Free Republic

You would have had to be under a rock to miss our President stating that recently. He mouthed that repeatedly during the budget debate and the government shutdown. It became his mantra leading up to the impending vote for raising the debt ceiling. The constitutional lawyer was apparently absent the day they taught that we have three co-equal branches of government. More than anything else, Mr. Obama apparently does not understand how the debt ceiling works. President Obama has regularly repeated “I will not negotiate over the full faith and credit of the United States.” Certainly he may mean that,...

In contemplating the bizarre, incompetent, and feckless behavior of House Speaker John Boehner over the years, I am reminded of the signature scene from the 1969 Western comedy Support Your Local Sheriff: In it,the sheriff (James Garner) ridicules dim-witted prisoner Joe Dandy (Bruce Dern), deriding him and maintaining full control even though his jail has no bars. The money scene is from 2:40 through 3:30: The cell on the right is yours. We don't have any bars yet...but we're gonna operate just as if the bars are there...so while you're in this jail, you stay on that side of the...

Soooo I'm searching for info on a Civil War historic site and click on a National Park Service page presented  (high) in the Google results- yet all I get is this: "Because of the Federal Government Shutdown,  all national parks are closed  and the National Park Service webpages are not operating.  For more information, go to www.doi.gov" It costs less somehow to generate/post disingenuous Obama propaganda and close down all their other pages, then? And these messages are putting themselves up? That ain't how it works with my server- Just in case you missed that, a big, black banner promptly...

I am a federal bureaucrat. A professional government employee. And guess what? I’m damn proud of it. It seems that all I hear these days are the once and future leaders of our country tripping over themselves to denigrate the work we do. I’m tired of it, and I’m fed up. I don’t claim to represent anyone other than myself, but I would bet that a fair number of federal employees feel as I do. We are lawyers, doctors, PhD students, economists, writers, electricians, construction workers, security officers and technology specialists. We are not a drain on the national economy;...

Our government is out of control.First, it was the World War II veterans who had to break down barriers to see the open air, un-attended memorial erected in their honor.  A memorial which is on public land but is supported – including the National Park Service fee – with private funds. This week there was more security surrounding this memorial — just to keep elderly veterans out — than there was at our embassy in Benghazi the night it was attacked.And for what? To inflict as much pain as possible through this government shutdown. It’s called Washington Monument Syndrome, and it’s...

Most Americans are aware, on some level, of the Firemen First Principle. Politicians face a shortfall in the budget, and wish to raise taxes, or debt, to cover it, but also must face the wrath of the public. So they pretend to bite the bullet, strategically placing onto the chopping block those parts of the government that the people like best. This “demonstrates” the “need” to raise taxes, increase debt, or otherwise do things voters would rather not do. Firemen go first onto the list, because everyone likes firemen. They risk their lives and help us when we are truly...

WASHINGTON — Wheelchair-bound elderly veterans pushed aside barricades to tour the World War II Memorial Tuesday morning, in defiance of the government shutdown which closed all of the memorials in the nation’s capital. The four bus loads of veterans — visiting from Mississippi as part of a once-in-a-lifetime Honor Flight tour — ignored National Park Police instructions not to enter the site as lawmakers and tourists cheered them on. “We didn’t come this far not to get in,” one veteran proclaimed. The scene was both emotional and comical at once. After it was clear they had lost control of the...

On health care, the president's pile of broken promises keeps getting higher. Consider this gem from Aug. 20, 2009: “Let's be clear about the fact that nobody has proposed anything close to a government takeover of health care.” Well, yes, somebody did. President Obama is now well on his way to orchestrating the federal government's takeover of Americans' health care. Commandeering the resources of major federal departments, particularly the Department of Health and Human Services and the IRS, the administration and its allies in Congress have created numerous federal bureaus, commissions and programs and have issued thousands of pages of...

Rep Randy Neugebauer confronted a park ranger at the WW II Memorial. Anderson takes a look at the video.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday blocked a House bill providing funding to reopen national parks amid the government shutdown, saying he would not allow the GOP to pick and choose from among favored programs and insisting the only way out is to pass all spending at the same time. Republicans tried to get an agreement in the Senate to restore the parks money along with funding for the National Institutes of Health, the military reserves and National Guard, and veterans affairs, but Democrats objected to each of those agreements in turn. [snip] The debate on the Senate floor...

Shutdown overreach: More personnel sent to WWII memorial than Benghazi; Park Service closes park it doesn't run (Video at Link) The National Park Service is sending so many officials out to shut down federal parks from visiting Americans that at this rate it might have to suspend furloughs if the government closure continues. Two examples: -- At the World War II Memorial on The Mall in Washington, where veterans have been staging protests to keep it open...

Washington’s grown a bit nastier and colder since the last government shutdown, and the casualties of the partisan fight are the family memories lost from being denied access to public landmarks that are supposed to belong to the people. The government doesn’t see it that way anymore – it’s all just a “damn game” and the folks running the Capitol are just toying with the American people. That’s right – public memorials, monuments and parks remained open under President Clinton and the Republican Congress in 1995/96, causing one to wonder how much inconvenience and financial hardship this partial government shutdown...

Tuesday morning, seven National Park Service employees were seen erecting and tending to a barricade around the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. One NPS employee was operating a forklift. There usually aren't any NPS employees working at the World War II memorial. A couple hours later, when an Honor Flight of World War II veterans arrived, accompanied by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, the fences blocking the memorial were easily moved away, allowing the veterans to enter. But the barriers are still at the memorial, and they've been reinforced. This morning, I walked by the memorial and...

Pat Vaillancourt went on a trip last week that was intended to showcase some of America’s greatest treasures. Instead, the Salisbury resident said she and others on her tour bus witnessed an ugly spectacle that made her embarrassed, angry and heartbroken for her country. Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard. The...

Two battles were joined this week, one on Capital Hill and another at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (the symbolic core of which is known as Bascom Hill). In both cases, free men who refused to be cowed struck back at overreaching tyrants. (a) The Battle of Capitol Hill As the Republicans and Democrats squared off on spending, World War II and Korean War vets were making their way to Washington, D.C. on Honor Flights, a charitable program to bring these folks to see the memorials to service members who fought... ~snip~ On hearing that the Obama administration intended to block...

The Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina created a publicity crap storm for the Spite House when operators were forced to close during the government shutdown. The inn sits on federal land and despite the owner’s attempt to defy orders from the Park Police, he was forced to close his doors and throw away spoiled food during the height of fall foliage season. Today, the inn will reopen at 5 p.m. and all October reservations will be honored.

Friends, With the federal government shutdown, this has been a difficult week for all Americans. Furthermore, the Obama administration’s unwillingness to negotiate is frustrating to all of us who would like to see meaningful change in Washington. While I am disappointed by the actions of Harry Reid and President Obama, I was shocked to learn that veterans had been denied access to the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. Our veterans deserve better than this! It’s time to send a message to the Democrats in Washington that this sort of political gamesmanship is unacceptable. It is disturbing to note that President...

Thursday, October 10, 2013 The Obama Blockade Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog In the spring of ’48, the collision of wills between the free world and the red slave empire of the east came to a head in Berlin. The Communist strategy had been to push forward, to violate the spirit of the agreements and then the letter of the agreements while always claiming to be the aggrieved party. The Allies had treated the Soviet Union as if it were a credible partner that wanted to work together with them on rebuilding Europe. The Soviet Union...

Even though it’s an uphill battle, I’m glad there are some lawmakers willing to fight Obamacare. They realize a hard battle today could help save America from genuine fiscal crisis in the future. I don’t know how this government-shutdown battle (which is morphing into a debt-limit battle) will end, but I’m hopeful the taxpayers get some sort of victory. The 2011 fight over the debt limit, after all, gave us sequestration, which has been Obama’s biggest defeat. Heck, maybe in this year’s fight we can even keep the government shut down long enough that people realize that we can do...

And now the feds have put up cones to keep people out of scenic overlooks on Mount Rushmore.