Free Republic

When the news trickled out a year ago that the head of the IRS union, Colleen ("fat and ugly") Kelley, met with President Obama the day before the agency began targeting the Tea Party, I finally saw the link. The story was picked up by many news sources on the right but did not develop any further. It's my opinion that this is the connection that the "lost" emails are trying to hide. And it's a big connection -- the White House, the POTUS, the union boss, and the government agency all collaborating, and conspiring, to thwart the actions of...

The replacement of Kathleen Sebelius by Sylvia Mathews Burwell as the Secretary of Health and Human Services has been portrayed by the legacy “news” media as a new lease on life for Obamacare. The party line is that Sebelius was mortally wounded by GOP exploitation of a single uncharacteristic mistake—the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov—while Burwell is a brilliant Beltway veteran unsullied by controversy and possessing the very administrative skills needed to save Obama’s “signature domestic achievement.” … This tale fails to conform to the facts, however … The vessel is taking on water at an alarming rate, and Sylvia Burwell’s...

Russian takeover of the Crimea, as well as many of our problems in the Middle East, was funded by high oil prices. Since there is no military solution to the Crimea conflict, President Obama should look closely at the successful pages of the Reagan playbook. Before the Reagan and Gorbachev Summits could begin, Reagan needed to rebuild our defenses to bring the Soviets back to the bargaining table. The Kremlin was pressured to end the Cold War on America’s terms because of President Reagan’s policies of supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, deploying Pershing cruise missiles in Western Europe (to counter...

WASHINGTON -- It is called the Taranto Principle, having been named after he who coined the principle, the inimitable James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. According to the Taranto Principle, the left-wing media, in their fawning treatment of left-wing politicians, only encourage the pols' worst instincts: encouraging Jean-Francois Kerry's sophomoric wind-surfing during his presidential race or Howard Dean's blood-curdling scream upon losing the Iowa caucuses. And then there is President Barack Obama. At his press conference the other day, he finally commented on the traitor Edward Snowden. Obama said, "You know, if I had a son, he'd look like...

A congressional select committee could offer immunity to the CIA’s dispersed, intimidated survivors. You can always tell the depth of an event’s illegality by the measures people take to cover it up. By that measure, the conduct of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and David Petraeus leading up to the terrorist attack that killed four Americans on 9/11 2012 must be must be so sufficiently wrongful that, if revealed, they could lead to the president’s impeachment.How else can we gauge what is apparently the most energetic coverup in modern history? We know, from several sources, that the survivors of the attack —...

It’s not so much that he thinks he’s above the law as that he thinks he is the law. The duties of the President of the United States are spelled out in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which states, inter alia, that the President “shall take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.” As Stanford Law Professor and former federal judge Michael McConnell explained in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do...

Anthony Weiner had it all. Had. And will never have again. As a powerful progressive congressman who never had a serious election challenge before 2010, he was considered the heir to Senator Chuck Schumer’s throne. He also had an early lead for the 2013 mayoral election–a position he had been vying for since his 2005 defeat in the Democrat primary. And with one tweet it was all gone. Despite Weiner’s ambition to rise again to become New York’s mayor, the electoral and demographic math simply isn’t there... --snip-- What Weiner and all the other non-Quinn candidates are hoping for is...

In January, Rush Limbaugh warned that there was “an effort under way to normalize pedophilia,” and was ridiculed by liberals (including CNN’s Soledad O’Brien) for saying so. But now liberals have joined a crusade that, if successful, would effectively legalize sex with 14-year-olds in Florida. The case involves Kaitlyn Ashley Hunt, an 18-year-old in Sebastian, Florida, who was arrested in February after admitting that she had a lesbian affair with a 14-year high-school freshman. (Click here to read the affidavit in Hunt’s arrest.) It is a felony in Florida to have sex with 14-year-olds. Hunt was expelled from Sebastian High...

I just don’t wanna. I don’t wanna write about whether to treat homosexual relationships as “marriage,” and I don’t wanna see lawmakers do anything about it. Just a quarter century ago, just about nobody had even dreamed of such a thing as “gay marriage.” Why don’t we leave the law alone as it is, leave people free to do what they want to do behind closed doors as long as no innocents get hurt (and as long as they don’t “scare the horses”) — and have everybody, including heterosexuals, stop talking in public about what they do in the realm...

Very strong stuff from Bob Woodward criticizing The One's administration regarding Libya. These (the first link and this one) are two excellent videos. In the second, Woodward concludes that "anyone in the intelligence community knows that [Obama's brags about having hobbled al Qaeda] are not true." [T]hose in the know have always said that Woodward has always had particularly good sources in the intelligence community, going back some 40 years. Plus, as the perfect leading indicator for Washington conventional wisdom, Woodward signifies very bad news for a liberal if he comes down as hard on said liberal as Woodward did...

Mideast in Flames -- And Obama Still Can Do No Wrong ANDREW B. WILSON on 9.18.12 In the eyes of a worshipful press, of course. The Middle East is in flames, our embassies are under attack, and four American diplomats have come home in coffins. So who is to blame? It's time for the MSM to round up all the usual suspects -- and to exonerate a president who cavorts with Hollywood celebrities and goes on the David Letterman show to demonstrate his famous cool under fire. Perhaps he will do a Top Ten list on why the U.S. should...

With a second term for Obama, the world-leading America we have known and hoped to leave to our children will be gone. Last Friday's jobs report confirms that Obama is well on his way to transforming America into a third world country, with declining living standards and perpetual economic stagnation. Argentina enjoyed the world's fourth highest per capita GDP in 1929, on par with America at the time. But then the nation lost its way in embracing a leftist, union allied government, which took control of the economy and imposed wildly irresponsible taxes, spending, deficits, and debt. After World War...

Obamacare tax confusion a warning sign: the peril of playing it safe. Thomas E. Dewey. The president who might have been. The Romney campaign's stumble over Obamacare (it's a penalty…no…wait…it's a tax! Yes! Yes! We're sure now…it's a tax!) was both unnecessary and avoidable. If the Romney campaign isn't careful (as our friends at the Wall Street Journal noted here), the morning after the 2012 election they may well find themselves linked forever to the famously hapless 1948 campaign of Tom Dewey. The campaign everyone expected to be a hands-down winner -- which turned into the greatest upset in American...

Now that the Rally for Rush is in full swing -- and winning the day -- let's focus on four things. Lifelock. Transgendered persons. The Washington Post. You. Huh? Say what? Stick with me. Let's start with Lifelock. Rush fans know it well. Lifelock -- the company's "About Us" section found here is all about protecting their customers from identity theft. A decidedly big deal in the day and age of cyber pick pocketing of entire lives. In a way one suspects the Lifelock people could never have possibly conceived a mere week ago, their symbolic image of the little...

For the second straight year, members of the UW-Madison Teaching Assistants' Association will express their love for the university on Valentine's Day. The teachers' union plans to hold an "I ♥ UW" rally, marching from the Memorial Union to the state Capitol at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday. Last year's rally by the same name touched off a series of historic protests in opposition to Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to curb the power of public employee unions. In August, the T.A.A. chose not to seek state certification under the new law, which curtails collective bargaining for most public workers. The T.A.A. is...

2011 was a year of worldwide turmoil and great change. I expect -- and to a certain degree fear -- that last year was the warm-up act to 2012 which, both internationally and domestically, seems likely to be one of the most consequential years in recent history. *BREAK* On the global scene, some of 2011's most significant events pose very different short- and long-term results. For example, the Arab Spring initially appeared to be a move toward freedom in an historically repressive part of the world but is now drifting toward other forms of tyranny. The Middle East remains likely...

The thought startles. Is Newt Gingrich America's Winston Churchill? The former Speaker has repeatedly dazzled in the ongoing series of GOP presidential debates. He is "the adult in the room," the man Republicans keep saying they would like to see on the debate stage with Barack Obama. The latest polls (Wall Street Journal, CBS, and Marist) have him vaulting into a tie with Mitt Romney behind Herman Cain or leapfrogging Cain to barely trail Romney. This video of a Frank Luntz focus group that appeared on Sean Hannity's TV show following a recent GOP debate is typical of the changing...

Living in housing he (and we) can scarcely afford. If President Barack Obama were a legal document, he'd be a sub-prime home loan. The nation's housing crisis seems an apt metaphor for the president and his political position one year before he stands for re-election. Like nearly a quarter of the mortgage loans outstanding on U.S. homes, Obama is under water. His poll ratings are low and sinking. Gallup records 43 percent approval, 49 percent disapproval. Three-quarters of American voters think the country is on the wrong track under his leadership. In moving into the White House -- a very...

Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax reform is attracting enough attention to become the focus of this week's Presidential debate. As a plan for overhauling revenues and unleashing the private sector, it's a bold gambit that shows Cain is willing to take chances and shake up the Capital. The 9 percent business tax is a stroke of genius. It would give us the lowest business rates in the world and would make us the "tax haven" for investment from everywhere. The stock market would barely be able to stay abreast. The 9 percent personal income rate would eliminate all the deductions and...

Odious Conservatives By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. WASHINGTON -- A major proposition that I advance in a book that will be published later this month, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, is that there exists an odious subgroup of conservatives who since the beginning of the conservative movement have made their way to prominence in the mainstream media by a cheap act. They disparage with great melodrama other conservatives. Liberals love it -- and for a while love the disparagers. In the late 1990s Arianna Huffington exploited this instrument of self-promotion brazenly. For several years David Frum has...