Free Republic

Friday's December jobs report was a major disappointment, showing the economy gained just 74k jobs last month. Economists had expected the economy to gain around 200k jobs. The unemployment rate, however, dropped to 6.7% as 347k frustrated job-seekers gave up and left the labor force. We are in an upside-down world where a drop in the unemployment rate is a bad sign for the economy. The overall labor force shrunk dramatically last year. In December 2012, 155.4 million workers had a job or were actively looking for one. Last month, though, 154.9 million were in the labor force, a drop...

Excerpted from BizPac Review: ost freedom-loving Americans celebrated the recently reported news that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted an order on Dec. 31 to temporarily halt the Obamacare mandate requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to offer contraception. When Attorney General Eric Holder dug in to fight the Little Sisters, country rock icon and conservative tweeter Charlie Daniels offered his encouragement to the nuns.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who used his authority to permit the implementation of Obamacare, robbing Americans of their freedom and their money, used his end-of-the-year report to lament the effect of sequestration on the judicial system. Calling for more funding for federal courts, Roberts wrote that Congress should use A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as inspiration to “look at what has made our federal court system work in the past, what we are doing in the present to preserve it in an era of fiscal constraint, and what the future holds if the judiciary does not receive...

The New York Times had a reporter talking to attackers on the ground during the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans in September of 2012, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, and may know the identity of some the murderers and perpetrators. David Kirkpatrick, the Times reporter who wrote the story that forced the paper's Editorial page editor to defensively declare on Monday that it has not chosen to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, said that the paper had a reporter on the ground who was witnessing the attacks.

If Democrats get their way, the next phase of the Obamacare wars will see something unusual: a flood of success stories.The White House, Democratic lawmakers and advocacy organizations will launch a campaign this week to highlight real-life experiences under the Affordable Care Act — tales so compelling that they help drive up enrollment, marginalize Republican repeal efforts and erase memories of this fall’s HealthCare.gov debacle.

I used some of the most memorable moments. It's pretty good for a laugh. The pink prancing lady is my favorite although it was purely gratuitous.

This is a story that has caught very little attention, but needs to be circulated as wide as possible. The world of government-managed health care is about to get very ugly for millions of senior citizens who rely on Medicare for their coverage. Quietly announced on the day after Thanksgiving, the Obama administration has decided to cut Medicare home health benefits to the tune of 14% between 2014 and 2017. Some of America's most vulnerable citizens are under attack from a liberal administration who is determined to have its way with our health care system. What does this mean for...

President Barack Obama is golfing on his first day of vacation. Obama, typically an early riser, got a late start, staying at the home until early afternoon, when he headed to the golf course at a nearby Marine Corps base. Joining Obama for the round of golf were Sam Kass, the White House chef; Marvin Nicholson, Obama's trip director and a frequent golf partner; and childhood friend Bobby Titcomb, the White House said. The presidential motorcade left his Kailua vacation home and arrived at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at about 1:10 p.m. Obama, in white golf shirt, hat and sunglasses,...

[Prefatory notes] † Defining and using terms in this debate is fraught with difficulties. Gay can be a political term of the sexual left. Many consider homosexual to be pejorative. Then there is “same-sex attracted.” I am using “gay” out of deference to the good people I am writing about. †† Homophile was the term used for gay groups in the 1950s and 60s, prior to the birth of the modern gay rights movement. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

After the recent discovery of several well-preserved hand axes of Acheulean age dating to approximately 500,000 years ago, as well as a phallus shaped object coated with traces of ocre (see Fundsache Homo erectus, Archaeology Online 2012) a number of hammerstones were also recovered... and have clear use marks on the longitudinal edges. However, after close examination... a quartzite hammerstone was shown to have a peculiar line of reddish ochre along a well-defined and particularly striking side. Natural sediment retention in the cobble itself was excluded, and it suddenly became obvious that what was being observed, was the outline of...

Left bleeding on the floor of Las Vegas shopping mall: 'You hit a GIRL, dude?' Not going to plan The guy in the white shirt can be heard saying to an accomplice 'let's go'- yet only seconds later his buddy goes 'uh-oh' as the woman in the striped sweater pounds the attacker to smithereens!  Another male -apparently her partner- joins in for a second, but really isn't needed... rather, he has to pull the lady off of the assailant before she killed him... [video] Or -if you don't like going to hip-hop sites- also at Reaganite Republican...

Amid an array of “knock-out” attacks against a number of Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, a city councilwoman pointed to the success of the Jewish community as triggering the aggression. Councilwoman-elect Laurie Cumbo emphasized that while she “admire[s] the Jewish community immensely” for its work ethic, black teens may see it differently. “While I personally regard this level of tenacity, I also recognize that for others, the accomplishments of the Jewish community triggers feelings of resentment, and a sense that Jewish success is not also their success,” Cumbo, who was recently elected, wrote in a letter. Chief among the...

Some of us are old enough to remember "perestroika." It was Premier Gorbachev's desperate move to reform the USSR or save a system that was falling apart dramatically. Perestroika did not work. It did not make the centrally planned Soviet economy any better at putting food on the table or manufacture tractors. Perestroika failed. And so will the latest effort by President Obama to save ObamaCare.

<p>Anyone who opposes the Affordable Care Act is a subhuman. It is a great law but lying republicans are trying to destroy it. I signed up with no problem on the website. Republicans want to repeal my new insurance. Obama is a hero!</p>

A data center critical for allowing uninsured Americans to buy health coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare law went down on Sunday, the U.S. government said, in the latest problem for the "Obamacare'' rollout. Verizon's Terremark operates the data center behind a federal system for determining eligibility for government subsidies to buy insurance nationwide and hosts HealthCare.gov, the website that makes insurance available in 36 of the 50 states. The data center experienced a failure on Sunday that led it to lose network connectivity, Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Joanne Peters said. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid...

Now that the presidential election of last year is in the distant past, it appears that Obama may have abandoned his domestic agenda and is now squarely focused on the Middle East, or to be more accurate, the “Muslim Agenda”. What is this agenda? The answer is simple – the Caliphate. Obama is setting up the Caliphate as quickly as possible for his Sunni Muslim Brotherhood brethren ... Ed Klein wrote a book about Obama called “The Amateur” .. Klein interviewed Obama’s former Reverend, Jeremiah Wright .. Wright stated that he guided Obama to accept Christianity without affecting his faith...

The last thing US President Barack Obama did during his trip to Russia for the G20 summit was meet Friday with a group of Russian human rights activists, including members of the gay community, in an encounter that attendants described as symbolic, and a signal to the Russian authorities. The group of nine activists who met with Obama for a little over an hour included three gay activists from LGBT organizations that have not traditionally been invited to take part in meetings with visiting senior US officials. Russia passed a controversial new law earlier this year banning the “promotion of...

Updating our earlier report on Senior Master Sergeant Phillip Monk, a Christian serving in the Air Force whose unit is now commanded by a lesbian: according to Monk’s complaint filed with his superiors, he was relieved of duty for refusing his commander’s order to say he supports gay marriage. Now the Air Force has taken the first steps to criminally investigate Monk for talking to the media about his situation. Despite the fact that earlier this year the Obama-Hagel Pentagon said they would never court-martial a service member for their Christian faith, they have taken the first steps to possibly...

Before leaving for home after the Group of 20 summit, President Barack Obama sat down with Russian civil society activists on Friday evening to assure them that he would keep pressing Moscow to respect human rights, some of the activists said. But Obama also explained to them why this wasn't always possible. The meeting was held several hours after two dozen of gay activists rallied in St. Petersburg to protest Russia's new law banning gay propaganda, which prompted some activists to call for the boycott of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. Igor Kochetkov, the head of LGBT Network, who...

Michelle Obama is adding another fun element to her healthy kids campaign that seeks to tackle the issue of childhood obesity. Like her husband, the first lady has turned to hip-hop to demonstrate a point. She is distributing a hip-hop album complete with 10 music videos and 19 tracks to support her “Let’s Move!” nutrition program. Obama is partnering with Hip-Hop Public Health and Partnership for a Healthier America to release then Songs for a Healthier America album on September 30th.