Free Republic

Not even President Barack Obama could sway U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch from voting against a health-care reform package now headed for a dramatic weekend showdown. After emerging from a 40-minute Oval Office meeting this afternoon with Obama and a White House aide, Lynch (D-South Boston) said he was not persuaded and made it official: “I am firmly a ‘no’ vote.” The Herald first reported today that Lynch, one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, was likely to vote against a Senate version of health-care reform, even though the congressman supported a House reform package last year. Lynch, who has...

So this is what it looks like when a mild-mannered, liberal community activist goes “nuclear.” President Barack Obama didn’t use the “n” word - or even the “r” word, “reconciliation.” But he made it clear he’s ready to go to Democrat DefCon4, give the partisan launch codes and inflict Obamacare on the American people at any political cost. In defending his decision to go nuclear, Obama talked about insurance company “abuses.” He talked about premium hikes in California. He talked about a sick mom in Wisconsin. He even talked (in extremely modest ways) about Republican ideas like tort reform and...

Economic signals have been all over the map lately, making it hard to get a handle on what's happening in the housing market and broader economy. Every now and again, it is of value to connect the dots -- the sort of thing U.S. intelligence agencies historically fail to do combating terrorism -- to get a truer picture of the state of the economy and real estate market. With this in mind, let's look at some of the statistics that emerged in just the past seven days. It's fair to say that, when taken together, any reasonable person would be...

US national security leaders and top cyber warriors from around the world are gathering here to plot defenses against criminals and spies that increasingly plague the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt will take part in this week's RSA conference along with computer defense companies and technology icons such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark. "We have before us more data moving into the cloud and more sophisticated cyber criminals," said Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot, who is among the keynote speakers at the premier event that kicks...

It's only been a year since a helicopter flew him out of the capital right after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. But some Americans will be pleased to know that George W. Bush is out there, watching over them after all. From a billboard, high above Interstate Highway 35 near Wyoming, Minn., to be exact. And he wants to know if you miss him. Someone has placed a giant photo of the former president on a billboard with the question, "Miss Me Yet?" Until now, the billboard was thought to be a hoax, a clever doctoring of an image...

Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes blamed the Federal Reserve for sparking the recession and said President Obama has hindered the recovery. In a speech yesterday to the Boston College Chief Executives’ Club, the editor in chief of Forbes magazine said the economic crisis was avoidable. “It was the result of a series of mistakes starting with the Federal Reserve, and not a sudden outburst of greed,” he said. “The Fed ginned up the monetary printing press and kept interest rates artificially low.” The result, he said, caused cataclysmic events including the bursting of the commodities and housing bubbles that sent...

NEW YORK (Reuters.com) --The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families. In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth. While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a...

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Say hello to “Medicare Part E” — as in, “Medicare for Everyone.” House Democrats are looking at re-branding the public health insurance option as Medicare, an established government healthcare program that is better known than the public option. The strategy could benefit Democrats struggling to bridge the gap between liberals in their party, who want the public option, and centrists, who are worried it would drive private insurers out of business. While much of the public is foggy on what a public option actually is, people understand Medicare. It also would place the new public option within the rubric of...

As if seniors didn’t have enough worries about Medicare, they now have an unexpected new one - health care “reform.” For the past decade increases in health care costs have outpaced overall inflation to the extent that the Medicare Trust Fund’s 2017 bankruptcy is now alarmingly imminent. Seniors also recognize that “reform” is not about them but rather about subsidizing health insurance premiums for the uninsured under-65s. Nevertheless President Barack Obama persists with a disingenuous pitch to seniors which goes like this: “The nearly $1 trillion reform tab will be paid for with new revenues (also known as taxes) plus...

For weeks, the United States Olympic Committee and the national sports governing bodies it oversees had settled into an uncomfortable truce. Despite a year of upheaval and conflict, the parties had agreed to set aside their differences in solidarity for Chicago’s bid to win the 2016 Summer Games. The truce ended as quickly as Chicago was dispatched from the race won by Rio de Janeiro. In surprisingly frank terms, a number of influential people in American Olympic sports questioned the performance of the U.S.O.C.’s new management team and said its two top executives were ill-equipped to navigate the insular world...

Plateau in Temperatures ....Adds Difficulty to Task....Of Reaching a Solution... --In response to New York Times (9/23/09) In this headline on a story about difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word “plateau.” It dismisses the unpleasant - to some people - fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it. The “difficulty” - the “intricate challenge,” the Times says - is “building momentum” for carbon reduction “when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.” Further down in...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D.-R.I.) says people will be able to stop doctors from including records of sexually transmitted diseases and abortions in the new national system of Electronic Health Records that was mandated by the stimulus law enacted in February. The law says that doctors, hospitals and other health care providers must create an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for every American by 2014 or else face deductions in their Medicare payments. The EHRs are supposed to be integrated into a national health care IT system where health-care providers nationwide as well as the government would have the ability to access...

Cyber criminals have created a highly sophisticated Trojan virus that steals online banking log-in details from infected computers. The Clampi virus, which is spreading rapidly across hundreds of thousands of computers in Britain and the United States, infects computers when users visit websites that host a malicious code. Once on the computer, the virus sits unnoticed until the user logs on to bank, credit card or other financial websites. It then captures log-in and password information and sends it to a server run by the attackers. They can then tell the compromised computer to send money to accounts that they...

A Yale University lab technician was arrested Thursday and charged with the suffocation death of a graduate student whose body was found stuffed in a research building wall on what would have been her wedding day. New Haven police said they arrested 24-year-old Raymond Clark III at the Super 8 hotel in Cromwell, about 25 miles north of the Ivy League campus. Clark had been staying at the hotel since he was released early Wednesday by police, who had served search warrants looking for evidence linking him to Annie Le's death. New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said there are...

On the eve of what organizers call a 'Big Ol' TEA Party', the Washington, D.C., offices of FreedomWorks were evacuated by DC Metro police on Friday afternoon after the conservative organization reported to authorities at 3:42 pm ET that it had received a bomb threat. At 4:48 pm ET, the organization put out a Twitter message saying that it turned out to be a false alarm but the organization is not happy about the disruption. My colleague, ABC News' Teddy Davis has the story: Tens of thousands of anti-big government activists are expected in Washington on Saturday as part of...

Van Jones quits... see article at this link

Charles Krauthammer seems to be encouraging President Barack Obama to continue to forget that the government is the employee and that “We the people” are the employer (“Breathing life into ObamaCare,” Aug. 30). Any business owner worth his salt will say that if you want a successful business, you don’t put the employees in charge because they don’t always have the company’s best interest at heart. So what do “We the people” not want from our health care? We don’t want it to be managed by an unaccountable government monopoly, we don’t want the country to become bankrupt paying for...

If I went to a Democratic town hall, I’d probably boo, too. Hence, according to various Democrats and supporters of ObamaCare, I’m paranoid and just a bit unpatriotic. Well, let me dilate on my paranoid treachery. Under the plan discussed at President Barack Obama’s infomercial-esqe town halls, America would cut costs and expand coverage while avoiding rationing. Apparently, it’s paranoid to think that’s too good to be true. Imagine you’re in charge of bringing pie to a company picnic. You’re planning to provide dessert for 100 people. Then, your boss says you need to hand out pie to 150. But...