Free Republic

Why not? It worked for ObamaCare, didn’t it? The Hill reports that Speaker John Boehner’s latest strategy to thread the needle of demands to defund Planned Parenthood and yet avoid a government shutdown will take a page from the Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi playbook: Top House Republicans hope to convince their members to keep the government open by using a fast-track process known as reconciliation to try to defund Planned Parenthood.House Republican leaders are planning to target Planned Parenthood’s funding by immediately drafting a fast-track reconciliation bill, according to a senior House GOP aide.Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants...

Sources tell Breitbart News that several members of the House of Representatives are saying “the rumor is Boehner cut a deal with Pelosi.” According to those sources, outgoing House Speaker Rep. John Boehner and Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi agreed that her Democratic caucus would join Boehner along with a handful of Boehner loyalists and moderate establishment Republicans to continue Planned Parenthood funding, along with a few other budget items President Obama says were must-haves, in order to avoid a Government shutdown. Boehner resigned because he knew that after he cut that deal, conservatives in his own party would be...

House Speaker John Boehner’s time with the big gavel may be coming to an end in the next week or so. The Hill reports some Republican lawmakers think they have a shot at getting Boehner out, if the government shutdown over the funding of Planned Parenthood doesn’t happen. “That’s what tells you there’s something afoot. You know there’s some drops of blood in the water, because all the sharks are starting to circle,” said one conservative lawmaker who backs Boehner’s ouster. The key word in all this is “may” because there’s no guarantee it will happen. North Carolina Congressman Mark...

Pope Francis's address to Congress may have voters on both sides of the aisle seriously considering supporting Donald Trump’s immigration plan.  The pope stated that we must "not be taken aback by the numbers" of illegals he calls "refugees" invading our country.  Rather, we must apply the Golden Rule to the 11-30 million people openly defying our nation's rule of law. Unfortunately, Francis's "do unto others" dictum does not apply to cash-strapped lower- and middle-income Americans.  He says we must see the “refugees” as “persons … seeing their faces and listening to their stories,” but he exhibits no such...

Two of those Republicans, Rand Paul and Tom Cotton, opposed the bill not because of its Planned Parenthood provisions but because it didn’t meet their priorities on other government spending. Paul voted no because it would lead to another $400 billion in debt; Cotton opposed it because spending on defense wasn’t high enough to suit him.I haven’t seen explanations from the other six but five of them are among the most centrist members of the caucus. (Ben Sasse is an exception.) Did they take issue with some element of spending too, or was this in fact a vote to...

I don't see any other logical reason for him speaking the way he did.

Pope Francis today suggested to reporters during an airborne press conference that he is not a left-winger. “Some people might say some things [I said] sounded slightly more leftish, but that would be a mistake of interpretation,” the Pope said to journalists, according to Time.

Amid high unemployment and a weak economy, employers have been shifting health care costs to workers, according to a study released Thursday. The premiums that employees pay for employer-sponsored family coverage rose an average of 13.7 percent this year, while the amount that employers contribute fell by 0.9 percent, the survey found. For family coverage, workers are paying an average of $3,997, up $482 from last year, while employers are paying an average of $9,773, down $87, according to the survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

Employers are leaving a bigger chunk of the bill for care to workers who use their health insurance, and benefits experts see few signs of this trend slowing. Most companies now offer health coverage that requires employees to pay an annual deductible before insurance kicks in, and the size of that deductible has soared in the past decade, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research & Educational Trust. The average general deductible for workers with single coverage totaled $1,077 this year, compared to only $303 in 2006. That deductible has climbed nearly seven...

Fiorina's story -- that she went from "Secretary to CEO" -- is more embellishment, than truth. In fact, Fiorina didn't rise from secretarial pool to CEO, like a real world version of "Working Girl." The daughter of the dean of Duke Law School, and top Nixon advisor, she took a part-time job as a secretary, while in law school, and then was put on the management track at AT&T. I worked in the dining hall in college, but I don't go around saying that I rose from burger flipper to Presidential Campaign press secretary. Then there is the now widely...

House Democrats are blocking their Republican colleagues from using Obamacare in letters mailed on the taxpayer's dime to voters, but who made up the term in the first place? Lots of people are asking this question, getting answers like "Certainly a republican, potentially Glenn Beck" and "I am about 80% sure it was Rush Limbaugh" and "Hillary Clinton's campaign coined Obamacare." Iowa Rep. Steve King claimed President Obama himself made it up. Free Republic posters want to claim credit. Lots of liberals suspect an insidious plot by Fox News. But the answer appears to be: a lobbyist.

Once upon a time, your origins were easy to understand. Your dad met your mum, they had some fun, and from a tiny fertilised egg you emerged kicking and screaming into the world. You are half your mum, half your dad – and 100% yourself. Except, that simple tale has now become a lot more complicated. Besides your genes from parents, you are a mosaic of viruses, bacteria – and potentially, other humans. Indeed, if you are a twin, you are particularly likely to be carrying bits of your sibling within your body and brain. Stranger still, they may be...

An Obama administration representative took a shot at a well-known conservative college Thursday, saying the school wasn’t included on its much-heralded new “College Scorecard” because it isn’t a real two-to-four year college. Hillsdale College, a 1,500-student liberal arts college in Michigan, is ranked by U.S. News and World Reports as the 67th-best national liberal arts college in the country. The college is well-known for the conservative identity of its student body and its focus on a core curriculum that emphasizes Judeo-Christian tradition and the U.S. Constitution. It’s also known for its refusal to accept any federal funding (including federal student...

0bama has called 0bama a Muslim. Anyone remember when StepOnallofus had to correct him, “You mean your CHRISTIAN faith?”. Problem is that 0’s statement doesn’t make sense unless he HAD MEANT TO SAY “Muslim”. “I am thankful that my opponent John McLame has not made an issue of my CHRISTIAN faith.” WTF? Its not like he was an such an outspoken bible-thumper that it could have been used against him. However if the word “Muslim” is used, it makes perfect sense that he would have given McLame a hat tip for not making an issue of it....

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed the Republican-controlled Senate on Friday for blocking action on Obamacare, tax reform and more while representatives are working hard to push conservative measures through. "The latest metric shows this is the second-most productive Congress of any Republican in the majority," the California Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" co-host Martha MacCallum, "but what's stopping us is the Senate." The House has two bills on the floor that could affect Planned Parenthood and the abortion services it provides, McCarthy said, at the same time many in the Senate are arguing about whether to shut down...

The abortion-friendly media are having a heyday challenging Carly Fiorina’s assertion during Wednesday’s debate that on the Planned Parenthood videos you can: “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’” Planned Parenthood calls her a liar. Politico adds, “…at no point do they include footage of an entire aborted fetus.” Huffington Post said, “That footage doesn’t exist…” Vox said Fiorina’s claims are “pure fiction.” George Stephanopoulos told Fiorina to her face “…the harrowing scene you describe isn’t actually in those tapes.”...

SWANSEA, Wales, September 17, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- A former cast member of BBC3’s hit reality TV show The Call Centre is being investigated by police after she posted on Facebook earlier this week that babies born with Downs Syndrome should be executed. Ursula Presgrave, 24 years-old, posted on her Facebook page Sunday night: “Anyone born with down syndrome should be put down, it’s just cruel to let them lead a pointless life of a vegetable.” Pre-born children with Downs syndrome are highly discriminated against because of a genetic anomaly of having an extra 21st chromosome. A in utero diagnosis...

Based on numerous polls and countless surveys, we already knew Americans didn’t trust Congress or the Executive Branch—but now, it looks like they don’t trust the courts, either. A new Gallup poll released Friday shows only 53 percent of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the United States’ judicial system, a record low since Gallup first began measuring government trust in 1997. Conversely, about half (47%) of all Americans think the courts can’t be trusted. …

Many members of Congress are calling for an end to government funding for America’s biggest abortion mill, Planned Parenthood. Americans were outraged over the organization’s alleged sale of aborted-baby parts as revealed in undercover videos conducted by the Center for Medical Progress. But the money does not go just one way—members and employees of Planned Parenthood, as well as the group’s PAC, have been very active and generous in their donations to government officials who both funnel taxpayer money to the organization as well as ardently defend abortion.

In two wide-ranging new interviews, the pontiff discusses matters both weighty and personal, such as: the perils of his popularity, his plans to welcome divorced and remarried Catholics, and his fear that the church has locked Jesus up like a prisoner. Speaking Sept. 13 to the Argentine radio station, FM Milenium, Francis lamented those who posed as his friends to exploit him, and decried religious fundamentalism. And speaking to Portugal’s Radio Renascença in an interview that ran on Sept. 14, Francis said that a priest comes to hear his confession every 15 to 20 days: “And I never had to...