Free Republic

If you want to know why Democratic Senators appear to be panicking over Obamacare, it is probably because the White House has not been able to convince them that HealthCare.gov will be up and running as promised by November 30. And President Obama's HealthCare.gov surge czar Jeffrey Zients did nothing to calm that panic Friday on a conference call with reporters. Reuters reports: The Obama administration's HealthCare.gov adviser Jeffrey Zeints said on Friday that the trouble-plagued federal healthcare website is improving, but that higher volumes of visitors are exposing new capacity and software issues. In a conference call with...

What may be the fiercest typhoon in recorded history smashed into the Philippines early Friday morning, carrying winds that make Superstorm Sandy look like a weak relative. Even Hurricane Katrina, the modern measure of nature’s disastrous force on the United States, pales when compared to the punch and expected devastation from Typhoon Haiyan. According to the latest report, Haiyan, also known as Yolanda in the Philippines, was packing winds in excess of 200 mph as it homed in on the island nation in the western Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said maximum sustained winds in the...

Nearly two-dozen members of Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns lost reelection earlier this week, delivering another blow to the anti-gun group that has been losing members at a rapid pace for more than year. Here is the list of members who were defeated: Daniel Juarez – Hawthorne, CA Patrick J. Morris – San Bernardino, CA Richard A. Moccia – Norwalk, CT Gow Fields – Lakeland, FL Earnestine D. Pittman – East Point, GA Nancy Chaney – Moscow, ID Joshua J. Cohen – Annapolis, MD Thatcher W. Kezer, III – Amesbury, MA Linda M. Balzotti – Brockton, MA James H....

President Obama wanted to go in himself and fix glitches that have plagued HealthCare.gov since its rollout last month, he told a crowd Friday at the Port of New Orleans, "but," he added, "I don't write code." The president couldn't ignore altogether lingering dissatisfaction with the botched health insurance exchanges, despite that the crux of the speech was intended to move back on the offensive with other aspects of his second-term agenda - specifically, job growth through investments in infrastructure and increasing U.S. exports.

Last month, at the Values Voter Summit, a gathering of conservative activists from around the country, Senator Rand Paul gave a speech on what he called “a worldwide war on Christians by a fanatical element of Islam." Anti-Christian persecution, violence, and “religious cleansing” have become common in many Muslim-majority countries. The media, as Paul pointed out, have turned a blind eye. So, too, have President Obama and European leaders. The senator was careful not to paint all Muslims with the brush of fanaticism. He stressed that only a minority of Muslims read Islamic scripture as mandating an armed struggle against...

Long before a nuclear deal was in reach, the U.S. was quietly lifting some of the financial pressure on Iran....

Home improvement maker Home Depot Inc. on Thursday apologized for a tweet that showed a picture of two African-American drummers with a person in a gorilla mask in between them and asked: "Which drummer is not like the others?"

The national news media's liberal spin on Tuesday's off-year elections focused on the Republican loss in Virginia, insisting it demonstrated the GOP was still on a steep, downward slide. But the political reality behind what happened this week tells a far different story that suggests it's the Democrats who are in trouble, from the state house to the Obama White House. Yes, Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli lost the Virginia governor's race, but far more narrowly than anyone expected, or that the polls had shown. Despite the fact that he was vastly outspent by Bill and Hillary Clinton's shadowy,...

Saturday night at a black tie dinner in Chicago, a Dodgers broadcaster will go into the Hall of Fame and it won't be Vin Scully. A shocker? No. Scully is already there. If there is a Hall of Fame that has any connection whatsoever to broadcasting and Scully isn't in it, it's a lousy Hall of Fame. Now, Charley Steiner will be joining him. That means, next year, when fans tune in to Dodgers' baseball, they will be informed and entertained by two Hall-of-Famers. That's far from the norm, maybe a first, and should make Dodgers fans proud. Even if...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

The Idaho high school basketball coach fired after the school district deemed a photo of her fiancé grabbing her chest as “immoral” says she is “discouraged” that she was fired while her fiancé, the school’s varsity football coach, kept his job. “Obviously, I don’t want to see my fiancé to get into trouble but I was a little bit discouraged,” Laraine Cook, 31, of Pocatella, Idaho, told GoodMorningAmerica.com today. “They told me it was because it was on my Facebook account that I was being terminated.” Cook, the mother of two elementary school-aged children, was fired from her job as...

<p>The number of sexual assaults reported in the military saw a double-digit surge over the last year — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that members are suffering more attacks, the Pentagon said, in its latest report.</p> <p>Instead, most of the 46 percent hike can be attributed to “victim confidence in our response system,” the Pentagon made clear, United Press International reported.</p>

A new Gallup poll brings more terrible news for President Obama and his signature health plan, showing that only 22% of uninsured Americans intend to buy insurance through the ObamaCare exchanges. One of the major selling points for using ObamaCare to disrupt our health care system (that polls showed up to 80% of Americans were satisfied with) was to insure the uninsured. But according to this poll, only a very small minority of that small minority is even interested in obtaining insurance. Even more troubling is the realization that a month ago, that number was double; a full 44% of...

Germany has granted a young doctor asylum due to his sexual orientation, after he faced persecution and social exclusion in Russia. Thanks to a recent EU ruling, other gays and lesbians will likely to follow. Pavel is gay. He is open about his sexuality, a fact which used to continuously cause outrage in Russia. "It is very unpleasant to be living in a society that thinks you are sick and backward, and where you can be fired from work just for being gay," he said. "At any moment, someone can chop your head off," that's how he described the fear...

So what was the point of all this drama? Why did Democrats pass this awful health care law? Wasn’t it to ensure that those without healthcare insurance would finally be covered? Hmmm … maybe someone should have asked the uninsured whether or not it was a priority for them. Gallup tells us most of them are ignoring the push for them to enroll: In the midst of widespread news coverage of problems with the federal health exchange website, relatively few uninsured Americans (18%) — the primary target population for the exchanges — have so far attempted to visit an exchange...

As many of you know who follow my page I don't believe for one second in global warming or climate change. I’ve been a very outspoken advocate trying to inform people that the science connected to it is a fraud. It’s nothing but a control issue for Liberals to regulate everything from our energy resources, to our food supply, to what kind vehicles we drive etc. The worst of it is it’s destroying our national economy. The debate needs to be continued by those of us who know that its total nonsense and explain GW/CC for what it really is...

Pop quiz: If nominated in 2016, Chris Christie will be another: a) Bob Dole b) John McCain c) Mitt Romney D) All of the above

“Dumbest Thing to Say” award goes to Samantha Powers Written by Allen West on November 8, 2013 If we were giving out a “Dumbest Thing to Say” award for this week, the prize would have to go to US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. As reported by Fox News, Ms Power was speaking at the United Nations Association of the USA 2013 Global Leadership Awards in New York Wednesday, where honorees included the brave Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who survived being shot in the head by Taliban thugs and is now an education advocate for girls. As...

<p>The Mormon church stands to own nearly 2 percent of Florida by completing a deal to buy most of the real estate of the St. Joe Co. for more than a half-billion dollars.</p> <p>The megapurchase was announced jointly Thursday by a corporate representative of church, which owns the nearly 295,000-acre Deseret Ranches in Central Florida, and by the real-estate and timber business, which has built several communities along the Panhandle coast.</p>

Personal Testimonies are supposed to be three to five minutes. I suspect that my written version of how I met Jesus violates that rule. But, since many of you have known me a while, I think that I have to add a few details that I don’t when I am speaking to people who know less about me.Thus, here is my personal testimony of how and when I met the Lord. I break it into sections so that perhaps you can abbreviate your reading where necessary. The over arching truth of my life is that the Lord kindled a fire...