Free Republic

Racists, mobsters, terrorists, wingnuts, 9-12ers and Tbaggers: Many who’ve become enamored with the sharply left-swerving federal government have coined a variety of slurs against the ordinary citizens now railing against Washington’s rush to control American lives with bankrupting agendas. To me, the protesting citizens are intelligent, patriotic, respectable Americans who have finally realized that the sacred freedoms our founders gave us are under serious attack. Millions of independents, conservatives, moderates, Libertarians and, yes, even liberals have risen from comfy couches to unite and act on their shared concerns. These Americans once were called the silent majority. Well, as of this...

[Note: John D. Guandolo is a 12 ½ year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At the request of the Center for Security Policy, he prepared an assessment of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s (FDLE) investigation of the Ohio-based parents of former Muslim Rifqa Bary, the 17-year old apostate from Islam who has sought refuge in the state of Florida. The FDLE report is provided here, and is available as searchable text for the first time, below his analysis. The significant errors and omissions that Mr. Guandolo and other experts have found in this FDLE investigation show a...

ACORN, calling the actions of some of its employees “indefensible,” has suspended advising new clients as part of its service programs and is setting up an independent review to see what happened. ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis said in a written statement that she was “ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review.” ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis said in a written statement that she was “ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review.”

Classic Johnny Chan...

Keith Olbermann calls Rush Limbaugh an "asshole" after the talk show host called Jimmy Carter the nation's hemorrhoid.

If you have been following James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles' "Pimp and Hooker" videos busting several offices of ACORN you can't help but laugh at the "stuck on stupid" staff.By the same token it is an insult to the American taxpaying public that our money is going to fund these idiots! .....

For some people in this country, Obama will always be an angel.

TEA Parties and "End the Fed" Protests cannot win back the Republic without this information! Many Americans appear to be awakening from their slumber of apathy as government forces are making their move for total control of our lives. Massive TEA Party protests on April 15th, followed by more than 1000 again on Independence Day, show a growing movement of concerned, dedicated Americans. But there is a major component missing from those protests. There is a nearly universal lack of understanding of the issue of Sustainable Development and the dangers it poses to our liberty. Consequently, that issue is being...

The journalists at the center of an embarrassing scandal for the grass-roots organization ACORN also paid a visit to the ACORN office in San Diego County. Grass-roots organizing has gotten a black eye on the national stage after undercover videos involving ACORN, a controversial group with a local office, were released that were shot during a series of visits from a hidden-camera crew. At 6 p.m. on Wednesday, a video was broadcast on Fox's "Hannity" that purported to show a San Diego ACORN staffer discussing human trafficking with two people who were undercover. Earlier in the day, local ACORN officials,...

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan - Across just a few deadly yards of rocky terrain, the private’s cries grew weaker. Even though bullets came pouring in like hail, Staff Sgt. Jared Monti made a break for it. The enemy was strong — maybe 50, to the 16 Americans. But Pvt. Brian Bradbury was Monti’s guy. He was isolated and bleeding badly on this grim mountain ridge in northeastern Afghanistan’s Nuristan province. Monti didn’t get far. A barrage of fire cut down the 30-year-old moments before air cover he’d requested arrived. Exhausted and reeling from a desperate fight that left Monti and another...

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died Wednesday night in Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and had lived in Redding, Conn.

The left has made a lot of hay over Joe Wilson’s opponent’s stellar fundraising since last Wednesday. But what about Joe and what about his district? I’m told that Wilson now has collected just under $2 million dollars online and has “mountains” of mail to be opened with lots of checks there. As I said the other day, a lot of the people who’d be most inclined to give money to Joe are people like my sister and the secretary at her church — they are ‘thank you note’ and stamp activists who’ll send Joe a nice note and check...

The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all. Is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 working? At the time of the act's passage last February, this question was hotly debated. Administration economists cited Keynesian models that predicted that the $787 billion stimulus package would increase GDP by enough to create 3.6 million jobs. Our own research showed that more modern macroeconomic models predicted only one-sixth of that GDP impact. Estimates by economist Robert Barro of Harvard predicted the impact would not be significantly different from zero.

"I have a lot of contacts in Tijuana."

Video at link.

A draft health care bill was issued on Wednesday by a key Senate committee after months of negotiation, helping to clear the way for President Barack Obama's plans to overhaul the American health insurance system. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, made public a bill that attracted no Republican supporters and alienated the liberal wing of his own Democratic party. "The cost of America's broken health care system has stretched families, businesses and the economy too far for too long. For too many, quality, affordable health care is simply out of reach," he said in...

The president is changing the political landscape, but not in the way he intends. On Friday, I was at DePauw University in Indiana debating former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. It was two days after Barack Obama's big speech before a joint session of Congress and Mr. Dean is a strong advocate for his party's agenda and a medical doctor, so I expected him to defend the president's idea of adding a "trigger" to health-care reform to ease its passage and thereby guarantee a government takeover of our health-care system. But Mr. Dean turned out to be tougher on...

Look at all those empty seats as Sen. Max Baucus stands alone in Senate Committee Room! Alone! No one joined Baucus to help push his "compromise!" Curt has the full story on the much vaunted "compromise" health bill introduced today by Sen. Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. This was the bill Dems hoped would attract some GOP support and they couldn't even get Maine's Olympia Snowe to support it. Worse yet, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) plans to vote against it for raising taxes on middle class coal miners in his state. This bill has so little support...

I blogged a couple of weeks ago that the Obama administration was about to abandon its plans for Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. I wrote then that “if enacted, this would represent a huge turnaround in American strategic thinking on a global missile defence system, and a massive betrayal of two key US allies in eastern and central Europe. Such a move would significantly weaken America’s ability to combat the growing threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and would hand a major propaganda victory to the Russians.” It now looks as though the...

(CNN) -- The FBI is investigating as a possible hate crime an incident in which a woman was beaten to the ground in front of her child at the entrance to a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Morrow, Georgia, south of Atlanta. Troy Dale West Jr., of Poulan, Georgia, is facing charges including misdemeanor battery and disorderly conduct after allegedly beating Army reservist Tashawnea Hill, 35, after the two had words at the entrance of the Morrow, Georgia, restaurant the evening of September 9. Hill, an African-American, told police that West, 47, yelled racial epithets at her as the attack took...