Free Republic

As President Obama wrapped up his conversation with Chris Matthews at American University, he took a swipe at the partisan media for dividing the country and making compromise more difficult. Obama said being the Commander-in-Chief for so long “makes you humbler, as opposed to cockier,” and compared himself to Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill for eternity with little success. He spoke of how enthusiastic young people encourage him and give him confidence, only for the media to take that enthusiasm and use it to divide people. “The American people are good and they are decent, and yes, sometimes

The new and improved Obamacare website struggled under heavy traffic loads on Monday, but still appeared to operate pretty much as the Obama administration has promised: Okay, but not perfect. After a weekend of final, intensive fixes, officials unveiled a somewhat repaired HealthCare.gov on Sunday and promised that it will work well enough to serve the Americans who want insurance exchange coverage by New Year’s.

The Texas communications director for Enroll America has resigned after a conservative watchdog group posted a video of him discussing his Democratic leanings. A spokesman for the self-proclaimed non-profit, non-partisan group, which is leading efforts to enroll Americans in ObamaCare, confirmed to FoxNews.com Chris Tarango has resigned after the video by Project Veritas was posted online.

It appears one Democrat member of Congress has decided to drop the mask and reveal who he really is. Unbelievably, Charlie Rangel told NY1 that “President Obama should drop the charade of democracy and rule directly through executive orders.” I mean, why not? After all, Rep. Rangel’s own relationship with following laws is fuzzy at best, given his problems with tax evasion.

Many groups have claimed that the NSA’s surveillance program is an unconstitutional violation of privacy. But a different type of challenge is growing teeth. Led by civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, more than 20 organizations, with interests ranging from marijuana to guns, are currently suing the federal government. They believe the NSA surveillance program has a chilling effect on speech, thus violating the First Amendment. It’s difficult to prove this, though. There’s no way to quantify the students who don’t join their college’s “legalize marijuana” club, or the number of Arab-Americans who avoid political topics via email. Absences...

On Thursday, Fox News’ Ed Henry tweeted that MSNBC hosts Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell, as well as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post and Fox News’ Juan Williams, had been invited for a private off-the-record chat with President Obama. Obama’s signature program, Obamacare, has been flailing in the press for weeks, and Obama apparently believes that it is about time to reshift the narrative:

(Update: Adding more on opposition to Core, where Duncan spoke) U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” Yes, he really said that. But he has said similar things before. What, exactly, is he talking about? In his cheerleading for the controversial Common Core...

Yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee published a video on their Youtube page highlighting a portion of the committee questioning Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cyber-security and Communications, who confirmed at least 16 attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s portal Healthcare.gov website in 2013. Roberta Stempfley highlighted one successful attack that is designed to deny access to the website called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack is designed to make a network unavailable to intended users, generally through a concerted effort to disrupt service such as repeatedly accessing...

(CNSNews.com) - At a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee event in Philadelphia on Thursday night, President Barack Obama ended his speech by bemoaning what he called “a level of polarization that seems unique”—citing as one cause to blame for this phenomenon “the Balkanization of the media.” “Obviously, this year and over the last three years, we’ve seen a level of polarization that seems unique,” said Obama. “But the truth is, is that as you travel around the country, the country--ordinary folks--aren’t as polarized as Washington would make us think.”

Schools: Opposition is rising to new national education standards pushed on public schools. They have turned schools into re-education camps for liberalism, with political statements masquerading as English lessons. If one had to include one speech by President Ronald Reagan as recommended reading in a national standardized curriculum it might be the one in which he stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" One might pick Reagan's first inaugural address when he said, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Or even his 1964 "A...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must disclose its plans for a so-called Internet “kill switch,” a federal court ruled on Tuesday.The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the agency’s arguments that its protocols surrounding an Internet kill switch were exempt from public disclosure and ordered the agency to release the records in 30 days. However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling.The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is seeking “Standard Operating Procedure 303,” also known as the “Internet kill switch” from Homeland Security. The protocols govern shutting down wireless...

If Signorile and other "LGBT" activists get their way, this would mean that churches, mosques, synagogues, religious schools, Bible bookstores, as well as any and every other business in America with 15 or more employees, would be forced, under penalty of law, to abandon the biblical and traditional-values viewpoint on human sexuality, and hire (and otherwise not offend) those who openly flaunt expressly sinful and demonstrably self-destructive sexual behaviors.

Citing the Heath and Human Services website, a report posted Wednesday at the Freedom Outpost says that under Obamacare, government agents can engage in "home health visits" for those in certain “high-risk” categories. Those categories include: • Families where mom is not yet 21; • Families where someone is a tobacco user; • Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities, and • Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.

President Barack Obama told his enthusiastic supporters Monday night that he never promised what video recordings show him promising at least 29 times. The videos show Obama promising 300 million Americans that “if you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan, period.” (snip)

ALCON - FYI, the Air Force servers are back to not letting me log in to FR due to its "political and activist" nature. I thought we were through with this crap...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Besieged by unflattering stories about the launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare program, the White House saw a news report that it wanted to swiftly knock down. It was from NBC, which said that Obama had overpromised when he said Americans who liked their insurance could keep it, and that the president knew that many people would see their coverage change. White House officials quickly began firing off a barrage of tweets on Twitter, which has become one of the administration's most potent and relied-upon weapons in trying to shape public opinion and media reports. Josh Earnest,...

President Obama on Friday demanded “new strategies” to boost the nation’s resilience to powerful storms, drought, heat waves and other dangerous weather linked to climate change. Obama issued a wide-ranging executive order designed to support “climate resilient” infrastructure investment in states and communities. It also calls on federal agencies to change their policies and rules “to make the Nation's watersheds, natural resources, and ecosystems, and the communities and economies that depend on them, more resilient in the face of a changing climate.” The executive order, echoing Obama’s second-term climate agenda released in June, recognizes that climate change is inevitable even...

What an odious piece of garbage. Today's Politico, in an article by Todd Purdum, accuses Republicans of "calculated sabotage" of Obamacare, comparing their opposition to the "pattern of 'massive resistance' not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954." Purdum himself seems to recognize just how loony he comes off, writing "[t]hat may sound like a left-wing conspiracy theory . . . But there is a strong factual basis for such a charge." Sabotage, really? People who understand democracy would call it entirely legitimate opposition to a philosophy and a...

Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell vowed that President Obama would use executive authority to create more national monuments to protect lands if Congress doesn't pass legislation to do so. "If Congress doesn't step up to act," Jewell said during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, "then the president will take action." Obama has used the more than century-old Antiquities Act to establish national monuments nine times, with six coming in the last year. The administration has said it would use the law only if local communities can demonstrate there is significant support for such action. Those...