Free Republic

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 Barack Obama will campaign for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe this weekend, giving a late boost to McAuliffe as he seeks to energize core Democratic voters in an off-year governor’s race, Democratic sources told POLITICO. Obama is set to appear at a Sunday afternoon get-out-the-vote rally in Northern Virginia. It will be the president’s first campaign appearance for McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. McAuliffe’s campaign has been working to activate many of the same voters who carried Virginia for Obama in 2008 and 2012: young people, independent women and African American, Latino and Asian American...

Terry McAuliffe (D) opens a double-digit lead over Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) among likely voters in a Washington Post/Abt SRBI poll, as majorities say both candidates are running negative campaigns.

For the record: Valerie’ Jarrett’s daughter Laura’s father-in-law Canadian Liberal politician Bas Balkissoon is not (thank God!) Canada’s Prime Minister. Nor, as some news outlets are indicating, is he a MP. (Member of Parliament). Balkissoon—one of many Canadian Liberals with deep ties to the Obama administration—is a minor player MPP (Member of Provincial Parliament ) at Ontario’s Queen’s Park, irreverently known to the plebes as the ‘Pink Palace’. Before landing at the Pink Palace as a ready-made Liberal MPP, Balkissoon was a City of Toronto councillor involved in a computer leasing scandal. Wow, what a coincidence! Just as key Barack...

**SNIP** Lautenberg died in June after nearly three decades in the U.S. Senate. Many people would agree that he is owed a debt of gratitude but not everybody agrees that his widow Bonnie should receive $174,000, funded by taxpayers. Lautenberg was worth nearly $60-million. “I don’t think it’s right. I mean most us can’t afford death benefits like that. You know we would be happy to have a little bit saved just to bury ourselves,” Wayne resident Carol Dabaghian said. The payoff was buried in the government shutdown bill. It is a death benefit that is almost always approved and...

I can't believe I'm writing this sentence, but Obamacare's exchanges appear to somehow be more deeply corrupted and broken than previously known. If there were words more impactful than "meltdown" and "trainwreck," I'd use them. Instead, I'll simply present the facts as they continue to come to light. USA Today: The federal health care exchange was built using 10-year-old technology that may require constant fixes and updates for the next six months and the eventual overhaul of the entire system, technology experts told USA TODAY....Recent changes have made the exchanges easier to use, but they still require clearing the...

A proposal to end the government shutdown and avoid default orchestrated by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Leader Harry Reid includes a $2 billion earmark for a Kentucky project. Language in a draft of the McConnell-Reid deal (see page 13, section 123) provided to WFPL News shows a provision that increases funding for the massive Olmsted Dam Lock in Louisville from $775 million to nearly $2. 9 billion.

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Hollywood’s Obamacare ZombiesPosted By Matthew Vadum On October 15, 2013 @ 12:54 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments If you’re sick and tired of TV news broadcasts spewing pro-Obamacare propaganda, get ready to be inundated with even more progressive health care proselytizing in the dramas and comedies that follow those news shows.For this you have the left-wing California Endowment to thank. The radical philanthropy is in the news because it is funding Obamacare public outreach efforts.As Newsmax reports, the Obama administration is “turning its focus on prime time television series, using the influential...

Foreign diplomacy doesn’t always resolve world-class problems, but it sure does rake in the swag. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was given a half-million bucks worth of diamond and ruby jewelry by Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and received $58,000 worth of bling from Brunei. The lavish gifts were among a treasure trove of keepsakes bestowed upon U.S. leaders in 2012, the State Department disclosed Thursday. ... Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden got a bare-breasted female bust from Liberia. The Constitution prohibits U.S. government employees from keeping presents worth more than $350. But officials at the U.S....

Foreign diplomacy doesn’t always resolve world-class problems, but it sure does rake in the swag. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was given a half-million bucks worth of diamond and ruby jewelry by Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and received $58,000 worth of bling from Brunei. The lavish gifts were among a treasure trove of keepsakes bestowed upon U.S. leaders in 2012, the State Department disclosed Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Clinton a $560 bottle of cognac

Ten days ago, intern-bullying Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh disappeared from public view, stopped showing up to meetings and deleted all traces of social media in the midst of a municipal struggle swirling around a possible city bankruptcy. Today, he's facing serious allegations of misconduct with a recent high school graduate. A woman, who has chosen to remain unidentified, told her son's vice principal at Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men that she was concerned about gifts he was receiving through Pugh, who runs a mentoring program (named after him: the Charles Pugh Leadership Forum) for students at the...

A British member of parliament under fire in a corruption scandal was caught on camera describing an Israeli soldier as a “bloody Jew.” Patrick Mercer made the remark to a BBC reporter posing as a lobbyist in the investigation. The footage was broadcast Thursday. … “An 18-year-old girl, wearing a uniform, with her sort of hair in plaits, and crazy jewelry and open-toed sandals, with a rifle up my nose,” he said. “Who the ---- are you, you know? ‘Well I’m a soldier.’ Are you? You don’t look like a soldier to me. You look like a bloody Jew,” Mercer...

William H. Ginsburg, a seasoned medical malpractice attorney who bolted to national prominence in the brutal arena of Washington politics as Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, died Monday at his home in Sherman Oaks. He was 70. snip Later, in an open letter to Starr in California Lawyer magazine, he wrote: "Congratulations, Mr. Starr! As a result of your callous disregard for cherished constitutional rights, you may have succeeded in unmasking a sexual relationship between two consenting adults." snip

There is no "set price" to meet with President Obama, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday amid continued outcry over the role of Organizing for Action, the outside group supporting the president's agenda. "Any notion that there is a set price for a meeting with the president of the United States is just wrong," Carney said during his daily briefing. Since OFA is intended to back the president's agenda, it makes sense that Obama would meet with the group, Carney said. "As anyone would expect, the president would likely meet with their representatives to discuss his agenda." "But,...

In an explosive report set to send shockwaves through official Washington, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released a 108-page GAI investigation into the threat of foreign and fraudulent Internet campaign donations in U.S. federal elections

Minutes after Newsweek published a story on the threat of illegal foreign and fraudulent online campaign donations late Monday afternoon, the Obama campaign struck back hard with a response smearing one of the article’s authors and offered an anemic defense of its online fundraising operations.

Over the last few days, the internet has been abuzz with the possibility that the Obama campaign was about to be nailed with a major foreign donor scandal, with some even speculating that the President was so distracted by the pending story, that it contributed to his horrible debate performance. Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner wrote: President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story. The campaign tried desperately to block...

DE TERESINA - Federal Police in the northeastern state of Piauí are investigating allegations of a drugs-for-votes ring. Candidates for the city council in the capital Teresina used crack to lure dealers and addicts to vote for them, accuses a prominent lawyer in the region Lúcio Ribeiro, who heads the local Commission for Human Rights. The formal accusation was submitted to the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB), though names of those being investigated were not initially made public. According to Folha de Sao Paulo, police are also looking for evidences that drug dealers and addicts have teamed up to...

If our corrupt media believe a Republican said something inappropriate at a fundraiser about the 47% of the American people the rest of us carry, the corrupt media attempt to destroy his campaign over it. However, if a sitting president appears to openly and brazenly break the laws surrounding the solicitation of super PAC money, this very same media dutifully report but refuse to talk about it: Speaking at a fundraiser hosted by the famous rapper and singer couple Jay-Z and Beyonce, President Barack Obama made comments, seemingly in jest, asking guests to help out his campaign against Republican nominee Mitt...

President Obama's former traveling assistant got financial assistance on his departure from government from a New York financier who is a top Obama fundraiser. Reggie Love, Obama's former "body man" and a former Duke basketball star who the President has referred to as his "little brother" left the White House last November, and is on track to receive his MBA this December from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. In the meantime, Love has received money, three sources told BuzzFeed, from Orin Kramer, the managing partner of Boston Provident and a leading Democratic fundraiser who has raised more...