Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s remaining campaign apparatus will relaunch Sunday as a tax-exempt group to support his second term agenda, a senior Democrat familiar with the plans confirms to POLITICO. The new organization will be separate from the Democratic National Committee, with Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina serving as the national chair of the group. The effort will begin on Sunday, the day the president is formally sworn in to his second term, as Obama campaign staff and volunteers gather at the Washington Hilton for an event dubbed the Obama Legacy Conference. The formation of the group will make Messina...

The big-ticket items in President Obama’s push for action on gun control will require the approval of Congress, but many of the 23 executive moves he announced Wednesday could have been taken at any time in his first term — a point that nettles those who have been advocating for stricter measures. “It’s a disgrace that it hasn’t been done until now,” said Richard E. Gardiner, a lawyer based in Northern Virginia. “I didn’t see anything in here that they couldn’t already have been doing and in fact that the pro-gun people have been encouraging for years.” ... “It’s not...

HELENA, Mont. (AP) Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf has been moved from a drug treatment center to the Montana State Prison for threatening a staff member and other unspecified behavioral problems at the center, a corrections official said Thursday. The former San Diego Chargers and Washington State Cougars quarterback was charged last spring with breaking into two houses and stealing prescription painkillers near his hometown of Great Falls. He pleaded guilty in May to reduced charges, and his five-year sentence called for spending nine months in a locked drug treatment facility as an alternative to prison.

Take small victories; engage the grassroots; go viral before the State of the Union. As outlined in a column earlier this week, Republicans/conservatives should try to outmaneuver Barack Obama and his leftist allies via a new strategy consisting of guerrilla tactics, constantly keeping Obama on the defensive, combined with a re-crafting of how conservatives communicate our principles. Conservatives have proved inept at managing crisis-atmosphere brinksmanship, but we can consistently win smaller skirmishes and ward off societal disaster long enough to outlast the Democrats’ current hold on the Senate and the White House. It’s not that budget-cutters in Congress are wrong,...

The veteran senator has endured and thrived in a state dominated by Republicans because he champions and raises awareness of popular causes and knows how to attract press on issues of the day. Bill Nelson didn’t kill any pythons in the Everglades. But Florida’s senior senator bagged something bigger Thursday: the rapt attention of the news media.

Two handguns and two pistol permits were reportedly stolen from the New York home of a man whose name and address appear on the website of a local newspaper as a gun owner, police told Newsday. It's not yet known if the theft Wednesday at the New City, N.Y., home is connected to the Journal News' controversial decision to publish a map listing the names and addresses of those who legally possess gun permits.

The CEO of Whole Foods compared President Obama's health care law to "fascism" in a radio interview on Wednesday, a turnabout from earlier comments in which he compared the signature reforms to socialism. "Technically speaking, it's more like fascism," John Mackey told NPR's Morning Edition.

HR 226 IH 113th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 226 To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow a credit against tax for surrendering to authorities certain assault weapons. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 14, 2013 Ms. DELAURO (for herself and Mr. GRIJALVA) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means A BILL To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow a credit against tax for surrendering to authorities certain assault weapons. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in...

I stumbled upon this while trying to research a matter and I was struck by Paine's simplicity and ... uhh ... common sense.It seems so fitting to post it and I hope I can post daily until all of Common Sense is re-published here ... in the Free Republic Paine so loved and articulated.

Click on link.

While many believe substance should trump style when it comes to the first lady, there is no denying the impact Michelle Obama has on American style. So when Mrs. Obama debuted a new haircut Thursday (with bangs, no less!) via her freshly launched official Twitter account (on the first day, no less) it was sure to become a major style moment. The fact that the reveal also occured on her 49th birthday didn't hurt when it came to creating interest in the new 'do. The first lady's second official tweet showed her chatting with inaugural citizen co-chair David Hall in...

Listen to the Quinn & Rose Morning Show from 6:00 to 9:00 Eastern on: www.wpgb.com (104.7 Pittsburgh, Pa) http://wysl1040.com/ (Rochester, NY) http://www.talkradio560.com/ (Frostburg, MD) http://wicofm.com/ (Salisbury/Ocean City, MD WOBX - Outer banks NC httphttp://www.wncoam.com/main.html (Ashland, OH) ://tunein.com/radio/The-War-Room-with-Quinn--Rose-p34761/ for archived shows And now on 166 XM

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 17, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposal to abolish the filibuster could lead to a “nightmare scenario,” in which “a radical social revolutionary” president could appoint Supreme Court justices without dissent from nearly half the Senate. Reid has proposed new rules for the Senate that severely limit the minority party’s ability to block legislation and presidential appointments. Under Reid’s proposed changes, Republicans would be prohibited from using the filibuster during the motion to proceed to debate, as well as when sending a bill to conference. In addition, during open debate, Republicans would have...

If someone ever needed evidence that the agenda of the public school system has been completely taken over by radical, left-wing thinking, just look at what's being taugh at one Wisconsin school. Under the banner of "diversity," high school students are being taught that whites are the bad guys and everyone else is a victim. As reported by Fox News, the "American Diversity" class at Delavan-Darien High School is under fire for a curriculm focused on "white guilt." non-whites, 'You have been oppressed and you're still being oppressed.'" The parent, who asked not to be identified, has an 18-year-old son...

A somber President Obama, launching a public campaign Wednesday for a package of gun-control measures that is likely to face very tough opposition in Congress, signaled that he was prepared to go over the heads of lawmakers to push for his proposals... Obama’s proposal includes a requirement for universal background checks for all firearms purchases. “This is common sense, and an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with us,” the president said, citing a survey that he said indicated that 70 percent of National Rifle Assn. members support such a move. The NRA has repeatedly blocked past efforts to require universal...

The second inauguration of our sitting president will take place this coming weekend as this is being written. It is a time of great happiness for most of my neighbors and friends inside the beltway, indeed for most people in the country. But I find myself in despair for our beloved country. It is quite likely that a large minority of the nation’s citizens agree with my pessimistic mood. The reasons for that despair are not difficult to discern. Our beloved country is in terrible condition. The awful evidence is easily seen everywhere, for those willing to look. Our economic...

Last week, I appeared on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight." For the past few weeks, Morgan had been inviting gun rights defenders ranging from the reasonable to the nutty, and then slamming them by appealing to the memory of the children slain at Sandy Hook. And when I appeared with Morgan, that's precisely what I told him: "What you tend to do is you tend to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids." Morgan could only stammer, "How dare...

Although Mayor Rahm Emanuel has promised that his first aldermanic appointment would be based on a transparent community process, Jackson all but declared her chief of staff, Keiana Barrett, as her successor.

Marie Curie (1867–1934) is not only the most important woman scientist ever; she is arguably the most important scientist all told since Darwin. Einstein? In theoretical brilliance he outshone her — but her breakthroughs, by Einstein’s own account, made his possible. She took part in the discovery of radioactivity, a term she coined; she identified it as an atomic property of certain elements. When scoffers challenged these discoveries, she meticulously determined the atomic weight of the radioactive element she had revealed to the world, radium, and thereby placed her work beyond serious doubt. Yet many male scientists of her day...

One of Russia's top crime lords was gunned down Wednesday in Moscow in what police described as a war between two powerful mobs over lucrative construction projects, allegedly including ones for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Police said an unidentified gunman fired seven shots from a sniper gun at Aslan Usoyan near a restaurant in central Moscow — the third assassination attempt on him since the late 1990s. Usoyan, also known as Grandpa Khasan, was a 75-year-old ethnic Kurd born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Police say for the past two decades he headed one of the...