Free Republic

About a month ago, I did a story about a voting battle being played out in Pierce County in Washington state. Back in 2006, Pierce County put on its ballot an initiative to change its voting system to ranked choice voting. RCV) is the American English term for a voting system used for single-winnerelections, in which voters rank candidates in an order of preference. If no candidate is the first preference of a majority of voters, the candidate with the fewest number of first preference rankings is eliminated and that candidate's ballots are redistributed at full value to the remaining...

Under a rainy sky, Vice President Joe Biden appeared at today's annual Pittsburgh Labor Day parade, joined by U.S. Sen Arlen Specter and Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County Labor Council. Mr. Biden joked that the parade organizers would never invite him back, noting that his appearance last year was also weather-challenged -- then with the threat to the Gulf Coast of Hurricane Gustav, which prompted him to cancel his visit. While noting that "people are hurting" across the country, he boasted of the effects of the administration's economic stimulus package. Mr. Biden praised Mr. Specter's role in supporting...

ABC News’ Rachel Martin and Sunlen Miller Report: President Obama said that on Labor Day it’s time to “reaffirm” the nation’s commitment to rebuild, and declared that the stimulus plan is working. Speaking before the friendly crowd during the annual AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati Ohio this afternoon, the President said that it’s time to ensure that the middle class remains the backbone of the economy, “not just a vanishing ideal we celebrate a picnics once a year as summer turns to fall.” In rhetoric similar to the campaign trail, the President said this has been is an ideal...

NBC's John Harwood smears parents as stupid, plus a video from the NBC Nightly News going to bat for the Dear Leader on his speech to school children...

The racism of marijuana prohibition Enforcement of marijuana laws disproportionately affects young African Americans -- even though their usage rates are lower than whites'... So while the purported mainstream is delighting to "Weeds" and contemplating the new revenue that state-regulated marijuana would generate, there's even greater urgency to ending the prohibition of marijuana. California can't wait any longer to end the racist enforcement of marijuana laws.

SNIPPET: "The elusive jihadi bloodhound, “Ms. Jones,” passed this article from the Saudi Gazette to me this morning. It digs deeper into the recent surrender of Fawaz al-Otaibi (65. Fawaz Al-Humaidi Hajid Al-Habradi Al-Otaibi) on the 85 Most Wanted List of February 2009. I’m not sure how much we can make of it, but the Gazette discusses the interview that al-Otaibi did with Al-Watan last week where he said that al-Qaida is suffering from ’financial crisis’ and therefore not able to deal with the numbers of foreign fighters that it has knocking on their door as of late." SNIPPET: "Well,...

An incredibly old wall has been discovered during excavation in this ancient land. Within that wall, behind a deeply engraved stone, certain ancient scrolls were discovered. Until they were read, the existence and fate of a people was unknown. After they were read, most disbelieved. It was a hoax, of course. Certainly improbable. Snippets are still legible among the crumbling, ancient writings. * * * * * The first scroll (what remains and can be read). They had their orders, and they followed their orders, all while watching the behavior of those across their eastern borders. The ranks of centaur...

A Very American DistrustSeptember 7, 2009By Alan Caruba Barack Obama has crashed headlong into a wall of distrust. If he had any understanding of American history he would know why, but his sole interest is himself and he proved that by writing not one, but two memoirs. The men who waged the American Revolution and then met in secret to write the U.S. Constitution all shared a distrust of government. They understood government was necessary, but they wanted to keep a federal government small and ensure that most powers resided in the individual states and in “the people.”For most of...

Van Jones loved the spotlight. Heck, who wouldn't, after being named a special adviser and green jobs czar for President Barack Obama. In Kansas City last week, Jones was one of the federal officials flown in to take a look at the Green Impact Zone, an idea to upgrade 150 blocks of low-income neighborhoods. Jones was introduced twice by fellow, higher-ranking fed officials -- and on both occasions, Jones made sure to interject that he was a "special adviser" to Obama. But now he's not part of the administration at all, thanks to imprudent remarks and a petition he signed...

Looking to rescue his signature domestic policy initiative with a prime-time address to Congress on Wednesday, President Obama for the first time is poised to "draw some lines in the sand" over the size and shape of legislation to remake the nation's health-care system, top advisers said Sunday. Until now, Obama has resisted taking firm positions on specific elements of a broad health-care bill, instead expressing openness to many ideas. But the approach has left lawmakers divided over contentious elements, such as how to rein in costs. And with a growing chorus in favor of a slower, less ambitious approach,...

See how the left is cooking up a rumor to destroy Glenn Beck --saying a "Glenn Beck" was arrested in 1990--they are attempting to blur the association to create the perception that is THE Glenn Beck. The "police report" is obviously manufactured and the name "Glenn Beck" as the man arrested. This group stays above the fray--supposedly-- by claiming hey it's a parody----knowing full wel how this stuff floats across the cyber world and takes on a life of it's own. Really evil stuff. Some Obama supporters are true demons. Go through all the links at this site. It turns...

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Sen. Max Baucus on Monday pushed a new health care plan including an industry fee to help pay for covering the uninsured as President Obama said insurance companies must share accountability for the troubled system. The Finance Committee is the last best hope for a bipartisan bill since four of five congressional committees have produced partisan proposals. Baucus, D-Mont., has said he would move forward on his own if there's no agreement by Sept. 15. Meanwhile, Obama said in a Labor Day speech in Cincinnati that a health insurance system should work as well for all Americans as it does...

I do not purport to take a stance on the Obama birth certificate controversy, save to say that his refusal to release the full document is suspicious. I do take issue with falsehoods being put up in Obama's defense though. One of those falsehoods is currently being used to "debunk" the rumor that Obama was born in Mombassa, Kenya instead of Hawaii. The false claim is that Mombassa was part of Zanzibar in 1961 when Obama was born, and it is being repeated without scrutiny by the slothful mainstream media. As with so many things about Obama, this claim is...

When former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced “death panels” to the health care overhaul debate vernacular via Facebook in early August, she showed herself to be a brilliant idiot. Technically, Palin’s claim of a panel of “downright evil” government bureaucrats rationing health care based on Americans’ “level of productivity” is obviously idiotic. There is not, and never will be, some mythical jack-booted panel of government pinheads, rubber stamps in hand, deciding who shall live and who shall die. As such, Palin was deservedly roasted. Tactically, however, Palin’s move was pure brilliance: in but a few keystrokes she synthesized the underlying...

“Kings,” Louis XIV once observed, “should enjoy giving pleasure” and when it came to the fairer sex, he obeyed this precept zealously and often. “They’re all good enough for him, provided they’re women,” his sister-in-law remarked, “peasants, gardeners’ daughters, chambermaids, ladies of quality”; women of every stripe benefited from the Sun King’s sexual largesse. Neither the bonds of matrimony (to the sad, neglected Marie-Thérèse of Spain) nor the intrigues of his “official” mistresses (one of whom, Athénaïs de Montespan, wasn’t above spreading the rumor that a particular rival had scabs all over her body) could deter him from sharing the...

...I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three....Brain cancer at three? This kid would have been six feet under if one of Obama's healthcare gurus had his way. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research...So what's Ezekiel's take on three year-olds with brain cancer? Bury them. In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, edition Ezekiel and co-authors presented a...

Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification. The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a...

He who is merciful to the cruel, will become cruel to the merciful. Al Taqyyaa and political correctness are recipes for irreversible damage to the values of freedom and liberty, which are the foundation of our US constitution and other Western liberal democracies. There is nothing "progressive" about covering up misogyny, there is nothing "progressive" about defending oppression and attacking courageous voices like Dr. Wafa Sultan.

General Motors Corp. is dropping the franchises of 70 percent of Cadillac dealerships nationwide and southeast Wisconsin is no exception, leaving only two area dealerships confirmed as continuing beyond 2010 — Metropolitan in West Allis and Crest in Brookfield. Metropolitan Cadillac, in fact, is running commercials urging customers whose dealers are closing to switch to its dealership. “My understanding is that there are a lot of Cadillac stores closing,” said Metropolitan president Max Stephenson. “The only two that are staying open are Metropolitan and Crest.” General Motors will not disclose the identities of dealerships that are closing. Only one area...