Free Republic

Time has come for me to leave the chaos of FreeRepublic. Over the past 13 years I always felt that FR was the home of Conservatives with core values that could not be compromised. This election cycle has shown me that I have been wrong in my assessment. The lack of moral or intellectual commitment by many of the FR members has resulted in the end of my involvement. I'm sure JR and many others are pleased but know that the early years were great experiences. God Bless to all and enjoy the next 4 years of Obama.

epublican presidential candidate Ron Paul has been spending large amounts on airfare as a congressman, flying first class on dozens of taxpayer-funded flights to his home state. The practice conflicts with the image that Paul portrays as the only presidential candidate serious about cutting federal spending. Paul flew first class on at least 31 round-trip flights and 12 one-way flights since May 2009 when he was traveling between Washington and his district in Texas, according to a review by The Associated Press of his congressional office expenses. Four other round-trip tickets and two other one-way tickets purchased during the period...

PORT BOLIVAR - Roy Mooney was surprised to learn early last year that the federal government was deducting $180 each month from his $1,200 Social Security check. "I had no idea they could do that, just haul off and do it," the 79-year-old said. He also was surprised to learn that federal assistance intended to help him rebuild a home destroyed by Hurricane Ike instead made it impossible for him to qualify for a new dwelling under a $100 million federal program administered by Galveston County. Advocates for storm victims say Mooney's plight is an example of how regulations sometimes...

A New Hampshire surrogate for Mitt Romney said at a local political event that it's evident he will be the Republican presidential nominee and suggested that "beliefs and principles" should not be the deciding factor for voters. State Sen. Gary Lambert said the most important thing is to nominate somebody who can defeat President Obama. "I don't get it. This is not about picking a favorite, it's not about picking someone you like," Lambert said. "It's not about picking someone even with your own beliefs and principles. This is about picking a person who can beat Barack Obama, period."

Video of Forbes on Hannity. Very nice discussion of issues. http://video.foxnews.com/v/1349496864001/iowas-big-surprise/?mid=5655258

House Republicans defending their opposition to a two-month payroll tax extension are pointing to a letter sent by a payroll processing trade organization that says even if the bill were made law, it's logistically impossible to make the changes in tax software before the extension expires. In a letter to the the leaders of the House and Senate Ways and Means committees, the National Payroll Reporting Consortium, whose members serve 1.5 million employers and more than one-third of the private-sector workforce, wrote that the Senate's two-month extension allows "insufficient lead time" to institute changes by Feb. 29. The group wrote...

The malady is far more serious than a mere affinity for mandates. When I read that Donald Berwick had resigned from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), I nearly shouted for joy. The cheer died on my lips, however, when my eye caught the following headline among those retrieved when I sent my search engine after more information: "Gingrich-Endorsed Health Care Expert Don Berwick Forced to Resign." Surely, I thought, the gods cannot be this cruel. But they are, of course, as another search confirmed. Newt has indeed lauded Berwick as a pioneer in the quest to improve...

A key Iowa social conservatives group announced Tuesday it will not endorse former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney or businessman Herman Cain, but is still evaluating if it would back one of the other candidates. The Family Leader, which hosted a forum that six Republican candidates attended last Saturday, said in a statement that its board had narrowed its choices of an endorsement to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ex-senator Rick Santorum (Penn). The statement said the group would not consider endorsing Romney, who the group criticized for skipping its event. The...

Just before Mitt Romney left the Massachusetts governor’s office and first ran for president, 11 of his top aides purchased their state-issued computer hard drives, and the Romney administration’s e-mails were all wiped from a server, according to interviews and records obtained by the Globe. Romney administration officials had the remaining computers in the governor’s office replaced just before Governor Deval Patrick staff showed up to take power in January 2007, according to Mark Reilly, Patrick’s chief legal counsel. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, said the governor’s aides did nothing wrong.

Welch was right! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZU0c8DAIU4&feature=related

To my knowledge, this is not an accurate story.” -- Herman Cain campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon on allegations of payments to two former female subordinates whom Politico reports made claims that Cain sexually harassed them. Maybe if Herman Cain’s campaign manager had spent less of the past two weeks on self-promotional smoke breaks, the GOP’s putative presidential frontrunner would be having a better Monday........... Despite having known that the story was in the pipeline for weeks, the Cain team and the candidate seemed utterly unprepared for the onslaught that has predictably followed. They have issued evasive denials and immediately gone...

He is the man with the mustache who takes a rebellious drag on a cigarette in the Herman Cain Internet ad gone viral. "We've run a campaign like nobody's ever seen," he says before taking a puff. "But then America's never seen a candidate like Herman Cain." Meet Mark Block, Cain's unorthodox campaign manager. Perhaps no one is more responsible for the Georgia businessman's meteoric rise in the presidential polls than Block, a Republican strategist and tea party leader who's left a trail of questionable campaign work behind him. Block has been accused of voter suppression and was banned from...

The Republican National Committee is considering a proposal to hand over partial control of its most valuable asset – its voter file – to a newly formed private entity that would enhance it by using unregulated money from an increasingly influential network of independent groups allied with the GOP. The RNC’s willingness to essentially contract out management of its voter information reflects the plight of a committee grappling with a huge debt left over by from the chairmanship of Michael Steele, as well as a campaign finance landscape increasingly dominated by independent groups. In exchange for access to the huge...

Taking aim at minimum wage laws, union protections, and even local building codes, Herman Cain has put the finishing touches on the last missing piece of his signature “9-9-9” plan – an elaborate proposal to create “opportunity zones” in inner-city America that the GOP presidential candidate will unveil during a major campaign appearance in Detroit on Friday morning. Cain hinted at the move during Tuesday night’s GOP debate in Las Vegas. He and his aides hope the details they provide about their plans to encourage growth in impoverished areas will deflect the surge of recent criticism branding “9-9-9” as unfair...

NEW YORK (AP) - The Occupy Wall Street movement, which has spent a month bashing banks and other corporations, has become a money manager itself. The movement has $435,000 - $85,000 of it donated in person at the Manhattan park that's become the epicenter of the global "anti-greed" protests and the remainder from online credit-card donations, said Darrell Prince, an activist using his business background to keep track of the daily donations. "It's way more support than we ever thought would come in," Prince said.

Herman Cain has been gaining much traction with his 9-9-9 Plan, a bold proposal to replace our dysfunctional tax code with what could be a simpler, less invasive, and more economically stimulative alternative. While I don't agree with the full spectrum of Mr. Cain's policy choices, I applaud his courage on the tax front. Judging by his rising poll numbers, this appreciation is widely shared. However, the plan has deep flaws, the most glaring of which is its creation of a hidden payroll tax which represents a fourth "nine." This serious pitfall has been unmentioned by Mr. Cain and overlooked...

Although he does not claim to have invented the Laffer curve concept (Laffer, 2004), it was popularized with policy-makers following an afternoon meeting with Nixon/Ford Administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in 1974 in which he reportedly sketched the curve on a napkin to illustrate his argument. The term "Laffer curve" was coined by Jude Wanniski, who was also present. The basic concept was not new; Laffer himself says he learned it from Ibn Khaldun and John Maynard Keynes.Wikijunk “This may be unpleasant to some of you: We have benefited more from free trade than anybody else. Outsourcing is...

Herman Cain has been caught lying in last night's GOP debate. Cain, who was the former deputy chairman and then chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve throughout the 1990's, had been opposed to an audit of the Fed. He had also said that Ron Paul supporters frequently ask him "annoying questions" about a Fed audit, even accusing the Paul campaign of sending agents to harass him at every event he attends. According to the Daily Caller: The Daily Caller obtained an advance copy of Cain’s book, “This is Herman Cain,” which goes on sale Oct. 4. In the manuscript,...

BAYTOWN, Texas -- A woman has been accused of making more than 100 destructive devices with her common law husband, who fatally shot a sheriff's deputy. •Slideshow Pamela Leggett, 32, has been charged with aiding and abetting in the making and possession of destructive devices and conspiring to make and possess destructive devices and firearms. Baytown police said two utilities workers went to the home Leggett shared with Gilbert Ortez Jr. on West Osage Drive in the Tower Terrace subdivision in July 2009 to shut off the water. Investigators said Leggett went outside and fired shots at the utility worker....

...... But in addition to circumstances of an external nature, there were also a number of favorable internal conditions which facilitated the victory of the October Revolution. Of these conditions, the following must be regarded as the chief ones: Firstly, the October Revolution enjoyed the most active support of the overwhelming majority of the working class in Russia. Secondly, it enjoyed the undoubted support of the poor peasants and of the majority of the soldiers, who were thirsting for peace and land. Thirdly, it had at its head, as its guiding force, such a tried and tested party as the...