Free Republic

Washington (CNN)Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley took a major shot at Hillary Clinton on Sunday, saying the country needs a "new perspective" and "new leadership" in the 2016 election. "Let's be honest here," O'Malley said. "The presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families." The Democrat's comments, in an appearance on ABC's "This Week," are another signal that he's likely to challenge Clinton in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. He's focusing in recent weeks on issues like income inequality and wage stagnation -- which liberal darling Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has made her...

Senator Chuck Grassley has sent two letters to the State Department to ask about Huma Abedin's special government status when she was a government employee--and for information on Abedin's email use while working for the government. Abedin is a close aide to Hillary Clinton, and worked for the consulting firm Teneo (under a special government employee status) while working for Clinton. "I am writing to follow up on inquiries I have been making since June 13, 2013 and August 15, 2013 regarding the State Department’s use of Special Government Employee (SGE) designations, and in particular, what steps the Department took...

Democrats are calling republican senators traitors. If they truly believe that then Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi are traitors, too. With the exception of Pelosi, the democrats would be worse traitors because they operated in secrecy, not having the intestinal fortitude to act out in the open. Let’s see how these three stack up against a letter written by 47 senators. First, to establish context, let’s examine exactly what the republican senators did. They wrote a letter to the Iranian government explaining US law. No only were they direct and open, but they are also correct. Any agreement...

An unusual time-lapse video made by a Washington, D.C. nonprofit fundraiser and his friends shows former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton aging from her teen years to the present. Clinton, 67, is the presumptive Democratic White House front-runner and would be 69 years and 86 days old if she were to become president after the 2016 elections. That would make her the second-oldest chief executive to move into the White House behind only Ronald Reagan, who took office 17 days before he turned 70.

I almost shed a tear but it was the garlic.They haven't heard about the RACIST Nobel Prize Committee yet.

Gerbils are cute and furry creatures. They may also, according to scientists, have been responsible for killing millions of people across Europe by spreading the plague. Researchers now believe that gerbils from Asia, rather than native black rats, were behind the repeated outbreaks of the bubonic plague in Europe.

**SNIP** Consumers who get married, divorced, or have children between now and the next enrollment period will find making changes “a convoluted, multi-step process.” After hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the initial rollout and tens of millions spent to fix the system afterward, HHS and insurance companies will still rely on “clunky workarounds and manual spreadsheets,” Politico reported this week. And that 11.4 million enrollment figure? That’s largely overstated too, Avik Roy writes at Forbes. First, it’s cumulative; it represents the total number of those who completed applications and those previously enrolled. This year’s additions are also signups,...

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee begins their quest to retake the Senate in 2016 with $15 million in operational debt and $1 million in the bank, according to new numbers through the end of December. That's down from the $16.3 million in debt the DSCC carried shortly after the 2014 elections, and is slightly lower than the $15.8 million it started out with after the 2012 elections, though it's still one of the largest burdens the party has carried in decades. That operational debt doesn't include a $5 million loan the organization took out to buy a house adjacent to...

Pelosi gropes for a game plan Heading into a retreat in Philadelphia, House members say Democrats have no message and no clear strategy to retake the majority. By LAUREN FRENCH and ANNA PALMER 1/26/15 5:36 AM EST Nancy Pelosi has big problems in her ranks. The California lawmaker is facing some of the most serious unrest she’s ever seen in her dozen years as the leader of the House Democrats: Members complain that the party has no message and no clear plan to retake the majority, despite good news on the economy that should have brought rewards at the polls....

A second Democratic campaign has been caught mistaking a foreign ship for a U.S. Navy vessel in images meant to brag on the candidate's devotion to the military. A month after the Democratic National Convention featured Cold War-era Soviet ships on a giant screen as a former Navy admiral representing the Obama campaign praised American veterans, the Democrat running for Senate in Connecticut featured a foreign sub in a television ad promoting his efforts to create jobs at the state's sub-maker, General Dynamics' Electric Boat of Groton. Instead of Groton-made subs, the ad for Rep. Chris Murphy featured a Norwegian...

**SNIP** Obama will ask lawmakers to close a loophole allowing capital gains on inherited funds to go untaxed -- a so-called "trust fund" loophole the White House says allows billions of dollars in capital gains to go untapped by the government every year. The administration’s proposal would exempt the first $200,000 in capital gains per couple plus $500,000 for a home, along with all personal property except for valuable art and collectibles. The rest would be treated for income-tax purposes as if it had been sold. The total amount of money raised for the government by these actions would be...

Democrats are seizing on the fight for mandatory paid leave in the United States as their next big pocketbook issue. The Obama administration has for months called upon Congress to require employers to offer paid leave, with Labor Secretary Tom Perez relentlessly pressing the case to anyone who will listen. And while potential Democratic presidential candidates, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), have voiced support for the proposal, the party has yet to elevate paid leave to the top tier of its policy agenda. That will soon change, according to Democratic operatives, administration officials...

glaringly missing from the summary was mention of $15 million in fees paid by Burkle's Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund since 2002

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday laid out an early legislative agenda that Democrats are hoping will distinguish the party's priorities from those of the Republicans heading into the new Congress. In a letter to her troops, the California Democrat outlined the party's focus at the launch of the 2016 presidential cycle, including efforts to increase working class wages, hike infrastructure spending and eliminate tax breaks for companies that move their headquarters overseas. “In sharp contrast to Republicans whose first vote in the new Congress will be to advance additional tax cuts for the wealthy and special interests,...

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke issued a warning to Republicans who have criticized House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) for speaking to a white nationalist group in 2002, saying they "better be looking over their shoulders." In an interview with Fusion, Duke said he has ties to politicians on both sides of the aisle, and he is ready to release names if criticism of Scalise continues: Overall, Duke was rather flabbergasted by the new focus on Scalise. He said he has hosted both Democratic and Republican legislators at everything from conferences to his children’s birthday parties. He said...

A takeaway has been closed by police after a would-be customer filmed a three hungry, huge rats chowing down on pizzas at the shop. Disgusted Evgeny Ivanov, 26, had gone to the fast-food outlet at a bus station in Nizhny Novogorad, Russia, when he spotted the helping themselves to the pizzas. Police confirmed they had ordered the outlet to be closed and the food destroyed.

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats will use some of their last hours in the Senate majority to release the much-anticipated report about the CIA's methods of extracting information from terror suspects, called "enhanced interrogation" by some and "torture" by others. The report is 6,000 pages long, but only the 480-page executive summary will be released. It is contentious, opposed by both Republicans and former CIA officials who argue that it not only is false, but that it will bring harm to American personnel abroad.

Only 10 Senate Democrats are up for re-election in 2016, the residual benefit of the shellacking they took in 2010 when tea party Republicans swept into office. The only two challenges Democrats likely will face will be defending Michael Bennet's seat in Colorado and Reid's in Nevada. In a presidential year, Bennet, who managed to survive in 2010, will be the favorite. Reid may be the most vulnerable, but he is a tenacious campaigner and in the past pulled off re-election in the face of stiff odds.

In most parts of the earth there is neither light nor liberty; and even in the best parts of it they are but little encouraged, and coldly maintained; there being, in all places, many engaged, through interest, in a perpetual conspiracy against them. They are the two greatest civil blessings, inseparable in their interests, and the mutual support of each other; and whoever would destroy one of them, must destroy both. Hence it is, that we every where find tyranny and imposture, ignorance and slavery, joined together; and oppressors and deceivers mutually aiding and paying constant court to each other....

May today be the day of defeat that you so richly deserve. That is all!