Free Republic

This column has already told the story of Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman who last year contributed to a group supporting Mitt Romney. An Obama campaign website in April sent a message to those who'd donate to the president's opponent. It called out Mr. VanderSloot and seven other private donors by name and occupation and slurred them as having "less-than-reputable" records. Mr. VanderSloot has since been learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list. Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth his divorce records. This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate...

The star of a pro-Obama super PAC ad is speaking out against ... President Barack Obama. "I could really care less about Obama," Donnie Box says of President Obama, according to In These Times. "I think Obama is a jerk, a pantywaist, a lightweight, a blowhard. He hasn't done a goddamn thing that he said he would do. When he had a Democratic Senate and Democratic Congress, he didn't do a damn thing. He doesn't have the guts to say what’s on his mind." Box, In These Times reports, won't be voting for Obama. Here's the pro-Obama, anti-Bain Capital ad...

The star of a pro-Obama super PAC ad is speaking out against ... President Barack Obama. "I could really care less about Obama," Donnie Box says of President Obama, according to In These Times. "I think Obama is a jerk, a pantywaist, a lightweight, a blowhard. He hasn't done a goddamn thing that he said he would do. When he had a Democratic Senate and Democratic Congress, he didn't do a damn thing. He doesn't have the guts to say what’s on his mind." Box, In These Times reports, won't be voting for Obama. Here's the pro-Obama, anti-Bain Capital ad...

On Thursday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) lashed out at Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), calling her recent comments regarding Fast and Furious "mind-numbingly stupid," and suggested she "schedule an appointment" with a doctor. On Thursday, Pelosi claimed that the contempt vote against Attorney General Eric Holder was part of a grand conspiracy to undermine his fight against voter suppression. “This is no accident. It is no coincidence. It is a plan on the part of the Republicans,” Pelosi said. “It’s really beneath the office of a member of Congress to say something that outrageous, and the fact that she was...

Just when you thought the Obama campaign couldn’t get any more desperate, they come up with this: the Obama Event Registry, asking supporters who are getting married, having a birthday, or celebrating an anniversary to direct gift-givers to Obama’s re-election website: Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up? Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It’s a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it’s a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a...

The House committee investigating Fast and Furious has received more than 7,600 documents from the Justice Department, but Republican lawmakers say none addresses who approved the gunrunning probe, who failed to stop it before a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed and why department officials initially lied to Congress about it. Now the panel has its sights set on an additional 1,300 pages of documents it believes will answer those questions and also expose a political cover-up at Justice. Nevertheless, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's quest for records got more complicated this week when President Obama asserted executive...

Mitt Romney maintains that "President Barack Obama is holding on to the government's stake in General Motors to avoid an embarrassing financial loss before the election, and says he'd sell the stock quickly if he wins the White House," according to the Detroit News, which recently interviewed the Republican presidential candidate. "There is no reason for the government to continue to hold (its GM stake)," Romney tells the news outlet. "The president is delaying the sale of the shares to try and avoid the story that the taxpayer took another loss. I would get the company independent from the government...

In two campaign speeches over the last two days, President Barack Obama has twice mistakenly mentioned "my sons" when defending his administration's regulation requiring virtually all health-care plans in the United States to provide women, without any fees or co-pay, with sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions. Obama, of course, has two daughters--10-year-old Sasha and 13-year-old Malia--but no sons. On Monday, 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations across the country--including the archdioceses of New York and Washington, D.C. and the University of Notre Dame and Catholic University of America—filed 12 different lawsuits against...

This week the Obama campaign debuted its attack on Bain Capital, the private-equity firm Mitt Romney founded. Its two-minute ad purports to tell the story of GS Technologies, a Kansas City-based Bain investment that went bankrupt in 2001. To hear the Obama campaign, this is a tale of greed: GST was a healthy, happy, quality steelmaker until Bain plundered its worth and stripped its 750 workers of their due. "It was like a vampire," laments one former employee in the ad. "They came in and sucked the life out of us." GST is a tragic tale, though in a different...

On "The Late Show" David Letterman went into a partisan speech about Obama's role in the killing of Osama bin Laden. [Video at the link if you're really interested in listening to this babbling half-wit Obama zombie Koolaid drinker]

The debate over same sex “marriage” has engaged the heartfelt feelings and convictions of millions of Americans. Then there is Barack Obama. In his ABC interview, the president pretended that his much touted “evolution” had now led him, ineluctably, to speak out now, today; he simply could longer stay silent. ABC let him off the hook, but this is not a credible account. In March, the Washington Post was reporting the debate among his advisers on whether the issue would help or hurt the reelection campaign and what, therefore, Obama should say: “Obama’s top political advisers have held serious discussions...

[Today] the Labor Department will release its April employment report. If the rate goes down, the administration will brag a bit, but they won't dwell on it. They know that the unemployment rate does not reflect the actual number of people who need work. Did you ever wonder how many of them are really out there? Let's put it in pre-recession, real numbers perspective. In July 2007, at the peak of the bling-years boom, there were 146.1 million people employed, 7.1 million unemployed, and 4.5 million working part-time "for economic reasons," which, added to the unemployed, gives the number for...

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters. “They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that...

Actress and left-wing activist Susan Sarandon has claimed she was recently denied security clearance for a visit to the White House - and that the government has been tapping her phone. The Oscar winner, who has vehemently condemned the war in Iraq, made the claims on Sunday during a Q&A session at the Tribeca Film Festival - an 11-day event in New York's Lower Manhattan. One audience member asked whether Sarandon, who was answering questions alongside documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, believed she was under surveillance by the government. 'We know we're under surveillance,' Sarandon said: 'I’ve had my phone tapped.'...

No, he’s not moonlighting as an agent. Vice President Joe Biden last year earned $20,900 in rental income from the Secret Service, which is paying him to host agents on his property so they can protect him. Most high-profile people in need of protection pay people to keep them safe. Government officials are allowed to have taxpayers pick up the tab. Biden is unique in that he actually gets paid by his bodyguards for the right to protect him. Biden’s tax records list rental income of $20,900 from a “cottage” on is property, which is reportedly being leased by the...

Marking the similarities between President Barack Obama's time in office and former president Jimmy Carter's is nothing new. But as of Monday, Obama has hit one more Carter benchmark - both saw gas prices double in their first term of office. [See Where Gas Prices are Spiking the Most] In fact, while just barely, Obama has seen an even higher gas price increase than Carter dealt with under his administration. Under the Carter administration, gas prices increased by 103.77 percent. Gas prices since Obama took office have risen by 103.79 percent. No other presidents in recent years have struggled as...

Barack Obama's re-election campaign released a 17-minute film, "The Road We've Traveled," that previews the Democratic general election narrative. Directed by Davis Guggenheim and narrated by actor Tom Hanks, the film explores Mr. Obama's most important decisions. Viewers are told Mr. Obama deserves re-election for restoring America to prosperity after a recession "as deep as anything . . . since the Great Depression." He accomplished this in part, so the film says, by bailing out the auto companies—deciding not to just "give the car companies" or "the UAW the money" but to force them to "work together" and "modernize the...

There goes the Buffett rule. Remember that political gambit, in which billionaire Warren Buffett pretended he was going to pay a much higher tax bill and President Obama pretended that raising rates on millionaires would make a dent in his hemorrhaging budget deficits? In one fell swoop Wednesday, Congress's tax scorekeeper punctured both phony claims. The analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation also showed less wealthy taxpayers why the Buffett ruse would eventually end up exposing them to higher taxes. With Mr. Buffett's help, Mr. Obama promoted the fairy tale that millionaires pay lower tax rates than their middle-class...

President Obama had just arrived home, walking across Lafayette Square after attending Sunday services with his family at St. John’s Church. In the West Wing, Obama ducked into the spacious office of his chief of staff, where he found his negotiating team huddled with two leading Republicans and a passel of aides. To the outside world, it looked like a do-nothing summer Sunday, a disturbingly quiet reminder of government dysfunction. The prevailing theme on the weekly political talk shows was things falling apart. In two weeks, the government would be unable to pay its bills. Where were the administration and...

Big donors considering whether to work the phones raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign might consider the fate of his 2008 bundlers. Many of them, it turns out, won plum jobs in his administration. Obama campaigned on what he called “the most sweeping ethics reform in history” and has frequently criticized the role of money in politics. That hasn’t stopped him from offering government jobs to some of his biggest bundlers, volunteer fundraisers who gather political contributions from other rich donors. More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have...