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"As soon as I sign this bill," President Obama promised in his prime-time address to Congress, "it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick." Thunderous applause followed. It's easy to understand why - no one wants to lose their insurance coverage when they need it most. But here's a news flash: It's already illegal for insurance companies to drop patients once they become ill. It has been for over a decade. The American people should take note, as President Obama is using this non-existent crisis to justify massive federal intervention in...

But not for the reasons Obama cites. She "was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne," he said in one telling. Beaton did not lose her insurance because she failed to own up to a skin problem in her past. She lost it because, when enrolling in the plan, she had not reported a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately. Obama tells stories of real-life hardships repeatedly, in his speech to a joint session of Congress, in interviews and at his...

WASHINGTON – The House has voted to admonish Rep. Joe Wilson over his "You lie" outburst to President Barack Obama during the president's health care speech to Congress last week. The 240-179 vote on the resolution of disapproval reflected the sharp partisan divide over the issue. Democrats insisted that the South Carolina Republican take responsibility for what they said was a serious breach of decorum. Republicans characterized the vote as a political stunt.

Finally! I have proof positive that Obama was born in Kenya! I guarantee that this will hold as much credibility in a court of law as the Rather National Guard letters or the COLB that Obama posed on Kos.

The Obama campaign talks a lot about new ideas and expanding the political map, but in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which the campaign has focused on almost exclusively since the Democratic convention, old-school issues still rise to the fore. The latest example came Friday during a small political event at SCHOTT North America Inc., a glass factory in Duryea, Pa., where even a hand-picked crowd threw Barack Obama a curve ball. A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted...

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 28, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - New Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden was blasted on Wednesday, in the wake of Nancy Pelosi's much derided remarks to the same effect, for claiming that his radically pro-abortion stance is "totally consistent" with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Biden made the remarks in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) in August of last year, which has received renewed attention in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding Pelosi's remarks. While discussing his desire to attract Catholics to the Democratic Party, Sen. Biden said, "My views are totally consistent with...

It took nearly five years, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his no-tax pledge in an effort to break a budget deadlock.It was the right thing to do, even if we would have preferred a more progressive alternative to the governor's proposed temporary one-cent increase in the sales tax. But let there be no doubt: The $4 billion tax increase would have less of an impact on low-income Californians than a commensurate cut in state programs.Now the challenge will be for Schwarzenegger to persuade a handful of Republicans to break their own no-tax pacts that have all but frozen any meaningful...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The mother of a missing Orlando girl said her gut feeling is that her daughter is OK and still close to home, she said during a newly released jailhouse call. The weekend call between Casey Anthony, 22, and her brother Lee Anthony was released Monday night. The conversation begins with Lee Anthony warning his sister, the mother of missing Caylee Anthony, that everything she says is being recorded and will be released to the media. He then tells her she can reach out to local detectives and she doesn't have to go through her attorney before asking...

TOKYO — North Korea took a step on Thursday toward reintegration into the world community and rapprochement with the United States by submitting for outside inspection a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear program. The 60-page declaration from North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished nations, was expected to describe in previously undisclosed detail its capabilities in nuclear power and nuclear weapons — meeting a major demand of the United States and other countries that consider the North a dangerous source of instability. “This can be a moment of opportunity for North Korea,” said President Bush, announcing the...

BOCA RATON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stood in the middle of one of the state's largest Jewish communities Thursday and was asked to prove his pro-Israel credentials. He pointed to the black voters in his Chicago hometown. "One of the raps on me when I first ran for Congress in the African-American community was, 'He's too close to the Jewish community. ... All his friends are Jews,' " Obama told about 600 people at B'nai Torah Congregation. "That's part of why this kind of conversation is frustrating." Obama, who lost that 2000 race, tried to assuage concerns from...

Maybe it was the pressure of the moment. Being under the Tim Russert spotlight can get to anyone. Under Russert's grilling about guns on this morning's "Meet the Press," former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney claimed an endorsement he'd never won. ....snip..... "I just talked about, about guns. I told you what my position was, and what I, what I did as governor; the fact that I received the endorsement of the NRA." The problem? He was never endorsed by the NRA, and didn't have their official support during his 2002 gubernatorial campaign. The NRA declined to endorse in that race,...

During a campaign swing for his wife, former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning” — a statement that is more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003. Before the invasion, Mr. Clinton did not precisely declare that he opposed the war. A week before military action began, however, he did say that he preferred to give weapons inspections more time and that an invasion was not necessary to topple Saddam Hussein. At the same time, he also spoke supportively about the 2002 Senate resolution that authorized military...

Things I'm starting to see on the main forums for the Duke case confirm my opinion that a legal equivalent of WW-II is about to erupt in Durham; I would anticipate hundred million if not billion-dollar suits against Duke and the city of Durham, and a hundred or so million-dollar suits against individuals. The most major forum for such discussions seems to be liestoppers.blogspot.com. One article posted there today appears to be a rundown of the causus belli for the coming war and reminds me more than anything else of the list of grieviences against King George: "...there were freshmen...

MANCHESTER – New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said yesterday her 2002 vote for a resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq was "not a vote for a pre-emptive war," but instead a show of support for further United Nations weapons inspections. The Democratic Presidential front-runner, who has been criticized by hard-line anti-war groups for not apologizing for the vote, emphasized that distinction in a telephone interview from Washington. While fellow candidate John Edwards, a former senator, has apologized for his vote on the October 2002 resolution, Clinton again did not. "I will let others speak for themselves," she said. "I have...

One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is "completely heterosexual." Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition. "He is completely heterosexual," Ralph said. "That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing." Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while...

NEW YORK - Her on-off relationship with Jude Law made her an overnight celebrity, but Sienna Miller says that wasn’t her goal. “I was just never desperate to be famous, which I know sounds cliched and probably like a lie, but it is, in my case, very true,” the 24-year-old actress says in the January issue of W magazine. “And that’s the irony of my situation. “It was always about acting, and now it’s all about everything but that. I fell in love with someone very, very famous, and that’s beyond all of our control. Strategically I probably could have...

JOHN EDWARDS CAUGHT IN A LIE This is rich. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (who? Oh yeah..him,) the former Democratic vice-presidential nominee who ran with The Poodle two years ago, has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Believe it or not, it all revolves around Wal-Mart...and a game console. You see....Edwards is always bashing Wal-Mart. Not because of their promotion of eminent domain abuse, but because of their policy of promoting low prices and non-union labor. Edwards just isn't going to ever shop there. Or his he? It turns out the answer to that question is...it...

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards acknowledged Thursday that amid his criticism of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a volunteer member of his staff asked the world's largest retailer for help obtaining a hot new Sony Playstation 3 for Edwards' family. Edwards, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told The Associated Press that the volunteer "feels terrible" about seeking the game unit at Wal-Mart while his boss claims the retailer doesn't treat its employees fairly. "My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people. That staff person mentioned it...

THE son of the jailed Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri declared yesterday that he was proud to be a British citizen. Mohammad Mostafa Kamel, 25, who was jailed for terrorist offences in Yemen in 1999, said that it was wrong to associate him with his father’s views. “Everybody has their own beliefs and it doesn’t mean that if my dad believes something that I believe the same,” he told the BBC World Service Outlook programme. “I don’t agree with everything my dad says.” Mr Kamel, who was dismissed from a part-time maintenance job on the London Underground after his bosses...

Kerry says he deserves 2nd chance in '08 1 hour, 29 minutes ago Sen. John Kerry says he deserves a second chance if he decides to take another crack at becoming president. The Massachusetts Democrat, who lost to President Bush in 2004, said it is a basic principle that "Americans give people a second chance. And if you learn something and prove you've learned something, maybe even more so. Now, I don't know what I'm going to do yet. We'll make that decision down the road." Ronald Reagan twice unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for president before he got it...

DES MOINES, Iowa --Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry lashed out Sunday against a group that bashed him during his last run at the White House. Kerry, who made a weekend appearance in northwest Iowa, said he is concerned that Swift Vote Veterans for Truth is again resorting to "the politics of fear and smear." The group, financed by Texas conservatives, ran commercials questioning his claim of being a decorated Vietnam veteran -- the centerpiece of his presidential campaign in 2004. "We're not going to give them an ounce of daylight," said Kerry, who is considering another run at the Democratic presidential...

Plamegate: Patrick Fitzgerald's three-year manhunt to track down who blew Valerie Plame's CIA "cover" has been exposed as a costly sham. He apparently knew all along that his man was not Scooter Libby. ...But it's hard to see anything but politics as the motivation for Fitzgerald's handling of the Plame affair. The facts indicate that Fitzgerald knew early on that the original leaker was State Department official Richard Armitage. So why did Fitzgerald let a cloud hang over White House adviser Karl Rove's head for so long? And why is Fitzgerald continuing to hound Libby, the former vice presidential chief...

The “Real” Reason Kerry lost—Remembering and Honoring Vietnam’s Heroes. With newspaper reports (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1639667/posts) of John (The Snake) Kerry out to prove his claims about his exploits in Vietnam and thereby, intending to discredit the Swift Boat Vets (and by association, all of the rest of us Vietnam Vets who opposed him, more so, for his actions after he returned from Nam) I thought it appropriate to post this, on this Solemn Day of Commemoration. I composed this poem and posted it on the eve before the last election (November 1st) and I believe it speaks for itself. God Bless (and...

A YEAR AND A HALF AFTER HE LOST the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry can't get enough of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. No matter the occasion, he doesn't miss an opportunity to parade his campaign wounds, however incoherently and obsessively. Supporting an Iraqi war vet running as a Democrat for Henry Hyde's congressional seat? "I know something firsthand about the Swift Boat-style Republican attack ads of the last election -- but you don't have to take my word for it," Senator Kerry wrote in a March fundraising e-mail, on behalf of Tammy Duckworth, an amputee whom no one...

Most of the controversies from the wild 2004 presidential campaign have long been forgotten. But one is coming back, the New York Times reported this week, and we're glad it is: Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for president, is joining an effort to debunk the many attacks on his service in Vietnam more than two decades earlier. Kerry is a holder of three purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star, all awarded in a four-month stint aboard Navy swift boats in Vietnam's Mekong delta.

Editorial: Kerry takes up the Swift Boat charges He deserves this opportunity to set the public record straight. Most of the controversies from the wild 2004 presidential campaign have long been forgotten. But one is coming back, the New York Times reported this week, and we're glad it is: Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for president, is joining an effort to debunk the many attacks on his service in Vietnam more than two decades earlier. [snip] Although they had little bearing on Kerry's qualifications to be president, his young-man's sentiments on Vietnam were a legitimate issue. But that's...

As we watch the left of the Democratic Party press its case to return to the top of the heap in American politics, or at least evade the fate of the Dodo, we have ever more evidence validating an insight on which I stake my reputation as a political seer. To wit: partisan politics more often falls under the professional expertise of the psychiatrist than that of the political scientist. A learned shrink can often tell us more about a political issue than any other professional, not excluding a swami or a voodoo priest. Consider the ongoing controversy over Sen....

June 05, 2006 The Truth, John Kerry, and The New York Times By Thomas Lipscomb Kate Zernike's story on the front page of the Memorial Day Sunday New York Times, "Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss," is an unfortunate reminder of the Times's embarrassingly poor coverage of Kerry in the face of the Swift Boat Veterans' for Truth charges in the 2004 election. Now as then, the Times acts as if the issues involved were between Kerry's latest representations of his record and the "unsubstantiated" charges of the Swift Boat group. The Times used the term "unsubstantiated" more...

Sunday, June 4, 2006 10:49 p.m. EDT John Kerry: Bush A Criminal, Looting Country Failed presidential candidate John Kerry blasted President Bush on Thursday as a "criminal" who has been "looting the country." The Massachusetts Democrat offered the incendiary comments during an off the record meeting with liberal bloggers after a speech in Los Angeles to the Pacific Council on International Policy. According to the Web site L.A. Observed, Kerry asked the bloggers to keep his comments confidential; a request they apparently dismissed out of hand without telling him. Blogger "Hollywood Liberal" reports that Kerry "agreed completely with someone's assessment...

Kate Zernike's story on the front page of the Memorial Day Sunday New York Times, "Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss," is an unfortunate reminder of the Times's embarrassingly poor coverage of Kerry in the face of the Swift Boat Veterans' for Truth charges in the 2004 election. Now as then, the Times acts as if the issues involved were between Kerry's latest representations of his record and the "unsubstantiated" charges of the Swift Boat group. The Times used the term "unsubstantiated" more than twenty times during its election coverage and continues to make no discernable effort to...

That's "Swiftboating" -- as John Hinderaker defines it: "when a veteran says somehthing that liberals disagree with." Kate Zernike is John Kerry's latest mainstream media stenographer regarding his service in Vietnam. I wrote briefly about her New York Times article in "Return of the magic hat" and called on Tom Lipscomb to rise to the bait: Preparing for another grab at the brass ring, John Kerry seeks to engage the claims of the Swift Boat veterans. In today's New York Times, the "magic hat" -- the hat that Kerry claims was tossed to him by the "special forces" (apparently Navy...

Failed presidential candidate John Kerry blasted President Bush on Thursday as a "criminal" who has been "looting the country." The Massachusetts Democrat offered the incendiary comments during an off the record meeting with liberal bloggers after a speech in Los Angeles to the Pacific Council on International Policy. According to the Web site L.A. Observed, Kerry asked the bloggers to keep his comments confidential; a request they apparently dismissed out of hand without telling him. Blogger "Hollywood Liberal" reports that Kerry "agreed completely with someone's assessment that everything that Bush does is solely for the purpose of looting the country....

The puff piece starts out: “John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: “Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia.” Right off the bat, this is the first piece where the Swift Boat Vets were 100% correct. At the time, John Kerry stated that his trip took place on Christmas Eve in 1968. The SBV were right at the time, he was NOT iN Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968. Kerry had said that this moment was “seared” into him. After the Vets came out, Kerry had his personal biographer come out and it changed...

John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia." Graphic: Kerry's New Evidence He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares. "They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. "I have the hat." Three...

Kerry Pressing Swiftboat Case, Long After Loss By KATE ZERNIKE John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia." He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares. "They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his...

Dean said that "one of the misconceptions about the Democratic Party is that we're godless and that we don't have any values." The Vermont liberal is trying to change that. Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean told CBN News that his party has a lot in common with the evangelical community. Dean wants evangelicals and other conservative Christians to know that Democrats have something to offer them. "The truth is, we have an enormous amount in common with the Christian community, and particularly with the evangelical Christian community,” Dean said. But the Democrats’ record on hot political issues such as abortion,...

Longtime CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather on Tuesday called for a return to independent journalism, telling viewers to be critical of the plethora of "new" media outlets that feign objectivity while working to advance their own - or another's - agenda. "You need to ask yourself: Is more better, and is all that calls itself news really news," Rather told the estimated 1,400 people who filled the Maine Center for the Arts near capacity for his morning speech on the University of Maine campus. "News is something people need to know which someone, somewhere, doesn't want them to know....

I try not to bother God too often, but I do sometimes ask Him for grace, to lend me some when I need to display it. I admit to asking now. The last three weeks have been the darkest yet most enlightening of my professional life. The dark part is obvious. I made a careless mistake in a column. It wasn't malicious. It didn't harm the subjects. But it was factually incorrect (how about "LIES") in four paragraphs. I assumed something would happen that didn't. That was wrong. I apologized to my bossess. We were going to run a correction....

Bannockburn police arrested a black, female Trinity International University student today in connection with a series of racially tinged letters sent to minority students. Alicia Hardin, 19, of Dolton, confessed to mailing the three letters Monday to members of the task force investigating the matter. Police said Hardin wanted to transfer to a different school because she was unhappy at Trinity but her parents would not let her. The letters, police said, were her way of implying the campus was not safe. Hardin appeared at the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan Tuesday morning on a charge of disorderly conduct and...

Borrowing a page from President Bush, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton told a Boston audience this week that prayer has always played a meaningful role in her life - though accounts from her days as a student radical suggest that's probably not true. "I've always been a praying person," Clinton told a crowd of more than 500, including many religious leaders, at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza. According to the Boston Globe, the newly religious former first lady "invoked God more than half a dozen times" as she urged society to accommodate religious people who "live out their faith in the...

My name is Mary Katherine, and I reside in the state of Ohio. I am a registered Republican. I grew up in a small town with very strict parents, attend church every Sunday, and have generally tried to live a good and decent life. I have been married for 15 years, have 3 children, and I am a stay at home mother. I am personally opposed to abortion, I believe in small government, and I cheered when welfare was overhauled. I am personally opposed to gay marriage, and I deeply believe this country needs to do more about the divorce...

Several readers have written to let us know that the email address for Tom Hays, the reporter who wrote the false AP story about a Republican crowd booing the announcement of Bill Clinton's hospitalization in West Allis, Wisconsin, and President Bush doing "nothing to stop them." It is thays@ap.org. I have written Mr. Hays to ask whether he has anything to say in his own defense. I also asked him whether he was actually at the rally. I promised Mr. Hays that if he has anything to say for himself, we will gladly print it, and millions will see his...

John Kerry has undergone so many contortions to avoid admitting he lied when he told the Senate in 1986 that President Nixon had illegally ordered him to enter Cambodia. (The Dem slogan seems to be: If in doubt, blame Nixon). For John Kerry to have successfully maintained his Cambodian fiction his lie would have had to be difficult or impossible to refute. The Cambodian lie revealed that Kerry really is not that bright. To state that Nixon ordered him into Cambodia when in fact the then-president was L. B. Johnson was an incredibly stupid thing to do. If nothing else...

"Unfit for Command" really blew me away. It is far more devastating to John Kerry than I imagined it would. It exposes John Kerry's lies, one after another, in a fashion that shows his true motivations for going to Vietnam -- as a badge he could wear to promote himself in his future political ambitions. I have read section one (about half of the book) so far. Even if you discount all of the "my word against his" type of claims, the exposing of John Kerry's own words provides the noose that will hang him. I found some of these...

CLINTON'S PRESIDENCY: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN Sat Jun 26, 8:00 PM ET By Cynthia Tucker Bill Clinton hopes to be acquitted by history. Fortunately for him, though, no subject of history is ever around to hear its verdict. Scholars will probably wonder what drove legions of conservatives to hate Clinton with such fury that they wasted years and spent a king's ransom trying to drive him from office. They will no doubt note that Clinton accomplished much despite the "vast right-wing conspiracy": He righted the nation's finances after decades of dangerous deficits. He drove the initiative that stopped a pogrom...

Some critics of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have questioned the circumstances surrounding the first of three Purple Hearts Kerry won in Vietnam. Those critics, among them some of Kerry's fellow veterans, have suggested that a wound suffered by Kerry in December 1968 may have made him technically eligible for a Purple Heart but was not severe enough to warrant serious consideration, even for a decoration that was handed out by the thousands. Whatever the case, Kerry was awarded the Purple Heart, and, along with two others he won later, it allowed him to request to leave Vietnam before his...

MTV tries it's hand at damage control, but fails miserablyMTV has rather deftly changed it's text on it's Super Bowl page from the text originally up there (and touted by news programs and websites everywhere:Janet Jackson Got Nasty at the MTV-Produced Super Bowl Halftime Show Jaws across the country hit the carpet at exactly the same time. You know what we're talking about...Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake and a kinky finale that rocked the Super Bowl to its core. P. Diddy, Kid Rock, & Nelly rounded out the halftime show in the midst of the greatest game on earth. MTV was...

President Bush's proposal to give temporary legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants is running into stiff resistance from both left and right on Capitol Hill and stands little chance of enactment this year, according to supporters and opponents. While this assessment is based on early responses, with the lobbying effort barely begun, some lawmakers say the measure's only chance of passage this year would require an all-out push by the president, and even that might not be enough.

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Saturday his program to allow illegal immigrants to work in the United States legally for up to three years was designed to put "willing foreign workers" in jobs that Americans are "not willing" to do.</p>

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton launched a triple-network attack on President Bush yesterday while at the same time insisting she doesn't want his job. For now. "No, no. I've said no. I've said no, no, no, no," the New York Democrat told NBC's "Meet the Press," when asked if she would accept her party's nomination in 2004. But no matter how many times she said no, the questions kept landing as Clinton made the rounds to ABC and CBS. Clinton and her aides have publicly denied for months that she will make a bid for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in 2004...