Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) - In his first-ever address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, President Barack Obama said he was going to “inform” the chairman of BP that he must surrender the company’s money to an independent party that will distribute it to people and businesses determined to have been harmed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The president’s declaration raises a serious constitutional question about his authority: Where does the president get the lawful power to order any private-sector company—BP or any other—that it must surrender its money? Should not courts and normal legal proceedings determine who is responsible, who has...

Obama urges business heads to push Congress in support of climate and energy bill *snip* Obama made the plug during a meeting Friday with his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which includes the heads of General Electric, Caterpillar and Oracle, along with labor leaders and economists. He told the group the climate bill — which would cap global warming emissions — is good for business and that members of Congress need to hear that. "Individual members of Congress may be worried about the implications, at least short term," of voting for the legislation, and hearing from businesses would be reassuring, Obama...

On Wednesday, President Obama had something of a Howard Beale moment. Speaking to a group of Democratic senators, the President exhorted his listeners -- and, by extension, all Americans -- to break the cable news habit. "If everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics," Obama said, things would be an awful lot better in Washington. His appeal threatened to alienate some of his loyal supporters in the media -- MSNBC actually...

SNIPPET: "Speaking in College Park to the University of Maryland, the President saw some of the same passion for change that consumed much of the country for the years leading up to his election. Make no mistake, health insurance reform is something every young person should care about for themselves. As HealthReform.gov detailed in a new report this morning, young people entering the workforce are more and more getting the short end of the health insurance stick. We also launched a Facebook version of our "What’s In Reform for You?" quiz, which is guaranteed to surprise you no matter how...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

Anyone not alarmed by the state of the U.S. economy is not paying attention. As our Dear Leader begins his term, the theory of very big government has the support of an alarmingly broad political consensus. Despite the obvious dangers—devastating inflation and the ruin of the dollar—the United States seems pledged to a debt-funded spending spree of gargantuan proportions. In opposing this trend, critics face the problem that the perils to which they point sound very theoretical and abstract. Perhaps Zimbabwe prints its currency in multi-trillion units, but that’s a singularly backward African dictatorship: the situation has nothing to do...

First Amendment: Beyond the various threats that President Obama has said require confrontation — financial, military, nuclear, climate — another danger looms large: Those in his party who want government to muzzle dissent.A lot has changed in the two decades since the federal government stopped requiring broadcast licensees to provide varied viewpoints within their programming. Talk radio, for instance, has become a counterweight to the liberal establishment media. Blogs have allowed anyone and everyone to become a pundit with no limit to the number of readers who can be reached. And Fox News has overwhelmed CNN and the Big Three...

<p>“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”</p> <p>Thus did a rule of the George W. Bush administration — coat and tie in the Oval Office at all times — fall by the wayside, only the first of many signs that a more informal culture is growing up in the White House under new management. Mr. Obama promised to bring change to Washington and he has — not just in substance, but in presidential style.</p>

A parent in the Clark County School District of Las Vegas, Henderson area reported today that his son, who is in 1st grade, came home yesterday saying that he didn't want to go back to school anymore. When asked why, the boy said that during the Pledge of Allegiance the teacher put up a large image of Obama next to the flag. Thinking that the boy might be exaggerating, the man asked his son if he was sure, and suggested that by "large" he might mean an 8x10 photo of the president. The boy apparently said "No, it is a...