Free Republic

Rep. Henry Waxman on passing health care reform: "Failure is really not an option on health care, this is a make or break issue for President Obama and the Democrats in the Congress." "I can't imagine some of the Democrats in difficult districts going home and running for re-election in 2010 and saying 'well, I don't have a health care bill," Waxman said.

In the mail this morning was an advanced copy of Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson's extremely well-reported history of the 2008 presidential campaign: The Battle for America is what the two veteran Posties have called it. The book will be published on August 4; Balz and Johnson will talk about it on Meet the Press on August 2. There are plenty of scoops, and I can't resisting sharing just one involving a critical phase of the campaign in early October of 2008. Whose idea was it for Gov. Sarah Palin to attack Barack Obama as a guy who "pals around...

The explosion of violence in China's wild north-west is a long, long way from Beijing's corridors of power. And yet it has sent shock waves through the very heart of the country's communist regime. Yesterday, as thousands of troops moved in to crush the uprising, the authorities vowed to execute the perpetrators of the unrest, which has left more than 150 dead and 1,100 injured. On the surface, the rioting in the town of Urumchi appears to be a brutal, ethnically-motivated, but localised, clash between the native population and migrants flooding in from elsewhere in China. In reality, however, it...

House Democrats will not unveil their full healthcare reform package on Friday nor begin committee work on the bill next week as planned, the latest sign that President Obama’s signature domestic initiative is in trouble. The delay caps off a rocky week for Democrats and puts Obama’s goal of having both chambers pass a bill by the August recess increasingly at risk. In spite of the disorder among congressional Democrats, Obama said his goals and timeline remain doable. “There are going to be some tough negotiations in the days and weeks to come, but I'm confident that we're going to...

Donald Dashnaw PLATTSBURGH — David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz attended his first religious seminar at Clinton Correctional Facility escorted by then-chaplain Donald Dashnaw. "He just wanted to get exposure to the church," remembered Dashnaw, who for 58 years lived in Morrisonville and now resides in South Carolina. Dashnaw was chaplain in the Dannemora maximum-security prison for three-and-a-half years. Close-up interaction with inmates made him apprehensive beforehand, a nervousness not allayed by the background checks and fingerprinting he had to have done. But once behind the walls, Dashnaw saw the incarcerated in a different light. The inmates, he said, "were very...

Los Angeles (E! Online) – Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster are giving it another shot. E! News can confirm that the Hollywood heavyweights, who last costarred in a movie together 15 years ago in Maverick, are set to join forces again for The Beaver. A quirky comedy drama along the lines of 2007's indie hit Lars and the Real Girl (or, depending on your humor, South Park), the Kyle Killen-penned script follows a down-and-out man (Gibson) who finds comfort wearing a beaver hand puppet. Foster will not only play his wife, but she'll also helm the film, marking her first...

Congressman Fleming has proposed a Resolution which states that members of Congress must also participate in whatever health care plan they choose for the rest of us...It might be time for Obama to slow down and rethink his game plan and his outlook. I don't think that will happen, quite honestly. His normal practice has been the arm-twisting Chicago way and it is possible that his being out of the country and preoccupied with foreign affairs has left him unable this week to wrangle these initiatives through. That's our good fortune. I've never seen Obama admit at mistake, either. He...

DETROIT – General Motors completed an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection on Friday with ambitions of making money and building cars people are eager to buy. Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, new GM is now leaner, cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans. But GM, whose 40 days under court supervision was far shorter than anyone predicted, faces the worst auto sales slump in a quarter-century. At a news conference, CEO Fritz Henderson said the revamped automaker will be faster and more responsive to customers than the old...

Update, 4:17 p.m.: Although Kirk has already told several national Republicans today that he will not run for the Senate, there is an ongoing effort now to convince him to re-think that decision, according to several sources close to the discussions. Pressure is now being brought to bear on Andy McKenna, who, according to knowledgeable sources, had told Republicans insiders that he would not run if Kirk got into the race. Once Kirk signaled he was indeed running, however, McKenna reconsidered and made clear he would in fact stay in.

Bangkok, Thailand - Over two months after the bloody finale of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war, a lingering row over civilian casualties continues to roil a fractured society. Sri Lankan authorities have insisted that their final military push against Tamil Tiger rebels didn't target hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped behind enemy lines. But aid workers, church officials, and government doctors reported that heavy shelling had caused mass casualties. A preliminary United Nations report estimated that 7,000 had died between January and May. On Wednesday, however, a group of doctors who had provided dramatic firsthand accounts of civilian suffering in...

Officials say a cocoa processing facility in New Jersey where a worker fell into a vat of melting chocolate and died was operating illegally. Camden cited Lyons & Sons Inc. for not having a business license after Vincent Smith II died Wednesday. Authorities say the 29-year-old was hit by a paddle used to mix chocolate. Company spokesman Kevin Feeley says it's a "misunderstanding" and Camden officials knew the firm was operating in the former Campbell Soup plant. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death. The Philadelphia Inquirer also reports the federal Food and Drug Administration is...

An interactive game about present day Organized Labor (Unions) push for doing away with the secret ballot and replacing it with public card signing. Play this interactive flash game to learn what life would be life if the so-called “Employee Freedom of Choice Act” passes and “card check” becomes the law of the land. Be sure to Contact Your Legislator Forward this link to your email forwards

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, whose bilious hatred of conservatives and Republicans oozes from every proverbial pore of his spirit, had some interesting things to say yesterday about these objects of his daily derision. Specifically, he cited conservatives’ “pervasive immorality and holier-than-thou hypocrisy” as the wellspring of “the reeking pile of manure that is the right wing media and right wing commentary.” “The right wing,” Olbermann added, “thinks that the only thing that might ever interest a voter about a woman is sex”—an assertion that led him to conclude, quite logically, that such primitive sexism “certainly would explain why the GOP nominated...

Contact: Margaret, Priests for Life,  888-735-3448, ext. 251ATLANTA, July 10 /Christian Newswire/ -- Dr. Alveda King, Pastoral Associate of Priests for Life and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., commented today on a new Guttmacher Institute study that shows that in states where Medicaid pays for abortions, more poor women have abortions."The Guttmacher report is really just another study that confirms the obvious -- subsidized abortion means more abortions," said Dr. King.  "My medical insurance paid for my 'legal abortion' in 1973.  My 'free' abortion, in turn, made it all too easy for me to be an unsuspecting victim of population control." "The President says...

Welcome to the GLENN BECK television thread...Shake the cobwebs out of your brain...We are another day closer to the REVOLUTION! All comrades, infidels, sick twisted freaks and lurkers are welcome and are encouraged to participate in the thread!

The Issue:On every front (from the Boy Scouts, to the Pledge of Allegiance to the Ten Commandments, Prayer in School, and more), attacks against our religious heritage and our rights to publicly acknowledge God are the work of the ACLU and its radical, anti-God, anti-religion, anti-American agenda. Liberty Counsel, one of the nation’s foremost public interest legal firms, is committed to defending traditional values and restoring our precious religious heritage. We are committed to fighting the ACLU—exposing their agenda and defeating them in courtrooms across the land. We Can Defeat The ACLUThe time has come to turn back the ACLU’s...

Chris Simcox, founder of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat held by John McCain, has denounced the Cap & Trade bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Simcox said, "The Cap & Trade Bill that squeaked through the House needs to bring a roar of opposition from voters in Arizona and across the nation. This is bad legislation that will, if passed by the Senate, not only bring us much higher costs in energy, as Obama has promised, but it will also bring a heavy cost to our sovereign freedom as a nation....

TAMPA - The Club for Growth, a conservative political committee known for spending big bucks in Republican primaries, is still interested in Marco Rubio's challenge to Charlie Crist but wary of his lack of fundraising success so far, its director said. "It's less than what we'd been hearing would be announced," executive director David Keating said. He said the group will still be watching the Republican primary race for the U.S. Senate and considering whether to intervene to support Rubio.

It's official: Intel is working with Google on the development of the Mountain View ad broker's new netbook operating system, Google Chrome OS. Word of the world's largest processor manufacturer's involvement with the world's largest internet searcher's purportedly virus-free OS first came by way of a comment by an Asia-Pacific Intel spokesman. And on Friday morning, Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer at the company's Santa Clara, California, headquarters, confirmed that report, telling The Reg that "We’ve been privy to the project for some time and work with Google on a variety of projects, including elements of this one. We welcome Google’s...

BEULAH, Fla. — Investigators searched Friday for three men wanted for questioning about the Thursday night home-invasion deaths of the mother and father of 16 children. The Escambia County Sheriff's Office said the men were driving a red full-size van when they were seen leaving the home of Byrd and Melanie Billings after the Escambia County couple were found shot to death in the bedroom of their home in Beulah, just west of Pensacola near the Alabama border.