Free Republic

GOLETA, Calif. (AP) — It was Friday night when Elliot Rodger's mother got a call from her son's therapist that he had emailed a ranting manifesto about going on a deadly rampage. The mother went to her son's YouTube channel and found the video in which he threatens to kill people. She alerted authorities and set off frantically with her ex-husband to Santa Barbara.

Daily Beast columnist Eleanor Clift said on Sunday’s The McLaughlin Group that late U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was killed the night of the Benghazi attacks, had not been murdered but had died from “smoke inhalation.” “I’d like to point out that Ambassador Stevens was not ‘murdered,’” Clift said, using air quotes, “but died of smoke inhalation in a CIA safe room.” This did not land well. “It was a terrorist attack, Eleanor,” panelist-for-life Pat Buchanan said. “He was murdered in a terrorist attack.” Clift responded that it was an opportunistic terrorist attack inflamed by the anti-Muslim video, the blaming...

For the Democratic Party, history began and ended with the election of George W. Bush. Nothing had happened before him. Every world crisis began with him and would only come to an end when the Democratic Party finally squeezed one of its own into the White House. If there was a problem, Bush had caused it. If another country hated America, it was Bush’s fault. Bush alienated Europe, Russia, Asia, the Middle East and even parts of Antarctica. It was all his fault, the media, academia and angry Trotskyite grandmothers marching for peace and tyranny in San Francisco agreed. Books...

Nearly five years after George W. Bush left office, half the public still blames the former president for the nation’s economic woes, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week.

CNN has blamed Christians for the problem of Americans without health insurance, calling it "The Obamacare 'scandal' you haven't heard about." In an article on CNN.com's Belief Blog, CNN writer John Blake says that, while famous pastors "preach in states where crosses and church steeples dot the skyline," they do nothing about "the poor who can’t get the health insurance they would receive if they lived elsewhere."

Yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee published a video on their Youtube page highlighting a portion of the committee questioning Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cyber-security and Communications, who confirmed at least 16 attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s portal Healthcare.gov website in 2013. Roberta Stempfley highlighted one successful attack that is designed to deny access to the website called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack is designed to make a network unavailable to intended users, generally through a concerted effort to disrupt service such as repeatedly accessing...

Over the years, lefties have blamed Fox News for all sorts of things. Now, via Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel, we learn that the nation’s sole non-liberal television news operation is actually responsible for the HealthCare.gov debacle. In a debate with FNC host Megyn Kelly on her program last night, Ezekiel argued that Fox News Channel was really to blame for the fact that almost no one has signed up for the Obamacare insurance exchanges that are the center-piece of the law. “You and your colleagues were constantly criticizing, trying to underfund it and trying to make sure it didn’t work,”...

Not only is this an egregious understatement of her own culpability, it’s horrible politics. Everyone knows that when a political crisis strikes, the surest way to soothe public/media outrage is with a phony, half-hearted “the buck stops here” statement accepting responsibility. Maybe it’s better this way. Why keep up a pretense of accountability at this point? Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will tell a House committee tomorrow the site’s botched rollout was the result of contractors failing to live up to expectations – not bad management at HHS, as the contractors suggested. “CMS has a track record of...

Juan Williams has a clear grip on responsibility for the failure of a program that got passed in Congress with no Republican votes, and implemented with no Republican management in a Democratic administration. Williams claims that the White House would have delayed the rollout of ObamaCare’s exchanges except for the opposition of the GOP to the program as a whole. As a result, Williams argues, Barack Obama and Kathleen Sebelius had no choice but to lie about the exchanges and let it unfold.Come on — you knew the media would eventually get around to this argument. You just didn’t expect...

NBC News Chief White House Correspondent and MSNBC host Chuck Todd reported on Monday that tea party figures like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin helped scuttle a potential deal to raise the debt ceiling over the weekend when they led World War II veterans to march on the White House. Todd reported that the tea party Republicans are “doing everything they can” to keep the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff “alive.” “While the non-tea party Republicans are desperately trying to end this standoff, the tea party Republicans are doing everything they can to keep it...

For more than a week into a government shutdown, Paul Ryan kept a low profile amid the political uproar. When he finally emerged, the time was ripe for someone with his conservative cred and fiscal bona fides to step in and try to corral his bucking Republican Party. While a group of conservatives were driving the agenda in the quagmire over spending, Obamacare and the looming debt limit, Ryan dropped an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal outlining the Republican path forward.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) channeled his inner-maverick Friday during an appearance on Fox News Channel, repeatedly reminding the conservative network that the government shutdown was brought about by the quixotic effort to halt the Affordable Care Act. When anchor Martha MacCallum asked him about the White House's handling of the suspension of death benefits to military families, McCain said that while the administration deserves blame it was a GOP-induced shutdown that caused the problem in the first place.

Simple and unadulterated hatred for Obama has driven the party to alienate the electorate by shutting the government down over their opposition to Obamacare.As I watched the deadlock over the approval of government expenditure finally lead to a partial shutdown of the US government, I could not help thinking how unfortunate it is that US lawmakers are behaving in ways unbecoming of their great and dynamic democracy. At stake in this incomprehensible showdown between Republicans and Democrats is the much-needed Congressional approval to government expenditure. The Republicans, under the sway of a minority of right-wing diehards, decided to use blackmail...

Multiple mentions made by the liberal-leaning FNC commentators, at least one being A.B.Stoddard of The Hill, highlight that 'some' of the LEOs (Capitol Police & US Secret Service) are doing their duties 'unpaid'. Yes, they did their job in this chaotic incident with the automobile attack, but unpaid - really?

Neither of Virginia’s two major-party gubernatorial candidates has any control over the budget impasse in Congress. But both are using the shutdown as political fodder, trying to tie each other to the most potentially unpopular positions of their national political parties. The message from Republican Ken Cuccinelli’s camp: that Democrat Terry McAuliffe is a Washington insider who would shut down Virginia government to get his way, in contrast to his own claim of bipartisanship. The McAuliffe camp’s message: that Cuccinelli is a Tea Party darling aligned with Republicans who would let government shut down to re-fight a health law that...

Day 2 of the government shutdown, and look out the window. The sun is still shining, and the sky is still blue. The birds are chirping. The Great Government Shutdown is not that big a deal, even for the government. The federal civilian workforce includes 2.9 million bureaucrats. Out of that, only 800,000 are being furloughed, or just 27%. Even for these workers, the shutdown just amounts to a paid vacation for a few days. Just like the overballyhood sequester, average Americans won’t notice any change in their lives at all. But for those you who are offended and indignant...

The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”… Atcs 23:11 Where is it written that a shutting down the District of Corruption is an economic disaster? It is a disaster for those who believe the world would end without the economic engine called Washington DC. What if all of these people are wrong and the only thing standing in the way of an economic resurgence is the Federal Gummit? The opposite theory from the pundiots is the longer the Fed is...

On Monday, President Barack Obama will mark the five-year anniversary of the U.S. financial crisis by reportedly speaking from the White House Rose Garden to "highlight his administration's response to it." The Hill reports Obama will make his remarks the day after the official anniversary, which began when Lehman Brothers collapsed five years ago. In response to the crisis, "the Bush administration pushed its Wall Street bailout plan through a reluctant Congress in late 2008 and launched a separate effort to prop up the nation's automakers."

President Obama did his best to shift his administration's focus to the economy today during a speech at Illinois' Knox College by blaming the anemic economy on Republicans and "phony scandals."  As predicted, Obama gave America the same speech he's been giving for five years, saying the country needs more infrastructure spending due to crumbling roads and bridges, that we must fight poverty, that CEOs are making too much money while the poor suffer etc. He even went so far as to tout "saving the auto industry" one week after Detroit filed for bankruptcy.  "Today, five years after the start...

Obama: Washington took its eye off economic ball Associated Press DARLENE SUPERVILLE 12 minutes ago PoliticsBarack Obama GALESBURG, Ill. (AP) — President Barack Obama is accusing Washington of taking "its eye off the ball" and getting distracted from the economy. The president is trying to refocus debate on pocketbook concerns after months that have been dominated by what he calls "phony scandals" and "stale debates." Obama's remarks come in a speech he's giving Illinois' Knox College. That school was the site of his first major economic address as a U.S. senator eight years ago. Wednesday's speech includes no new policy...