Free Republic

Yesterday I issued a heartfelt and personal statement about the passing of President Nelson Mandela. I said that his family and his country would be in my prayers and Callista’s prayers. I was surprised by the hostility and vehemence of some of the people who reacted to me saying a kind word about a unique historic figure. So let me say to those conservatives who don’t want to honor Nelson Mandela, what would you have done? Mandela was faced with a vicious apartheid regime that eliminated all rights for blacks and gave them no hope for the future. This was...

Republicans aren’t just trying to undermine President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, according to Former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.). They’ve also been trying to undermine the President “as a human being” since his election. Appearing on CNN‘s “State of the Union” this week, Dean discussed the rollout 2.0 of HealthCare.gov and how it plays into the larger picture of the President’s poor polling and damaged reputation as a whole. He told host Candy Crowley that there is “no evidence” that the damage for Obama will be lasting.

<p>Anyone who opposes the Affordable Care Act is a subhuman. It is a great law but lying republicans are trying to destroy it. I signed up with no problem on the website. Republicans want to repeal my new insurance. Obama is a hero!</p>

The Fed keeps buying roughly $85 billion in bonds a month, chronically delaying so much as a minor QE taper. Over five years, its bond purchases have come to more than $4 trillion. Amazingly, in a supposedly free-market nation, QE has become the largest financial-markets intervention by any government in world history. And the impact? Even by the Fed's sunniest calculations, aggressive QE over five years has generated only a few percentage points of U.S. growth. Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009....

Former Republican-turned-Independent-turned Democrat Charlie Crist, interviewed with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz this week and stated that he would raise taxes, if he was elected Governor of Florida in 2014. Here is the exchange between Ed Schultz and the one-time “I am pro-life, I’m pro-gun, I’m pro-family and I’m anti-tax” Charlie Crist. Schultz: What do you think about Florida’s finances, and what do you expect out of the wealthiest residents? Crist: I think we both have to expect more of each other. I don’t like to raise taxes. I don’t think that anyone really enjoys the idea of doing that, I did...

All is a twitter on Twitchy regarding Nobama's no-show at the a150 year anniversary of The Gettysburg Address. Some in the media are mocking Pfeiffer/Obama for their sarcastic tweets.

Star Partners and Hummingbird Prods. are collaborating on production of a sequel to Frank Capra’s iconic 1946 movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which starred Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. The sequel, titled “It’s A Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story,” is being financed by Allen J. Schwalb of Star Partners who will also produce along with Bob Farnsworth of Hummingbird. The duo are aiming to get the movie into theaters for the 2015 holiday season. Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey’s daughter “Zuzu” in the original, will return for the “Wonderful Life” sequel as an angel who shows Bailey’s...

Alec Baldwin's new weekly MSNBC talk show was suspended for two episodes after the actor was videotaped using an anti-gay epithet against a photographer during a New York street encounter. The cable channel didn't specify the reason it yanked Friday night's "Up Late with Alec Baldwin" from its schedule this week and next, but the decision came the day after the Thursday run-in.

A full-time professor on the faculty of the newly-minted Texas A&M University School of Law called for the repeal and replacement of the Second Amendment on Friday. The professor, Mary Margaret “Meg” Penrose, made her controversial declaration during a day-long panel symposium on gun control and the Second Amendment at the University of Connecticut School of Law in Hartford. UConn’s main student-run journal, The Connecticut Law Review, organized the event, according to Connecticut Public Radio. It was well-attended, primarily by law students, law professors and local attorneys.

Obama has apologized for claiming "if you like your health plan you can keep it," but Democrats to his left are standing their ground. Nancy Pelosi was unrepentant at a press conference on Friday, Politico reports. She said Obama had no need to apologize because his claim was "absolutely" precise. "There's nothing in the Affordable Care Act that says that your insurance company should cancel you," she told reporters. "That's not what the Affordable Care Act is about. It simply didn't happen."

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on Friday closed his show with likely the most disgraceful rant against former Alaska governor Sarah Palin you’ve ever heard. Besides calling her “America’s resident dunce” and claiming she has a “deceased mind,” Bashir suggested that someone should defecate in her mouth and urinate in her eyes (video follows with transcript and commentary, vulgarity warning): MARTIN BASHIR: It's time now to clear the air. And we end this week in the way it began - with America’s resident dunce, Sarah Palin, scraping the barrel of her long deceased mind, and using her all-time favorite analogy in an...

"I can only say: I'm sorry, America," he wrote. "The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time."

I've tried my level damndest to ignore the latest Richard Cohen column controversy, because life is short and Cohen will stumble into another racial contretemps within six weeks or so. And I don't like the idea of a columnist being Mau-Mau'd out of a job because he's a casual bigot. The smarmy-sounding Fred Hiatt defense—that Cohen "isn’t afraid to take on subjects where culture and politics and emotion overlap"—isn't entirely wrong. Past-their-prime white guys have opinions, too. No, the problem with Cohen's column was that he made an assertion about an entire class of people being racist, and did no...

A Denver Broncos lineman is quitting the NFL — and walking away from an additional $1 million he would have made if he’d stayed through the end of his contract next year — because he’d begun reading the works of liberal linguist Noam Chomsky and the Dalai Lama.Guard John Moffitt called the Broncos from his home in Seattle last week and said he wouldn’t be back.Unlike Miami Dolphins offensive tackle Jonathan Martin, who famously quit the team amid allegations that he was being bullied and harassed by teammates, Moffitt told the Associated Press that he was simply no longer all...

It’s impossible to say how or why these people got so misguided, but the result is absolutely hilarious. These are the dumbest things that have happened in the history of man and, although it’s funny, it could make anyone lose their faith in humanity. Every new generation is apparently worse than the last.

Looks like there’s an election law showdown about to happen — and it involves House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and who can use her name. The conservatives behind the new political action committee called Stop Pelosi PAC launched their campaign against the San Francisco Democrat on Wednesday — despite federal election officials telling them that there was something wrong with their PAC. It uses the name “Pelosi.”

The House is out this week, giving Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plenty of time (yeah, there’s a budget conference and other important things regardless of recess) to go on David Letterman and make funnies, delivering last night’s top 10 list.

A new book covering the 2012 presidential campaign uncovers a series of scathing remarks from political figures, but one alleged comment has stirred controversy around President Barack Obama and his administration’s use of targeted drone strikes. Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book “Double Down: Game Change 2012” notes President Obama commenting on drone strikes, reportedly telling his aides that he’s “really good at killing people.”

In light of a recent report, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) fears the National Security Agency may be spying on President Barack Obama. “They could well be spying on the president, for all I know,” Paul says, in an interview with National Review Online. “He has a cell phone, and, in fact, my guess is that they have collected data on the president’s phone.” Paul also believes the federal government may be tracking Pope Francis. “The most important question we need to ask the NSA is, ‘Are you telling us you’re collecting no data on the pope?’ And, ‘Did you...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sat down with Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night, and during a frank discussion on the government shutdown, the topic of Ted Cruz came up. Reid said he would love it if Cruz was the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, because if he was “it would be the end of the Republican party.” He expressed his profound disappointment with “so-called moderates” that went along with this, saying that the Republican party has damaged itself so much by offending every almost minority group that it’s a guarantee they won’t try the shutdown again. Reid said if Cruz...