Free Republic

Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict. Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I. Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now picture all of...

A judge has set a new trial date for 15 people accused of participating in a gun smuggling ring that was investigated by the federal government in Operation Fast and Furious. U.S. District Judge James Teilborg set a Jan. 3 trial date.

President Obama believes that his effective federal tax rate requires him to pay less than his fair share -- but the White House also believes it is inappropriate to ask the president to write a check making up the difference voluntarily. "People like the President should not be able to -- the tax code should not written in a way that allows for -- for the wealthiest Americans to pay taxes at a lower rate than middle-class Americans," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters today. Earlier this week, Carney impugned the "classiness" of people who propose that wealthy...

The debate over forcing a religious institution to pay for employees' contraception morphed into unfounded claims that Republicans want to outlaw contraception. A Democratic strategist's foolish dig against an opposition candidate morphed into the generalized accusation that Democrats don't believe raising children is work. While these manufactured controversies captivate the journalists who sensationalize them and the politicians who try to take advantage of them, the women of America are once again being reduced to reproductive organs with voting rights and petty concerns.

In her explosive new book Fast and Furious, Katie Pavlich makes the case that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano not only failed to stop an operation that led to the death of one of her own, Border Agent Brian A. Terry, but she may have also lied to Congress in sworn testimony at a hearing held to find out what really happened. Inside sources told Pavlich that Napolitano’s testimony was in direct contradiction to emails she exchanged, and reports and briefing she received, according to an exclusive preview of the book by Human Events. Pavlich’s book Fast and Furious is...

With the general election now underway, it’s tempting to assume that President Obama has a built-in advantage by having at his disposal a campaign operation that earned universal plaudits in 2008. But as Team Obama itself already knows—or, if not, will soon come to realize—the 2012 contest will be very different from the president’s triumphant march to the White House four years ago. The key question will be how the old campaign staff responds to the new electoral landscape. Here are seven realities that Team Obama will have to adjust to.2012 will be a referendum, not a choice. One of...

...Here’s our standard attack strategy: 1.The drop: someone close to the administration drops a non sequitur into an otherwise innocuous conversation. 2.The slap-shot: one of our media lap dogs wins the face off and slaps the puck as hard as he/she can down a very slippery surface. 3.The score: the designated player zips around the goalie and puts the puck in the net, thereby launching the... 4.“Liberal echo chamber elite cocooning” offensive: (i.e. the talking heads can’t stop talking about it). That’s how we introduced our Class War with the Buffet Rule; that’s how we launched the Republican’s “War on...

Today, the President released his 2011 federal income and gift tax returns. He and the First Lady filed their income tax returns jointly and reported adjusted gross income of $789,674. About half of the first family’s income is the President’s salary; the other half is from sales proceeds of the President’s books. The Obamas paid $162,074 in total tax. The President and First Lady also reported donating $172,130 – or about 22% of their adjusted gross income – to 39 different charities. The largest reported gift to charity was a $117,130 contribution to the Fisher House Foundation. The President is...

Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s visit to Washington last week featured his usual lecturing of Americans about gun control. This time, he had some good ideas, although he remains wedded to many bad ones, too. A polite guest, Mr. Calderon did not mention the “Fast and Furious” operation during his public events with President Obama. But reports indicate that he did bring it up privately, and he was furious - justifiably so. From late 2009 until early 2011, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) orchestrated the delivery of more than 2,000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels. According...

Energy: To hear President Obama talk about energy, you'd think annual oil price spikes were routine and predictable. But it's another energy myth Obama peddles to avoid responsibility for high gas prices. In February, Obama lamented these "gas price spikes that happen every year." A few days later, he talked about the need to "take control of our energy future" so we could "avoid high gas prices every single year." For Obama, this is a convenient excuse. After all, price spikes can't possibly be his fault, since they happen "year after year." Except it's not true.

God save me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. That thought must be coursing through the mind of President Obama right now as his White House rigs for silent running in the murder trial of George Zimmerman. Obama foolishly inserted himself into this volatile case weeks ago, and injected the issue of race. Expressing empathy with the family of Trayvon Martin, Obama flashed a signal of racial solidarity: "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon." Obama also implied that he shares the liberal perspective that America is a country where black kids must...

Few prominent economists have a worse record predicting the impact of Obama’s economic policies than Paul Krugman. Writing for the New York Times and touting his close “genuine contact” with the “smart” economists and others in the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership, Krugman has been, and remains, Obama’s most important champion. Not only has he been defending Obama’s Keynesian-type deficit-spending, but he has been advocating still more of these same failed policies. The economy just can’t gain ground. Thirty-four months since the "recovery" started in June 2009 and the actual number of jobs have increased by just 0.4%....

Has anyone seen Barack Obama recently? You know, the optimistic hopeful fellow with the charming smile who promised so many positive things four and five years ago, how he was going to change the harsh, partisan tone of our nation's capital and bring the country together as its first African American president. Even allowing for political hyperbole, his empty resume and the invisible witnesses from the past, Obama was such a Real Good Talker that even some who didn't vote for him still had hope that he could change some things for the better in what seemed a sadly-splintered society....

Eh, what does this guy know about leadership, anyway? He’s only the most widely respected CEO of the last twenty years or so and the founder of a school that develops leaders in the business world, plus the author of a book or two on the subject. Former GE chief Jack Welch unloaded on Barack Obama yesterday for his chronic lack of leadership, manifest mainly through the ever-expanding universe of scapegoats that Obama cites for the failures of his economic policies. Welch thinks that Obama has become positively Nixonian — or maybe worse (via Instapundit): President Obama’s “divide-and-conquer” approach isn’t...

In an exclusive interview to Breitbart News, Sarah Palin discussed energy policy and her Fox News Special (with Eric Bolling) "Paying at the Pump," which airs tonight on FNC at 10pm ET. The program will re-air on Saturday and Sunday. She also touched on some other topics of the day...

Sarah Pain on Fox News Channel about Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Hilary Rosen's criticism about Ann Romney being a stay at home mother.: Look at what is going on today with Hilary Rosen. She, who has the ear of the president, who is advising the Democrat Party and making such disrespectful comments about a woman who has made a very honorable choice to stay home and do the toughest job, the most important job there is, and that's raising good kids. The comments Hilary made Thursday has awoken a lot of MAMMA grizzly women across the nation. I have...

George Zimmerman is facing charges of second-degree murder. A jury will decide his guilt or innocence. Here’s hoping the criminal-justice system cools rather than exacerbates the passions the killing of Trayvon Martin has raised. But Attorney General Eric Holder isn’t helping. Wednesday, he appeared before the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network to praise Sharpton “for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill.” This is the same Al Sharpton who...

In January 2012 a [then] quiet deal was struck between SOE Software (then the leading US vote tabulation company. Scytl is said to be strongly linked to George Soros. The Obama syndicate members arranged the deal and Obama’s now wholly-owned rubber-stamp Congress agreed to it. That’s right. A foreign company may now, ostensibly and unconstitutionally, determine who wins US “elections.” Of extreme interest, Scytl’s CEO, Pere Valles, was the former VP and CFO of GlobalNet whose headquarters were based in Obama’s then base of operations Chicago. Although apparently scrubbed from Obama’s donor list (as so many negative and potentially negative-to-Obama...

God save me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. That thought must be coursing through the mind of President Obama right now as his White House rigs for silent running in the murder trial of George Zimmerman. Obama foolishly inserted himself into this volatile case weeks ago, and injected the issue of race. Expressing empathy with the family of Trayvon Martin, Obama flashed a signal of racial solidarity: "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon." Obama also implied that he shares the liberal perspective that America is a country where black kids must...

Famed actor and comedian Bill Cosby on Thursday said people who are critical of President Obama are "acting like they have no idea what he inherited" at the White House. Cosby compared the first four years of Obama's presidency to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the king condemned to an eternity of rolling a rock up a hill only to have it fall back down to the bottom. "I see Obama as Sisyphus in the first four years. And nobody would speak about the size of the rock, or the elevation of the hill. All you hear people talk about...