Free Republic

Children who don’t get a pre-kindergarten education, ideally from birth to age 5, might fall behind and “may as well drop out” by third grade, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday at an event to garner support for President Barack Obama's $75-billion proposal to increase pre-school enrollment across the country.

A proposal by the Miami Dolphins to use taxpayer money to help finance an upgrade of the NFL team's stadium failed on Friday to win broad support among Florida state lawmakers, dealing a potential blow to Miami's bid to host the 2016 Super Bowl. The Dolphins, owned by real estate tycoon Stephen Ross, lobbied the state legislature for months to back a bill to increase hotel taxes in Miami-Dade County to finance nearly half of a proposed $350 million renovation of the Sun Life Stadium, which is privately owned.

Here is Yale alum Leah Libresco responding with vigor to Keli Goff’s recent article entitled “Female Ivy League graduates have a duty to stay in the workforce”: Goff assumes that women who leave the workforce will cease to use the education that they paid for, but there’s nowhere you can go that learning about beauty and citizenship and character and tradition aren’t relevant. The liberal arts are supposed to have taken up philosophy’s mantle as preparation for death — the study of how we should live.[...] The college grad starting out as a junior staffer or an administrative assistant may...

SUSAN PATTON, the Princeton alumna who became famous for her letter urging Ivy League women to use their college years to find a mate, has been denounced as a traitor to feminism, to coeducation, to the university ideal. But really she’s something much more interesting: a traitor to her class. Her betrayal consists of being gauche enough to acknowledge publicly a truth that everyone who’s come up through Ivy League culture knows intuitively — that elite universities are about connecting more than learning, that the social world matters far more than the classroom to undergraduates, and that rather than an...

A new proposal would require New York City retailers to keep tobacco products out of sight under a first-in-the-nation proposal aimed at reducing the youth smoking rate, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday. The legislation would require stores to keep tobacco products in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in other concealed spots. They could only be visible when an adult is making a purchase or during restocking. "Such displays suggest that smoking is a normal activity," Bloomberg said. "And they invite young people to experiment with tobacco."

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush told Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday that there is no Bush fatigue in America. Chris Wallace: Do you think there would be any Bush baggage? Do you think that would be a problem? Jeb Bush: No. I don’t think there is any Bush baggage at all. I love my brother. I’m proud of his accomplishments. I love my dad. I am proud to be a Bush. And, if I run for president, it’s not because there is something in my DNA that compels me to do it...

"...If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you'll see more of them doing it," [President Obama] said.

So not only did Beyoncé lip sync her performance, but she essentially forced the Marine Corps band to pretend to be playing their instruments. Kristin DuBois, a spokesperson for the band, said "the Marine Band did perform live throughout the ceremony but we received last-minute word that Beyoncé wanted to use the recording.” Jessica Chasmar of the Washington Times writes: The Marine Corps Band has confirmed that it, along with Beyonce Knowles, faked Monday’s national anthem at President Obama’s second Inaugural. Band director Colonel Michael J. Colburn conducted the Star-Spangled Banner energetically, but the band members were actually mimicking blowing...

After reviewing President Obama‘s 23 “executive actions” signed into law yesterday, Joe Scarborough said Thursday morning that his Republican Party had better proceed with caution, seeing as how he believes the policy proposals have the “overwhelming” support of the American people. The president’s plan included universal background checks on gun purchases, which Scarborough said has the support of at least “85% of Americans.” The president’s call for a

Somewhere, there’s a whiplash lawyer who runs his law office out of a van down by the river who watches the congressional Republicans attempt to negotiate the fiscal cliff crisis and has to turn his head away. John Boehner and his inept coterie of GOP establishment cronies have made every mistake in the book. It’s professionally embarrassing. Frankly, if these hacks were my associates, they’d be on a street corner with signs reading “Will litigate for food.” Congress is famously full of lawyers, but what people don’t understand is that it is really full of bad lawyers. Good lawyers tend...

Obama secession petitions: 34 of 50 states petitioning the president to secede It's unclear whether these petitions are a nod to dissatisfaction that some conservatives think may soon match Civil War proportion,or not. However, the utter contempt for the Obama administration indicated by this petition drive, which appears to be on its way to all fifty states, is very clear. ==================== Commentary by walford Greetings from Virginia. These petitions at the very least make an explicit statement that, in the aftermath of the most recent election, many of us are finding ourselves in a country that is no longer a...

Asked by host Neil deGrasse Tyson what he thought about the death penalty and abortion, Maher re-affirmed his support for both, remarking, “The Pope is consistently pro-life, I am consistently pro-death.” Expressing how he was pro-death penalty, Maher said, “my motto is let’s kill the right people.” “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving – that’s what I’m for,” said Maher, adding, “It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.” Explaining how he knew many people who felt the same, Maher went on to...

..........Romney's whiteness has been hit by various super-PACs, including the organization the Obama campaign set up called "African Americans for Obama." But Obama's allies in the academic world are really stepping up to the plate. One of the loopiest attempts to attack Romney's race is from one Stephanie Li,an English professor.Her vicious little hit piece on Romney has a truly stunning thesis. It is that Romney isn't merely white--simple observation reveals that, surely, even to the uneducated. No, it takes some kind of scholar such as Ms. Li to discern that he is "the whitest man to run for president"!...

A New York police detective shot and killed an unarmed man, whose hands, a witness said, were on the steering wheel of his Honda, after he had been pulled over early Thursday for cutting off two police trucks on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, the authorities said....The shooting, which occurred at 5:15 a.m., was the latest in a series of episodes in which police officers fatally shot or wounded civilians...A passenger in Mr. Polanco’s car, Diane Deferrari, said in a phone interview Thursday night that just before pulling the car over, officers appeared irate that Mr. Polanco had cut...

...It's a tragedy of history that Karl Marx chose to dress his theories in the clothing of scientific analysis. Ever since his time, Marxists have built systems on his theories in the settled faith that their daring new policies must bear fruit,because they're based on "irrefutable science." And yet, time and again, those policies have failed. Science isn't supposed to work that way. So the Marxists are forced to ask, "What can explain such an anomaly? How can science be wrong?" The answer is always the same–"Wreckers have been at work. Saboteurs, ungrateful for the blessings of socialism, are conspiring...

Erica Loberg doesn’t come right out and say it, but the author of “Inside the Insane” believes that those of us who are very religious – or “hyper religious,” as she describes us – are mentally ill. “Are there are lot of hyper religio(us) people walking around with schizophrenia or hypo mania and not even know it?,” she asks. “Can religion be a springboard to help discover a mental illness?” Loberg doesn’t answer her own questions, but it’s pretty obvious what she thinks: Religiosity is a marker for mental illness, if not insanity. When I checked Loberg’s biography, I discovred...

City slickers are slimmer than their country counterparts, according to a new study that suggests rural obesity is a bigger problem than we realized. A national study in the Journal of Rural Health of over 8,800 Americans showed that country folks were nearly one-fifth more likely to be obese compared to those living in cities. In other words, the findings suggest, where you live is important in obesity. "The rates of obesity were much higher than previously reported based on self-report, with 39 percent of rural Americans being obese compared to 33 percent of urban Americans," said study lead author...

Biological colonialism is on the rise. Rich couples from western nations hiring poor Indian women to be surrogates. It seems like a win-win. The infertile couple gets the child they so desperately want on the cheap and the surrogates make more money than they can hope to make in such a short time. But look closer and you find a disturbing western attitude that the poor, dark, and different women are not people, but vessels in which to grow the next generation; natural resources to be exploited to continue on the western blood line.

the Supreme Cort will be exclusively filled with judges who earned their law degrees at Harvard or Yale. That seems somewhat remarkable given that there are more than 1 million lawyers in the United States and 200 law schools approved by the American Bar Association (seven of them are provisionally approved). Should we care? Jonathan Turley, a law scholar at George Washington University, does, according to this story from the McClatchy Newspapers. “You’re voiding a wide array of interesting and potentially brilliant nominees,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s like insisting you’re only going to read books by two authors."...

There’s only one way to say something like this, and it’s loud and proud and without apology: I wholeheartedly support Mike Bloomberg’s war on sugar. It’s unassailable as policy. Refined sugar is without question the worst foodstuff in the world for human health, and high-fructose corn syrup is little better. We are a fat country getting fatter and fatter, and these mountains of refined sugar that people ingest are a big part of the reason. The costs to the health-care system are enormous, so the public interest here is ridiculously obvious. Obesity is a killer. Are we to do nothing,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We're gonna start Columbia, South Carolina. Naomi, a southern Christian woman who's looked down upon by Washington Democrat women. It's great to have you on the program. CALLER: Thanks, Rush. When I heard those clips that you played I was absolutely furious. I am a white working woman. I am not a racist and I'm not stupid. Those women are doing so much to put us back decades by letting us being victimized, thinking that we can't control our own bodies and we have to have someone else pay for our birth control, that I can't see...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Karen Finney is the Democrat strategerist. She was on MSNBC last night. They were in total shock, total shock. "Santorum won last night! Santorum? Conservative women? How can this happen? " Karen Finney, big-time Democrat strategerist, said it hurt her that women voted for Santorum. FINNEY: (haltingly) Well... This woman vote really hurts me, I gotta say. (snickering) It's a little painful 'cause I'm wondering if those women really heard the full message that: Yes, there is the economy, but if you've gotta worry about your basic health care, how are you then gonna be able to...

Well said, Santorum -- well said. At a campaign stop in Michigan on Saturday morning: Santorum On Obama 'What A Snob' "Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands... and want to work out there making things. President Obama once said, he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good decent men and women, who go out everyday to put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go...

< snip > ..... If Republicans have an opening this year, it is with the white working class, a crowd the Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging for decades. Barack Obama did better than John Kerry or Al Gore with these voters, though even he earned just 43% of their vote. ..... < snip > ..... The white working class will make up as much as 55% of the vote in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. ..... < snip > ..... And so at the heart of the Santorum agenda are policies designed to give special handouts to the working class,...

NBC's Andrea Mitchell on New Year's Day made it clear to Nightly News viewers that her Obama-loving network will continue using the race card to assist the current White House resident's reelection. In a brief segment about the upcoming Iowa caucuses, Mitchell said "the rap" on the Hawkeye state is that "it doesn't represent the rest of the country - too white, too evangelical, too rural" Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/01/02/andrea-mitchell-iowa-too-white-too-evangelical-too-rural#ixzz1iMDxZzyc

First lady Michelle Obama took daughters Malia and Sasha to MA'O Organic Farms in Hawaii for a pizza party this week, where they were joined by Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass, and Honolulu chef Ed Kenney, a board member at MA'O — which supplied a healthy heap of fresh veggies used by Kenney and Kass as they cooked pizzas for the First Family in a fire oven. The first lady met Kenney when she first visited MA'O back in November for a tour of the farm and a round table with the her "Let's Move!" initiative....

The historic achievements for the worst president in modern history just keep on coming. Apparently it was unseasonably warm on the east coast, especially in D.C. So King Putt Obama decided to hit the links for a record 88th time as President. Truly historic ... according to White House Dossier the “four some” did include one of Obama’s loves, Reggie Love who is leaving the failing White House at the end of the year.It’s his 30th time golfing this year and the 88th golf outing of his presidency.

Bill Whittle spoke the other day at the Beverly Hills Tea Party and I must say it was excellent. When he began he said that his job was to scare us to death and then explain why he has so much hope for us overcoming the big problems we face. I’m not sure he succeeded on the former, but definitely the latter. He broke the speech up into seven categories that he believes most Tea Party members would agree on and then elaborated on them, some at great length. The seven categories are limited government and free enterprise, distrust of...

The legacy of 9/11 can’t be fully measured even now, but perhaps the most damaging aspect can be found in our national discourse. Taking the long view, it is possible to see the roots of today’s political dysfunction — the hate, fear, anger and resentment — firmly planted in the soil at Ground Zero.

The state Senate has approved legislation today that would make it a crime to openly carry an unloaded handgun in public. Assembly Bill 144, by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, targets the "open carry" movement, marked by gatherings of people displaying their firearms in public places to protest gun-control laws.

An inquirer asks, ‘How do you know Obama is lying?’ to which I replied, ‘When his lips are moving.’ OK, that’s a bad old joke; but strangely, it fits so well with that foreign operator who plays with our money out of our White House. The problem today is to even remotely know when he is telling the truth. I don’t think even he knows when that rare occurrence happens. His entire existence is based on lies, misconceptions and outright deception. He has spent millions of dollars, perhaps even government funds, otherwise known as our tax dollars, to deceive the...

With a bit of Chicago-machine swagger about him, Bill Clinton, a “war room” veteran, is back in the spotlight and stumping for Obama. Speaking to Campus Progress last Wednesday, Clinton asked the crowd of young progressives, “Are you fighting?” Taking talking points almost directly from the mouth of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D.-Fla.), the former President asserted, “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the voter Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit a franchise that we see today." Likening Republican policies aimed at preserving voter...

Here, too, college reflects the way things work in the adult world (unless it’s the other way around). For the elite, there’s always another extension—a bailout, a pardon, a stint in rehab—always plenty of contacts and special stipends—the country club, the conference, the year-end bonus, the dividend. If Al Gore and John Kerry represent one of the characteristic products of an elite education, George W. Bush represents another. It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale. Entitled mediocrity is indeed the operating principle of his administration, but as Enron and WorldCom and the...

Detroit — General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he's confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker. "I actually think the government will be out this year — within the next 12 months, hopefully within the next six months," Akerson said in a two-hour interview with The Detroit News last week. He is grateful for the government's rescue of GM — "I have nothing but good things to say about them" — but...

THE FRONT-RUNNER for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, will formally declare his candidacy in New Hampshire today. Romney received 17.4 per cent of intended votes in the “Real Clear Politics” average for the April 10th to May 26th period. But the Gallup polling institute calls him “the weakest front-runner in any recent Republican nomination campaign”. Romney’s announcement has been upstaged by the antics of the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who launched a “One Nation” roadshow wearing a black leather jacket and storming into Washington on the back of a Harley Davidson motorcycle on May 29th....

Trend: Dropouts might lose drivers licensesBy Sara Lenz, Deseret News Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 2:34 p.m. MDT Lawmakers around the country are looking at a new way to keep kids in school — not letting them get a drivers license if they drop out. Although Minnesota's law states that students only have to stay in school until they are 16, lawmakers there are considering a bill that would not allow school dropouts to get their license, the StarTribune reported on Tuesday. "Driving is not a right, it's a privilege, and it's perfectly within bounds for the state government to...

A new Gallup poll reveals that voters who identify as more conservative, do not have college degrees and who make less than $24,000 annually are more likely to support former Alaska governor Sarah Palin over Mitt Romney for president in 2012. Romney, on the other hand, has evidently fared better with voters who describe themselves as “liberals to moderate”, have received degrees of higher learning and who make at least $90,000 a year. The split drives home the challenges facing any would-be GOP candidate: Catering to the party’s base without completely alienating those on the fence, and appealing to voters...

By Suzanne Eovaldi, staff writer Starting her day with rashers of free range turkey glasses of red fruits juices and a ten minute workout on the Vibration Exercise Machine which she uses on advice from “Aunt Agony to the stars”, Liverpudlian Wilma Proops is giving our First Lady a toned body. What with the heavy schedule of White House entertainment and full plate dinners, Michelle Obama is taking care of herself in all of the right ways, especially after having served her guests $150 lb Waygu beef entrees.

The University of Chicago has decided to destroy the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan in Hyde Park. That's the University of Chicago I know and do not love. When I wrote of the violence and corruption my friends and lovers endured in Hyde Park in the late 60s, I was taken to task because the Hyde Park the Obamas inhabited was different from the Hyde Park I described. Fair enough. But some said that it was not only different, but also better, by which they mean, let's tell the truth, richer and whiter. Several commenters got it right, however, so...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina's newest Representative Renee Ellmers said the deadly shooting rampage in Arizona has made her concerned for her own safety. Ellmers said she has a concealed carry permit and plans to carry a handgun at public events. However, even in light of the shootings she said she will not support restrictions on certain ammunition. "I think it was an isolated incident and has more to do with the individual who committed the crime than the actual ammo he was using," said Ellmers. North Carolina Congressman Health Shuler has also said in recent weeks he will carry...

"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When people fear the government, there is tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson It's said the composers of the Constitution intended to constrain the central government by charging it with protecting the rights of the citizen. This was clearly a lapse in judgment, a pratfall actually, the kind requiring many tankards of the previous autumn's cider. Since those wonderful days of yesteryear, generations of our best and brightest have not merely alienated our inalienable rights, they've criminalized most of them. The work has been exacting and exhausting but it's yielded a dark parallel to the...

It just happened again. I spend a fair amount of time at my local coffee shop. I like to do my writing outside and, besides, it gives me an opportunity to try and initiate political conversations with the people who pass by, my hope always being to begin to enlighten them as to what conservative really believe (and not just what the Leftist media tells them.) Today the conversation turned to Sarah Palin and my new acquaintance blurted out “Oh I hate her.” Not yet knowing my politics, I’m sure that, being her in Los Angeles she expected to hear...

It’s healthy, even natural, for Americans to feel populist resentment against elites that base their status through inherited wealth and family connections. But it’s toxic, misguided and profoundly stupid to focus public hostility on leaders who achieved their positions through education, diligence and ability. Recent sniping between Sarah Palin and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer highlights the crucial distinction between rebellious attitudes that attack unfairly arrogated power and privilege and a trendy neo-populism that attacks brains. When Krauthammer dared to suggest that the former Alaska governor looked less than “presidential” while shooting caribou with Kate Goselin on her hit TLC...

“She is a gifted politician, just in terms of getting people to connect with her on an emotional level in person,” says Taibbi. “It’s something that if you’re an experienced campaign journalist you can just see.” Question: Will Sarah Palin run for President in 2012? Matt Taibbi: Absolutely she is going to run for president in 2012 and... I don’t think she is going to win, but I think she is a very good bet to win the nomination. I think what we saw in the last election was the Tea Party is now in this kingmaking role and the...

Outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has commuted the prison sentence of the son of a former state Assembly speaker, cutting his sentence from 16 years to 7 years in the 2008 killing of a Concord man. The move came just hours before Schwarzenegger was to leave office. In 2009, Esteban Nuñez, son of Fabian Nuñez, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of Luis Dos Santos, 22, during a fight in San Diego. He and co-defendant Ryan Jett were sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence. Santos, who was attending San Diego Mesa College, was killed in...

A huge majority of Washington's insiders say Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate, isn't qualified to be president, a Politico poll indicates. Eight-six percent of respondents considered members of the political establishment said they don't think Palin is qualified to hold the office, compared to 64 percent of the general public, results of the Politico poll released Wednesday said. Eleven percent of political establishment respondents in Washington said they believe Palin is qualified to be president, compared to 23 percent of the general public, the survey indicated. In addition, 79 percent of those classified as Washington elites said...

Well, the bubble of Obama supremacy has finally exploded in all our faces and is now lying in tatters, with little giblets of its former hot-air glory spread from here to kingdom come. The candidate who played his "Peace is just an Obama speech away" tune to the easily bamboozled left has just been dealt the final blow that crashed the big, fat hot air balloon. The very first test case was just last week: a former Gitmo detainee, brought to NYC to be tried as a civilian with all the rights of a genuine American citizen, was found guilty...

Probably not since the days of the Pharaohs or the more ludicrous Roman Emperors has a head of state travelled in such pomp and expensive grandeur as the President of the United States of America. While lesser mortals – the Pope, Queen Elizabeth and so on – are usually happy to let their hosts handle most of the security and transport arrangements when they venture beyond their home shores, the United States creates a mini-America on the move to ensure that nothing is left to chance. Today, Barack Obama arrives in India at the start of a ten-day tour of...

A day after President Obama got what he called a "shellacking" in the midterm elections, he took full responsibility for the outcome that turned over the House to the Republicans. Pundits will spend the next few days poring over the numbers. But judging from the questions reporters asked at the news conference, the defeat is being cast as a clear message from voters that Obama is going in the wrong direction.(snip)For the last two years, the electorate has been subjected to lies about Obama's religion, his heritage and his agenda. These deliberate falsehoods were designed to scare the bejeezus out...

In the Boston-area home of a wealthy hospital executive one Saturday evening this month, President Obama departed from his usual campaign stump speech and offered an explanation as to why Democrats were seemingly doing so poorly this election season. Voters, he said, just aren’t thinking straight. “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” he told a roomful of doctors who chipped in at least $15,200 each...