Free Republic

Russia's opposition said on Tuesday they feared Vladimir Putin had decided to use force to smother their protests after riot police detained hundreds of demonstrators challenging his presidential election victory. After three months of peaceful anti-Putin protests, police hauled away more than 500 people, including opposition leaders, who attended unsanctioned protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Monday or refused to leave after a rally that was permitted. The police intervention sent a clear signal that Putin is losing patience with opponents demanding more democracy, openness and political reforms, and will crack down if they step out of line. "Fear...

Timeless words...written 149 years ago but could have been penned yesterday, but not by the current Imposter-in-Chief: "Insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and...

In the uproar over President Obama’s unconstitutional “recess” appointments (Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members of the National Labor Relations Board), one fact has gotten too little attention . Attempting to justify the president’s violation of the Constitution and 90 years of legal precedent, presidential spokesman Dan Pfeiffer claimed that the president can exercise recess appointment powers because the Senate’s pro forma sessions—conducted since mid-December—are merely “a gimmick” during which “no Senate business is conducted and instead one of two Senators simply gavel in and out of session in a matter of...

But when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them.

President Barack Obama says he won't take "no" as an answer from Republicans, so he's going around them to appoint the head of a new consumer protection agency. Obama says Republicans would just keep holding Richard Cordray's nomination hostage—and the president says that's inexcusable and wrong. He says Cordray must be in place in order for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to start helping consumers deal with unscrupulous mortgage companies, dishonest payday lenders, and others. Obama announced the appointment of Cordray during a stop Wednesday in Ohio, where Cordray once served as attorney general. Republicans are outraged but Obama says...

An Obama-fied parody of my all-time favorite comic... ________________________________________________ Via email - h/t Speedunque

WASHINGTON -- In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico, the Justice Department announced Monday that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles. The new policy comes amid criticism of a failed federal probe aimed at dismantling large-scale arms trafficking networks along the Arizona border with Mexico. In the probe, called Operation Fast and Furious, several agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say they were inexplicably ordered by superiors to stop tracking some small-time "straw" buyers who...

...Obama will hold a news conference on Wednesday morning at 11:30am EDT, giving reporters the chance to ask....

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa. Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western...

So....if our President cares soooooo much about the suffering (and little about our national interest) why is he stopping at Syria? Dozens of people have been killed in a number of Syrian cities after protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime flared up more than a week ago. Ten people, including members of the security forces, residents and two members of “armed elements” died in the Latakia violence, the state-run news agency said, adding that at least two people were killed by rooftop snipers. Around 200 others, mostly members of the security forces, were reported to have been injured. Ammar...

This is probably the most important ongoing revolt in the Middle East right now. If Assad were to fall, it would reverberate all over the region, and greatly weaken the Iranian regime. Typically, it is getting far less coverage than the other “crises,” but we’ll follow it here. Latest updates: Dara’a. According to eyewitnesses, the whole city (Population: ~100,000) is up in arms. Tens of thousands are on the street demanding freedom and liberty. Many are aware that the French Foreign Ministry, the US State Department, and the world is watching what they’re doing. This video shows Syrian security men...

The community organizer who became president has launched a massive pre-reelection year campaign .......-SNIP-Strengthening "our democracy" presumably has something to do with reelecting the revered leader in 2012.However, the recruiting message says nothing about politics or election campaigns and strangely talks in military terms of "a grassroots program that aims to put boots on the ground and help foster a new generation of leaders -- not just to help win elections but to strengthen our democracy in communities across the country."-SNIP-News of the community organizer drive went out in an e-mail to millions of supporters and past donors Tuesday...

Abraham Lincoln’s greatest love was politics, but his intellectual passion was for what the 19th century called “political economy” — the way economics and politics intersected in society and government. According to his law partner William Herndon, Lincoln “liked political economy, the study of it,” and Shelby Cullom, who practiced law beside Lincoln in Springfield, Ill. (and later crafted the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887), thought that “theoretically . . . on political economy he was great.” Although Lincoln’s angular, shambling appearance gave him the look of anything but a student of economics — one contemporary said he resembled “a...

VILNIUS (AFP) — US Republican Senator John McCain on Friday dubbed Belarus's strongman President Alexander Lukashenko "a ruthless, oppressive, brutal tyrant" who was on the "wrong side of history". "We will continue to urge for further sanctions from the entire European Union and United States against Mr. Lukashenko and his corrupted regime," McCain said in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

In the aftermath of the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords earlier this month, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have proposed a cluster of gun control measures ranging from a ban to knowingly carrying a firearm within 1,000 feet of certain high-profile government officials to a proposal to allow members of Congress to carry firearms in the U.S. Capitol. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy formally introduced her own bill on the House floor Tuesday that would ban high-capacity ammunition clips like the one Jared Loughner used to gun down 19 individuals in the Tucson shooting Jan. 8. McCarthy, who is regarded as one...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) adopted the role of Ebenezer Scrooge and scheduled the Senate to work through the Christmas holiday. Two Republicans - Jon Kyl of Arizona and Jim DeMint of South Carolina - objected, and that became political fodder for Reid, proving that nothing is off limits if a political point can be made. Reid then took to the floor of the Senate to blast the GOP. “I don’t need to hear the sanctimonious lectures of Sens. Kyl and DeMint to remind me of what Christmas means,” he said Wednesday afternoon. He also blamed Republicans - who...

Our Nobel Peace Prize Winning President Barack Obama (“Winner: 2009 Prize for Being the Darling of the Euro Left”) has, yet again betrayed the suckers who took him seriously as some sort of Messianic Bringer of Peace. First, it was the move (on the heels of the Nobel Prize) to increase troop levels in order to prop up a failed third world narco state with no clear plan of what to do besides get Americans killed in pointless battles. [snip] Sec’y of Defense Robert Gates... plainly stated, “We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely. In fact, we’re not ever leaving at all.”...

Ever since Barry Soetero ascended to the office of President of the United States, people have wondered exactly what type of man he really is. Barack Obama broke on the national scene on July 27th 2004 when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Although only a state senator at the time; many of the movers and shakers of the DNC felt this person had real potential. The kinship they felt speaks volumes; not only regarding Barack Obama, but about progressives as well. He was both well spoken and correctly educated; having graduated from both...

The message in Portland in 2008 was hope. The president returns to talk about mistrust and threats. With the 2008 Democratic primary race all but won, Barack Obama appeared at a massive outdoor rally here and delivered a message that was unique by the cutthroat standards of American political campaigns. "We're not going to worry about what other folks are doing," Obama told a crowd of 75,000 at the waterfront event in May 2008. "We're going to try to focus on what we think we can do for America." Obama returned to Portland on Wednesday night and delivered a different...

Here we go again. I've been through this nightmare before. Any day now, you can expect to begin hearing that dozens of groups and individuals critical of Barack Obama and his policies have been subjected to Internal Revenue Service audits. That's the way it happened during the last Democratic presidential administration. And this one is, if anything, more desperate, more ruthless and more cunning that the one run by Bill Clinton.