Free Republic

I understand we've turned the page to the next controversy -- Obama's unconstitutional immigration pander -- but I'd like to dwell a little longer on the previous travesty. Obama administration health-care consultant Jonathan Gruber was discovered to have boasted that Obamacare was designed to exploit the "stupidity" of American voters and elude honest accounting by hiding both its cost and the taxes necessary to pay for it. When asked about this in Brisbane, Australia, the president rolled his eyes at the controversy. "I just heard about this," Obama said. "... The fact that some adviser who never worked on our...

The liberal myth surrounding the hypercompetent Barack Obama faded long ago, but the liberal myth of "cultural icon" Jon Stewart is only getting stronger. Stewart's tour of interviews for the new movie he directed, "Rosewater," has created a parade of flatterers, sycophants, and every other synonym in the thesaurus for obsequious. Roy Sekoff at The Huffington Post stands out by insisting the movie only polishes this walking statue: "In finding this format, in this form, you have become obviously a cultural icon, maybe one of the dominant figures in the political discourse." But Sekoff was surpassed in syrup by NPR...

"When the facts change, I change my mind," economist John Maynard Keynes said when charged with inconsistency. "What do you do, sir?" As President Obama threatens to stretch his power to faithfully execute the law to a breaking point by effectively legalizing some 5 million illegal immigrants, perhaps I owe readers an explanation of my own changes of mind on immigration. I tended to support the so-called comprehensive immigration bills passed by the Senate in 2006 and then rejected by the Senate in 2007, due to missteps by new Majority Leader Harry Reid. But I think the similar bill the...

What we are seeing in Jerusalem today is not simply Palestinian terrorism. It is Islamic jihad. No one likes to admit it. The television reporters insist that this is the worst possible scenario because there is no way to placate it. There is no way to reason with it. So what else is new? The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred. The only difference between the past hundred years and now is that today our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it harder...

It’s a brilliant, brutally cynical near-term gambit. He delayed action until after the election, he even told everybody he was doing it! And then he completely screwed over the incoming Republican majority, making their lame-duck and first 100 days a complete pain-in-the-ass, while shoring up support among his progressive doubters who, if you watched MSNBC tonight, are back to 2008 levels of adoration. Still, what are the Republicans going to do? Impeach him? There’s a smart-ish strategy that involves funding the rest of the government while denying DHS the funds to enforce His Majesty’s edict. But when POTUS vetoes it,...

Lawyers have raked in more than $7.5 billion in fees from the federal Disability Insurance program since 2009, according to a Manhattan Institute report issued Friday. And that money has come directly out of the pockets of workers through the Social Security payroll tax.

When it rains, it pours. Just before unveiling his colossal administrative amnesty for millions of "undocumented" aliens and foreign tech workers on Thursday, President Obama separately ordered up to 8,000 more executive pardons and special work passes for Liberians, Sierra Leoneans and Guineans illegally in this country. Strange, isn't it? The same administration that refused to enact travel bans from Ebola-plagued West African nations to protect Americans is now granting "temporary protected status" (TPS) to West Africans on American soil so they don't have to go back. It's not really about public health, of course. It's about political pandering and...

Bill de Blasio, the New York mayor, says he knows why Democrats lost the 2014 election. Income inequality defines our times, he said during a visit to Washington this week, and his party did not talk about the issue enough. De Blasio needs a hearing aid. Democrats speak of little else. Dodging questions about Hillary Clinton, de Blasio praised Elizabeth Warren. He called the liberal heroine “one of the indispensable voices” among Democrats, and appeared with her at a Center for American Progress event later that day. The policy conference featured other darlings of the left: Julian Castro, Tammy Baldwin,...

If Aesop were here he might rewrite his famous fable, replacing the boy who cried “wolf!” with the girl who cried “rape!” The cry of “rape” is used so carelessly that it’s often impossible to get to the truth of an accusation. When rape was a capital offense it was a rare and vicious crime which required a court of law to apply justice. It was underreported, since the rapist usually took advantage of those who felt too vulnerable even to say anything about it. Contemporary accusations of rape are frequent, often made by women at prestigious colleges whose accusations...

Rep. Michele Bachmann warned that the immigrants about to be amnestied have high illiteracy rates and may vote. The left howled, but the reality is she understated it. The hard data tell the story. Commenting on President Obama's amnesty of 5 million illegals, the Minnesota Republican told reporters at the Capitol, "The social cost will be profound on the U.S. taxpayer — millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming to the United States who can't speak the English language." She added that many will vote illegally, too. An outraged, politically correct reporter from the Washington Post then asked Bachmann just...

Jonathan Gruber let it slip. He thinks you're pretty much a moron. And, being a moron, you couldn't possibly understand legislation as complex and important as the Affordable Care Act. Actually, Gruber didn't merely let it slip - he repeatedly called Americans idiots, in the process affirming his own vastly superior intelligence. And he obviously is a pretty smart guy. It's not easy getting into MIT and then earning a Harvard Ph.D. in economics. All his life Gruber was certainly told he was brilliant, destined for great things. But Gruber, blessed with a high IQ, was cursed by possessing not...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: And not only that, Obama cannot give them work permits. Obama cannot hand out benefits to these people. That is appropriating money. Only the Congress can appropriate money. Only the Congress can write law that appropriates benefits. The president just can't start handing out things like this. He can't do it. Now, this action tonight, it does bring the governors into the equation, but I don't know quite how that's gonna work out yet. Only time will tell. Governor Perry, Texas, is gonna sue him. Well, how long is that gonna take? I mean, but the governors...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yeah, really, when you stop -- and I'm sure most of you have -- when you stop and think about what's gonna happen tonight and the way it's being promoted, and the way it's playing out, I don't know, it's kind of surreal. Everybody involved knows that what's gonna happen tonight's unconstitutional. Everybody knows it. And there's nothing that can stop it. And stop and think of that. Everybody knows. I don't care if they're in the Drive-By Media. I don't care if they're in the White House. I don't care if they're in the Senate. I...

Time and time again, President Obama demonstrates his contempt for the Constitution and for the American people, whose integrity and will must be subordinated to his personal prerogative and hijacked sovereignty. Obama has admitted on several occasions that he had no authority to act unilaterally, via executive order, to grant amnesty to millions of immigrants who came here illegally, so his doing so is, in his own opinion, flagrantly illegal. Daily he proves to us that his words mean nothing. They are utilitarian tools to serve his political purposes. When traveling the country to rally support for the DREAM Act,...

My favorite quote by H.L. Mencken is ‘a cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin‘. A bit morose, I know, but this appeals to the contrarian in me. My second favorite is überly-applicable to US shale oil break-evens: ‘For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong‘. For there is no lack of estimates flying around as to the price level at which US shale oil production could be curtailed. The problem is, they all appear to be different. The debate was ignited by OPEC, after comments from...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, I'm gonna go back to the Constitution here for just a second. Before my detailed -- and it won't take long -- explanation of prosecutorial discretion, which (if everybody is right) is the legal, so-called legal underpinning for Obama's executive action tonight, let's start with the oath of office the president of the United States takes. In that oath, the president swears, he promises that to the best of his ability he will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath will be violated tonight, in plain view of however many millions...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Looky here. Looky here, ladies and gentlemen. Jeffrey Toobin on CNN has just finished explaining that it is prosecutorial discretion that Obama will use to justify what he's doing tonight. Ashleigh Banfield said, "If the president's actions effectively nullify federal law, then they're unconstitutional. But if they're merely channel enforcement resources to other areas, then it's within his discretion to do so, right? Is the layperson's version of that, if you're going 70 in a 55 zone, the policeman might pull you over. But if you're going 60 he might use that discretion and say, 'I'm gonna...

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are stoking fear about the project by connecting it to two of the biggest bogeymen in politics: Charles and David Koch. The claim goes that the Koch brothers stand to make $100 billion if the pipeline gets built. The figure, which would effectively double the Kochs’ net worth, has bounced around liberal news organizations and was repeated this month by progressive radio talk show and TV host Thom Hartmann on his RT show. Take it with a block of salt, a PunditFact analysis finds.

Earlier this week, President Obama made it clear that he will soon offer some form of limited amnesty to about five million foreign nationals who are currently living illegally in the United States. He will do so by issuing an executive order to federal officials who oversee immigration directing them to undertake a course of action that, if complied with individually by all persons whom he designates as eligible, will cause the federal government to remove the threat of deportation from those who meet the standards he will lay down. Can he legally do that? To address that question, we...

Tonight on national television Barack Obama will give away what your grandparents worked to get. He will spit in the face of the Statue of Liberty, repudiate the spirit of Ellis Island, and throw rule of law out the window. Tonight, by royal decree, Barack Obama will bestow amnesty on millions and millions of illegal aliens. It is astounding act of arrogance by a president who was repudiated just two weeks ago by an electorate that has no confidence in him. With no mandate and no discussion, the people and the Congress have been left out of a society-changing decree...