Free Republic

After nearly a week of vacation in Hawaii, the president's scorecard looks like this: four rounds of golf, three visits to the gym, a trip to the bowling alley and a hike through the wilds of Oahu. It's a fairly typical Hawaiian presidential getaway, filled with athletic pursuits for a relentlessly competitive commander in chief in search of a worthy adversary.

..... Today we mourn the loss of two NYPD officers who were gunned down in a vicious act of senseless violence. As soon as news broke of the tragedy in Brooklyn, I spoke with both the families of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. And let me be perfectly clear, we are all outraged and saddened by the deaths of these police officers. Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases.

....Obama announced the administration’s move to normalize relations with the communist government of Cuba — the most dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward the island nation in more than 50 years.... Fox News Latino reached out to music power couple Gloria and Emilio Estefan, both Cuban-born and outspoken critics of the regime, but their publicist said the couple had no comment. They were on the set of “Glee” when news broke.

Looking at the vast attention given to this Sony hack, I began to realize today that the media, egged on by Team Jarrett, is REALLY UPSET that a MOVIE was not going to be released. Compare this, though, to the NORKS efforts to build missiles and bombs that could annihilate millions of lives and leave cities radioactive for decades..... You can barely get the media to care.... Same goes for Iran. Let Iran's leader make an untoward remark about society or something.....the media talks. Iran building weapons to destroy Israel or sell to other terrorists to be used against America?...

A magazine that published a column by a University of Michigan professor titled "It's Okay to Hate Republicans" said late Thursday that it had crafted that headline without her knowledge and had swapped it for the original one, "We Can't All Just Get Along." In These Times also said in an Editor's Note that after the professor protested, saying the new title was not representative of her piece or its main points, it had restored the original one and had "also removed from the Comments section all threats to the author's life and personal safety."

National Review's editorial board, Mitt Romney, and other Republicans seem to be MORE willing to stand for freedom of speech than the Obama administration. Getting pushed around by third world tin pot dictators is modus operandi for Demon Rats.

Oprah Winfrey says she wishes people wouldn't rush to judge private conversations between Sony executives that were revealed in a recent hack. I would hope that we would not stand in judgement--in such harsh judgement--of a moment in time where somebody was hacked and their private conversations were put before the world. Because if we were to look at your computer and everybody else's computer...I try to write everything as though it's going to show up in the New York Times. But there are things that you say in your private conversations with your friends and your colleagues that you...

Did you bury a teenage girl alive after shooting her? Are you on death row after a string of crimes too gruesome to describe? Or are you just a member of Al Qaeda dedicated to destroying America? If so progressives will fight for you. Just dial 1-800-IAM-VICTIM and the leftist waiting to take your call will insist on your presumption of innocence. Its activists, reporters and lawyers will exploit every pretext to get you off the hook and they will call that justice. The judicial process, they will say, matters more than public safety, public outrage or the victims. When...

President Obama referred to the Bible during a speech on immigration Tuesday in Nashville. But there was a problem: Strictly speaking, one of the lines he cited appears nowhere in scripture. "The good book says, don't throw stones in glass houses," the president said. "Or," he added, "make sure we're looking at the log in our eye before we are pointing out the mote in other folks' eyes."

The actor and comedian Russell Brand has certainly tried brand himself. "Messiah Complex" was the name of his last tour. His new book is titled "Revolution." On "The Tonight Show," he told Jimmy Fallon he's inspired by Jesus, Gandhi, Malcolm X and Che Guevara. He thinks he's like them. In Tinseltown, they're the Fab Four revolutionaries for the downtrodden. So it's shocking to him -- and no surprise to us -- when he gets exposed by the British press as a fraud. He's just another champagne socialist playacting. On Dec. 1, he led an angry march to No. 10 Downing...

In late October, Hillary Clinton traveled to the Hawkeye State to campaign for Democratic Senate nominee Bruce Braley. Hillary offered some choice words about Braley's Republican opponent, Joni Ernst, who'd recently declined to meet with a major state newspaper's editorial board. Ernst's refusal to answer tough questions (besides in her many media interviews and debates, that is) was "disqualifying," the likely presidential candidate averred: Hillary Clinton on Wednesday turned up the heat on Republican hopeful Joni Ernst for skipping meetings with newspaper editorial boards, calling it a “disqualifying” factor in the Iowa Senate race. “You test your candidates. You force them to be...

....shootings throughout the Thanksgiving holiday weekend [have] left five people dead and at least 14 others wounded....

Leftists looking for the perfect ornament to adorn their trees need look no further. "Ready for Hillary" ornaments are now available! I got the good news via email today from RFH. Says the promo: "Embellish your Support! Hang this elegant, gold-finished aluminum ornament proudly. Comes in a black velveteen pouch." And at only $35, a steal! We are assured that the ornaments are "USA made." OK, but are they union made? In any case, what are your thoughts on these ornaments, shown in the photo with a delicate tree limb in the background?

Authorities say they have arrested a "criminal Casanova" suspected of swindling thousands of dollars from wives, fiances and girlfriends across the nation. Trevor Thornton, 33, was arrested on Nov. 19 on a grand theft charge in Broward County after he stole $14,000 from a woman he had been dating for just two weeks, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office....

After five days of ballot counting, it’s official – neither of the two openly homosexual Republican candidates for U.S. House won their races last Tuesday. They lost despite strong public backing from Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-OH, and other high-profile GOP leaders, who aggressively promoted the two men as part of their “Young Guns” recruitment program after concluding in a post-2012 election report that the party’s position against same-sex “marriage” was hurting them with millennial voters. In Massachusetts, former state senator Richard Tisei was defeated by 14 percentage points by Democrat Seth Moulton, a former Marine and combat...

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...