Free Republic

It’s actually old news that Mitt Romney’s health-care experts helped design Obamacare. Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who was the architect of both laws, received nearly $400,000 as a consultant to the Obama administration for “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform.” And, as Isikoff notes, while President Obama may not have called Romney, he did call Gruber. Indeed, White House visitor logs show that “senior White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three [Romney] health-care advisers and experts.” These included Gruber (five); Jon Kingsdale (three), executive director of Massachusetts’ new subsidized insurance exchange; and...

For Democrats, the rule of law and civil society are just suggestions On Election Day I agreed to pass sample ballots for a couple of hours for the Republican Party. They were having a hard time finding someone to do it - Republicans are generally busy working. How hard could it be sitting down and giving a ballot sample to those who pass by? It was a gorgeous fall day and I was glad to be outdoors. I would find out soon enough that it was harder than it seemed. Armed with a small box of papers, I was told...

In the year 257 AD, the Roman emperor Valerian stepped up the persecution of Christians, especially in the city of Rome itself. The principal targets of his campaign were the clergy and laity who came from the upper classes of Roman society. One of those caught up in Valerian’s persecution was a deacon named Lawrence. Lawrence was in charge of the Church’s property used to support Rome’s poor. Lawrence was offered a deal: in exchange for turning over the property, he would be spared arrest and execution. He agreed, adding that he needed three day to collect the church’s riches....

The State Department acknowledged that the crew of the destroyer USS Donald Cook has been gravely demoralized ever since their vessel was flown over in the Black Sea by a Russian Sukhoi-24 (Su-24) fighter jet which carried neither bombs nor missiles but only an electronic warfare device. On 10 April 2014, the USS Donald Cook entered the waters of the Black Sea and on 12 April a Russian Su-24 tactical bomber flew over the vessel triggering an incident that, according to several media reports, completely demoralized its crew, so much so that the Pentagon issued a protest [1]. The USS...

Former U.S. Rep. Marge Roukema, one of the dwindling numbers of moderate Republicans, has died. She was 85 and had Alzheimer's disease. Roukema was first elected to the House during the Ronald Reagan landslide of 1980, defeating Democratic incumbent Andrew Maguire in Northern New Jersey, and retired after finishing her 11th term in 2003. “We have lost a tremendous leader and state treasure today," said newly elected U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-Ewing, who will be the first woman representing New Jersey in Congress since Roukema retired. "Congresswoman Marge Roukema was a standard bearer for many in New Jersey and...

I've been posting DUFU threads for years and am not one to bellyache ever. On election night I had a thread pulled because I used only one asterisk instead of three on quoted F words even though that was the practice before. I didn't complain. I accepted that due to the proliferation of the F words QUOTED in that thread, maybe it was a bit too much and promised to use three asterisks in the future. So today I posted what I thought was a really fascinating DUFU reaction to the Jonathan Gruber video and it had a grand total...

The ebola story will probably flare up once again. The WTO sees 421 new infections in Sierra Leone. In total, 5160 people out of 14,098 cases have died.

Observatório Conservador - by Rafael Merlo and Fabio Ardito On October 26th the presidential election took place in Brazil.By a narrow margin of votes (3%) Dilma Rousseff, the current president and socialist candidate from the Workers Party, was reelected. With this victory, the Workers Party will complete 16 years of being in charge of the country. The election was turbulent, marred by allegations of corruption and embezzlement of public funds by the Rousseff campaign. One witness under a plea deal has linked Rousseff and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, (Lula) to a billionaire fraud in Petrobras, Brazil’s biggest...

The Good Ship America, drifting far out to sea for six long years without oars, is almost out of sight,Obama's Executive Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Just like a Barbary pirate, Barack Hussein Obama will continue plundering all that is good in America even with the Republicans now outnumbering the Democrats in most American ports of call. Obama and his minions have much in common with the Barbary pirates, who morphed all the way from the 16th century as bearded and ear-ringed cut-throats into the business suits of the present day, and whose riches down to the last poor man’s penny...

The immigration policies of the Obama administration and the democrats in Congress have opened the door to another disease, Dengue hemorrhagic fever that is now showing up in the U.S., Jerome R. Corsi of WND reported on Tuesday. With the influx of unaccompanied illegal minors who have illegally entered the U.S. this year, Dr. Lee Hieb, past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, explained to WND in an interview that the U.S is now facing another deadly disease. Hieb told Corsi, “The big picture here is that we are getting all these diseases brought into the United...

<p>The family of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who died of Ebola at a Texas hospital, has reached a confidential settlement with Texas Health Resources, according to the Duncan family attorney Les Weisbrod.</p> <p>In September, Duncan traveled to Texas from Liberia and began experiencing Ebola symptoms which prompted him to go to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He was misdiagnosed and sent home, both the Duncan family and Texas health authorities have said. Duncan was hospitalized days later, tested for Ebola and then began receiving care.</p>

Full title: Lawful and Peaceful Revolution: Congress’ Present Duty to Call a Convention for Proposing Amendments. The solution to America’s problems is to be found within the American tradition. Fabian socialism, fascism, islam are foreign imports. As varieties of Utopian statism, they not only offer no reasonable solutions, they are hostile to our cultural DNA. They ignore four hundred years of customs, beliefs, and replace them with oppressive forms unfit for free society and contradictory to free government. This 1990 treatise examines the history of Article V from its conceptual beginning in the Articles of Confederation through the 1787 Federal...

<p>BAGHDAD – Iraqi soldiers battling the Islamic State group recaptured most of the town of Beiji, home to the country's largest oil refinery, state television and a provincial governor said Tuesday.</p> <p>The strategic town, 155 miles north of Baghdad, will likely be a base for a future push to take back Saddam Hussein's hometown just to the south, one of the main prizes overrun by the extremists last summer. But troops backed by Shiite militias faced pockets of stiff resistance around Beiji, hindering their advance.</p>

Archaeologists in northern Greece have found a skeleton inside a tomb from the time of Alexander the Great, during a dig that has enthralled the public. The burial site at Amphipolis is the largest ever discovered in Greece. The culture ministry said the almost intact skeleton belonged to a "distinguished public figure", given the tomb's dimensions and lavishness. Chief archaeologist Katerina Peristeri said "the tomb in all probability belongs to a male and a general". The excavation has fascinated Greeks ever since Prime Minister Antonis Samaras visited the site in August 2014 and announced it amounted to "an exceptionally important...

This is not for the weak-stomached.

Reports suggest that Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) chief and caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in an air raid by the US-led coalition which hit a ten-truck -convoy of the ISIS, outside Mosul on Friday, November 7. According to reports Baghdadi was ‘critically wounded’ in the American-led air strike that targeted the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. AFP had reported that US authorities confirmed that air strikes targeted ISIS leaders near their northern Iraqi hub of Mosul late Friday, without any confirmation of Baghdadi’s death. According to some other sources, there...

Federal wildlife officials have granted protection to the Gunnison sage grouse, a move that could to bring restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land uses to preserve the bird's habitat in Colorado and Utah. ... They're related to the greater sage grouse, which is at the center of a separate and larger debate over federal protection across 11 Western states.

... heated fight for a seat on Louisiana's Public Service Commission (PSC) is still going strong. December runoff between PSC chairman Eric Skrmetta and alternative energy advocate Forest Bradley-Wright.

The New Black Panther Party, Amnesty International, Sistahs Talkin’ back, CAIR and the Organization for Black Struggle are but a few of the groups which make up the “Don’t Shoot Coalition,” a collection of individuals and organizations which has taken it upon themselves to decide how police and other government officials must respond should demonstrations take place in response to a Grand Jury decision against indicting Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. Nineteen proposed Rules of Engagement have been released by the Coalition for the purpose of “ ‘…[deescalating violence]’ without tamping down on peaceful protest...

The congressional office of Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) recently had several items and cash stolen from her Washington D.C. office, according to a police report obtained by Townhall.Camera equipment with a retail value of $1,079 and $220 in cash vanished between Oct. 3 and 6 of 2014. Bachmann’s press secretary, Dan Kotman, declined questioning as to whether or not this incident is believed to be from a staffer or if these items were purchased with taxpayer money.Capitol Police have declined any comment about the case, citing an ongoing investigation. When asked if there are security cameras in Bachmann’s office, Lt. Kimberly...