Free Republic

No, the United States isn't trying to build a military force of centenarians. It just seems that way after the Selective Service System mistakenly sent notices to more than 14,000 Pennsylvania men born between 1893 and 1897, ordering them to register for the nation's military draft and warning that failure to do so is "punishable by a fine and imprisonment." The agency realized the error when it began receiving calls from bewildered relatives last week.

Have you been following the news about Obamacare? The Affordable Care Act has receded from the front page, but information about how it’s going keeps coming in — and almost all the news is good. Indeed, health reform has been on a roll ever since March, when it became clear that enrollment would surpass expectations despite the teething problems of the federal website. What’s interesting about this success story is that it has been accompanied at every step by cries of impending disaster. At this point, by my reckoning, the enemies of health reform are 0 for 6. That is,...

Policy decisions and politically driven censorship of the American national security establishment have helped strengthen Al Qaeda's successor and hastened the collapse of the nation of Iraq. ​The current administration and the President represented Operation Iraqi Freedom as the "wrong war," as opposed to the "good war" that was Afghanistan. The Vice President even called the end of our involvement in Iraq one of the great achievements of Obama's tenure. With the jihadi group ISIS now in control of parts of the country that together equal the size of Syria, taking over former US bases, and moving toward the capital...

On the floor of the House Wednesday, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs featured a dialogue between Chairman Jeff Miller and Dr. Thomas Lynch, assistant deputy undersecretary for health for clinical operations at the Veterans Health Administration. Another shocking piece of information about VA hospitals was revealed during that exchange. Miller revealed he had received an email from an employee at the Los Angeles VA Medical Center in which the employee raised concerns over the status of patient wait times and the possible manipulation of records. The director of the facility responded to colleagues via email and said that the...

Seven vulnerable Democrats are now calling for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation after a preliminary Inspector General’s report confirmed allegations of a scandal in the agency.

The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts during the past six years, mainly during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, according to a newly released Inspector General report. The $6 billion in unaccounted funds poses a “significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” according to the report. The alert, originally sent on March 20 and just released this week, warns that the missing contracting funds“could expose the department to substantial financial losses.” The report centered on State Department contracts worth...

President Barack Obama's failures to adequately address his administration's biggest challenges demonstrates that he does not have the competence to be an effective president, some liberals and Democrats have begun to claim. CNN's John King said Sunday that Democrats have been telling him privately that Obama is "detached, flat-footed, even incompetent," he "doesn't want to take command, doesn't want to act fast," and "this White House doesn't appear to have its hand on the lever [of government]." And on Tuesday, liberal National Journal columnist Ron Fournier accused Obama of "intellectual dishonesty" for blaming his failures on Republicans. "The candidate of...

I remember well the liberal Democrat echo chamber calling G W Bush “incompetent”. It was their mantra. Their rehearsed talking point. And the went on the weekend shows and in front of every camera they could find to repeat it. Over and over and over. If Bush was incompetent, what in the world does that make Obama? This inept and incompetent White House just outed their own CIA station chief in Afghanistan in a picture of the Obama trip there over the Memorial Day weekend. A trip clearly designed to distract from the growing VA scandal goes south in a...

Free Republic is a great resource to visit and browse, but it also is valuable to use as a searchable resource. It is very useful to see what FReepers have to say on various subjects, as we come from wide array of backgrounds, and have lived practical lives in the very-real world. Hence, one of the ways I access FR is via Google's search engine. I do a search, but specify to ONLY get results from Free Republic by appending "site:freerepublic.com" to the search term(s). In the past, this would guide me to the pages hosted on freerepublic.com, full of...

Name one high-profile issue that’s going well right now for Secretary of State John Kerry. Russian troops are still sitting on the Ukrainian border, and Russian-backed militants haven’t backed off inside the country. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is still taking Kerry’s calls, but not seeming to care much about what’s being said. Syrian President Bashar Assad announced Monday he’s running for re-election, unopposed, eight months after firing nerve gas over President Barack Obama’s red line. Kerry’s attempted peace process reboot between the Israelis and Palestinians has stalled out. And then, “apartheid” — what the future could hold for Israel...

Two months after KPIX 5 ConsumerWatch first reported about some doctors listed on the Covered California exchange were actually not accepting the plans, insurer Anthem Blue Cross admitted that nearly 1,000 doctors were erroneously listed. According to a statement by the California Medical Association, the insurer recently notified 965 physicians that they were wrongly placed on the exchange’s list. The notice, which was posted on April 9th, stated that the doctors were “inadvertently” listed for “a certain period of time” during the open enrollment period.

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama is getting a number of critical report cards on his foreign and domestic policies lately. Here at home, Janet Yellen, in her first monetary policy address as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, said the labor markets were still weak, and that it will likely take two years or more before the U.S. fully recovers from its recession. Ouch. If Yellen's forecast proves right, this means it will have taken Obama's administration nearly eight years to lift our economy out of its long and painful lethargy.

I would like to share the best rules that place ignorance at the most unsuspected limits. I’m positive you’ll recognize someone close to you who appears to be a true professional but who, in reality, isn’t anything more than an unqualified beginner. These are, in my opinion the most important rules:

What could go wrong? A lot, if you consider the former peanut farmer and president’s last intervention in Venezuela.Joshua Goodman of AP reports on Carter’s expressed interest in going to Caracas: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is expressing concern about Venezuela's escalating political crisis and wants to meet with leaders on both sides in an upcoming trip. Carter, a mediator of past political conflict in the deeply polarized South American nation, made the offer in private letters he sent this week to President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles. Expressing "grave concern" about the loss of life in recent...

A White House official emailed some reporters to say that President Obama's team met today to discuss the ongoing situation on Ukraine. It appears President Obama did not attend. "The President's national security team met today to receive an update on the situation in Ukraine and discuss potential policy options. We will provide further updates later this afternoon," reads the full statement.

In an appearance on The Daily Show, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) insisted that “none of the problems of the Affordable Care Act are my fault. The bill we passed was over 2800 pages. I didn’t have time, no one had time to carefully read all of its provisions to see if there might be any glitches.” “Beyond this there is always the problem of bureaucratic incompetence,” Pelosi continued. “Time after time we have passed legislation aimed at helping people—veterans benefits, medicare, medicaid, and now universal health insurance—only to see treatments bungled, services denied, and money wasted. It’s criminal.”...

This appearance by Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show starts to run off the rails almost immediately. Jon Stewart starts off by asking Pelosi about why people talk about politics rather than policy, to which Pelosi answers by … complaining about Republicans. Stewart doesn’t take the bait, though, and starts pressing Pelosi for answers as to why big-government politicians can’t produce competent government — and gets stunned by her admission that she can’t explain why ObamaCare failed: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook Stewart said that Democrats...

Still littered with abandoned cars, Atlanta struggled to find its way back to normal Thursday while the mayor and governor struggled with the political fallout from a snowstorm that trapped some people in their cars more than 24 hours. Mayor Kasim Reed assured people on Tuesday, in a message on Twitter before the snow began to fall: “Atlanta, we are ready for the snow.” On Thursday, he acknowledged that authorities made a mistake by not staggering their orders for people to go home — schools first, then private businesses, then government employees. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people poured onto...

Top Capitol Hill lawmakers on Sunday expressed concerns about terror attacks at the upcoming Olympic games in Sochi, Russia, amid nearby terror attacks and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assurances that his country will “do whatever it takes” to protect athletes and visitors. “The threats are real,” Texas GOP Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told ABC’s “This Week.” McCaul is among those who think an attack during the games next month will most likely occur outside of the Olympic city and that terrorists will go after “soft targets” such as roads and transportation systems. McCaul, who...

A recent Gallup poll revealed that the number one problem facing America, according to those polled, is “the government.” Twenty-one percent listed this as the worst problem facing the nation. Rounding out the top five problems were the economy (18%), unemployment (16%), healthcare (16%), and government debt (8%). These poll results were dramatically out-of-sync with President Obama’s declaration that “income inequality” is this nation’s chief problem. Only 4% of the poll respondents agreed with his assessment. As one poll respondent explained, “my work hours have been cut and my health insurance canceled. My wife has been unemployed for three years....