Free Republic

Four days after slamming the doors of the White House closed, Barack "It's-not-my-fault" Obama says he's going to ask the Secret Service if to reconsider. Contradicting previous statements, Obama told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News this morning that neither he nor his staff had anything to do with closing the public out of the White House. This time, he threw the Secret Service under the bus. “I have to say this was not a decision that went up to the White House,” Obama said in the interview with Stephanopoulos. “But what the Secret Service explained to us was that they’re...

Bob Woodward said Sunday Democratic senators have called the White House asking if defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel will withdraw his nomination only to be met with an emphatic “no,” in an interview with “Fox News Sunday”:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- NATO says the 13 people killed when a suicide bomber rammed a military convoy in Kabul included five coalition troops and eight civilian contractors. NATO initially reported that all 13 killed were service members. But after further identification, it confirmed that eight were civilians working for the coalition. A U.S. official says all were Americans, but Canadian defense spokesperson Lt. Col. Christian Lemay told The Associated Press that a Canadian soldier was among the troopers killed. Canadian military officials have not yet released the soldier's identity or further details. The Taliban suicide bomber hit an armored...

Media: Does the Washington Post ever consult a dictionary? In what looks like an effort to lasso Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's rising star, they've built a shoddy two-story attack on a faulty definition of "exile." It started Oct. 20 when, on the front page, the Post headlined, "Marco Rubio's compelling family story embellishes facts, documents show." The hit piece, by Manuel Roig-Franzia, cited Rubio's repeated self-reference as the "son of exiles," saving the "Gotcha!" for the second paragraph: "The documents show that Rubio's parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before...

Via SeattleTimes: The 150 Occupy Seattle tents in Westlake Park were taken down by 7:30 Monday morning as Seattle police and Seattle parks employees moved in to clear what the city has long said was illegal camping on city property. Police also arrested nine people. All the tents were down within a half-hour, according to Assistant Police Chief Mike Sanford. The protesters were told to take the tents down. If they didn’t take them down themselves, police or parks employees took them down for them, according to Sanford. Read more and watch Raw Video Clips at post link > http://bit.ly/nKG6Ys

You may remember this fellow who had an epic meltdown at an Occupy Wall Street rally: Edward T. Hall III. ...He is also attending Columbia University, an Ivy League college. In fact, I was able to track down his college profile on http://columbia.academia.edu/, accompanied by this picture: Under the "about" section, he writes of his interests: I study intertemporal choice with respect to environmental decisions. I wish to develop socially based interventions to help moderate excessive discounting. I am also especially interested in the organizing of research information for public use, and open access use of ideas for problem solving......

From time to time until November 2012, I’ll be offering a snapshot of the emerging presidential race. This is the first. Here’s the headline: Given current national trends and a credible Republican nominee, the presidential election would be very, very close, and President Obama might even lose. The economic situation looks like it will not be good enough for the president to cruise to victory, yet it will not so bad that voters are in the mood to repudiate him. In such a situation, campaign tactics, branding, and the identity of the Republican nominee would likely determine the outcome of...

Seniors should be older before the receive Social Security and wealthy Americans should receive less benefits across the board, says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. He made the argument in an interview on Sunday's Meet the Press, but it's a position Graham has advocated for on the stump in South Carolina, including a 2009 stop at The Citadel with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "What I'm going to do is challenge this country to make some hard decisions," Graham said at the time, telling the crowd of cadets, Tea Partiers, and Graham supporters that they shouldn't give Congress a pass on the...