Free Republic

As President Barack Obama heads into the final half of his final term, many of us Americans wonder: Whatever happened to the fresh promise of that cheerfully charismatic optimist who dominated the political stage back in 2008? Some of those who voted for him now say they're sorry they did. Why is the thrill gone? I can think of three big reasons: 1. Public impatience. After six years in office, any president has been seen and heard too many times to satisfy the public's relentless appetite for something fresh and new. 2. An anti-incumbent reflex in news media. The most...

We keep hearing from liberals that people who oppose Barack Obama MUST feel that way because of racism. As if there couldn’t be another reason or for that matter, dozens of other reasons like… · The IRS scandal · Obamacare · Fast and Furious · Opening up the borders and illegally implementing the DREAM ACT · Lying about being opposed to gay marriage in 2008 and then supporting it later · Refusing the turn away flights from nations with Ebola · Killing NASA’s manned space program · Losing America’s AAA credit rating · Helping radical Islamists take over in Libya...

Preparedness: Earlier this week, Sen. John McCain called for an Ebola czar, not knowing one already effectively exists. Why should he, since Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S.P.H., has been completely M.I.A. You have to wonder sometimes if anyone in a leadership position in the Obama administration bothers to show up to work these days. Case in point is Dr. Nicole Lurie, who arguably should be front and center in planning for and responding to the Ebola outbreak. After all, it's right there in her job title. She's the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, a position created in the wake of...

As Americans grow increasingly concerned about Ebola both here and around the world, I’ve been speaking with respected doctors who have spent most of their lives working for our government. The concern they have about the Ebola threat to the American people is very real. They have spent their lives making sure America has the right systems and technologies in place to prevent potentially catastrophic medical events, such as hemorrhagic fevers. These doctors are not alarmists; they are patriots who have dedicated most of their lives to making sure that our nation was adequately prepared for an event such as...

October 17, 2014 The Macaca Democrats Column: Why the GOP Is Winning Election 2014 By Matthew ContenettiSomething peculiar has happened. As I write, none of the Republican candidates for Senate has become a public embarrassment. On the contrary: For the first time in a decade, it is the Democratic candidates, not the Republican ones, who are fodder for late-night comics. That the Democrats are committing gaffes and causing scandals at a higher rate than Republicans not only may be decisive in the battle for the Senate. It could signal a change in our politics at large.Yes, at any given moment,...

Leadership: In a telephone press briefing, the CDC director repeated that you can't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but infected or exposed people should avoid public transit because they might transmit it. Huh? During the Wednesday conference call with reporters, Centers for Disease Control director Tom Frieden was asked if he or anyone else at the CDC had vetted a videotaped message posted on U.S. embassy websites that showed President Obama saying you couldn't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, while the CDC's own guidelines advised those with symptoms or a...

Five Christian pastors will no longer have to turn their sermons over to attorneys for the city of Houston. Instead, they will be forced to turn over their speeches related to the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). I don’t mean to point out the obvious here—but what do those attorneys think a sermon is? It’s a speech. According to an amended motion filed Friday in Harris County, Texas court, the city’s attorneys will no longer demand sermons related to homosexuals, gender identity, or Mayor Annise Parker—Houston’s first openly lesbian mayor. The amended subpoenas do require the pastors to turn over...

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be found on Abrams' blog "Pressure Points" here. The New York Times, whose hostility to Israel is visible in both its news and its editorial ‎pages, was at it again this week. In an editorial (about the symbolic vote in the U.K. ‎parliament backing Palestinian statehood) titled "A British Message to Israel," The ‎Times's editorial board unloaded yet again with a barrage of advice, opinion -- and untruths.‎ Here are some of the key words:‎ "The...

The Neil Young tour buses If only the Nazis had pursued a smaller carbon footprint, Neil Young would have joined the party. He had to settle for joining the Green Nazis. In an interview with radio shock-jock Howard Stern, Canadian rocker Neil Young suggested a fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) is not worth the release of greenhouse gases from military vehicles.“And yet we are fighting what? ISIS…al-Qaeda. And we are fighting these wars against these organizations and their carbon footprint has got to be like 1% of our huge army and our navy and all of this stuff that...

Jihad Crow in AmericaPosted By Jamie Glazov On October 17, 2014 @ 12:54 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Nadra Enzi (aka Cap Black), an anti-crime activist, Project 21 member and founder of American Brothers Against Crime. He writes for Change The Game at ctghq.org. FP: Nadra Enzi, welcome to Frontpage Interview.I would like to speak to you today about “Jihad Crow” in America, a phenomenon in this nation that involves Arab hatred of and discrimination against American blacks (and American black Muslims) in America.But before we get to that I would like to talk...

While the cultural commissars keep throwing praise and awards at raunchy shows on trendy Internet streaming channels, CBS has a series of highly-rated traditional police or military shows that get no attention or respect. "NCIS" keeps spinning off shows -- this year in New Orleans -- and "Blue Bloods" is a consistent Top 20 performer despite airing on Friday night. You won't see its star Tom Selleck at Emmy awards time. "Blue Bloods" deals with an Irish-Catholic family of cops, headed by New York police commissioner Frank Reagan, played by Selleck. Some Catholics became fans of the show as a...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dusty and remote, the Syrian city of Kobani has become an unlikely spoil in the war against Islamic State militants - and far more of a strategic prize than the United States wants to admit. Perched on Turkey's border, the city of about 60,000 has been besieged for weeks by IS fighters. Kobani is now a ghost town: the U.N. estimates that fewer than 700 of its residents remain as its people flee to safety in Turkey. The Obama administration has declared Kobani a humanitarian disaster, but not a factor in the overall strategy to defeat the...

As tensions grow between factions with different levels of concern over Ebola, a buzz-phrase has arisen: “Ebola has no political preferences.” The supposition is that the disease will gladly infect liberals as well as conservatives, which is certainly true. The differences that matter, however, are the political engines that drive attitudes and reactions, as a crisis that should be unaffected by politics is in fact exacerbated by it. It would be unfair to blame liberalism for the entirety of the arrogant displays we have been treated to since the late Thomas Eric Duncan lied to get into America. But there...

Free at last! I'm silent no more. Now, the story can be told. Democrats here in my adopted state of Colorado did not want the new political documentary I hosted to see the light of day. They lost. This week, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency injunction declaring that our movie deserved the same free-speech rights as a "traditional" (translation: old-guard liberal) news organization. "Rocky Mountain Heist," produced by David Bossie's Citizens United and directed by Jason Killian Meath, tells the story of how a wealthy quartet of liberal millionaires and billionaires in Colorado -- known as...

Do you ever get the feeling everyone is in on a joke, except you? That maybe you are the punchline? That everyone is secretly laughing at you? Well the joke is on America. Obama and his socialist cabal are in on the joke. Illegal aliens are in on the joke. The only ones left out are the rest of us- law-abiding American-born citizens and taxpayers. We are the joke. And everyone knows it…but us. Do you see the picture above? It was taken yesterday by my friend- a U.S. border agent. He texted it to me- direct from the processing...

The contrast between New Hampshire’s two candidates for U.S. Senate couldn’t have been clearer this past weekend. In one town, Senator Jeanne Shaheen spoke to the International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers over a pancake breakfast, and in another, former Senator Scott Brown received a rowdy and enthusiastic reception at a tailgate organized by College Republicans at the University of New Hampshire. It sounds like a normal weekend in October, so why the significance? I can’t help but marvel at the juxtaposition: a traditional, pre-planned campaign event with the candidate as the main attraction and the other, a tailgate loosely organized...

Add Ebola to our long and growing list of federal screw-ups. On Wednesday morning we learned a second nurse was infected by the virus in a Dallas hospital while taking care of the Ebola patient from Africa who died October 8. When the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, went on TV, he admitted his government agency wasn't aggressive enough in managing and containing the spread of Ebola. "We could've sent a more robust hosital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be...

Buried inside of the 20,000 pages of the Obamacare monstrosity are a few paragraphs which could create a multi-billion dollar industry in the American healthcare sector. Known as "biosimilars," the law allowed for the production of complex drugs which are medically equivalent versions of biologics (drugs derived from living organisms), and can treat deadly diseases ranging from Alzheimer's, AIDS, and rheumatoid arthritis. Not only can biosimilars save lives, the competition they create for a heavily regulated and patented marketplace can help patients by lowering the price of their prescriptions by up to 40 percent. The average annual cost of biologic...

<p>That’s the bottom line of a harshly-worded letter written by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to Houston City Attorney David Feldman.</p> <p>Feldman’s office sent subpoenas to five Houston pastors last month demanding that they turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality and gender identity issues. They also wanted sermons or correspondence that referenced Annise Parker, the city’s first openly lesbian mayor.</p>

So now we know when bad news is actually bad: When the Federal Reserve Bank wonÂ’t continue quantitative easing. The stock market has fallen out of bed in the past two weeks. You can pick its poison: Ebola, ISIS, Obama, Oil or any other proper nouns with bad intent. But my money is on, well, money.The end of the money parade -- or quantitatively eased "bribes"-- is making it more difficult for traders to find the money to chase stocks up. But donÂ’t worry stock market. As our guest Chris Versace pointed out on the radio this week, the Federal...