Free Republic

I've got some thoughts on what I'd like to see the new Republican leadership focus on when they take over the House of Representatives next month. But I'd like to see your ideas, too. So, I thought I'd ask you to list your top five suggested agenda items in the hope that someone with a communications line into the new Congressional leadership might read this...

President Obama's nominee for a high-level United Nations reform position dropped out of the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania last year shortly after Sen. Arlen Specter switched parties and won an endorsement from the White House. Joe Torsella, chairman of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education, was nominated this week for U.S. ambassador for the U.N. Management and Reform, a post that has been vacant since Obama took office. A spokesman for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who appointed Torsella to the chairmanship, told the Philadelphia Daily News that he was not aware of the U.N. job but has "recommended Joe...

These Limburger Tie-Priests have done nothing else their whole lives long, than attempt to destroy the Church. Five minutes before their retirement they rebel one last time against their Bishop, who they fear, will institute necessary reforms.

November 19, 2010 'Reform Math' By Jason and Genevieve McNew Pay attention to what our children are being taught. Not even simple arithmetic is safe from progressive stupidity. Apples and peaches make great neighbors. Here in "upper" Adams County, Pennsylvania (also the seat of Gettysburg and the battlefields), there are twenty thousand acres of fruit trees. Many businesses are closed on Sundays, and "traffic" consists of getting stuck behind a combine or waiting for the flock of mallards that live behind the 7-11 to finish crossing Route 394. I have often compared it to Mayberry. We moved here in June...

(CNSNews.com) – Twenty-two months into his administration and almost a year since a previous effort failed, President Obama has nominated an envoy to the United Nations with a mandate focusing on reform. The delay in putting in place a U.S. permanent representative for U.N. management and reform has drawn fire over the past year. Critics said the delay suggested the administration does not prioritize reform of the organization that gets more than one-fifth of its operating budget from the U.S.

Stop Swindling Paper Profits- By: Larry Walker, Jr. -Much of the debate against raising tax rates on the upper bracket centers around how income taxes are computed on small business owners. The debate focuses on the way that pass-through income, which is earned by the shareholders of S-Corporations and Partnerships, gets taxed. What we need is a fundamental transformation in the way that businesses are taxed. A business should be treated as an investment, not a person. Once we have correctly defined the nature of a business, and how businesses ought to be taxed the rest of tax reform is...

Link only - U.S. Supreme Court rejects health care reform case

Arizona and Oklahoma vote to reject insurance mandateBy SARAH KLIFF | 11/3/10 4:11 AM EDT Voters in Oklahoma and Arizona resoundingly supported ballot initiatives to opt-out of the federal health reform law, while Colorado voters appeared headed to rejecting a similar measure. Strong support for the anti-health reform ballot initiatives, which push back against the health law’s mandated purchase of insurance, echoed a national swing in favor of the Republicans, who reclaimed the House and picked up at least a half dozen Senate seats Tuesday night. Oklahoma approved an opt-out ballot initiative by a 2-to-1 margin. Proposition 106 in Arizona...

...The new [German] party, whose slogan is "the party for more freedom and democracy," speaks candidly about Islam, Islamism, Islamic law, and Islamization. Starting with the insight that "Islam is not just a religion but also a political ideology with its own legal system," the party calls for scrutiny of imams, mosques, and Islamic schools, for a review of Islamic organizations to ensure their compliance with German laws, and condemns efforts to build a parallel legal structure based on the Shari'a. Its analysis forcefully concludes: "We oppose with all our force the Islamization of our country."Freiheit robustly supports Israel, calling...

Wall Street Reform Architect Frank Fights for SurvivalBy Reuters November 01, 2010 BOSTON - Representative Barney Frank, the outspoken, witty Democrat closely tied to the 2008 U.S. bank bailout, faces a tough re-election battle after 15 terms in office at a time when incumbency itself is a liability. Challenging the Massachusetts liberal is Republican Sean Bielat, a former U.S. marine, and opinion polls suggest Frank has an uncomfortably narrow lead over a political unknown. In the run-up to Tuesday's congressional elections, Frank has faced a torrent of negative ads and mailings, much of it from groups outside the state who...

Obama: Negative ads have made it 'very difficult' for Dems to run on health reform By Michael O'Brien - 10/27/10 12:03 PM ET President Obama said Democrats are running away from his healthcare bill because of the millions spent by outside groups to negatively frame his signature legislative accomplishment. Obama said advertisements and campaigns against his health reform law have made it "very difficult" for Democrats who had supported the legislation in Congress to campaign in support of it this fall. "I think that you've seen a couple hundred million dollars of negative TV ads that make it very difficult...

President Obama is trying to use "comprehensive immigration reform" to whip up Hispanic turnout next week... "....if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us, if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder - and that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2," [Obama] said.....

PARIS (AP) — The French Senate, pushed into an early vote, approved on Friday a hotly contested bill raising the retirement age to 62, hours after riot police forced the reopening of a strategic refinery to help halt growing fuel shortages amid nationwide strikes and protests. In tense balloting after 140 hours of debate, the Senate voted 177-153 for the pension reform. The measure is expected to win final formal approval by both houses of parliament next week. President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government, keen to get the measure passed and quell increasingly radicalized protests, cut short the debate and voting...

U.S. Senate candidate Joe DioGuardi has been warning Americans about public debt and wasteful spending for over 20 years. New York’s pied piper of fiscal common sense is a certified public accountant who authored a primer on cleaning up public finance in 1992. “Unaccountable Congress” does for the Tea Party movement what Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” did for the American Revolution. This was a call to action that preceded the “Contract With America” by two years. DioGuardi’s story is drawn from events and life experience before Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. The former Congressman wrote the “How To” book...

I got this in an email and it sounded like such a good idea that I thought I would share it. Subject: You're one of my 20 people, Your part of my 20 people, hoping you will send this on to your 20 so we get this out before November If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time. THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! A friend sent this along to me. I can't think of a reason...

Dear Friends in Christ, We thank the Lord for your faith in our magnificent Creator-God, the One who created all things out of nothing (Heb. 11:3), and who created this world and all that is in it in six literal 24-hour days (Exodus 20:11), to the praise of His glory. Many of you have supported sound creation research organizations such as the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and Answers in Genesis (AIG), and some of you are leaders in these organizations. We recognize that many of our Reformed brethren are staunch creationists, and for this we thank God and we...

The Republican rallying cry during this election season has been a promise to "repeal and replace" ObamaCare. The problem is that through at least 2012 President Obama would veto any law repealing his signature health-care legislation. What, then, can Republicans do in the next two years? Look to the states. After November, more than 30 Republican governors (many newly elected) will have the opportunity to resist the legislation at the state level. They could refuse to implement the health-care exchanges that are the core of ObamaCare. Doing so would force the federal government to step in and run the exchanges...

More than three million people took to the streets of France in protest at pension reforms, with distant echoes of May 1968 as students and schoolchildren swelled numbers to record highs.

Maryland begins potentially painful pension processBy Nicholas Sohr Daily Record Business Writer Posted: 7:35 pm Thu, October 7, 2010 ANNAPOLIS — Maryland began on Thursday a nine-month process to examine its underfunded pension system while many of its neighbors and other cash-strapped states across the country have already altered retiree benefits. The 50 states combined were $1 trillion short of the amount needed to cover retiree healthcare, pensions and other benefits at the end of 2008, according to a Pew Center on the States report released in February. And in 2010, 19 states decided to act. “There has never been...

House Republicans request to know how states will pay for health reform lawBy Julian Pecquet - 10/05/10 01:03 PM ET Energy and Commerce Republicans Joe Barton (Texas), John Shimkus (Ill.) and Michael Burgess (Texas) wrote to the 50 state governors and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty on Tuesday requesting data on how they'll go about implementing the healthcare reform law. Their letter gives the local leaders two weeks to answer nine questions concerning such as issues as the costs of the Medicaid expansion, the effect of cuts to safety net hospitals payments and how the states will pay for it all....