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(CNSNews.com) - First Lady Michelle Obama will hold another “listen-only” conference call with reporters this afternoon, continuing a pattern of holding events for the media where access is sharply limited. When public figures in Washington, D.C., hold telephone briefings for the press—which are designed to attract press coverage for some item the briefer is seeking to promote--they routinely allow reporters listening to the briefing to ask at least a few questions. The First Lady appears to be establishing a new routine, where she speaks and--from beginning to end--reporters mutely listen.

I keep a list of historical analogies — derived from years of grading papers — that tell me that the individual using them is (to be polite) more interested in rhetorical impact than historical accuracy. Before last night, the list began with “we need a Marshall Plan for X,” where X usually equals Africa or the Middle East, and ended with “the United States is a young country.” Both are fallacies: the Marshall Plan was a pump-priming program, not an effort to rebuild the infrastructure and remake the culture of half a continent; and while European settlement of North America...

The latest posting today of the National Debt shows it has topped $14 trillion for the first time. The U.S. Treasury website today reported that as of last Friday, the last day of 2010, the National Debt stood at $14,025,215,218,708.52. It took just 7 months for the National Debt to increase from $13 trillion on June 1, 2010 to $14 trillion on Dec. 31. It also means the debt is fast approaching the statutory ceiling $14.294 trillion set by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last February. The federal government would have to stop borrowing and might even...

Just what we need — another new Obama appointee with a controversial past and radical inclinations. Several weeks ago, the president announced his intention to make three appointments to the National Council on the Humanities. One of them is Cathy Davidson, an English professor at Duke University. Davidson’s curriculum vitae includes some very impressive-sounding credentials: past president of the American Studies Association (ASA), past editor of the American Literature journal, and vice-provost of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke. But one thing she probably won’t voluntarily mention at her confirmation hearing is that she was a member of Duke University’s “Group of...

What is it with the League of Woman’s Voters and the Pledge of Allegiance? For the second time in less than a week a congressional debate began with a request for the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and for the second time in a week the League of Woman’s Voters moderator said no, and for the second time in a week the audience got up and said it anyway. One would think that with all of the bad publicity after last week’s incident, the League would have “gotten it.” But Tuesday night the League of Woman Voters proved that...

On September 23, the calendar signaled it was time for a six-month anniversary celebration of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka PPACA. (No similar salute was planned for the end of the month, for the bill’s accompanying reconciliation provisions, which were signed into law a week later, on March 30). Not only did the honeymoon never get started, growing numbers of voters are checking out the terms of the pre-nuptial agreement and considering options ranging from trial separation to annulment. With the Obama administration suffering low approval ratings not just for botched healthcare reform, but also for a...

“Special adviser” is the new czar. Facing stiff opposition and pointed questions about the left-wing, anti-business advocate that he wanted to nominate as chairman of the new federal consumer financial protection bureau, President Obama once again circumvented the Senate’ constitutional advice and consent role and installed Elizabeth Warren with a wave of his hand: Consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren will help set up a powerful new watchdog agency policing the financial marketplace on behalf of ordinary borrowers and savers, a Democratic official said Wednesday. But it’s unclear whether the Harvard University law professor will end up running the Consumer Financial Protection...

The director of the White House Fellows program, Cindy S. Moelis, previously served as director of a group that granted Weather Underground terrorist organization founder William Ayers its "public trust" award, WND has learned. Moelis' group, the Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, or BPI, also was one of the biggest recipients of a grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was founded by Ayers and chaired by Barack Obama.

Obama hits golf course with Biden on another hot, humid weekend By Bridget Johnson - 06/19/10 03:37 PM ET President Barack Obama hit the golf course Saturday with Vice President Joe Biden. The White House pool report noted that Obama left at about 1 p.m. for the course at Andrews Air Force base, and his golfing parters included White House Trip Director Marvin Nicholson and photographer David Katz. Nicholson and Katz, along with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, joined Obama for four hours of golf last weekend. The Republican National Committee released an ad soon afterward taking aim at Obama's golfing...

And another member of the media is leaving the world of reporting for a left-leaning advocacy job. Ed Chen, a Bloomberg reporter covering the Obama administration who was most recently the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, will rejoin the Natural Resources Defense Council to do the “Lord’s work,” he said in a departure e-mail. It’s not Chen’s first time leaving journalism for the NRDC, a powerful green group known for clashing with industry by filing pro-environmentalist litigation. Chen, once a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, left the news business in 2006 to work for the environmentalist group,...

SNIPPET: "BANGALORE: A day after two low-intensity blasts in the city, an explosive device weighing 2kgs was found wrapped in a yellow bag near Mahatma Gandhi statue on MG road." SNIPPET: "As stands filled on Saturday for the Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers IPL match, two bombs went off at the Chinnaswamy Stadium wounding 12 people and triggering panic. Roughly 20,000 people had packed into the stadium and hundreds more were streaming in when a loud explosion at Gate 12 rocked the arena and rattled nearby buildings. Six policemen were injured when the grill near the wall collapsed on them....

One can only imagine the “Dean Scream” that came out of Burlington, Vermont the night the government takeover of health care passed the House of Representatives. The always daffy Howard Dean appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Sunday to discuss the health care reform bill. He explained that the broader principle of the legislation has less to do with fixing the health system and more to do with a Marxist principle of redistributing wealth. “When [wealth distribution] gets out of whack as it did in the ’20s and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form...

Washington, DC --(AmmoLand.com)- Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reported 1,074,757 checks in August 2009, a 12.3 percent increase from the 956,872 reported in August 2008. So far that is roughly 9,076,205 gun bought this year! The total is probably more as NICS background checks may cover the purchase of more than one gun at a time.

SACRAMENTO — For the third time in as many weeks Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is slashing state programs by billions of dollars to wipe out a deficit that seems to be growing by the day. The cuts would eliminate in-home nursing for all but the neediest patients, such as those who can't breathe or walk on their own. The proposal would grab $550 million from counties that's currently used to provide social services for the poor. And it would cut funding for schools and community colleges by an additional $680 million, bringing the total education cuts Schwarzenegger has suggested to...

The U.S. and Europe were widely expected to clash at the G-20 summit in London last month over how to address the global financial crisis. Voila, in just two days the problem was solved with a joint promise to increase International Monetary Fund resources by $750 billion to a total of $1 trillion. The U.S. portion of this new commitment is more than $140 billion. Yet Congress has debated neither the amount nor the proposed use of the funds. Instead, President Obama and his fellow leaders simply waved their hands, like a Star Trek captain, and said make it so

President Bush on Wednesday retracted one of the 19 presidential pardons he granted just before the Christmas holiday. The White House announced that Isaac Toussie, a Brooklyn developer convicted of fraud and making false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, should not be granted clemency. White House press secretary Dana Perino said the new decision was "based on information that has subsequently come to light," including on the extent and nature of Toussie's prior criminal offenses. She also said that neither the White House counsel's office nor the president had been aware of a political contribution...

I have been a lurker here for a while now. You may see me as a newbie to FR but I am no newcomer to conservativism. I am quiet in nature and will not post often. But, If I have something to contribute I may speak out. I am honored to be a part of this establishment. Thank you.

Revival of the 10th Amendment should be the centerpiece of a new Republican Contract with America.What should the other parts be?Perhaps, realing the 16th Amendment and starting the Fair Tax?

How long? Will the media hang with the one? My bet is 4 months, of course I thought Mc/Palin would win so what do I know.

1. On September 12, 2001 and in the days that followed, how long did you imagine it would be before America experienced another terrorist attack on its soil? 2. Have you heard of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? He conceived and planned the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden is a figurehead. Khalid was captured by Pakistani security forces in Rawalpindi in 2003. The year before, the Pakis captured Ramzi Binalshibh, who was the middle-man between Kahlid and the hijackers. Have you heard of him? By 2004, two-thirds of Al-Qaeda’s leadership was in jail or dead. This raises two additional questions: 3. Why do...