Free Republic

President Obama has exercised a tradition of honoring national heroes by inviting the late Steve Jobs’ wife Laurene Powell Jobs, to the State of the Union address on Tuesday, reports Vanguard News. The visionary executive’s widow will join First Lady Michelle Obama in her box in the House of Representatives, according to a release from the White House. Powell will be joined by Warren Buffet’s secretary Debbi Bosanek as a nod to the billionaire’s complaint about the level of taxes paid by his employees being higher than his own, Mark Kelly, the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, a representative who was...

The media stood and applauded yesterday when President Obama and his family went to church for Easter. Yesterday’s visit to Shiloh Baptist Church in D.C. shows again that Obama really is a man of faith, the reports seem to suggest. But while the media rushed to report on the first family’s attendance of the predominately black congregation (and the family’s outfits), what it failed to mention was the views held by the church’s pastor. And while those views are not delivered in the same fiery manner as Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, they sound eerily familiar. What views are those?...

The two-day Nuclear Security Summit in Washington brought 46 other nations and three major international agencies under one roof to sign a pledge to put highly enriched uranium under lock and key within four years to stop terrorists from creating a nuclear weapon. “Today is an opportunity, not simply to talk, but to act — not simply to make pledges, but to make real progress on the security of our people,” said Mr Obama. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, praised the president’s vision and leadership in establishing a “gold standard of what nuclear security means”. Ukraine and Chile have agreed...

For Democrats, the medicine cabinet is mostly empty, save for “a poisonous pill called reconciliation,” says Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, to National Review Online. That’s the Senate budget procedure enabling a bill to pass with 51 votes. As Democrats plot to keep Obamacare alive, they seem ready to pop that pill and “swallow the consequences,” says Gregg. Before they try, Gregg cautions that such a maneuver is, “procedurally, an extremely heavy lift in the Senate” and “unrealistic.” Democrats, he says, should “learn the lessons of Massachusetts, and stop playing by the...