Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Passover and Easter — intrinsically linked in the Jewish and Christian traditions — are being celebrated this weekend. For observant Jews, Passover commemorates the Hebrews' liberation from slavery under Egypt's Pharaoh. For faithful Christians, Easter is a celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the grave and the fulfillment of a new covenant between God and man. Biblical passages in Exodus 12, Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20 describe these historical events and the reasons for festivities among people of faith. But this year, these holidays are a time of extraordinary anxiety for Christians and Jews...

Most lawyers trying a case abide by the maxim: Don’t piss off the judge. President Obama disregarded that when he lectured the Supreme Court not to overturn the health care law. Indirectly the President was challenging the entire judiciary and it struck a raw nerve with Judge Jerry Smith, of the 5th Circuit Appeals Court. Judge Smith had, less than two years earlier rejected, in a 2 to 1 decision, the Interior Department request to stay a lower court order lifting the offshore drilling moratorium (Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC v. Salazar) – thus requiring the moratorium lifted. In one of...

Don’t hold back, Judge. FOX News contributor Judge Napolitano told Neil Cavuto today, “I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism. A few months ago he was saying the Congress doesn’t count. The Congress doesn’t mean anything. I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation. Now he’s basically saying the Supreme Court doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t review our legislation. That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing.”

There are few films that stir the heart and soul more than the 1962 classic To Kill A Mockingbird. To commemorate the Oscar-winning film’s 50th anniversary, President Barack Obama will introduce a special broadcast of a restored and digitally remastered print of the film on USA at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Saturday, April 7. Starring Gregory Peck as the heroically decent Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch, and based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Harper Lee, the film will air with limited commercial interruption. In a rare public statement, Lee said she was “deeply honored” that President Obama would be participating...

... a federal appeals court apparently is calling the president's bluff -- ordering the Justice Department to answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law ...

We were half-joking yesterday when we asked if Barack Obama slept through his Harvard Law class on Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court first asserted its power to strike down unconstitutional laws. It turns out it's no joke: The president is stunningly ignorant about constitutional law. Obama, " A law like that has not been overturned [pause] at least since Lochner, right? " But in citing Lochner, the president showed himself to be in over his head.

The Talking Points Memo headline reads: “Dems Warn Of ‘Grave Damage’ To SCOTUS If ‘Obamacare’ Is Struck Down.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D), a former attorney general of Connecticut, pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court would damage itself if it did something so ridiculous as find Obamacare unconstitutional: "The court commands no armies, it has no money; it depends for its power on its credibility. The only reason people obey it is because it has that credibility. And the court risks grave damage if it strikes down a statute of this magnitude and importance, and stretches so dramatically and drastically...

Yesterday the Obama administration announced a delaying tactic which will put off the possibility of new offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic coast for at least five years: The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur.

PORTLAND, Maine - President Barack Obama accused Republicans of clinging to economic policies that preceded the Great Depression and the more recent economic downturn, saying his rivals are showing signs of "madness." Raising campaign cash in Maine on Friday, March 30, Obama said Republicans want to return to economic policies that would let Wall Street play by its own set of rules and allow insurance companies to roll back health coverage.

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency just condemned to death an entire U.S. industry - a legal and scientific horror story that congressional Republicans failed miserably to prevent. The EPA’s newly proposed greenhouse gas emission standards for coal-fired power plants will be finalized by the Obama administration, win or lose, after the November election. Though the proposed standards leave alone existing coal-fired power plants, they effectively prohibit the construction of new plants by establishing an impossible-to-meet emissions standard. But don’t get the idea that the EPA threw the coal industry a bone by omitting existing coal-fired plants, as the agency has...

President Obama just gave the world a glimpse into his future foreign policy plans this week, should he win a second term. On tap for Obama II: more faith in our adversaries, more betrayal of our traditional allies and more unilateral indulgence in nuclear abolition fantasies. Monday, President Obama told Russian President Medvedev that “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Medvedev responded that he would dutifully report that tidbit to Vladimir Putin back in the Kremlin. The men apparently did not realize their discussion was being caught by a live microphone. Given that the...

On the heels of NDAA, ObamaCare, Stimulus, Son of Stimulus, Patriot Act, takeover of auto, energy, media and movie industries, and the relentless implementation of Agenda 21... the Obama regime running our country into the ground has issued an updated Executive Order which suggests the probability of impending MARTIAL LAW. We are left to scratch our heads and ask……… Why now? The only possible answer is… America is in fact, right now, in the vicious throes of a Cold Civil War. Cold as in non-violent and Civil as in nationwide; an attempt to force a new government-controlled ideology upon an...

I was in Australia earlier this month and there, as elsewhere on my recent travels, the consensus among the politicians I met (at least in private) was that Washington lacked the will for meaningful course correction, and that, therefore, the trick was to ensure that, when the behemoth goes over the cliff, you’re not dragged down with it. It is faintly surreal to be sitting in paneled offices lined by formal portraits listening to eminent persons who assume the collapse of the dominant global power is a fait accompli. “I don’t feel America is quite a First World country anymore,”...

The recent release of a tape by Andrew Breitbart's outfit sparked renewed interest in President Obama's murky past. In anticipation, conservatives were elated that the president might finally be exposed. The tape showed Obama, then at Harvard Law, orchestrating a protest on behalf of Derrick Bell. Without providing any background on just how radical is Professor Bell, the compliant liberal media derisively dismissed it all as conservative paranoia, even proclaiming presidential vindication. It still appears preposterous to purport that America elected a communist ideologue. The world's greatest beneficiary of capitalist bounty would never willingly empower a radical socialist to "fundamentally...

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke Obama against America While American people continue in their attempt to hide from an endless deteriorating reality, yesterday breaking news brought that president Hussein Obama takes "the killing of Afghan civilians by a deranged gunman as seriously as if it were our own citizens and our own children who were murdered.” Furthermore, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the death penalty is a consideration as the military moves to investigate and possibly put the soldier suspected in the mass killings on trial. So, they...

Marines waiting for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to speak at Camp Leatherneck were ordered by Sgt Maj. Brandon Hall to go out and leave their weapons outside the room. Panetta arrived in Afghanistan Wednesday for a two-day visit amidst heightened tensions after an American soldier was alleged to have killed 16 Afghan civilians. It was an unusual request as it is not customary to disarm for a defense secretary visits. The Marines did as they were told. There were about two dozen Afghan soldiers in attendance who were unarmed. Hall was told to do so by Maj. Gen. Mark...

The Russian regime is tyrannical, criminal, murderous, and every bit as paranoid and predatory as its predecessor, the Soviet Union. It thinks the West duplicitous, arrogant and greedy and it wants our secrets, whether military, business or political. To get them it uses an underground army of spies based here, whose most potent weapon is their ordinariness. They are the kind of people you might meet at the school gates, work alongside in an office or see mowing the lawn next door, stealthily penetrating our society. That Russia runs such agents in the U.S., Britain and Europe (and elsewhere) should...

Talking heads, bloggers and pundits who repeat the cop-out falsehood that “Obama is in over his head” are leading the masses astray and lulling them back to sleep. Count the number of times you’re hearing or reading daily that “Obama is in over his head”. Obama is not in over his head, he’s over their heads and therefore over some of the heads of the badly misinformed We the People. Barack Hussein Obama is no accident. He’s the slick and well-trained lead Agent of Change, handpicked by the far left to force Free World leader America into a socialist state....

The State Department recently denied $2 million in grants to a Russian research institute over concerns the money would be used to boost Moscow’s advanced nuclear missile work. The unusual denial of the grant money was based on a review of a research program to be funded through the Moscow-based International Science and Technology Center, a group that acts as a funding vehicle for research cooperation and training in the former Soviet Union. The department feared the grant could undermine U.S. national security. A State Department official said the project for the funds was reviewed in 2009 and 2010. “During...

So much talk amongst right wing Catholics of the erosion of religious liberty, the collapse of all things and the coming persecution. Talk of government detention centers and priests being shot like Bl. Miguel Pro. I don't think they get it. That's not what it will be like. America is different. We're into image big time. We thought the Soviets were into brainwashing and propaganda. We put them in the shade. America is all about healthy, lusty, good looking guys and gals who are clean cut, successful and smiling. We're into the good life. We're into being good and...