Free Republic

Scandal In Libya: A new email dump shows that the White House, contrary to public statements, was heavily involved in editing the Benghazi talking points to remove all references to it being a terrorist attack. The limited, heavily redacted package of emails released by the administration Wednesday is noteworthy for what the emails don't say and reflect a concerted effort by the White House and State Department not to get at the truth but to put something together to help President Obama in an election two months out. The email package begins some 67 hours after the Sept. 11, 2012,...

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls. It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

Some days one can't help but look at the headlines and think of Ayn Rand. With all the destructive measures by desperate governments from Cyprus to Argentina, it seems sometimes like we're reading from the pages of her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. But what we're seeing now seems to have far surpassed Atlas Shrugged. We're definitely into 1984 territory. We've recently learned that the US federal government has (a) secretly tapped the Associated Press's phone records, and (b) used the nation's tax authorities to target opposition political groups. This is the same sort of thing one would expect from Belarus...

AUSTRALIA and the US will merge to form one super nation called Ameristralia. Sound like a gag? Maybe not. A petition has been created on the official White House website calling for the Obama Administration to join "America and Australia to form Ameristralia". The "We the People" section on the whitehouse.gov website was launched in 2011 to allow the public, in accordance with the First Amendment of the US Constitution, to petition the US government on issues deemed important.

For a long time conservatives have warned that the heavy propaganda and regulatory hands of the Obama administration were not going to change the exercise or eating habits of 315 million Americans... Now comes early statistical proof that after reelecting Obama with fewer votes the second time and 1,567 days of his reign of government intervention and stimulation, many Americans are deciding that maybe the Obamas' plans for their lives do not fit their plans for their own lives.

Washington state’s governor signed into law on Monday the final piece of a six-year effort to rewrite state laws using gender-neutral vocabulary, replacing terms such as “fisherman” and “freshman” with “fisher” and “first-year student.” Lawmakers have passed a series of bills since 2007 to root out gender bias from Washington statutes, though a 1983 state mandate required that all laws be written in gender-neutral terms unless a specification of gender was intended. “This was a much larger effort than I had envisioned. Mankind means man and woman,” said Democratic state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Seattle. The bill passed the Democrat-controlled...

As Orwell knew, taking over the culture starts with corrupting the language. Imagine if, during the campaign of 2008, someone had written the following: “If Barack Obama is elected president, then each year from now on the federal budget will be a trillion dollars in the red. He will pile up in two terms more debt than all previous presidents combined. Interest rates will stay at near zero; 7.6 percent unemployment will be proof of progress in creating jobs. Record use of food stamps, unemployment, and disability insurance will be hallmarks of recovery.

Eighth-graders in Wisconsin’s Union Grove school district were assigned to fill out a “Liberalism vs. Conservatism” crossword puzzle, and they learned some new and very questionable “facts.” Students learned conservatism is “the political belief of preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms … ” Conversely, they learned liberalism is “the political belief of equality and personal freedom for everyone, often changing the current system to increase government protection of civil liberties.” See the photos here. The crossword puzzle was part of a civics assignment that was forwarded to EAGnews by Tamara Varebrook, a local conservative activist whose eighth-grade daughter...

A mother at a Wisconsin public school said her daughter’s eighth grade class was assigned a worksheet with some eyebrow-raising definitions for “conservatism” and “liberalism.” Conservatism, it stated in part, believes in “preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms” while liberalism is for “equality and personal freedom for everyone.” “This is indoctrination,” Tamra Varebrook, a Republican activist in Racine, Wis., told TheBlaze on Thursday after her 13-year-old daughter showed her the crossword-style vocabulary sheet from Union Grove Elementary School earlier this week. Varebrook first talked about the assignment with the news arm of the conservative Education Action Group. Varebrook...

The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail. Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge. That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans' e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that...

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell delivered an unexpectedly laudatory eulogy for Margaret Thatcher on The Last Word Monday night, but it was not one that many of her Republican admirers would appreciate. While conservative columnist George Will credited Thatcher for helping to “bury socialism as a doctrine of governance” in his tribute to the former British prime minister in The Washington Post, O’Donnell praised her for upholding the “good socialism” that still exists in Britain.“What do you call a person who gets rid of bad socialism and keeps good socialism?” O’Donnell asked. “I call that person a good socialist, like Margaret Thatcher.”...

A California billionaire is pledging to spend as much of his fortune as necessary to make climate change “the defining issue of our generation.” Tom Steyer, who made his riches as a hedge fund manager, told The Hill on Tuesday that he wants to make climate change a campaign issue for years to come and Democratic support for environmental protections as widespread as support for gay marriage and immigration reform. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory,” Steyer said of candidates he judges to be on the...

Climate change is expanding Antarctica's sea ice, according to a scientific study in the journal Nature Geoscience. The paradoxical phenomenon is thought to be caused by relatively cold plumes of fresh water derived from melting beneath the Antarctic ice shelves. This melt water has a relatively low density, so it accumulates in the top layer of the ocean. The cool surface waters then re-freeze more easily during Autumn and Winter. This explains the observed peak in sea ice during these seasons, a team from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) in De Bilt says in its peer-reviewed paper.

Fusion center director: We don’t spy on Americans, just anti-government Americans Law enforcement intelligence-processing fusion centers have long come under attack for spying on Americans. The Arkansas director wanted to clarify the truth: centers only spies on some Americans – those who appear to be a threat to the government. In trying to clear up the ‘misconceptions’ about the conduct of fusion centers, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis simply confirmed Americans’ fears: the center does in fact spy on Americans – but only on those who are suspected to be ‘anti-government’. “The misconceptions are that we are conducting...

So I just noticed today that a few of my "Facebook friends" more like 2 people I haven't spoken to in twenty years, had those stupid gay marriage red equality signs up. I defriended them all, anyone else have the same thing happen?

Mayor Bloomberg admits soon NYPD surveillance cameras will be on nearly every corner and in the air. 'You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they'll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not,' Bloomberg said Friday. 'The argument against using automation is just this craziness that 'Oh, it's Big Brother.' Get used to it!' Big Brother is watching. Now get used to it! Envisioning a future where privacy is a thing of the past, Mayor Bloomberg said Friday it will soon be impossible to escape the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras and even...

In a move that reminiscent of the tyrannical actions of Abraham Lincoln that led to the War of Northern Aggression, Barack Obama says that he will not wait on states to enforce Obamacare. Instead his administration has announced its intent is to completely disregard the state’s Tenth Amendment rights to nullification of the Obamacare law, via their passed legislation and state constitutions. In fact, his administration has said that in states where they refuse to comply with federal healthcare mandates that agents from the Department of Health and Human Services will assume absolute control over the state’s health insurance industry....

George Orwell published the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949. It is a satirical vision of a future society dominated by omnipresent government surveillance and public mind control. Individualism or any independent thinking is prosecuted as a thought crime. Since we now live in a world that seems closer to Orwell’s vision, a world where more and more it seems individualism is discouraged, a closer appraisal of Mr. Orwell’s work might be in order. Oh, you don’t see the connection? Take a look at Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village or President Obama’s warning to achievers, “If you’ve got a business...

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to capture and store Americans' confidential text messages, according to a proposal that will be presented to a congressional panel today. The law enforcement proposal would require wireless providers to record and store customers' SMS messages -- a controversial idea akin to requiring them to surreptitiously record audio of their customers' phone calls -- in case police decide to obtain them at some point in the future.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Maxine Waters. This was last Sunday on TV One's Washington Watch with Roland Martin. Maxine Waters, Democrat from California. Her district is basically the Watts area of Los Angeles, and Roland Martin said, "The reality is like anything else, you'd better get what you can while Obama's there because, look, come 2016, that's it." Now, what Roland Martin's saying here is all of you who are looking for prosperity from the government, you better get it and get it now. Get it while you can, get it while Obama's there, because come 2016, he's not gonna...