Free Republic

Environmentalists have cheered the decision by the Obama administration to tap Recreational Equipment Inc. CEO Sally Jewell as secretary of the interior, a position to be vacated by Ken Salazar. “In Jewell, President Obama chose a leader with a demonstrated commitment to preserving the higher purposes public lands hold for all Americans – recreation, adventure, and enjoyment,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement. “Jewell’s unique experience and her love of America’s outdoors will be invaluable to the stewardship of the waters, lands and wildlife we’ve been entrusted to protect for our children,” said Frances Beinecke, president...

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama opened his second inaugural address by quoting the statement from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." He then went on to say that if men were in fact created equal, then homosexual “love” must be equal as well. “What makes us exceptional, what makes us American," said Obama, “is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by...

“Hundreds” of death threats have been made against the president of the National Rifle Association just since the first of this year. And those threats reflect President Obama’s political tactics. That’s what NRA President David Keene told talk show host Ernest Istook on Thursday. Keene says those threats reflect attempts by the Left and by President Obama “to demonize and blame those who disagree with him for everything he doesn’t like.” Keene also is literally targeted by a video game that invites people to shoot him, which he calls the “Kill David Keene” game. The good news, according to Keene,

Jeffrey Goldberg, an indefatigable defender of the president when it comes to Israel, has done the president no favors by revealing President Obama’s deep-seated arrogance and lack of respect for our democratic ally Israel. Goldberg writes: In the weeks after the UN vote [on Palestinian observer status], Obama said privately and repeatedly, “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation. . . . On matters related to the Palestinians, the president seems to view the prime minister as a political...

Elections have consequences. One of them is continuing US support for the European Project and the process of ‘ever closer union’, following Barack Obama’s re-election last November. Had Mitt Romney won, there would have been a very different approach towards the EU, with a far greater emphasis upon advancing ties with nation states in Europe as opposed to currying favour with Brussels. Romney’s approach was distinctly Eurosceptic, with frequent warnings against America ending up like Europe, with its big government, high tax approach. As David Blair has reported, Philip Gordon, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian...

Cuba was singled out by Human Rights Watch in 2011 as being the only Latin American country that represses virtually all forms of political dissent. It is difficult to understand how such tyranny could get worse. Both Reuters and the Miami Herald report that Cuban Security agents broke their previous records of government political repression in 2012 with 6,602 confirmed detentions of political dissidents. In 2011 there were 4,123 confirmed political arrests which was even higher than the 2,704 arrests from 2010. Both Reuters and the Miami Herald based their data on a 2012 year-end report from the Cuban Committee...

America is entering a new economic normal, a reality where almost everything that should be going up is going down, and everything that should be going down is going up. The United States begins 2013 in uncharted economic waters; America has never been here before. Consider, for example, these seven “firsts” for the U.S. economy: 1. All-time record annual average gas price: In 2012, the average cost of a gallon of gas eclipsed the previous record by nine cents, bringing the annual average to $3.60. 2. All-time record food stamp participation: As of last month, for the first time in...

Speaking before a friendly crowd of “middle-class families” at the Old Executive Office building in Washington, D.C., this afternoon, President Obama addressed the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations, claiming that the deal was not achieved in his preferred “balanced approach” because of Republicans unwilling to negotiate higher taxes on the wealthy. While noting that the current plan includes no new spending cuts, he also added that any future debt deals will have to include more tax increases. “The potential agreement that’s being talked about would not only make sure the taxes don’t go up on middle class families, it also would...

Some interesting news has broken in the wake of the latest push for gun control by President Obama and Senate Democrats: Obama sends his kids to a school where armed guards are used as a matter of fact. The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak. If you dismiss this by saying, "Of course they have armed guards -- they get Secret Service protection," then you've missed the larger point. The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period....

The first family will be vacationing in Hawaii for the Christmas holidays at a cost of at least $4 million to taxpayers, according to a report from the Hawaii Reporter.The Hawaiian paper reports that residents living near the beachfront homes at Kailuana Place, where the President Obama and first family have visited annually since 2008, were notified Monday that there will be restrictions on their movements in place for 20 days, from Dec. 17 through Jan. 6.The Hawaii Reporter calculated the $4 million cost to taxpayers based in part on the price of a round trip flight to the island...

Yet again, President Obama’s Thanksgiving message eschewed any direct reference to thanking God, making this the fourth straight year in which the President of the United States has ignored the central message of the holiday in favor of political grandstanding. This year, Obama’s central message was that now that he’s been re-elected, Americans should agree with all of his policies. His unity routine sounds strangely empty after a campaign in which he focused on dividing Americans: But most of all, it’s a time to give thanks for each other, and for the incredible bounty we enjoy. That’s especially important this...

Georgia lawmakers sat in a seminar involving the UN’s controversial Cold War era mind control techniques used to move Agenda 21 forward. The seminar, as could be expected, was roundly mocked by the media even though the UN makes no secret of their abominable plans for the world’s future.

The White House is pulling a tactic out of its campaign playbook – and President Obama’s own community organizing past – using the organs of government to enlist average Americans to help Obama advocate for his priorities. In an email sent to people who signed up to receive official updates from the White House, recipients are told to forward the message to their friends, asking them to help promote what is in effect White House propaganda. The White House email list, which government officials began compiling earlier in Obama’s term, is separate from the famed Obama campaign email list, but...

President Obama has spent far more lavishly on White House state dinners than previous chief executives, including nearly $1 million on a 2010 dinner for Mexico's president, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner. Presidents have long used formal dinners to court foreign heads of state and to dish out fine food and wine to reward political, financial and show business celebrities and supporters. But current and former government officials said the documents obtained by The Examiner point to an unprecedented upsurge in White House spending on such events. The Obama extravaganza two years ago for Mexican President Felipe...

A compromise! h/t Reason to Laugh

“I hear Pittsburgh is very nice this time of year.” -- A senior Romney campaign staffer talking to Power Play about the strategy for the closing weeks of the campaign. Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney trailed in five Rust Belt battleground states by an average of 6.9 points in the Real Clear Politics Average of polls. This morning, his average deficit was just 3.2 points. While all 11 swing states have moved his direction since the Republican nominee’s boffo performance in his first debate with President Obama, Romney has seen the most significant improvement in the core column of the...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported last Friday that 114,000 new jobs were created last month, according to its Establishment Survey of business payrolls that has been emphasized by the Obama Administration. That is pitifully weak, especially for what is supposed to be the fourth year of a recovery (the National Bureau of Economic Research scored the recession as officially over in June, 2009). As economist John Lott noted at FoxNews.com on October 5, the working age population grew by 206,000 last month. With two-thirds of those working as would be expected during a normal recovery, 138,000 new jobs...

Long Island was the electoral map has narrowed and Obama’s team, while conceding nothing publicly, is circling the wagons around Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Plouffe said that Obama remains strong in all four states, but he would not discuss the specifics of internal polling or voter-contact analytics, saying only that Obama has “significant leads” in all four places. It is uncharacteristic of Team Obama to concede any terrain, but Plouffe offered no such assurances about Obama’s position in North Carolina, Virginia, or Florida. Romney advisers have seen big gains in all three states and now consider wins likely,...

Mychal Massie is a respected writer and talk show host in Los Angeles. The other evening on my twitter, a person asked me why I didn't like the Obama's? Specifically I was asked: "I have to ask, why do you hate the Obama's? It seems personal, not policy related. You even dissed (disrespect) their Christmas family picture." The truth is I do not like the Obamas, what they represent, their ideology, and I certainly do not like his policies and legislation. I've made no secret of my contempt for the Obamas. As I responded to the person who asked me...

President Obama’s advisers attacked critics for suggesting the White House fudged jobs figures, comparing them to “lunatic” birthers. The sub-8% unemployment stats were released by the non-partisan Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday, but former GE chief Jack Welch and several Tea Party figures claimed the numbers were cooked. Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs called such comments “incredibly dangerous” and said Welch had embarrassed himself. “There's a number of people that believe the real unemployment report is somewhere in a safe in Nairobi with the president's Kenyan birth certificate," Gibbs said sarcastically on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.