Free Republic

It was supposed to be the ceremonial equivalent of the first pitch at the All-Star game, but when President Obama visits a Virginia school on Tuesday, he will find himself amid another testy dispute like the town hall confrontations that made August such a hot political month. Obama is scheduled to visit Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., at about noon. In his about 20-minute speech, to be released Monday, Obama will encourage students to work hard and succeed in the forthcoming school year. Sounds harmless, but it wasn’t the content of the president’s message that sparked the kerfuffle. Rather,...

The political radicalization of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" adviser, dates back to 1992, when he and hundreds of others took their anger to the streets of San Francisco in the infamous Rodney King protests. Jones, a Yale Law School student who was working in the Bay Area as an intern, was part of a mob that stormed the city following the acquittal in Los Angeles of four white police officers who had been charged with beating King, who is black, after a car chase. In an essay he wrote soon after the rioting and republished in The Huffington...

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has renewed his call for Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to resign as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. “When it comes to the relationship between the American people and those they elect to serve them, trust is everything,” Boehner wrote in a letter to Rangel sent Friday. “This is especially true at a difficult time such as this for our nation, when Americans are looking to their government for leadership and solutions, and finding both in short supply. “For this reason, I am writing to again respectfully urge that you step aside as...

I want to say Thank you Holy Lord! My hubby (Netmilsdad) wiped out on his motorcycle today. He was on a very busy street (five lanes on both sides). Through the Grace of God, he has only a broken collar bone. He could have died, been run over, paralyzed, head trauma, ect. He is fine. A painful fine, but fine. Wear your helmets!

An exceptionally touching 9 minute video of a courageous, loving couple who show what it means to be pro-life, give life and reject the life-demeaning advise of professionals. You Tube Link

From a Nexis search a few moments ago: Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0. If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama's...

Just when you thought the culture wars were ancient history comes this news bulletin: Conservatives are up in arms over President Obama’s planned speech to schoolchildren Tuesday, the day millions of Americans return to work and school after the Labor Day holiday, touting the value of education. After a summer of stoking controversy over nonexistent death panels in healthcare plans, critics on the right are now charging that the White House -- which plans to broadcast the speech live on the White House website and over C-SPAN -- is trying to indoctrinate their innocents on issues like healthcare reform and...

WASHINGTON – As Obama prepares to go before Congress and lay out more details about his stance on health reform, he held a conference call Friday with some of the most liberal members of the House, who say they won't vote for a bill without a government-run insurance option. Two congresswomen on the call...tell CNN that the president probed them about how entrenched they are, even asking them to define what they mean when they call for a "robust" public option. "I think he would like to convince us that there is something sort of that could lead to a...

(Bloomberg) -- Jeffrey Goldstein, the private- equity executive nominated to be Treasury undersecretary, is obligated to pay at least $10.5 million to several investment partnerships, according to an ethics filing.

Pity the unemployed, but especially pity the teenage unemployed. According to today’s job report, the overall unemployment rate (the percentage of people in the labor force not working but looking for work) in August rose to 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. The teenage unemployment rate, however, is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948. Take a look at the chart below, which shows seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for teenagers (workers 16 to 19), nonteenagers (20 or older) and older workers (55 or older). You’ll...

New Jersey will guarantee free swine flu vaccines to the state's 1.3 million uninsured residents and will try to remove all "financial barriers" for anyone else who wants the shot, Gov. Jon S. Corzine and other officials said Thursday. The announcement comes as the state prepares for the start of school and an expected spike in swine flu cases in the coming months. "We're going to be making the H1N1 vaccine — if it's proven to be safe and effective — available to anyone who wants it," state Health Commissioner Heather Howard said. "We will be eliminating financial barriers." Shots...

The captain of the Arctic Sea freighter contacted the ship’s operating company Thursday for the first time since the ship mysteriously disappeared in July. The captain made a brief call to Solchart Arkhangelsk Ltd.’s office on his cell phone, a company spokesman said. “He said the rest of the crew on the ship is all fine,” the spokesman told Interfax. Eleven of the 15-member crew have returned to their families in Arkhangelsk, while the other four are on the ship sailing to Novorossiisk. The 11 were not allowed to contact their families for more than a week after they flew...

The Senate recently confirmed Sonia Sotomayor as the 111th Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but it needn’t have bothered. The Obama Administration apparently believes Supreme Courts can be ignored. Following the removal of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from office, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quick to condemn the move, saying it could create a “terrible precedent.” What terrible precedent did she think might be established? A Latin American country was actually following its constitution? Despite what you may have heard from Secretary Clinton or read in the press, there was no coup d’etat in Honduras. Manuel Zelaya,...

BERLIN - Following the death of purportedly the world's oldest dog this week aged 21, a German woman came forward on Wednesday claiming her pooch was 25 — with a tattoo of her birthdate in her ear to prove it. The death of Chanel the wire-haired dachshund — the equivalent of 147 for a human — in the United States made headlines around the world on Tuesday, prompting Verena Wulf from Bavaria to phone her local radio station. "My Penny is 25," Wulf told SWR3, and came to her family in 1986. "The vet at the time put her age...

PASADENA, Calif. -- Thousands of newly released images from more than 1,500 telescopic observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a wide range of gullies, dunes, craters, geological layering and other features on the Red Planet. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the orbiter recorded these images from the month of April through early August of this year. The camera team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, releases several featured images each week and periodically releases much larger sets of new images, such as the batch posted today. The new images are available at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/releases/sept_09.php . Each...

After two seasons of chukar hunting that could best be described as grim, chukar hunters have reason to be encouraged. It appears that chukar numbers are on the rise. Surveying the highlands along Brownlee Reservoir on August 26, wildlife biologist Jake Powell counted nearly 900 chukars in the 12 square mile survey area. That translates to 73.7 chukars per square mile, double last year's dismal count of 37.8. "It's encouraging news," Powell noted. "We found 106 groups of chukars distributed across the entire survey area with an average group size of 8.3 birds." In contrast, the 2007 and 2008 surveys...

President Obama wants everyone to believe that American health care is in a crisis, and he wants everyone to be willing to sacrifice in order to solve that crisis... President Obama wants everyone to sacrifice. Well, not quite everyone. There is one group that President Obama doesn't mention, one group he doesn't demand sacrifice for the greater good. President Obama is protecting the plaintiffs' lawyers who sue doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies and reap billions in fees from the tort lottery...

TORONTO, September 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The decision to permit a grandiose public funeral celebrating the life of  pro-abortion extremist Senator Ted Kennedy has caused a rift in the Catholic Church in North America.  Several prominent Catholic priests in the pro-life movement as well as other Catholic pro-life leaders criticized the decision, and advocated a more subdued private funeral instead.  Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley shot back Wednesday defending his actions with some fairly strong words for his critics.However, the war of words has escalated to new heights with the latest blogpost of Fr. Thomas Rosica, the President and CEO of...

Should President Obama speak to schoolchildren? Should President Obama's back to school speech be shown in classrooms? Of course. He's the president; why shouldn't he speak to kids? No. Class time shouldn't be used for this speech. Maybe. I'd like to know more about exactly what he'll say.

The decision of the Associated Press to release a photograph of the last moments in the life of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, especially after his family objected, is contemptible.