Free Republic

MSNBC host Chuck Todd said the American people are “fatigued” from President Barack Obama Monday on Morning Joe, in the wake of a poll showing Republican Mitt Romney would trounce him in a rematch of the 2012 election. Co-host Thomas Roberts called the poll evidence of “voter’s remorse” for sending Obama back to the White House. Todd pointed out Obama’s average job rating in states with competitive 2014 Senate races was 38 percent.

UNKNOWN QUESTIONER:“Um, you mentioned the Health Insurance Exchanges for the States. And it’s my understanding that if the States don’t provide them, that the Federal Government will provide them.”M.I.T. economics Prof. Jonathan Gruber:“Yeah, so these Health Insurance Exchanges —once you go on MA-HealthConnect.org and CRS [is] in Massachusetts—will be these new shopping places. And they’ll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. “In the law it says [that] if States don’t provide them, the federal backstop will. The Federal Government has been sort-of slow in putting in this backstop, I think partially, because they...

America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. But as we become bogged down in our many problems, I see, unfortunately, a mentality in which we are becoming increasingly a nation of the unfree – the victim – and the timid, in how we’re approaching these challenges. Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman wrote a column this week drawing attention to the latest dire projections from the Congressional Budget Office. CBO projects the nation sinking deeper and deeper into an ocean of red ink. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the Senator notes, we’ll pile...

Two kayakers adrift in Jamaica Bay with just one paddle unwittingly breached Kennedy Airport’s $300 million perimeter detection system. They could have been spotted by a boat patrol — except there wasn’t one. Port Authority boats don’t patrol the bay at night, police sources said.

New federal data published Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families showed Tennessee received 760 of the more than 30,000 children who have been released to sponsors this year through July 7.

President Barack Obama, who in his political dotage is enthusiastically getting in touch with his inner Otto von Bismarck to such an extent that we half expect him to start sporting a walrus mustache and a pickelhaube, on Saturday treated the ailing republic to another lecture on the theme of “economic patriotism,” by which he means an arrangement under which companies adopt tax strategies that maximize the amount of money they send to President Obama and his colleagues to dispose of as they see fit. He demanded that companies “embrace an economic patriotism,” presumably one defined by Barack Obama, rather...

SIX YEARS AGO, Jeanne Shaheen was quick to attack then-Sen. John Sununu on the cost of gasoline. This was a time when New Hampshire consumers were paying around $4 a gallon. In television ads and on the stump, Shaheen argued that the senator deserved blame for not doing more to bring prices down. Her supporters even held protests at his offices to highlight her position. One of her supporters went so far as to dress up as a gas pump to follow Sen. Sununu around at events claiming he wasn’t doing enough to “help the middle-class” deal with fuel prices....

When the Government Accountability Office reported last week that several of its investigators had successfully used fake identities and incorrect information to sign up for subsidized Obamacare coverage, Democrats reacted with skepticism. They claimed that the report didn’t necessarily signal big potential for fraud or abuse. Representative Sander Levin (D., Mich.) said: “There would be no financial windfall, as any government subsidy goes directly to insurance companies and not to the consumer seeking that insurance. In fact, people committing these frauds would be risking severe fines and possibly jail time.” And Representative Joseph Crawley, (D., N.Y.) called the report “much...

Amnesty is coming — big time.Americans need to brace themselves for a huge new wave of Obama-led lawlessness because the president is planning what a top schemer in the White House calls a “very significant” executive action on immigration after the summer. Undoubtedly this means some kind of amnesty for illegal aliens is in the works over and above what Obama has already done, the Constitution and public fury notwithstanding.Obama’s “planned executive orders” would give legal status “to another 5–6 million illegal immigrants,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, (R-Alabama). “This would effectively end immigration enforcement in America.”Leftist congressman Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) boasted...

Fifteen years ago, when I was 6, my parents and I moved to the United States from Canada, where I was born. Since moving to this great country, I have attended elementary, middle and high school in Coral Springs, Fla., and I’m currently pursuing a bachelor degree in biological sciences and pre-med at Florida Atlantic University.I’m also a “non-resident alien,” meaning I was able to stay in the United States first under a visa because of my father’s job and now thanks to a student visa. But because of my status as a non-resident alien, I have paid out-of-state tuition...

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry called on President Obama last month to deploy federal troops to help quell the surge of immigrants crossing the border illegally, he urged the president to give the troops “arrest powers to support Border Patrol operations.” Last week, Perry announced that he was activating 1,000 National Guard troops in response to the border crisis in the Rio Grande Valley. Because the troops were deployed by Perry and not federal officials, experts said Perry can allow them to make arrests and apprehensions. But will he?

The deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards vowed revenge against Israel for its ongoing military incursion into Gaza, which has already killed hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis. “You [people of Israel] are trees without any roots which were planted in the Islamic lands by the British,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said at this week’s Friday prayer sermon in Tehran, Fars News Agency reported. That statement referred to the Balfour Declaration, which led to the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the eventual creation of the state Israel in 1948. “We will chase you house...

Dinesh D'Souza has a new movie out called America: Imagine A World Without Her - but we don't really have to "imagine", it's happening before our eyes. Nothing difficult and complicated about it: in this decline and fall, the Emperor simply went fundraising. At any rate, Jamie Weinstein sat in for Hugh Hewitt this week, and took me on a brisk trot round current topics: MARK STEYN: Well, what's going on in the world is of very little interest to President Fundraiser. He's got other priorities, and the rest of the planet, as I believe it's marked on the State...

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon didn't pull any punches Friday in his response to the Obama administration's request that Congress repeal the 2002 law authorizing the use of military force in Iraq. In a statement, McKeon, R-Calif., who's retiring at the end of this year, said he thought the letter sent earlier in the day to House Speaker John Boehner from national security adviser Susan Rice was a joke. He said: Obama Administration officials are warning us daily that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is ‘worse than al-Qaeda' and an extreme threat to the American people....

Sarah Palin – former governor of Alaska, erstwhile candidate for VP of the U.S. and polarizing public figure – has unveiled a new subscription-based Internet TV network that promises direct access to her and her supporters. The Sarah Palin Channel, which costs $9.95 per month or $99.95 for a one-year subscription, will feature her commentary on “important issues facing the nation,” as well as behind-the-scenes looks into her personal life as “mother, grandmother, wife and neighbor.” Palin serves as executive editor, overseeing all content posted to the channel. “I want to talk directly to you on our channel, on my...

Christopher Brumfield, 43, said he was brutally assaulted Saturday evening (July 26) in the St. Roch neighborhood by a dozen teenagers, at least one of whom he recognized from his time teaching art at the youth's school. He said he escaped by crawling into oncoming traffic on North Claiborne Avenue. The incident was not listed in the police department's major incident log Sunday (July 27). New Orleans Police spokeswoman Hilal Williams said a team was dispatched to St. Roch and North Claiborne avenues Saturday night but had not verified the incident because they were unable to reach Brumfield at several...

After a spate[??] of shootings across Chicago that left over a dozen dead and nearly 100 wounded, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Friday toured a new federal Gun Crime Intelligence Center, saying, “You can’t fight a war without intelligence,” the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the office will collect data on the more than 7,000 firearms used in crimes and recovered by Chicago police each year, the Sun-Times writes. “You can't fight a war without intelligence, to know where the weapons are, where the shooters are and to stop it before...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A program designed to foster a new generation of young African leaders will be renamed after former South African President Nelson Mandela, the White House said Sunday. President Barack Obama, who has said he was one of the untold millions of people around the world who were inspired by Mandela's life, is set to announce the name change at a town hall-style event on Monday in Washington with several hundred young leaders from across sub-Saharan Africa. The youngsters are participating in the inaugural Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, part of the broader Young African Leaders Initiative...

-snip- There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level. We considered whether it would be best for Washington to hold back while the states continued experimenting with legalizing medicinal uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even...

In a story about President Barack Obama's potential executive actions, the Los Angeles Times suggested that illegal immigrants have a "right" to work permits even though that is not allowed under U.S. law. The headline of the Los Angeles Times story about Obama potentially granting temporary amnesty and work permits to five million illegal immigrants blares, "White House pursuing plan to expand immigrant rights." Last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) blasted the Obama administration for declaring amnesty "as a civil right." Bewildered, Sessions, the former U.S. attorney, wondered how Attorney General Eric Holder could "assert that...