Free Republic

Rob Wiercinski, WTOL-TV: The final question comes from one of our viewers; we're sticking on health care. Mike Baas from Perrysburg wants to know: "Is the mandate to buy health insurance in the new law a tax or a penalty?" President Obama: As I've said, it's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principal, which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your healthcare, if you can afford it. Now if you can't afford it, you're out of a job, you're broke, you're trying to make your payments, what we're going...

President Obama’s campaign is suing Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to try to re-instate the three days of early, in person voting before Election day in November. Ohio Public Radio’s Jo Ingles reports. (AUDIO AT LINK) Back in 2004, Ohio’s voting process was under national scrutiny after there were long lines at polling places, causing voters to wait for up to eight hours to cast their ballots at some precincts. After that, Ohio lawmakers passed a law that, among other things, allowed Ohioans to vote in person on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before the election. Those rules were...

Republican Senator John McCain says he chose Sarah Palin over Mitt Romney as his running mate in 2008 because she was a “better candidate,” not because of Romney’s much-discussed tax records. The McCain presidential campaign received 20 years of Romney’s tax records, much more than what the 2012 Republican presidential nominee has revealed to date. Democrats have suggested the McCain campaign passed over Romney because they found something politically damaging. “Of course not,” McCain told Politico when asked if the tax records hurt Romney...

Last May, a cult-like throng of journalists chased Sarah Palin and her bus along the East Coast, eager that she’d drop the slightest of hints that would answer an almost fanatical question: Was she jumping into the GOP primary? This weekend she gave a speech in front of hundreds of supporters, revving them up with some of her favorite lines — blasting both President Obama and “crony capitalism” and calling the “bitter clingers” to action. She even unveiled this new line to huge cheers: “We’re little tea pots, and we’re getting steamed up because Obama is tipping us over, pouring...

(snip) Not since the Copperhead Democrats tried to appease the South and derail the Lincoln presidency have the Democrats been such an explicitly anti-American party. The relatively moderate party of JFK and Hubert Humphrey was hijacked in the streets of Saul Alinsky’s Chicago in 1968 and at the Miami Beach convention of 1972, which nominated George McGovern, and was transformed into a radical group that can no longer contain its animus against our country, our history, and our Constitution. All eminently predictable, of course. (snip) For years now, I’ve been saying that the modern Democratic party is the unholy issue...

JACKSON, Miss. - At a fundraiser at a country club in Mississippi this evening that was expected to raise a record-breaking $1.7 million, Mitt Romney defended the Republican Party against its reputation as the "party of the rich" explaining that really, it is a party focused on helping the poor. "We're accused, by the way - in our party - of being the party of the rich," Romney said. "And it's an awful moniker, because that's just not true. We're the party of people who want to get rich. And we're also the party of people who want to care...

America is at a crossroads. Our government is out of control. All three branches of the federal government have abandoned First Principles and the Constitution. We have a president who ignores Congress and a Congress that cannot get anything done because of obstructionism by Big Government liberals in both parties. We have a Supreme Court Chief Justice who just ruled on the most evil piece of legislation this country has ever seen, one that will destroy America, not based on his understanding of the Constitution, but because he fears bad press for the Court! Corruption, from the Oval Office, to...

After the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves in January 2009 to announce his hope for the failure of Barack Obama's policies. He was very quick to make sure people understood he was not against Obama due to the color of his skin, but solely due to his policies. In the same vein, I would like to announce a similar sentiment. I agree with Rush that Obama's polices should fail, and I hope they do. I also hope that the policies and philosophies of Mitt Romney fail as well.

The American people have been hoaxed, and they need to know it. Hoax(www.thefreedictionary.com/hoax): 1. An act intended to deceive or trick. 2. Something that has been established or accepted by fraudulent means US Senate candidate in New York Wendy Long deftly debunked Team Obama's Republican "War on Women" hoax factually, saying: “The 'War on Women' is a hoax and Kirsten Gillibrand is the chief purveyor of its cynical propaganda. Here in Onondaga County alone we have Congresswoman Buerkle, County Executive Mahoney, Lysander Town Clerk Lisa Dell and Sandy Schepp, candidate for Onondaga County Clerk, all strong successful Republican women. The...

Over the weekend, the Obama campaign slammed Mitt Romney with an ad featuring the GOP’s presumptive nominee singing “America the Beautiful” while the ad flashed statistics about Romney’s wealth. Today, the Romney campaign is responding with a singing ad of its own. Titled “Political Payoffs and Middle Class Layoffs,” the ad features President Obama singing Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” while the video track flashes facts about the Obama economy and charges that the president has engaged in paying off his political supporters at taxpayer expense. Watch the new Romney ad below. (link to embedded video) Hopefully after the dueling...

Republicans can thank President Barack Obama for the party's solid control of the Tennessee Legislature, starting with his appearance at the top of the national Democratic ticket in 2008 — after losing the state's presidential primary even among Democratic voters — and continuing in more dramatic fashion in 2010. The GOP has used advertising that linked many Democratic state legislators, even some who were staunch fiscal and social conservatives, to the evil national Democrats. "You'd think Nancy Pelosi was my high school sweetheart and I played golf with Barack Obama every weekend," grumbled state House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner...

This week in the presidential campaign was driven by several stories, primarily Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP convention; the likely bogus rumor that Romney was considering Condoleeza Rice as his vice-presidential pick; and the hysterical, bogus claim that Romney may be a felon based on decade-old SEC filings. Let’s look at the common thread running through them. Partisans on both sides of the aisle questioned Romney’s decision to appear at the NAACP convention, given that African-Americans have been a solidly reliable Democratic voting bloc for decades. However, a Romney campaign adviser told BuzzFeed that Romney’s attendance at the convention...

Gov. Rick Perry is putting his months of attacks on Mitt Romney behind him and rallying to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's banner. The Texas Republican makes his first campaign trip on behalf of Romney on Friday when he visits Elko, Nev. He'll make two evening stops there Friday evening, with visits to the Silver State Stampede Rodeo and a Romney campaign office. Romney, who's a former Massachusetts governor, isn't expected to appear. Nevada is a key state Obama won in 2008.

President Barack Obama's campaign has spent nearly $100 million on television commercials in selected battleground states so far, unleashing a sustained early barrage designed to create lasting, negative impressions of Republican Mitt Romney before he and his allies ramp up for the fall. In a reflection of campaign strategy, more than one-fifth of the president's ad spending has been in Ohio, a state that looms as a must-win for Romney more so than for Obama. Florida ranks second and Virginia third, according to organizations that track media spending and other sources....

From Congresswoman Adams: Governor Sarah Palin Endorses Conservative Sandy Adams for U.S. House Orlando, FL – Today, freshman Sandy Adams announced that she had earned the endorsement of former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin. Governor Palin’s support is proof-positive that Sandy Adams is the conservative choice for Florida’s new 7th Congressional District. “Governor Sarah Palin has led the charge for conservatives,” said Adams. “While many politicians subscribe to the notion of the status quo, Governor Palin has risen above it. She knows that the true power of our country comes from the American people – not the...

<p>President Barack Obama’s support among Latino voters has dropped to a new low, according to a poll by Quinnipiac University.</p> <p>The poll, released Wednesday, found Obama support at 59 percent, well ahead of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, which had 30 percent support. But the figure was significantly lower than that registered in a Fox News Latino poll released in March (he had 73 percent support) and a USA Today/Gallup poll published in June (66 percent).</p>

Corn Futures SURGE As USDA Cuts Crop Forecast By 12% Mamta Badkar Jul. 11, 2012, 8:38 AM Corn prices are jumping after the USDA cut corn yield by 20 bushels per acre to 146 bushels per acre. This is down from 166 bushels per acre because of poor crop conditions from early June and because of the heatwave and drought conditions plaguing the Midwest. The corn crop forecast was cut 12 percent to 12.97 billion bushels. Corn futures are up 3.20 percent on the news. From the report: "Persistent and extreme June dryness across the central and eastern Corn Belt...

A google search using the term, “McCain voters say they wished they’d voted Obama” shows about 7,450,000 items, but searching through them yields not a single article about voters feeling this way. When most people are asked, “We all know people who voted for Obama and say they wished they had voted for McCain, but where are the people who say they voted for McCain but wish they had voted for Obama?” they start laughing. By now, we have all heard the public “secular confessions” of the Barack Obama supporters who wish they hadn’t done what they did. These people...

The Army has revoked the Special Forces military occupational specialty of an Arkansas political candidate who claimed he served as a Green Beret in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kenneth Aden, a Democrat running against incumbent Rep. Steve Womack for Arkansas' 3rd District, has said in interviews he served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Green Beret, though a DD-214 and other documents he released to substantiate the claim only raised questions. In a statement Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the Special Warfare Training Center at Fort Bragg, N.C., said Aden was dropped from Special Forces training in April 2008 "after failing...

Republican 2nd Congressional District runoff opponents Markwayne Mullin and George Faught continued to tussle Thursday over something said by Mullin last August and used by Faught in a recent campaign spot. The setting this time was Mullin's Broken Arrow plumbing business, where a representative for Faught showed up to hand out a statement from Faught after Mullin essentially called Faught a liar at a Thursday afternoon press conference. Mullin's campaign team eventually shooed the Faught operative off the grounds, but not before he'd passed around copies of Faught's statement. At issue is Mullin's use of the term "single payer" during...