Free Republic

Barack Obama hired Anthony “Van” Jones as a special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jones is an admitted “rowdy Black nationalist” and “communist” who was also a co-founder of the communist revolutionary organization STORM: Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. Quick question: how many Marxists, Communists, Domestic Terrorists and raving racialists does the President get to associate with before reasonable people can assume that the president on some level shares their particular vision of America? While perusing the manifesto of this now defunct STORM, several things struck me as...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama takes on the bitter healthcare reform debate on Wednesday with a high-stakes speech to the U.S. Congress on his top domestic policy priority. Aides have promised Obama's nationally televised address will provide specifics about his vision for overhauling the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system -- although they said he will not offer his own legislation. "The president will outline his plan moving forward," both on healthcare and how to get a bill passed by Congress, said spokesman Robert Gibbs. "I don't think you'll walk away confused about where he is." Obama told ABC News...

Recess is over. As the dog days of summer begin to recede in our nation, children are returning to school, and federal legislators will soon leave their local districts and return to Washington. You might want to pause for a moment, and ponder this thought: What if American citizens decided it might actually be better for the country to send our kids to Washington and many incumbent legislators back to school? After all, one thing just about everyone has learned during this year’s summer recess is that too many incumbent politicos have behaved like, well, spoiled children. Most have repeatedly...

The U.S. said on Wednesday that Iran was moving closer to being able to produce a nuclear bomb by stockpiling enriched uranium. "We have serious concerns that Iran is deliberately attempting, at a minimum, to preserve a nuclear weapons option," U.S. envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Glyn Davies, told a meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's 35-nation governing board. "Iran is now either very near or in possession already of sufficient low-enriched uranium to produce one nuclear weapon if the decision were made to further enrich it to weapons-grade," Davies said. "(This) moves Iran closer to a dangerous...

When college students' parents finally join that caravan of departing SUV's and mini-vans, there is often an elated sigh of relief. Suddenly the expectations, responsibilities and obligations their parents diligently enforced fall prey to that age old prophesy: out of sight, out of mind. But as we know, with freedom comes responsibility. If students are not able to manage their new found autonomy, they can quickly, and often do, find themselves in trouble. Unfortunately, what most students fail to realize is that their futures are already in jeopardy. With the GDP at 5.5 percent lower than the second quarter of...

When President Obama addresses Congress and the nation tonight, he should pledge to do three things. First, he should announce that he will discard the 1,018-page health bill drafted in the House of Representatives and replace it with a 20-page bill in plain English. Twenty pages should be sufficient. The framers of the US Constitution established an entire federal government in 18 pages. One reason for the rancor over the current health bill is that few people, including members of Congress, know what it says. When those who have read it point to its dangerous provisions, the bill's defenders offer...

I was in Maine on the day that marriage qualified for the ballot this November. I went to Maine as president and founder of the National Organization for Marriage, which helped local groups organize the signature drive in Maine, as we did in California for Proposition 8. Most of the people in Maine were enthusiastic, but one clergyman asked me, "Shouldn't we live with our neighbors in peace?" His question haunts me for its debased presumptions: Is using democracy to fight for shared values somehow an act of war against our neighbors? "Agree with me or you're a hater" is...

This article is the second of a point / counterpoint series on Mr. Obama's health care plan. ObamaCare will not promote abortions. It is true that there are no provisions in the current plan specifically providing for abortions. However, there are provisions in the plan for "family planning." Given his record, many conservatives rightly suspect that to Mr. Obama family-planning means a lot of planning, and fewer people in order to reduce the amount of carbon producing biological units. This health care plan gives the Commissioner of Health Choices the power to determine future benefits within the plan. The promotion...

WASHINGTON -- The armies of "tea party" conservatives who packed town-hall meetings last month to oppose President's Obama's $1 trillion government healthcare plan are bringing their protest movement to the Capitol Saturday to urge its defeat. Those who thought the hundreds of April 15 tax-day rallies across the country were a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon had better think again. It is a grassroots movement that has been gathering strength ever since, fueled anew by pending bills in Congress to enact a historic expansion of the government's power over the nation's private healthcare system. The tea party's march on Washington will come three...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A leader of fiscally conservative Democrats in the U.S. House says he's backing away from a healthcare reform proposal he supported before the August recess. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a member of the so-called "Blue Dog Coalition" said he now can't support a reform bill that includes creation of a public health insurance option, The Washington Post reported. "An overwhelming number of you oppose a government-run health insurance option, and it is your feedback that has led me to oppose the public option as well," Ross said in a statement to constituents. The House Energy...

This weekend's resignation of President Obama's "green jobs" czar and the week of partisan frothing that prompted it beg an obvious question: Is anyone really surprised that Mr. Obama would choose to surround himself with Marxist cronies like Van Jones? After all, during last year's campaign, it was widely reported that Mr. Obama's pastor and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was an America-bashing race baiter; that Mr. Obama associated with leftist radical and former terrorist William Ayers; and that he had a deep alliance with the shakedown artists of ACORN. The country's moderate voters decided they didn't particularly care...

The prospect of recovering the government's assistance to GM and Chrysler is heavily dependent on shares of the two companies rising to unprecedented levels, the report said. The government owns 10 percent of Chrysler and 61 percent of GM. The shares "will have to appreciate sharply" for taxpayers to get their money back, the report said. Treasury Department officials have acknowledged that most of the $23 billion provided by the Bush administration is likely to be lost. But Meg Reilly, a department spokeswoman, said there is a "reasonably high probability of the return of most or all of the government...

Having spent much of the past thirty years of my life in the advertising industry, the flaws of President Obama's health care message are apparent and massive. Most people outside the ad business will tell you that commercials try to beat you over the head to make you buy what you don't need or want. In truth advertising that doesn't address the public's needs or wants does not work. On top of that, if a consumer keeps being exposed to a message that does not meet a need, they begin to tune it out quickly; it's called wear-out. Finally if...

Democrats may be moving toward a “trigger” proposal that could implement the public health insurance option several years from now, but don’t expect Republicans to latch on to this idea as some form of compromise. “I think a lot of Republicans would be very leery of a trigger, because a bad idea today would be a bad idea tomorrow,” House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence told reporters today. Democrats have floated the idea of a trigger that would impose benchmarks on insurance complanies to put in place certain reforms over a period of time – with the idea that that...

The 1,018-page House healthcare bill may soon be scrawled up in neon chalk on the steps of the Capitol. “Those steps need a little color,” said Eric Yaverbaum, a public-relations specialist and co-founder, with fellow New Yorker Mark DiMassimo, of the $750,000 campaign called ReadtoVote.org. A nonprofit group is seeking permission to write every word of the healthcare bill on the Capitol steps. The effort is intended to draw attention to the fact that lawmakers are moving legislation they haven’t actually read. And what better way to draw attention than with bright chalk more associated with games of hopscotch than...

Arguably violating its embed agreement, the near universal press practice since 9/11, and the expressed wishes of the family, the Associated Press went ahead and published a photograph of mortally wounded Marine Lance Corporal Joshua "Bernie" Bernard, killed in action in Afghanistan. The AP also ignored the pleas of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had implored the press agency as a "matter of judgment and common decency" not to publish the photo. Bernard, 21, a devout Christian and Iraq War veteran from Maine, was described by his squad leader as "a true-heartedly very good guy ... probably one of...

A steel version of Velcro that is strong enough to hold together buildings has been developed by German scientists.The new invention, called Metaklett, uses the same hook-and-loop fastening system as Velcro but can support loads of up to 35 tonnes per square metre at temperatures as high as 1,472F (800C). Like the popular fabric fastener, Metaklett is designed to be peeled apart and reused, making it a potentially useful and cost-effective engineering component.

If the aphorism holds -- the guerrilla wins if he does not lose -- the Taliban are winning and America is losing the war in Afghanistan. Well into the eighth year of war, the Taliban are more numerous than ever, inflicting more casualties than ever, operating in more provinces than ever and controlling more territory than ever. And their tactics are more sophisticated. Gen. Stanley McChrystal calls the situation "serious." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen calls it "serious" and "deteriorating." President Obama thus faces a decision that may decide the fate of his presidency. For if the...

A significant part of Barack Obama's plan to "change" America involves having the federal government take control of public school curriculum, plus compiling a database of personal information about each student. The takeover is planned to be accomplished by talking directly to the kids in their schools and by attaching extraordinary strings to the $128 billion of stimulus funds shoveled into education. Obama's announced Sept. 8 speech from the White House Website to every schoolchild in America kicked up a storm of controversy. A study plan for his speech produced by the U.S. Department of Education, which exposes the political...

Every year, on the night before school starts, I announce that it’s time to take a walk. All six of us fan out throughout the house to find our flip flops, someone gets a leash for Scotty the dog, and we set out in a disorganized band up our street. But it’s not just a walk. It’s a ritual. This year was no exception. On the evening before we took our second daughter off to college, my husband, our four children and I took turns confiding our goals for the coming school year. It’s an annual rite that connects us...