Free Republic

I seldom post more than once per day, but I believe this warrants the occasion. I was doing my morning rounds of reading the news and blog posts I read almost every day and came across something that troubles me greatly. It has to do with the push for more gun control, restrictions on the 2nd Amendment and how gun owners are portrayed in the media. If you have read Political Realities for any length of time, you should be aware of my stance on gun control. I do not believe it is a good thing, much less constitutional. I...

AFP - Iran's foreign ministry strongly condemned the twin bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon that killed at least three people, the country's state television reported on Tuesday. "Iran strongly condemns the killing of American citizens in Boston," said ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, calling the bombings a "source of sorrow". "No one should under any circumstances support terrorism and extremism, whether it be in the Middle East or the United States," he said. Two bomb blasts struck one of America's top sporting events Monday, killing at least three and wounding more than 100 as the Boston Marathon descended into chaos....

Senator Mitch McConnell is criticized for having a Chinese wife. "A Democratic group is under sharp criticism for controversial online messages about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's wife," reports WFPL-FM, an NPR station in Louisville, Ky. For months Progress Kentucky, a liberal super PAC, has been stalking McConnell, the Bluegrass State's senior senator, holding "demonstrations at his offices and home." But the attack on Mrs. McConnell, who in public goes by her maiden name of Elaine Chao, took place on Twitter. The station quotes a Progress Kentucky tweet dated Feb. 14: "This woman has the ear of (Sen. McConnell)—she's his...

Disagreeing with Obama can ruin Christmas, says White House report Posted By Neil Munro On 6:00 AM 11/26/2012 @ 6:00 AM In DC Exclusives - Original Any Republican refusal to accept President Barack Obama’s fiscal plan may ruin Christmas for the nation’s retailers, the White House claimed in a report released Monday morning. “The National Retail Federation is forecasting that holiday sales will grow 4.1 percent this year … [but] if Congress does not act on the President’s plan to extend tax cuts for the middle-class, it will be risking one of the key contributors to growth and jobs in...

SAN FRANCISCO – Gov. Jerry Brown railed Thursday against politicians who doubt climate change, calling them "political lemmings" and the chief obstacle in the fight against global warming. "The main thing we have to deal with in climate change is the skepticism, the denial and the cult-like behavior of the political lemmings that would take us over the cliff," the Democratic governor said at a high-profile conference on climate change at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. At a conference that included Brown's predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Brown said climate change has...

The rich pay lower tax rates than we do. Bush's tax cuts were only for the rich. Both the Reagan and Bush tax cuts were sops to the rich. Schmucks like you and me pay all the taxes so the rich can ride free. You hear these lies every day. In case you think I make these lies up, here are some examples. "Changes in tax rates have strongly favored the very, very rich." -Paul Krugman "Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich[.]" -Paul Krugman "We know, for instance, that...

Perhaps we need a new definition of the word racism because it is now bandied about in a frivolous manner by race baiters who've never undergone its scourge. All we need to do is look at the history of racism in this country particularly in the South to get a real perspective of the pain suffered by blacks during that dark period. Those who underwent that torment are for the most part deceased but their pain has been exploited by modern day race-baiting demagogues who've benefitted by the changes in our civil rights and in the hearts of most Americans....

The upcoming battle over raising the debt limit is a microcosm of the fraud that government has become. This Kabuki act is performed every time Federal debt approaches its legal limit. The stage play is always the same: •Politicians admit that spending is unsustainable and speak about cuts -- only in generalities and never specifics. •The party in power always argues how important it is to increase the debt ceiling. •The party out of power argues how doing so is irresponsible. •The demagogues in power then warn about world-ending damage if the debt limit is not raised. After this drama...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she expects President Barack Obama to stay the course on domestic and foreign policy even if Republicans make big gains, as expected, in hotly contested congressional midterm elections. Clinton told students and civic leaders in Malaysia that she had spoken to Obama by phone on the eve of the vote, and joked that she thought he seemed "a little envious" that she was abroad for an election that may see Democrats lose control of Congress."I think he was a little envious that I am here," Clinton said,...

When someone connected with Jerry Brown's campaign referred to Meg Whitman as a "whore," it revealed a lot about the way liberals think. The liberal mind, it would seem, always thinks in terms of offering or receiving payment for illicit services. Whether it is the governor of the state of New York caught with a high-priced prostitute or the Brown campaign itself pandering to the union gravy train, for liberals, just about everything is "pay to play." This being three weeks before the election, pandering has reached a fever pitch among Democratic politicians. With the apparent failure of certain mortgage...

Jessica Brady witnesses Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) giving one of his final floor speeches on the subject of, well, how much he resents that he's giving one of his final floor speeches. “Mainstream Americans must march to the polls this November to express themselves forcefully to stop extremists financed by undisclosed contributors from stifling our democracy,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said in a floor statement Tuesday morning... “Within days of the start of the Obama administration, before the ink was dry on his oath of office, Republicans openly bragged about plans to ‘break him and engineer his Waterloo,” Specter said of...

Don't they usually wait until after Labor Day to do this? Ten days ago, I asserted that that the administration's cynical use of Andy Griffith for a patently political promo on behalf of Medicare ("This year, as always, we’ll have our guaranteed benefits, and with the new healthcare law, more good things are coming: free check-ups, lower prescription costs") was "the foundation for the biennial Democratic scare-the-seniors campaign."Well, the Social Security portion of that scare campaign kicked in this morning.

Shortly after assuming his position, Attorney General Eric Holder called America a “nation of cowards” because we were too afraid to speak about race. My former colleague Congressman Steve King (R-IA) recently tried to initiate a discussion, and the Democrats and politically correct Republicans are castigating him. Rep. King told a talk show host that “the president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race — on the side that favors the black person.” He stood by his remarks stating that there “appears to me to be an inclination on the...

.... In a June 8 media interview in Ecuador that began circulating Thursday in the U.S., Clinton said President Barack Obama thinks the federal government should determine immigration policy and that the Justice Department "will be bringing a lawsuit against the act." ....It's unclear why Clinton made the comment since it's not her area. She couldn't be reached Thursday for comment.

If government spending is growing faster than gross domestic product (GDP), can the resulting deficit problem be solved by: (A) decreasing the rate of growth of government spending, (B) increasing tax rates, (C) decreasing the rate of growth of government spending and increasing tax rates? If you answered A, you have a strong brain and can go to the head of the class. If you answered B, you have a flaccid brain and will need to repeat the class... People with flaccid brains have a hard time understanding the consequences of actions, and they tend to treat variables as constants...

PHILADELPHIA (JTA) -- The Obama administration's tilt against Israel, its tacit acceptance of a nuclear-armed Iran and its weak approach to combating Islamic terrorism all pose a direct challenge to Jewish Americans. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has described the "Obama doctrine" in U.S. foreign policy as "coddling our enemies while alienating allies." Palin has emerged as the leading public voice in opposition to President Obama's dangerous new direction. For these reasons, my colleagues and I are launching a national organization of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, supported by the new Web site JewsforSarah.com -- Home Page for Jewish Independents....

For those who have neither the time nor the Red Bull required to wade through Al Gore's windy "We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change" in the New York Times, permit me to summarize: * Record winter storms and revelations of warmist fraud notwithstanding, we "face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it." * To prevent this looming catastrophe, we must impose cap-'n-tax and a host of other oppressive "green" regulation. * Unfortunately, "television" has replaced newspapers as the dominant medium. And "television" serves as the tool of powerful forces favoring "unrestrained markets"...

Who knew? Thank goodness, Vice President Joe Biden went on CNN to chat with Larry King Wednesday night. So many think things are not going so well for the Democrat administration, as The Ticket chronicled here. Many Americans recall the ex-Sen. Biden's Democratic primary plans to give in to Iraq's fractious factions and carve the country into three territories. And even more probably recall Biden's boss' plan to halt the Iraq war years ago. As long as it got started anyway without the permission of the then state senator.

**snip** MSNBC and other “news organizations” are even billing this developing story as “Watergate”. What do Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow know? And when did they know it? I’m sure they would like to believe O’Keefe is stupid enough to try to “wiretap” a sitting U.S. senator in broad daylight during office hours, while recording the entire sequence of events on his cell phone camera. And they’d like you to believe it, too. But there is absolutely no allegation in the criminal complaint that “wiretapping” or “bugging” is any part of this case, just the charge that O’Keefe and the...

'WE will hunt you down!" thundered Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) during the AIG bonus demagogue-a-thon on the House floor Thursday. "If they're not going to give [the bonuses] back, we're going to take them back," growled Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who vowed to recover the taxpayers' "ill-gotten gains" from rogue corporate executives. House Republicans pressed the Democrats on who knew what and when regarding the AIG bonus protections included in Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd's now infamous amendment to the stimulus bill. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) shrieked about the Bush administration's culpability. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) smugly patted Democrats on...