Free Republic

The last president to balance the U.S. budget was in Los Angeles Sunday to preach the value of budgeting and saving money to at-risk kids. Bill Clinton spoke at the "World's Largest Financial Literacy Education Event" at USC's basketball arena.

Democratic Senate hopeful Alison Lundergan Grimes’ campaign appears to have shelled out $17,000 to shuttle Hillary Clinton into Kentucky to attend a rally last month. A $17,192 check was cut to Executive Fliteways, the Ronkonkoma, New York-based company that covered Clinton’s air travel with her husband to Iowa for the Tom Harkin Steak Fry in September, according to Grimes’ Federal Election Commission filings. The check was cut on Oct. 14, and Clinton campaigned for Grimes the next day. She also appeared last weekend at two events for Grimes in Kentucky. A Clinton aide did not comment, and a Grimes aide...

Although Lena Dunham danced half-naked in an MTV "Rock the Vote" PSA last month, the Washington Post reports that Dunham does not practice what she preaches. Although the PSA is meant to encourage and shame young people into voting in the 2014 midterm, Dunham herself did not vote in the last midterm. The same is true for at least four others who appeared in the video with Dunham: Rock The Vote released a public service announcement last month with a parody of Lil Jon's "Turn Down For What" that featured public figures who explained why they planned to vote in...

I see that Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that he is gay and thanks God for this gift. In a separate story, I see that he is widely quoted in the business press as anticipating an "iPad Christmas". I also notice a picture of a Christmas tree at Apple Headquarters in an insider newsletter. Recall earlier this year that Brenden Eich was forced to resign as CEO of Mozilla because it was revealed that he had donated to a ballot initiative that opposed same-sex marriage. It was claimed that his donation showed that he deserved to lose his job...

A Silicon Valley tech company that reportedly made $200 million last quarter was importing foreign workers from India and paying them $1.21 an hour. According to the Labor Department, "about eight employees of Fremont-based Electronics For Imaging [EFI] were flown in from India and worked 120-hour weeks to help with the installation of computers at the company's headquarters." NBC Bay Area noted that "the employees were paid their regular hourly wage in Indian rupees, which translated to $1.21." EFI claimed it "unintentionally overlooked laws that require even foreign employees to be paid based on local US standards." The company reportedly...

Let she who is without geography sin cast the first globe! On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow mercilessly mocked Darrell Issa for confusing Guinea with Guyana. The Republican congressman made his mistake during a discussion of the country in which the latest Ebola outbreak began. Issa said it was "Guyana," a South American country, whereas in fact it was Guinea, a West African one. Fair enough. Issa should have gotten his countries straight. But of all the hosts in the MSNBC lineup, Rachel Maddow should have been the last to have the chutzpah to highlight Issa's blooper. For...

The official autopsy of Michael Brown leaked Wednesday. It strongly suggests that there was an altercation between Brown and Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson before the 18-year-old man was shot dead on August 9. The autopsy also revealed that Brown had been using marijuana, and had enough THC in his system to trigger hallucinations. The Justice Department is angry — with the leak. The U.S. Department of Justice condemned the leaks Wednesday as “irresponsible and highly troubling” and said, “There seems to be an inappropriate effort to influence public opinion about this case.” That’s rich coming from a Justice Department...

Really...MRC recently produced a video (linked at the following sentence) at the Congressional Black Caucus conference asking attendees if the same nutritional standards imposed on kids via Michelle Obama should be applied to food stams. What ensues is three minutes and fifty nine seconds of liberal intellectual bankruptcy at it's finest.The money quote for me was at 1:27: "I don't think it's the government's job to dictate what you can and cannot buy." ...Seriously.It's an amazing quote from someone who would presumably follow those wanting to overturn Obamacare to the gates of hell...Hat tip to Biden for that one...The video...

Democrats are OK with changing the rules of the game to pass their agendas. But when it comes to Republicans using the same rules, Democrats warn of impending doom in order to defeat Republicans.For example, former Clinton Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, is now warning in a video by Moveon.org that if Republicans win the Senate they will pass their right-wing agenda using….wait for it….DUN Dun dun….RECONCILIATION!https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5SQP2KZflco Ok I don’t blame you if didn’t watch it. In short, reconciliation is a Senate rule that allows passage of a budget bill with a simple majority, bypassing the normal process that requires...

Stephen J. DUBNER: As you likely know, the American automobile company Tesla makes some of the most desirable–and expensive–electric cars in the world. The company is currently valued at roughly $31 billion. Compare that to the $55 billion market cap of the Ford Motor Company.Tesla, however, last year sold fewer than 25,000 cars while Ford sells more than 6 million vehicles a year, or roughly 240 vehicles for every single Tesla. Tesla currently has just one vehicle in production, the Model S luxury sedan. In the U.S. the starting price is a bit more than $70,000.Americans buy more Model S’s...

As a Christian and a conservative, I don't often find myself in agreement with liberal comedian Bill Maher and atheist author Sam Harris. I found Maher's so called documentary, "Religulous," fatuous and intellectually dishonest. Harris, while perhaps less strident than his fellow New Atheists, is essentially a materialist, grounding his critique of religion in the claim that it is a "failed science." Not surprisingly, I find his work condescending and ontologically off the mark. Recently, however, Harris and Maher found themselves at the center of controversy for criticizing the Liberal response, or lack thereof, to the atrocities being committed by...

Houston's embattled equal rights ordinance took another legal turn this week when it surfaced that city attorneys, in an unusual step, subpoenaed sermons given by local pastors who oppose the law and are tied to the conservative Christian activists that have sued the city. Opponents of the equal rights ordinance are hoping to force a repeal referendum when they get their day in court in January, claiming City Attorney David Feldman wrongly determined they had not gathered enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. City attorneys issued subpoenas last month during the case's discovery phase, seeking, among other communications,...

Sen. John McCain suggested Sunday that President Obama should nominate an Ebola czar to lead the nation’s response to the deadly virus. “From spending time here in Arizona, my constituents are not comforted. There has to be more reassurance given to them,” the Arizona Republican said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

President Obama’s efforts to try to differentiate Democrats from “billionaire Republicans” was undercut by his own participation in a posh fund-raiser sponsored by billionaire Rich Richman. Though the entry fee for the event ranged from $1,000 to $32,000, the President insisted that “it was an opportunity for the middle class to have a say in the electoral process” contending that “the $1,000 minimum fee was less than half the annual $2500 savings in health insurance premiums that each middle class family has experienced under the Affordable Care Act.” As for billionaire host Rich Richman, the President asserted that “there are...

Last Thursday evening I had my pastor over to Casa de Giles to enjoy one of my fine cigars with the family and me. During the course of catching up, I found out that several new families from a local South Florida mega-church had left that zoo and had joined our church. The reason why they said they absconded had me gobsmacked – and I’m a hard critter to shock. Having been in the ministry for twenty-five years, I’ve pretty much heard it all and have seen it all, but I wasn’t ready for this curve ball. This time it...

More than two dozen lawmakers want the United States government to ban travelers from the West African countries hit hardest by the Ebola virus until the outbreak is under control. Twenty-three Republican and three Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter released on Thursday to President Barack Obama asking the State Department to impose a travel ban and restrict visas issued to citizens of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In the letter, dated Oct. 8, they also asked U.S. health and border control officials to consider quarantine for anyone who arrives from the affected nations...

Democrat Kay Hagan didn’t mince words about the Iraq War during her 2008 Senate campaign against Republican Elizabeth Dole. “We need to get out of Iraq in a responsible way,” Hagan declared in May of that year. “We need to elect leaders who don’t invade countries without planning and stay there without an end.” Hagan is striking a different chord these days. Locked in a tough reelection battle, the first-term senator boasts that she’s more strongly supportive of airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants than her Republican challenger, Thom Tillis, and says she’s been pressing the...

....Palin flubbed the address of the White House when she was insulting the Obama administration. She said "truth is an endangered species" at "1400 Pennsylvania Avenue." But the White House is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Democrats convened their real presidential convention for 2016 a bit early. In NYC.At the U.N. In what is becoming a proxy for what the public believes is the Democrat National Committee, the media, world government organizations and activists who think that some small, few men should decide what every other man gets to have—or not have—met in public and private in New York City this week. They harangued and proselytized, raised money and “awareness” in a purely show-business attempt to re-set the agenda off their failed policies.If only by sheer volume of their arguments, they have tried to convince America...

Back in February, a Buffalo, N.Y. community activist who pushed for a highly restrictive 2013 gun control law was arrested for — wait for it — carrying a gun illegally at a public elementary school. The wheels of criminal justice have now slowly, slowly churned to completion. And wouldn’t you know it? The judge in the case has now found it in his heart to give the heat-packing activist, Dwayne Ferguson, a generously light sentence.