Free Republic

Politics: More than two dozen House Democrats are pushing the Senate to revive and ratify the nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to a critical post, but helping to fight deadly disease is not what they have in mind. The question of the day is why we have or need an Ebola czar in the form of political operative/hack Ron Klain when we have an unfilled surgeon general's position that physician emeritus serving as America's doctor is supposed to fill. We have an acting Surgeon General, Rear Admiral Boris Lushniak, but he is seemingly just a placeholder instead of the force...

Barack Obama and the head of the CDC need to quit saying that we know exactly how Ebola spreads. Because the truth is that there is much about this virus that we simply do not know. For example, a top Ebola scientist that is working in the heart of the outbreak in Liberia says that this version of Ebola looks like it could be "a very different bug" from past versions. Other leading scientists are echoing his concerns. And yet Barack Obama and Thomas Frieden continue to publicly proclaim that we know precisely how this virus behaves. Not only is...

Graciela Iniguez guesses she has spent $12,000 on traffic tickets and vehicle impound fees since she started driving 20 years ago. As an undocumented immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico, Iniguez drives without a license. But that's soon to change. Starting Jan. 1, California residents who can't prove they are in United States legally will be allowed to obtain driver's licenses under Assembly Bill 60, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last year. "This law is going to benefit us so much," she said. "Thank God, now we won't have to be afraid to drive." "Unfortunately, it's not a privilege to...

In its first public response after Breitbart News reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is quietly preparing the capacity to issue more than double its baseline number of green cards and employment permits, a USCIS spokesman said such preparation is routine and that a spike in immigration applications could arise “for any number of reasons.” “Solicitations of this nature are frequent practice for all USCIS contracts and allow the Agency to be prepared for fluctuations in the number of immigration applications received, which can arise for any number of reasons,” Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for USCIS said in a...

2001 video reveals Ron Klain's Ebola training background.... Last week, President Barack Obama made a largely symbolic move by appointing his new “Ebola Czar.” Since he had to look like he was doing something, he did. The man he chose is Ron Klain - someone who knows nothing about medicine or science. In fact, he has no background in either. The “go-to guy” who will manage America’s response to Ebola is a partisan political hack with long, slavishly faithful ties to the Democrat party. Among his many non-medical achievements are being General Counsel to Al Gore’s failed recount committee in...

The progressive will continue to haunt American politics, but his current hipster incarnation is headed for extinction. Obama’s approval ratings and MSNBC’s viewer ratings are in a close race to the bottom of Death Valley. It’s only a question of which set of obnoxious hipsters with a head full of bad policy ideas and no real life experience will be fired first; the Maddow crew or the White House staff. The progressive pajama boy era is over. The asexual messenger bag toting wonk has met an ISIS Jihadist and run home to its non-traditional family. Liberalism isn’t over, but its...

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to seek a vendor to produce as many as 34 million blank work permits and 'green cards' – the paperwork that authorizes illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States – as the White House prepares to issue an executive order after the Nov. 4 midterm elections. According to a draft solicitation published online, the government agency will look for a company that can produce a minimum 4 million cards per year for five years, and 9 million in the early stages. President Barack Obama has pledged that he will make a...

The Obama administration’s new Ebola czar will be paid, but the White House on Monday declined to say how much former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain will be making in his new position. White House spokesman Eric Schultz confirmed that Klain, who starts work Wednesday, would take home a paycheck, but he said the amount would only be revealed in the annual disclosure of White House staff salaries. That report is typically released at the beginning of July, which means Klain will likely have already left the administration by the time his salary is disclosed. Last week, press secretary...

A devastating new Politico poll reveals voters believe America has spun off its axis and is "out of control." "An overwhelming majority of voters in the most competitive 2014 elections say it feels as if events in the United States are 'out of control' and expressed mounting alarm about terrorism, anxiety about Ebola and harsh skepticism of both political parties only three weeks before the Nov. 4 midterms," reports Politico. The poll, which surveyed states and districts in the most competitive congressional races, found that 64% of Americans believe "things in the U.S. feel like they are out of control...

Never mind the negotiations with Iran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program. Far more urgent developments are afoot. While the foreign ministers were busily counting how many centrifuges could spin in Iranian facilities, President Obama and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have arranged a working relationship throughout the Middle East that effectively puts American policy at the service of Iran.Long the goal of Obama, who sent a private emissary to Tehran as early as the 2008 election campaign to tell the Khamenei regime he wanted to be their friend, there is now a de facto alliance between the two...

President Obama has been going out of his way to assure the world that you can’t catch the Ebola virus by riding on a bus. In a September 2 video message to West African countries suffering from Ebola outbreaks, the president assured people that they cannot get the disease through “casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus.” ... But compare Mr. Obama’s laid-back attitude to responses in countries that have more than a mere briefing-book knowledge of the Ebola threat. Tarnue N. Jeke, Managing Director of the Liberian National Transit Authority (NTA), takes a more serious view...

Yesterday, Obama made a rare campaign trail appearance in Maryland where he spoke in support of Democratic candidate for governor, Anthony Brown, proceeded with his usual bulletin of reading fabricated economic data off the teleprompter in which he highlighted improvements in US unemployment (if not the 46.5 million people on foodstamps or the 93 million Americans out of the labor force), a rebounding housing market (just as the bouncing dead cat is once again dead), the benefits of health insurance (if no mention of the disaster for small businesses that Obamacare now definitively is) a resurgent manufacturing sector (just...

President Obama does not want to be a Supreme Court justice. He calls it "too monastic" for his own personality. Besides, in an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama acknowledges that he needs to get out of the "bubble" after what will be eight years as president of the United States. “I love the law, intellectually,” the president tell the New Yorker, which says he sounds "tempted" at the idea of being on the Court. “I love nutting out these problems, wrestling with these arguments. I love teaching. I miss the classroom and engaging with students. But I think...

President Obama made a monumental mistake in appointing a political hack, Ron Klain, as the Ebola czar. He must undo his error now and give the job to someone of stature and genuine ability. In alphabetical order, here are three individuals the President should consider immediately for this crucial post: –Michael Bloomberg. He’s not a physician, but from his extensive work with (and donations to) the medical school and hospital at Johns Hopkins University and other medical institutions, he has gained an enormous amount of knowledge. –Ben Carson. A gifted neurosurgeon and former director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins...

Guatemalan President Otto Perez says the recent influx of illegal immigration to the US from Central American nations is America’s fault. “Look, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvadore are veritable cesspools,” Perez admitted. “Who wouldn’t want to leave? Compare this to welfare obtainable in the United States if you are poor and you have a strong motivation to try to get there. With President Obama’s open border policies its practically an invitation to make the arduous journey north.” As an alternative to mass migration, Perez suggested that “more generous foreign aid to our counties in the south could dampen the need for...

The Democratic Party depends on voting blocs of less educated, less wealthy, more knee-jerk voters than the Republican Party, As this is being written, Rasmussen Reports says that 48% of likely voters approve of President Obama’s performance in office while 50% disapproved. Other polls indicate far more unhappiness with Obama, but in general one must conclude that half the voters are idiots. He is an enormous failure domestically and with his foreign relations. In early July, a Quinnipiac University national poll found that Obama was regarded as “the worst president since World War II.” The only poll that counts will...

Ebola Dose of Reality As the ISIS crisis is conveniently ignored right before the election, the main stream media is focusing on the next crisis, the Ebola spread and the schizophrenic response from the CDC. Meanwhile Congress is silent, waiting for guidance on what opinion they should form before they actually do the job they were elected to do, legislate to protect the best interests of the American people. The Congressional Research Service has issued a report on October 9, 2014, RL 33201, outlining the federal and state quarantine and isolation authority. Jared P. Cole, Legislative attorney, overviewed the state...

Hard to hang onto Big Boo Man Status when so many of your observers know that when it comes to Ebola, Obama long ago mounted his girly bike and rode off into the do-nothing sunset. That Americans aren’t caving in to widespread hysteria on the current Ebola outbreak scare is a major headache for propagandist president Barack Hussein Obama. BHO must have been in a real flap when he took to the microphones for his weekly radio address on Saturday: “This is a serious disease,” he said, “but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear, because that only makes...

CDC officials said last week that Vinson had been told to avoid public transportation, including commercial airlines, while monitoring herself for symptoms. CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden said her trip to Ohio, which began before fellow nurse Nina Pham had been diagnosed with Ebola, violated that restrictio

Just how many illegal aliens is President Obama planning to amnesty and grant work permits to after the election? An announcement to federal contractors that the government is seeking to print millions of Green Cards and Work Permits gives us an idea of what the president has in mind. Daily Caller: President Barack Obama deputies are secretly preparing to print work permits for up to 11 million illegal immigrants over the next two years, despite the nation’s high unemployment, stalled wages and increasing automation. If Obama actually goes ahead with the plan that is sketched in a federal contract...