Free Republic

It is pretty freakin' unbelievable that zero doing a mulligan for his wednesday night speech gets more media attention than half a million taxpayers vociferously protesting out of control spending. I'd like to know who is making these decisions, editors, producers, or whoever signs their paychecks. It's a sad state of affairs when our best political reporting comes to us from a Canadian newspaper. There used to be, and probably still are, some pretty good minds in the forth estate, and I wonder where their curiosity got off to. I know that most newspeople are lazy, spoiled, overindulged, opinionated teenagers...

Here is video of the filmmakers that exposed ACORN responding to their threats of a lawsuit. The Chief Organizer of ACORN Bertha Lewis said "It is clear that the videos are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by Conservative Activist O'Keefe and his partner in crime" and that "We will be taking legal action against FOX and their Co-Conspirators." James O'Keefe said that the videos are "absolutely not" doctored at all. (Video)

The Count Us Out blog reports that a U.S. District Court hearing, scheduled for Friday in Georgia, has been rescheduled for Monday. Capt. Connie Rhodes is fighting deployment to Afghanistan until Barack Obama’s eligibility to hold the office of POTUS is established. Dr. Orly Taitz filed the complaint last week and Judge Clay Land granted an emergency hearing Friday afternoon in the Columbus federal courthouse. Rhodes, a medical doctor who was with her unit in Fort Riley, Kan., did not attend the hearing because she was ordered by her commanding officer not to leave Kansas. That prompted Land to reschedule...

<p>MANCHESTER, N.H. – A 114-year-old New Hampshire woman who loves the Boston Red Sox, Hershey's Kisses and ice cream is believed to be the oldest American.</p> <p>Mary Josephine Ray secured the title of the oldest person in the US after the death of Gertrude Baines on Friday in Los Angeles.</p>

An overlooked quote by a Michigan teenager picked up by the Associated Press regarding the murder of pro-life activist James Pouillon illustrates why many in the media are ignoring this story.: Later on Friday students outside the high school said Pouillon was a fixture there and regularly held graphic signs of aborted fetuses. "I can see someone spitting on him or punching him, but shooting him is pretty stupid," said 16-year-old Curtis Wisterman.

Could any banker be more colourful than Jimmy Cayne, the cigar-chomping, 70-something chairman of Bear Stearns, who was busy playing championship-level bridge right up until a few days before his firm ... Forget quantitative easing, troubled asset relief, currency swaps and the endless string of mystifying monetary policy manoeuvring of the past year. If the financial crisis was about anything it was about high drama. As we move into the one-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers' collapse with the tantalizing whiff of economic recovery in the air and a rip-roaring global market rally under our belts, the insanity that gripped the...

I live in a university town, not too large or small. Today (Sunday) I go out to buy gas. The first two stations I went to were closed, no gas. This never happens. The third station I went to had long lines. I passed another open station on the way home--again, long lines. I've not seen anything like this since the early 1970s. Not drawing conclusions, just reporting.

Contact: Derrick Jones, National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), 202-423-3329 cell, mediarelations@nrlc.org   WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 /Christian Newswire/ -- Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, appearing on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, addressed questions pertaining to the effect of health care legislation on abortion policy. George Stephanopoulos has posted a partial transcript of the exchange on his blog at blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/09/sebelius-president-rules-out-public-funding-for-abortion.html.   What follows is a reaction from Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the national federation of right-to-life organizations: "For months, the President, his staff, and his congressional allies have misrepresented actual...

Von Hildebrand remarks further that it's vitally important for human beings to be aware of their ontological value -- their dignity as persons made in God's image and likeness. The pantheistic view that we're but drops in an immense universe is fake humility, a subtle lack of gratitude for the fact that God -- in His infinite bounty and generosity -- has metaphysically "knighted" us. Apart from ontological values that are more or less beautiful according to their ontological rank, von Hildebrand speaks about qualitative values, moral values, intellectual values, and aesthetical values, to mention the most important ones. These...

September 13, 2009 We Have Averted Second Depression, Obama Claims Tim Reid in Washington President Obama will declare tomorrow that his economic policies saved America from a second Great Depression, but his words of reassurance risk being drowned out after a tumultuous 48 hours of protests and debate over his spending plans. Mr Obama will speak on Wall Street a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event that unleashed a global financial meltown and the worst economic crisis since the Depression. In his speech, a week before he hosts the Group of 20 financial summit in Pittsburgh, Mr...

The independent filmmaker whose hidden-camera videos prompted the firing of four ACORN workers is demanding an apology from ACORN for calling his work a fabricated "scam" and daring the activist group to take legal action against him. "Bring it on," filmmaker James O'Keefe said Sunday on FOX News. That was after ACORN lashed out at O'Keefe, who with his friend Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and prostitute looking to evade the IRS and apply for an illegal housing loan for a brothel. The sting operation caught four ACORN workers in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., offices appearing to offer...

How Large Was the Protest Crowd? Big Enough to Rattle Some Nerves It seems today that the biggest debate isn’t over political philosophies, but rather how large the crowd was at yesterday’s taxpayer march on Washington. I wasn’t there so I can’t make a firsthand guess, but the attendance was certainly higher than the 30,000 (ridiculously understated low end), and it doesn’t quite look like the 2 million (high end) that has been claimed by some. I marched into football games with 75,000 other people on numerous occasions, and the shots I’ve seen from Washington yesterday seem to eclipse that...

The Republican Health Care Failure Steve Chapman Sunday, September 13, 2009 Republicans fault President Obama for plans that would greatly expand federal outlays on health care, enlarge the federal role in the provision of medicine, doom private insurance and wrestle Aunt Sally into the grave. They have some valid points. But while they're heaping blame on Obama, they need to save a share for someone else: themselves. His GOP critics in Congress, after all, have proposals to help the uninsured and curb health care costs. During his speech to Congress Wednesday, they waved their own bill at him. But for...

Religious Vocation May Be Easier Than Lifting Debt Load A young Chicago woman preparing to be a nun is running a road race seeking pledges to help her pay off $94,000 in student debt. Some experts even attribute the decline in vocations to the problem. Alicia Torres planned to run a Chicago half marathon, hoping for pledges to pay off her debt. (Heather Charles / Chicago Tribune / September 9) [Pic in URL] By Manya A. Brachear September 13, 2009 Reporting from Chicago - Alicia Torres must raise $94,000 in order to take a vow of poverty. Drawn to the...

Sometimes an event occurs which is transformative in a way that everyone who sees it or participates in it instantly is aware of. Yesterday's demonstration in Washington DC is one of those rare happenings in my opinion. The Daily Mail said 2 million Americans participated. My friend Charlie Martin extrapolated from the pictures an attendance figure of 2.3 million. Here is a time lapse of the parade portion of the event so you can get a feel for yourself of the size of the crowd. Whatever the actual number it is sure to be seriously underestimated by the Obama-besotted members...

The United States is in danger of losing its place of leadership in space.

President Barack Obama is doing better in the approval rating game, but he's still behind. According to Rasmussen Reports: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 34% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -4. That's the President's best Approval Index rating in over a month (see trends).It doesn't bode well for him if his well-delivered speech didn't move him into positive territory. He's almost certainly irretrievably lost the fiscal issue, and...

Iran Snubs Barack Obama's Nuclear Talks Iran has dealt a blow to one of President Barack Obama's most ambitious diplomatic initiatives by dismissing demands to put its nuclear programme at the heart of direct talks with the United States. By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem 13 Sep 2009 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Iran dealt a blow to one of President Barack Obama's most ambitious diplomatic initiatives by dismissing demands to put its nuclear programme at the heart of direct talks with the US Less than 48 hours after Washington and its allies reluctantly accepted an offer of face-to-face negotiations from Tehran,...

13 Key Questions That Must Be Answered Before Supporting or Rejecting Government Controlled Health Care 1. Is universal health care constitutional? Did the founding fathers believe that it was the government’s responsibility to provide health care for its citizens? Is health care really a right? Should the government also provide everyone with a car, a home, a college education, and maybe even a high definition TV? 2. Is universal health care really affordable? Is it going to drive our country into greater debt and create an unbearable and unsolvable debt problem for our children and grandchildren? Is governmental health care...

September 13, 2009 (by Asif Shamim) - An F-16A from the IDFAF crashed in the Southern hills near Hebron on Sunday. The pilot who was killed was the son of the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia accident in 2003. The pilot Lt. Assaf Ramon, 20, was on his 47th training flight since completing his pilot training in June 2009. The aircraft crashed during a routine flight as part of the advanced pilot training course. IAF commander Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan and the head of the IDF Manpower Division Avi Zamir personally delivered the sad...