Free Republic

The executive order will direct the commission to produce a report for Obama within six months of its first public meeting, principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said. The panel will be tasked with considering "a variety of ways to shorten lines and promote the efficient conduct of elections" and its findings will be "intended to serve as a best practices guide for state and local election officials to improve voters' experience at the polls under their existing election laws."

In Stalin's Russia, genetics and cybernetics were treated as the cat's paw of imperialism and officially branded as "whores." But it was another branch of Soviet science, history, that was a far more deserving candidate to bear that not exactly honorific moniker. Russian historians loyally served the regime, meeting its propaganda needs in full compliance with a thesis propounded by the titular head of the Soviet school of history, Mikhail Pokrovsky: "History is the present telescoped into the past." Some American liberals have been faithfully following Pokrovsky's precept, reinventing the past in keeping with the progressive view of the world....

A 22-carat dictator: Robert Mugabe has gold coins minted to celebrate his 89th birthday in poverty-stricken Zimbabwe • Four-tier cake made in his honour at Zimbabwe's state house party • Opposition accuses his party supporters of killing 12-year-old boy Zimbabwe is one of the poorest country's on Earth, but clearly despot Robert Mugabe doesn't seem to care on his 89th birthday. The president celebrated it by immortalising himself in freshly minted gold coins and held a lavish party with a giant cake. Guests, including his wife, first lady Grace, tucked into the four-tier treat made in his honour at the...

...Did he exert features of moral grandeur and heroism necessary to steer the country through its deepest political crisis? Or was he an aspiring tyrant, especially in his use of executive power? A recent example of how not to think about Lincoln’s leadership comes from the historian and television commentator Doris Goodwin. Goodwin wrote a book called “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” showing how Lincoln drew his cabinet from his personal and political competitors. In a subsequent discussion of Lincoln’s leadership titled “The 10 Qualities That Made Lincoln Great... If all of these sound a little...

In January 1863, Abraham Lincoln made a remarkable confession. He was, he told a senator, more worried about “the fire in the rear” than he was about the Confederates to his front... Disgusted Republicans termed them “Copperheads,” after the poisonous snake... By January 1863, their assaults on Lincoln, combined with the poor performance of the armies, were taking a toll on civilian morale. Midwesterners spoke openly about seceding and establishing another new country or aligning with the Confederate States of America. Lincoln’s critics were harsh, uncompromising and relentless. They said Lincoln was a tyrant, bent on amassing power and ruining...

Group with enormous influence on White House issues specific plans A progressive group with enormous influence on White House policy has issued specific recommendations to the Obama administration on how to push sweeping gun control, including suggestions for executive orders. The Center for American Progress released an 11-page proposal, reviewed by WND, calling for a full ban on the sale of assault weapons and magazines with a capacity for more than 10 bullets. CAP suggests legislation to require licensing and transfer restrictions on new and existing assault rifles. The CAP paper, delivered to the White House last week, recommends that...

Top Two Reasons to Own a Gun: Thank God and Sam Colt … My right to own a gun, to stroke it, to use it, and to pass it on to my children is not a matter of pragmatism, so I’m not going to argue statistics or polls, even though they’d be in my favor. And this list is in no particular order because, after the top two reasons, it really doesn’t matter how you order the rest. It’s like the top musical acts of the twentieth century; there’s Elvis and the Beatles and where you rank The Stones, The...

Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime. ~ snip ~ The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an...

A New Mexico couple has been warned by the federal government not to touch trash – tin cans, broken glass and the like – that has accumulated over the years on the 20 acres of desert land they bought for their retirement home near Santa Fe because it could hurt the Rio Grande River, 25 miles away. Huh? The dispute over the Obama administration’s claim to jurisdiction over desert land belonging to Peter and Francoise Smith is heading to court now. Their lawsuit alleges Washington is over-reaching in its claim that their land, which does not contain any “relatively permanent,...

For months, federal agencies and the White House have sidetracked dozens of major regulations that cover everything from power plant pollution to workplace safety to a crackdown on Wall Street. The rules had been largely put on hold during the presidential campaign as the White House sought to quiet Republican charges that President Barack Obama was an overzealous regulator who is killing U.S. jobs. But since the election, the Obama administration has quietly reopened the regulations pipeline. In recent weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rules to update water quality guidelines for beaches and other recreational waters and deal...

With only a limited theatrical release last week, Steven Spielberg’s latest work of imaginative fiction is scheduled for wide release today. I know Hollywood plays fast and loose with history, but when they go out of their way to get the wallpaper in Lincoln’s office exactly right, and use a recording of his actual watch as the sound effect for his movie watch, but pay little deference to his actual statements or opinions… something must be said. People are seriously calling the Lincoln movie a “much needed civics lesson.” In reality it’s essentially a 2.5 hour courtroom drama about slavery...

Have any fellow FReepers seen this movie yet? If so, what did you think and would you recommend it?

New Movie Propagates Lincoln Historical Myths If you are planning to see the new, Steven Spielberg directed, Lincoln movie you might want to invest in an accurate history book instead. While it is successfully dramatic, the movie rehashes several 150 year old myths about the Lincoln presidency and America’s most horrible war. First, to the movie’s credit, the script avoids a key, blatant lie that is currently being taught throughout American public schools today. The script focuses correctly on explaining how slaves were freed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation did...

(Reuters) - Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee's call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade. U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge Washington denies. The month-long talks at U.N. headquarters broke off after the United States - along with Russia and other major arms producers - said it had problems with...

On this day in 1861, Lincoln imposes the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Strapped for cash with which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32 in 323 B.C., his once unbeatable army began a 2,900-mile withdrawal from India and headed home to Macedonia. As they retreated, the empire they had created collapsed behind them. To prevent pursuit, Alexander's royal cavalry and infantry dealt viciously with all internal dissent, destroyed cities and burned bridges. The Russians employed a similar scorched-earth tactic against Napoleon in 1812, as did the Red Army when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It's a maneuver now being employed both domestically and internationally by Barack Obama. The...

Appearing as a guest on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recommended that America's police officers should go on strike and refuse to protect people until gun control legislation which would allegedly make them safer is enacted. Bloomberg: (Video can be found here.) Well, I would take it one step further. I don't understand why the police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say we're gonna go on strike, we're not gonna protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what's required to keep us safe.

Exclusive: Joseph Farah has good laugh over prez's 'Bart Simpson-like juvenile appeal' Sometimes Barack Obama cracks me up. That’s not easy to do for a wannabe tyrant with no respect for the Constitution, one who has systematically concealed every meaningful document about his personal history, one who has “fundamentally transformed America” into something much less than the shining city on a hill Ronald Reagan envisioned, one who personally directed his White House and Justice Department to run guns to Mexican drug cartels so they could be used to kill at least U.S. law enforcement agents and probably hundreds of U.S....

It's becoming increasingly clear that President Obama is not burdened with too heavy a commitment to honesty. This is hardly a shock about any politician, but revelations of dishonesty hurt some more than others. Announce that Bill Clinton has been speaking falsely, and it hits the ears with as much force as the news that birds fly, fish swim and dogs lick their own nether regions. But Obama was supposed to be different. He was a "lightworker," an ocean tamer and cynicism slayer. In short, he was supposed to be too good to be true -- and it turns out...

President Obama returned Friday to a trusted tactic — satisfying his political allies by not doing something. Conservatives were angry when Janet Napolitano announced the administration would stop deporting certain undocumented immigrants but they should have seen it coming. On issue after issue – gay rights, drug enforcement, Internet gambling, school achievement standards – the administration has chosen to achieve its goals by a method best described as passive-aggressive. Rather than pushing new laws through a divided Congress to enact his agenda, Obama is relying on federal agencies to ignore, or at least not defend, laws that some of his...