Free Republic

resident Obama says he opposes marijuana legalization but thinks Colorado and Washington should be able to try it. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who sought to run against Obama in 2012 as a Republican presidential contender, takes the same position. You might call this policy federalism -- but not if you are Barack Obama. According to the president, he has the authority to enforce the federal ban on marijuana even in states that have legalized the drug. But he chooses not to exercise that authority, because he is curious to see how these experiments turn out. In an interview with The...

With the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade this week, it's time to blow the whistle on the greatest advocate of abortion in the modern age: President Barack Obama. To date, it is still unknown when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will rule on whether or not Obama and Obamacare will force a group of nuns -- the Little Sisters of the Poor -- to provide contraception, including drugs that possibly induce abortions, to the employees at the care facility for the elderly that they run or be fined because of noncompliance with the new health care law. What...

If you walk along the quaint, cobblestoned streets of Georgetown, in Washington, D.C., you can see ads for newly renovated townhomes “starting at $3.945 million.” That’s not surprising for this famously liberal enclave. Something else jumps at you, the number of bumper stickers on Mercedes and Audi automobiles that say: “I’m ready for Hillary.” These are surely head-scratchers. Are they simply folks who backed the former Sec. of State in `08 who defiantly maintained their allegiance? Or, are they among the glitterati like Barbara Walters, who are crestfallen at President Obama’s failure to be their new “messiah.” If the latter,...

When presidents give speeches, the affair is choreographed like a Broadway production. The message is not just the words of the speech, but where it is given and who happens to be the chosen audience. So it was not by accident that President Obama chose a theater in a poor black neighborhood in Washington, DC, where the average income is barely half the national average, to speak this week about economic opportunity and fairness. What exactly was the President trying to achieve by sharing with a low-income black audience that “today’s CEO now makes 273 times more” than the average...

After you heard President Obama's call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots? But just in case the question didn't occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee's announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili's already made this move earlier this year. With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Breitbart columnist, Ken Klukowski. “The power to tax involves the power to destroy,” the Supreme Court wrote in 1819, shortly after America began. Now in 2013, President Barack Obama is launching a frightening attack on free speech, using one of the most feared agencies in all the federal government: the Internal Revenue Service. One of the most roundly-condemned aspects of Richard Nixon’s malfeasance in office was his use of the IRS to target his political enemies with audits. If people shudder at Nixon’s abuses with the IRS, what Obama is doing should drive...

We were sitting in a sunroom, swapping stories, news and updates when the question was asked, "Why did they get divorced?" We leaned forward in anticipation of a standard response; "he was having an affair," or "she was having an affair," a possible "they've grown apart," or a more nebulous "it just wasn't working anymore." Instead the answer was more visceral and direct. "She was sick of him." I felt as though I had been punched in my stomach. "Sick of him?" a passing feeling maybe, a temporary state of mind, but a reason to sever a marriage union? The...

Soon after President Obama told the White House press corps he was solely responsible for the botched Obamacare rollout, he decided to shift part of the blame on Republicans. A mea culpa can be hard to deliver in public when you are the kind of politician who thinks he never mistakes and rarely if ever apologizes for anything that went wrong. But Obama's apologies have a brief shelf life, and a few days later they had reached their expiration date. So at a gathering of business executives on Tuesday, Nov. 19, the president concluded that he had done enough...

By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his "credibility gap" -- the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam. "Modified limited hangout" and "inoperative" were infamous euphemisms that Nixon administration officials used to mask lies about the Watergate scandal. After a while, few believed any of the initial Reagan administration disavowals that it was not trading "arms for hostages" in the Iran-Contra scandal. George H.W. Bush thundered during his campaign to "read my lips: no new taxes," only to agree later to raise them. Bill Clinton's infamous assertion that...

"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied to," one woman told the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare. And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president. The most famous presidential lies have to do with misconduct (Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" or Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations") or war. Woodrow...