Free Republic

They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s budget and pension reforms. Students were the first and last casualties of the ruthless Big Labor war against fiscal discipline. To kick off the yearlong protest festivities, the Wisconsin Education Association Council led a massive “sickout” of educators and other government school personnel. The coordinated truancy action — tantamount to an illegal strike — cost taxpayers an estimated $6 million. Left-wing doctors assisted the campaign by supplying fake medical excuse notes to teachers...

Poland had earlier insisted that Washington must do more than simply express the "regret" offered by another White House spokesman late on Tuesday, hours after Obama's use of words deemed offensive by Warsaw.... Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Obama's words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just regret. "I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman -- a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors," Tusk told reporters in Warsaw. "Today,...

Poles and Polish-Americans are having a tough time accepting Obama’s apology — the White House said he should have referred to “Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland” — for the gaffe Tuesday. They say they have spent a lot of time correcting the historical record that Poles, like Jews, were victims of the Nazis — not architects or staffers of the death camps during the Holocaust. “If a Harvard graduate can’t get that straight, shame on him. It’s unacceptable,” said Illinois Appellate Court Justice Aurelia Pucinski. “On the walk of honor at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, there are more...

Sean Hannity hosted a panel on his show last night, to discuss Barack Obama’s history, in his “own words.” Stephen K. Bannon was a member of that panel, and reminded viewers (around the 3:30 mark) that the McCain campaign failed to vet Obama during the 2008 presidential election. The decision to not vet the current president in 2008 by Steve Schmidt and other incompetent individuals within the McCain camp, played a role in outcome in that race. Governor Palin knew the American people deserved to know the facts about Obama’s history and associations. Schmidt & Co. simply wouldn’t allow it,...

UPDATED: COLUMBUS, Ohio — Even if Rick Santorum wins Ohio on Super Tuesday, he won’t be able to claim all of its delegates. In fact, he is at risk of forfeiting more than one-quarter of them. In three of the state’s 16 congressional districts, including two that are near Ohio’s border with Pennsylvania, Santorum will lose any delegates he might have won because his campaign failed to meet the state’s eligibility requirements months ago. Those three districts alone take 9 delegates out of a total of 66 off the table for Santorum. But it gets worse: Nine more Ohio delegates...

COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama has suffered the second embarrassment over oil imports within the space of a week. Brazil, whose offshore deposits of oil were sought by the Obama administration, has signed contracts with China for the product. According to the Washington Times, Brazilian offshore crude may number about 38 billion barrels. Obama went to Brazil last month to put in a bid for the oil, offering loans and other support to develop the oil in an "environmentally responsible matter," The Hill reported at the time. Republicans criticized that initiative, pointing out Obama has placed roadblocks in the way...

This is how we know who the children of god are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not LOVE his brother. LOVE One Another. 1 John 3:10 In November all of the Obamedia were crowing how their messiah had taken Speaker Bonehead to the cleaners over the tax cut bill. Was Speaker Bonehead dumb like a fox when he lost that battle while sticking a ticking bomb buried in the middle of it. Now that bomb has exploded and...

The U.S. is considering a proposal to transfer a top Taliban commander out of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as part of a potential step toward peace talks with the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. A senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that Mullah Mohammed Fazl is among the prisoners being considered for release. Held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, Fazl was suspected in sectarian killings of Shiite Muslims before the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. The U.S. alleges he was a top Taliban official who at one point commanded thousands of troops...WikiLeaks...

Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by President Obama cannot be implemented properly. Pete Isberg, president of the NPRC today wrote to the key leaders of the relevant committees of the House and Senate, telling them that “insufficient lead time” to implement the complicated change mandated by the legislation means the two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees...” The NPRC ... represents organizations that provide...

A Teen-age President in Search of an Adult Identity Barack Obama keeps looking for a presidential identity not his own. In 2008, he wished to be JFK — whom he often referenced as a youthful and charismatic figure supposedly similar to himself. So we heard references to Obama’s father’s arrival to the U.S. during the golden Kennedy Camelot years. Caroline Kennedy herself came out of seclusion to assure us that Obama had the same Kennedy zest, and she flirted with a Senate run to help restore the lost age of grandeur. And at the Brandenburg Gate, Obama would have liked...

Barack Obama and his minions — Suha-bussing Hillary Clinton who disses Israel every chance she gets and Ambassador Howard Gutman who thinks Islamic anti-Semitism began at a Tel Aviv felafel shop a week ago Thursday (he should read Andrew Bostom) — love to put pressure on our supposed ally… but on Iran’s despicable mullahs not so much. So it should be no surprise that our president is pushing back on last week’s Senate vote for stronger sanctions on Iran. Via Reuters: The Obama administration is urging US lawmakers to soften proposed sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank, Senator Mark Kirk said...

You Lie Obama has failed in every category of government that can be measured. Under his incompetent financial stewardship the increase in the National Debt has now increased to 4.2 BILLION dollars a day. His refusal to repeal the Dodd-Frank Business Destruction Law is consistent with the incompetence and complete lack of responsibility that Obama has repeatedly demonstrated since occupying our White House.

Truck Full of Equipment for Obama Bus Tour Stolen in Virginia: Report Presidential seals also in stolen vehicle Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 | Updated 8:20 AM EDT A truck carrying President Obama's Presidential seals, podiums and $200,000 worth of audio equipment is stolen north of Richmond. Angie Goff A truck carrying President Obama's Presidential seals, podiums and $200,000 worth of audio equipment is stolen north of Richmond. A van containing President Obama's teleprompter and podium were stolen from a Virginia hotel parking lot on Monday, NBC12 in Richmond reports. The truck was parked at the Virginia Center Commons Courtyard Marriott...

You've heard it before, but it's worth repeating as a reminder of just how puffed-up Barack Obama got back in 2008: I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best...

NBC News' newest broadcast journalist just keeps out doing himself. Enjoy tonight's must-see moment.

Former Vice-President Al Gore says he takes encouragement from the so-called “Arab Spring” protests against tyranny that have sprung up in the Muslim countries of the Middle East. “If young people can stand up against a government that shoots them down in the street, then I think there’s hope that the young people of America can rally against the oppressive and incompetent Obama Regime here,” Gore surmised. “I don’t believe that President Obama would dare call on troops to fire on American protestors. But even if he did the American people might finally get the message that they made a...

UPDATE: Dow down 460 at 2:00 est. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is taking a beating as President Obama continues to speak. Towards the beginning of his speech, the index was down 375 points. As I write now it is down 450. Obama's blaming of everyone else and trotting out the same old "solutions" are not helping. The S&P average is down a total of 5% on the day. The NASDAQ is also down 5% on the day. This is becoming a run. We need leadership now. In addition, between the time he announced the speech and gave it, the...

If I were caught in an earthquake, I'd be pretty shell-shocked. But Sebastian Alegria, a 14-year-old Chilean high school student, decided to hack together a twitter alert system that's already a year ahead of the Chilean government's own planned project. Alegria's rudimentary yet effective system comes from having survived Chile's own earthquakes last year and seeing the devastation that covered Japan earlier this year. Keen on finding an inexpensive solution for early earthquake detection, he rigged an Arduino and domestic earthquake detector to tweet seconds before detectable seismic activity. Tweeting from @AlarmaSismos, it has already successfully detected every major earthquake...

There is a laundry list of issues that may lead to Barack Obama being a one-term president. There's his massive, debt-financed spending plans designed to boost the economy that, of course, failed. There's his seemingly incoherent foreign policy. There's his complete grasp of how jobs are created. But there is another issue that is waiting to explode. Obama's administration has been involved in the idiotic plan of allowing American guns to be sold to Mexican drug dealers. These guns were used to kill an American Border Patrol Agent. So... what did Obama know, and when did he know it? Rep....

The number of Obama supporters seems inversely related to his time in office. Many wonder what happened to "The One We Are Waiting For." Obama assumed office in difficult economic times. After a couple of years of excuses -- which included "the problems were worse than we knew" and the generic, all-purpose "it's Bush's fault" -- Obama now owns the original problems and new ones of his own doing. An incomplete report card on his "accomplishments" would include the following: