Free Republic

The rule of law has been replaced in Washington by "yes we can." The events we witnessed Thursday in the Senate, that is Majority Leader Harry Reid's success at invoking the so-called 'nuclear option,' stripping the minority party of its primary power to block nominations, have become a stunning capstone to what has been already a steady erosion of a government of laws down to a sort of semi-political banana republic. We are now living in a republic in which politicians do what they want without regard to tradition or the best interests of our country. The rule of more...

SAN JOSE -- After listening Tuesday to more than 60 impassioned activists, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted to stick to the status quo on immigration, rejecting a proposal to turn over jailed illegal immigrants with a history of serious or violent crime to federal agents for possible deportation. The proposal by Supervisor Joe Simitian to change the current policy and hold "the worst of the worst" inmates for 24 hours past their release date failed on a 3-2 vote. Only Supervisor Mike Wasserman, who opposed the no-holds policy two years ago on the grounds that public safety...

**SNIP** Other Democrats now say they agree with Republicans that a delay of the individual mandate may be the only way to salvage the disaster and save face. "I think the administration is going to have to look at it [delay of the individual mandate]. and I'd encourage them to do so," said Rep. Gene Green (D-TX). Five Democrats have now asked for the Obama Administration to seek a refund from the contractors responsible for the Obamacare website fiasco. Reps. Ron Barber (D-AZ), William Enyart (D-IL), Pete Gallego (D-TX), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and Filemon Vela (D-TX) wrote a letter to...

Today, Team Obama isn’t getting any support from its normally active cheering section at CNN. Bob Laszewski, an executive who provides consulting services to many major American insurance companies, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.” Here’s what’s Bob is talking about: Insurers who expose Obamacare’s most sinister effects are told they can’t become authorized Obamacare insurance providers – that means they’d be denied access to the largest market in the country just for telling the truth about how many people are being forced off their...

"There's a mental health problem in Congress," says actor and liberal activist Sean Penn. The president could solve the problem "by committing them by executive order," Penn told CNN's Piers Morgan Monday night.Asked if Penn would have "people like Ted Cruz" committed, Penn said, "He is my American brother. I won't -- I think we should take care of him, he is in, he's the trouble.""Well, actually have him committed," Morgan followed up."Yeah, I think it's a good idea," Penn said.

Politico:President Obama held an off-the-record meeting with five conservative journalists on Tuesday afternoon. Present at the meeting were Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor; Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal editorial page editor; Robert Costa, the National Review’s Washington editor; syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker; and Washington Examiner columnist Byron York, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. Of those, at least 4 have been vocal critics of the Cruz strategy — and Obama, who follows the news and monitors his detractors and defenders just as you’d expect a paranoid narcissist would, did not pick...

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots...

As the government nears shutdown, the fundraising arm of the Democratic Party is having a budget crisis of its own. There's another budget crisis in Washington, and it's unfolding inside the Democratic party. The Democratic National Committee remains so deeply in the hole from spending in the last election that it is struggling to pay its own vendors. It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party -- especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief -- and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address since the...

She’s learned from her mistakes. Three years before November 8, 2016, she’s working hard to be relaxed, calm, easy. But, all the while, the old Clinton gears are whirring.

Police in the Netherlands are hoping to save money by training rats to sniff out things like drugs and gunshot residue. The animals are cheaper and faster than traditional lab work -- and they're very accurate. "Derrick" is unbeatable. He's right in 98.8 percent of all cases, the kind of accuracy only machines can achieve. But Derrick is no machine. He's part of an elite group of sewer rats currently being trained in Rotterdam to sniff out drugs, gunpowder or traces of other substances that cling to someone after they've committed a crime. The rats have an average success rate...

WASHINGTON — For four years, President Obama counted on fellow Democrats to rally to his side in a series of epic battles with Republicans over the direction of the country. But now, deep in his fifth year in office, Mr. Obama finds himself frustrated by members of his own party weary of his leadership and increasingly willing to defy him. In recent weeks, disgruntled Democrats, particularly liberals, have bolted from the White House on issues like National Security Agency surveillance policies, a planned military strike on Syria and the potential choice of Lawrence H. Summers to lead the Federal Reserve....

As in cockroaches. But vermin is nothing new in a building that is 213 years old--and roaches aren't the worst of it...

Elections officials are continuing to investigate an incident in which nine absentee ballots were mailed to a man who lives across the hall from Phil Carter, a candidate for the Winston-Salem City Council. The absentee ballot requests came mostly from residents of Holland Homes apartments on Mount Zion Place. What got the attention of local elections officials was that the elections office was asked to send all of the ballots to one address – the home of Benjamin Parker on E. Fifth Street. Parker lives in an apartment across a hallway from Carter’s apartment. Carter is in a three-way race...

EACH of us took turns over the past 43 years running the Environmental Protection Agency. We served Republican presidents, but we have a message that transcends political affiliation: the United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally. There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected. The costs of inaction are undeniable....

In a close vote yesterday in the House, 205-2017, a bill to stop NSA spying on Americans and roll back the Patriot Act was defeated. Part of the reason for the defeat was the House Democratic Leadership who voted for continued spying on American citizens, even though many made public statements condemning the Patriot Act. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz all voted for violating the 4th amendment. Nancy Pelosi’s vote may be the most dishonest of all given her previous statements on the Patriot Act. House Democratic Leader Nancy...

Sucker=xx=xx Bad news: After Republicans spent $400,000 in sickening ads to hijack John Kerry's old Senate seat, a terrifying new GOP poll shows an incredibly close race: Markey (D) 45, Gomez (R) 44% And the election is in JUST TWO WEEKS away I know you're a top President Obama supporter, so you need to know that the next 36 hours are critically important for the President. If we lose this seat, Mitch McConnell will be a step closer to: -blocking every single sensible gun law -completely repealing Obamacare -tearing apart Social Security and Medicare President Obama needs you to finish...

The White House press corps was so worried about its reputation when veteran reporter Helen Thomas ranted against Jews in 2010 that it quickly moved to discredit her journalistic creds and personally attacked her as crazy in a bid to save itself, according to a new journalism school analysis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly details the efforts by the press corps to shove Thomas out of their club after she told a New York rabbi in a widely distributed video that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine," and that Jews should "go home" to "Poland, Germany ... and...

It’s raining snakes in Washington, DC Police reports in the Adams Morgan area of our nation’s capital detail recent occurrences of snakes falling out of trees and onto children. Police believe the intimidating inhabitants of Walter Pierce park to be black rat snakes, WTOP reports. The snakes fell out of trees in a playground near the National Zoo, which caused panic among the children. Black rat snakes are not poisonous, but they do constrict their small prey to kill it. The responding officer was able to capture a small one in a water bottle. Officials at the zoo said there...

To prove that the U.S news media “distort the truth and mislead the public opinion to curry favor with power,” a North Korean newspaper used Helen Thomas’s 2010 retirement as an example. Only problem is that Thomas (pictured right) was once a female columnist for Hearst Newspapers, not a man.