would only get worse,” his former self pronounced with conviction. So… what...

On Monday the IRS provided the 'smoking gun' pointed at its own head, in reports and information showing that the government agency made decisions based upon the views of pro-Israel groups which disagreed with the administration about the 'Disputed Territories.'Ever since the beginning of the scandal concerning the United States Internal Revenue Service and the claims that it had a policy of treating differently – as in worse – organizations seeking tax exemptions if those organizations held positions in conflict with this US administration, there have been doubters. And, of course, the way the story has been spun fans the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is planning a major push using executive powers to tackle the pollution blamed for global warming in an effort to make good on promises he made at the start of his second term. "We know we have to do more — and we will do more," Obama said Wednesday in Berlin. Obama's senior energy and climate adviser, Heather Zichal, said the plan would boost energy efficiency of appliances and buildings, expand renewable energy and use the Environmental Protection Agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate heat-trapping pollution from coal-fired power plants. Zichal,...

5. Dictatorship of Relativism In his futuristic novel Brave New World, the British author Aldous Huxley had predicted in 1932 that falsification would be the decisive element of modernity. In a false reality with its false truth – or the absence of truth altogether – nothing, in the final analysis, is important any more.There is no truth, there is no standpoint. Today, in fact, truth is regarded as far too subjective a concept for us to find therein a universally valid standard. The distinction between genuine and fake seems to have been abolished. Everything is to some extent negotiable. Is...

The White House signaled Monday that President Obama will delay signing a controversial arms trade treaty until after Congress leaves for summer recess. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president aims to sign the pact “before the end of August.” Obama could have signed it as early as Monday. The National Rifle Association (NRA) opposes the treaty, and the delay would allow Obama to sign the pact during the August doldrums, with Congress out of town. That time frame appears to validate the concerns of treaty advocates who had worried the administration would wait until the cover of darkness...

PELL CITY, Alabama -- St. Clair and Bibb county authorities are confirming there were roadblocks at several locations in their counties Friday and Saturday asking for blood and DNA samples. However, the samples were voluntary and motorists were paid for them as part of a study, they said. According to Lt. Freddie Turrentine of the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department, it isn't the first time such roadblocks have occurred in the area. "They were here in 2007," said Turrentine, the supervisor in charge of the roadblocks, which took place in several locations in St. Clair County Friday night, early Saturday...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Security Agency has been collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order, according to a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper.</p> <p>The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the newspaper reported Wednesday. The order requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.</p>

When fascism comes to America, what will it look (and feel) like? Very much like what we have now, because a version of fascism is already here. I am not the first to worry about the prospect of fascism in America. In 1935, for example, Sinclair Lewis published It Can't Happen Here, which is a fictional account of a fascist take-over of the country. In 2008, Joe Conason published It Can Happen Here. The book's subtitle, Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, tells all we need to know.

President Obama’s administration, fronted by a “paid liar” of a spokesman, has created an anti-conservative atmosphere that led to IRS scrutiny of right-leaning organizations, top Republicans said Sunday. “The culture of the president calling Tea Party groups terrorists and ‘tea-baggers,’ and that entire culture has been cultivated by the president and his people, and everyone has been following,’ Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said on Fox News Sunday. …

As you prepare to grill out your steaks and fly your flags, take time from the swilling of beer to consider the following. Our government is completely out of control. Benghazi, Fast-n-Furious, IRS Abuse, 100,000 perjured affidavits, phony securities marketed under false pretense, Congressional force used to commit accounting fraud, money lanudering and more. There is no longer a rule of law; the Golden Rule has been turned into "Do unto others, run like hell and, if caught, bribe Congress or threaten economic collapse." While that contains a slight amount of hyperbole, the operative word there is "slight." There is...

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Friday urged congressional leaders to raise the debt limit and insisted that the White House is not going to negotiate over the increase because lawmakers have "no choice." "We will not negotiate over the debt limit," Lew wrote. "The creditworthiness of the United States is non-negotiable. The question of whether the country must pay obligations it has already incurred is not open to debate." Lew said that while President Obama is willing to discuss plans to reduce the nation's deficit with Congress, those talks must be kept separate from any effort to raise the nation's...

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities – toilet paper. Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the government says it will import 50m rolls to boost supplies. One supermarket visited by the Associated Press in the capital on Wednesday was out of toilet paper. Another had just received a fresh batch, and it quickly filled up with shoppers as the word spread. "I've been looking for it for two weeks," said Cristina Ramos. "I was told that they had some here and...

The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, has sent 3,000 troops on to the streets of the capital, Caracas, to crack down on rampant crime which has made the country one of the most dangerous in the world. The "secure fatherland" plan is a new effort to lower violent crime following close to 20 similar attempts during the 14-year rule of the late socialist leader Hugo Chávez. "Our armed forces are taking the streets to protect the people," Maduro said in a speech to military police and troops that was broadcast live on state television. "I call on you to serve your...

Joe Biden says the president of the United States is preparing to take "executive actions" to deal with guns. BuzzFeed reports: Vice President Biden told White House allies in the gun control fight Thursday that President Obama will be announcing new executive actions on gun violence in the days after the Senate voted down a gun violence bill. On a conference call with "stakeholders," Biden told gun control advocates that the fight is not over and that eventual action on gun control will come. Press were not invited to the conference call; a participant provided BuzzFeed with access. "Look I...

Is America a two party Dictatorship? A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual: a dictator . It has three possible meanings: 1. A Roman dictator was the incumbent of a political office of legislate of the Roman Republic . Roman dictators were allocated absolute power during times of emergency. Their power was originally neither arbitrary nor unaccountable, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictatorships after the beginning of the 2nd century BC, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman...

"One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again." --Dr. Thomas SowellThe Berlin Wall was demolished by joyful Europeans throwing off the chains of collectivism nearly a quarter century ago. The Soviet Union, its fraudulent promise of a "workers' paradise" long since proved a bitter delusion, fell soon after. But the idea that government control over the economy can improve the lives of ordinary people, particularly the poor, does not die. Hugo Chavez clawed his way to total...

There's only way to look at this folks. WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder's stunning admission that it was difficult to prosecute large banks because of the potential economic impact may be a turning point of the drive to break them up. It's not stunning at all. It is, however, an admission of what we have known for years. Now the pants of "Nobody committed any crimes" have in fact been artfully dropped to the floor and what's in our face is the ugly anatomical truth that crimes were committed and intentionally ignored. That is something that Congress and the...

Or, in other words: Just give in already to the power of the all-knowing and all-powerful bureaucracy. Trust us.Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare’s Medicaid mandate (requiring that states expand their programs and provide specified health care to all citizens whose income falls below a certain threshold, or else face losing all prior federal funding) was an unconstitutional “gun to the head” for states’ administrations and budgets, and confirmed their right to opt out without penalty — but that doesn’t mean the Obama administration isn’t applying every type of political pressure and fiscal inducement they can to coerce...