Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – As many as a dozen taxes in the new health care law violate President Barack Obama’s campaign pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 and on individuals earning less than $200,000. At least seven of these taxes directly affect health consumers regardless of income, such as the individual mandate to buy insurance, the employer mandate, the tanning tax, and limits and penalties on health savings accounts. In addition, Republicans argue that the tax impact of the law should include indirect taxes, such as the annual taxes on the health care sector that will be...

Rest of title: "Stupak, on Defense, Compares Order to Emancipation Proclamation" President Obama signed the Senate health care bill into law Tuesday. He did not sign the executive order on abortion negotiated with Michigan Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak in an 11th-hour arrangement that may well have saved the entire health care reform effort. A White House official told Fox, Obama will not sign the Executive Order Tuesday and has set no specific date to do so. Stupak predicted Obama would sign the order later this week. The White House said only that Obama would sign the order "soon." In two...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards has issued a statement declaring victory after the Senate health care bill's passage Sunday, noting that the abortion-related executive order Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) agreed to in exchange for pro-life Democrats' votes was merely a "symbolic gesture." Stupak had argued after the vote that, contrary to the affirmations of virtually every top pro-life organization in the U.S., Obama's promised executive order "is worth more than the paper it is written on." "The only option you had was leave the Senate language or strengthen it to prevent abortions under an...

The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two –thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll. Sixty percent also believe that gas and oil prices will drop if the government allows offshore drilling, opening up an estimate 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas On July 14,...

At least that's what Erick Erickson of Redstate is alleging: I almost missed this. It happens around 11am. The Senate is going to vote on an amendment from Senator Tom Coburn. From an email friend: The amendment would require the Senate to be honest about its ridiculous spending and post the full cost of all PAYGO violations online for taxpayers to see. The Democrats have drafted a side-by-side amendment, to be voted on tomorrow as well. This vote is meant to give cover for members to vote against the Coburn amendment, and still be for “transparency.” Their amendment would simply...

Gibbs: Obama has not fully kicked smoking habit By Jordan Fabian - 03/01/10 03:58 PM ET White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday acknowledged that President Barack Obama still "ocassionally falls of the wagon" when it comes to smoking cigarettes. Gibbs was asked about Obama's smoking at the daily press briefing after the president's medical report released Sunday said that he is using nicotine replacement therapy. "He is occassionally falls of the wagon when it comes to that," Gibbs said, adding that Obama "continues to chew nicotine gum." Obama's opponents and some in the press raised his cigarette smoking...

what Obama will do is simply leave the money in the bank, drawing interest, until he leaves the Oval Office, and everybody forgets about it. At that time, he'll press a button. Byron York says there's some buzz going around the net over the question of what Obama has done with the $1.4 million he won as part of the Nobel Peace Prize. Well before Obama accepted the award, the White House announced he would give the money to charity. Yet it's been two months since he went to Oslo, and there's no word of him giving it away. Some...

Per Fox, Obama just said that "All ideas are on the table" regarding taxing the middle class/people making less than $200K a year. Developing...

Obama Has Miles To Go To Keep All Promises Elkhart sees some stimulus money, but job growth hasn't By Tom Curry National affairs writer msnbc.com Feb. 9, 2010 ELKHART, Ind. - If there were a report card for the promises President Barack Obama made a year ago in this struggling city in northern Indiana, he would probably get a C. It’s a passing grade, but it’s not the strong performance that people might have hoped for in a town with one of the highest jobless rates in the country. One year ago, on Feb. 9, 2009, Obama went to Concord...

The lead story at DrudgeReport.com as of 11:30 a.m. this morning was "**REUTERS: Backdoor taxes to hit middle class." But Reuters withdrew the article last night. Drudge noted the change and wrote: "**REUTERS pulls tax story..." then added another link to the top left margin: "Largest-ever federal payroll to hit 2.15 million employees..." So what happened? According to a Reuters rep, the was withdrawn "due to significant errors of fact." "The story was wrong on multiple points and should not have gone out," she emailed us. A formal withdrawal will issued will address specific points that were incorrect later today....

Good government groups have released a report card grading the White House's "lobbying, ethics and transparency" reforms in the past year. Their findings? Positively glowing:The new rules and policies have begun the difficult process of changing the way business is done in Washington. President Obama deserves recognition and high praise for the ethics, lobbying and transparency rules put in place for the Executive Branch during his first year in office. Our organizations give the Obama Administration very high grades for the Executive Branch reforms it implemented during 2009. (Emphasis mine) It seems the authors graded the White House based on...

How many of you would let your children, business partners, employees, or friends be consistently dishonest? Would you pay for a product that you had not seen or researched? Would you purchase a product if you knew the company was incompetent and could not deliver quality? I think not. Yet here in America we do exactly that.

See Eight Clips of Obama Promising Televised Healthcare Negotiations. Video at link:

The growing problem for the Obama administration is that the public has finally caught on that the president's tough rhetoric and soaring oratory don't match reality. "Considering all options" and "wanting more information" essentially mean dithering and voting present on Afghanistan, even after announcing the adoption of a new bold strategy. "Saving jobs" means conjecturing about the effects of massive borrowing and enhancing your figures through the creation of fictitious congressional districts and bogus employment reporting. "Punishing KSM" means giving the liberal community a world platform for legal gymnastics designed to repudiate the past administration and demonstrate that community's "tolerance"...

Barack Obama left his 2.6 million fans on Twitter, the social networking website, bemused, disappointed and mildly irritated by admitting on Monday that he had never used the service himself. "Let me say that I have never used Twitter," he told students in Shanghai. "I noticed that young people are very busy with these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone." During his election campaign, Mr Obama portrayed himself as "connected" to the people through Twitter and his ever-present blackberry phone. Some of his more understanding fans asked if it was any real surprise...

Barack Obama is to reject all of the options outlined for increasing troop numbers in Afghanistan in favour of revised plans which include a clear exit strategy, it has been claimed. The report came from a senior administration official close to the high-level deliberations Mr Obama is holding with his war cabinet over the refocusing of the Afghan war effort. The President is said to have raised questions at a meeting on Wednesday that could alter both the size of any possible troop increase and the length of time they are in the country before they can hand over to...

The Obama Kool Aid may be wearing off, while Barack Obama Campaigned as a post partisan "moderate" for the first time since his election, Gallup is reporting that most Americans view the POTUS as governing from the left-wing. The number of American's who feel he has kept his promises fell 17 percentage points since April to 48% 54% of Americans believe his policies have been mostly liberal while 34% call them mostly moderate. There were also 7% of the public that need to get back on their meds, because they feel that Barack Obama's policies have been mostly conservative. This...

President Obama delivered an unprecedented message to the Human Rights Campaign Saturday night. Sounding more like a homosexual activist than a sitting president, Obama went well beyond his expected message of “I’m here with you” on the homosexual agenda. “My expectation is that when you look back on these years, you will see a time in which we put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians -- whether in the office or on the battlefield,” Obama told an estimated audience of 3,000. “You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men...

WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes. Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal. They also noted that their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting. Democrats said it was a delay tactic that could have postponed a vote for weeks.

He never intended to beat the taliban.