Free Republic

What’s it going to take? I just finished reading Andrew C. McCarthy’s excellent article appearing in today’s National Review Online, titled “Obama’s Massive Fraud.” McCarthy points out that Martha Stewart was sent to federal prison for doing essentially the same thing Obama has done on a vastly larger scale, with his fraudulent sales pitch of Obamacare–intentionally misrepresenting a situation, knowing that the lie would harm others financially. McCarthy also describes how CEOs of various firms are routinely dragged into court, sued and prosecuted, even jailed for decades, by Obama’s own administration, for frauds based on omissions of information that utterly...

A controversy has broken out at Washington University in St. Louis over a Facebook photo apparently showing five students dressed up for Halloween as a Navy SEAL team capturing Osama bin Laden with garish neon water guns. The photo was originally posted on Facebook on Oct. 30 with the title “Halloween ’13 Amurrica!!” reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The photo shows three dudes in camouflage attire surrounding a kid also in camo garb who is sporting a long, fake beard and turban. There’s also a guy in the background holding up an American flag. Washington University student Mahroh Jahangiri later...

November 8, 2013 12:38 PM UC-Berkeley Students Ban Use of 'Illegal Immigrant' By Andrew Johnson The University of California–Berkeley student government unanimously passed a resolution banning the term “illegal immigrant” from the body’s official discourse. The resolution is the second such measure to be passed since former Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano took over as president of the UC system. The Berkeley student government showed its support for the “drop the I-word” campaign, deeming the term “racially charged,” according to the College Fix. “The ‘I’ word is legally inaccurate since being out of status is a civil rather than criminal...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo directed state police and the Division of Human Rights on Friday to investigate allegations of anti-Semitic harassment in a New York state school district. “The reports of rampant anti-Semitic harassment and physical assaults at Pine Bush schools, if true, are deeply disturbing,” Cuomo said in a statement to the state education commissioner. … The alleged physical attacks against Jewish students included a swastika drawn on a student’s face against her will, the severe beating of one with a hockey stick, and repeated slapping of another in the head, according to the lawsuit that (lawyer Ilann...

The Fruits of the Rosary by Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur on October 31, 2013 ·  When I was growing up, my mother and I would say the rosary every day together. Before each decade, she would announce the mystery and the fruit, or virtue, associated with it. I have continued the practice of saying the rosary in my adult life. Indeed, it is one of my favorite devotions and can’t imagine life without it. I do remember all the mysteries of the original Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious sets of five decades. It took me a while, but I even managed to...

It's a shame, because Venezuela is a beautiful country. However, both stuff and freedom are in short supply and there appears to be more interest in stuff than in freedom, My wife and I arrived at a splendid marina, Mare Mares in Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela in (as I now recall) November of 1996 and remained there until we sailed to the island of Bonaire about a year later. We generally returned to Venezuela -- a pleasant overnight sail with the wind from abeam -- every six months or so to stock up on booze and fuel at very low...

A rare bi-partisan move that would allow individual health insurance plans to remain in effect throughout 2014 was drafted by Mary Landrieu, D-La. and a similar measure was put forward by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. Recognizing the failure of Obamacare’s initial roll out, the unlikely move by Landrieu and Upton would allow individuals to forego the “forced” signup of the Affordable Care Act insurance until the kinks are worked out, hopefully by 2014.

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Wind turbines killed at least 600,000 -- and possibly as many as 900,000 -- bats in the United States in 2012, researchers say. Writing in the journal BioScience, the researchers said they used sophisticated statistical techniques to infer the probable number of bat deaths at wind energy facilities from the number of dead bats found at 21 locations. Bats, which play an important role in the ecosystem as insect-eaters, are killed at wind turbines not only by collisions with moving turbine blades but also by the trauma resulting from sudden changes in air pressure...

Engineers at Duke University have designed a breakthrough gadget that 'harvests' background microwave radiation and converts it into electricity, with the same efficiency as solar panels. The development, unveiled on Thursday, raises exciting possibilities such as recharging a phone wirelessly and providing power to remote locations that can't access conventional electricity. And the researchers say that their inexpensive invention is remarkably versatile. It could be used to capture 'lost' energy from a range of sources such as satellite transmissions, sound signals or Wi-Fi. The Duke engineers used metamaterials, which their press release describes as 'engineered structures that can capture various...

Earlier this week we learned Delaware has spent $4 million to enroll four people in Obamacare. That was nothing. New numbers from four different healthcare providers show Washington D.C. has spent $133,573,928 to enroll a grand total of five people in Obamacare. That's $26,714,785.60 per Obamacare enrollee. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield: two enrollees from Oct. 1, 2013, through Oct. 30, 2013. Kaiser Permanente: three enrollees from Oct. 1, 2013, through Oct. 31, 2013. UnitedHealthcare: no enrollment data from the exchange as of Nov. 4, 2013. Aetna: no enrollment data as of Oct. 24, 2013. American's for Tax Reform breaks down taxpayer...

President Barack Obama is hitting the greens with a former basketball star at the private Florida golf club where “Caddyshack” was filmed. Obama played through intermittent showers at the Grande Oaks Golf Club in Fort Lauderdale. It’s a private 18-hole course where Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and a rambunctious gopher got into all kinds of antics in the 1980 golf flick. …

When setting premiums for next year, insurers baked in bigger-than-usual adjustments, driven in large part by a game-changing rule: They can no longer reject people with medical problems. Popular in consumer polls, the provision in the health law transforms the market for the estimated 14 million Americans who buy their own policies because they don't get coverage through their jobs. Barred from denying coverage, insurers also can't demand higher rates from unhealthy people and those deemed high risks because of conditions including obesity, high blood pressure or a previous cancer diagnosis. But the provision also adds costs. To a larger...

Rep. Todd Young, R-Ind., slammed President Obama for committing "betrayal" in the weekly Republican address on Saturday, claiming the president misled Americans when he assured them that, under the new health care reform law, they could keep their insurance plan if they liked it. Young relayed stories of Indiana residents whose insurance has been canceled or become more expensive under the new law. "This is what betrayal looks like," he said. "Here you have hardworking people who were repeatedly told not to worry, that their coverage would stay the same and - if anything - their costs would go down....

There’s an old saying that you can’t control what other people do or don’t do, but only what you do. It’s true in politics as with most other things in life. For decades conservatives have lost ground in the fight over religious liberty, primarily via our nation’s courts. But you can’t blame liberals for fighting in venues that play to their strengths (liberal judges), and avoids their weaknesses (public opinion). How conservatives “feel” about it however won’t change anything. Only raw political power does that. For opinion to become political power it must be focused and organized, and currently for...

NBC's Chuck Todd scored a huge interview with President Obama Thursday and opened things by immediately drilling down on the president's relentlessly repeated lie that under ObamaCare you can keep your current insurance plan if you like it. The full interview is even more impressive than the clips that have been going around. Even after he elicits a "sorry" from Obama, Todd keeps after the point for almost ten minutes.

Singapore’s government has blocked access to the popular adultery website Ashley Madison amid a public outcry ahead of the company’s planned launch of a portal for the city-state. The Media Development Authority, which regulates the Internet, said in a statement late Friday that it has blocked access to the Canada-based website because it is in “flagrant disregard of our family values and public morality.” …

The president's passive-voice expression of vague regret was so half-assed and self-serving that conservatives can simply sit back and let the mainstream media tee off on its inadequacy. He's not sorry for lying repeatedly in furtherance of his political goals, and he's certainly not sorry that people are losing their coverage. His law required that outcome. His promise was an intentional lie. Let the MSM opprobrium flow: The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza: "The lowest low of the Obama presidency." National Journal's Ron Fournier: I'm sorry, too, Mr. President...I'm sorry you campaigned for reelection on the famous false promise: "If...

Looks like there’s an election law showdown about to happen — and it involves House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and who can use her name. The conservatives behind the new political action committee called Stop Pelosi PAC launched their campaign against the San Francisco Democrat on Wednesday — despite federal election officials telling them that there was something wrong with their PAC. It uses the name “Pelosi.”

Psalm 130 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD...

Moments ago BitCoin hit $395, and will likely cross $400 in the immediate future (the chart looks a little less scary in log scale). So as more and more pile into the electronic currency, some due to ideological reasons, some simply to chase momentum, some out of disappointment with the manipulated gold price looking to park their savings in an alternative, non-fiat based currency, which a year ago traded 40 times lower, the attention of the government is finally starting to shift to what has been the best performing asset class in the past year, outperforming even the infamous Caracas...