Free Republic

<p>America is suddenly angry at the laxity, incompetence, and polarizing politics of the Obama administration, the bad optics of the president putting about in his bright golf clothes while the world burns. Certainly, no recent president has failed on so many fronts — honesty, transparency, truthfulness, the economy, foreign policy, the duties of the commander-in-chief, executive responsibilities, and spiritual leadership.</p>

All five terror suspects the Obama administration exchanged for the release of Sgt. Bowe Berghdahl on Saturday were deemed in a 2008 Pentagon dossier to be ‘high risk’ for launching attacks on American interests if released.

Meghan McCain was sharply critical of Karl Rove during an interview with Larry King, going so far as to say she hates him and that he needs to apologize to her family. The daughter of the 2008 Republican presidential nominee showed no love for the political commentator and said he is no longer a relevant political figure, according to a transcript of the interview from Ora.TV’s “PoliticKING with Larry King” that will air on Thursday night. “I hate Karl Rove and I think he still needs to apologize to my family, which he has not done, for things that happened...

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin isn't to blame for the GOP's loss in the 2008 presidential election, Meghan McCain, daughter of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, says. McCain told talk show host Larry King in an interview for his PoltiKING show that not even the Son of God could have saved her dad's campaign. 'I think my father could have had Jesus Christ as his running mate and it wouldn't have mattered in '07. I truly believe that,' she said. McCain wrote in her 2010 book Dirty Sexy Politics that Palin added 'drama, stress, complications, panic and loads of...

Original Title:Hillary, the Fighter: Hillary Clinton Fought Secret Service Agent to Fly Into Blizzard During her campaign for president in 2008, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was involved in a profanity-laced argument with one of her Secret Service agents, according to Glenn Thrush a reporter for THE POLITICO. Thrush witnessed Clinton being cursed at by an agent in an argument over her demand to fly the campaign plane, a Boeing 737, into a roiling Wisconsin blizzard. “I remember watching a usually stoic Secret Service agent cursing Clinton on the tarmac in Milwaukee when she ordered the campaign’s rattletrap 737 to fly...

The Chinese “received a message from the Russians” back in 2008 suggesting a pact to sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities on the market, which would have nudged down the price of the debt of Fannie and Freddie and also maximized the chaos on Wall Street, a former U.S. official told BBC. It confirms a report that TheBlaze TV’s For the Record first aired back in September 2013.

Michigan woman dead for six years found only after money runs out For six years the bills were paid, the grass was cut and no one noticed the body of the dead woman sitting in the back seat of a car in a garage of a residential Pontiac, Michigan neighborhood. Her mummified body was finally found this week by someone dispatched to check on the property that fell into foreclosure after the money ran out of her account and the mortgage payments stopped, police said on Friday. "It is kind of the perfect storm for a mysterious set of circumstance...

The was a time when everyone loved making fun of GOP vice presidential canidate Sarah Palin. It’s her turn to get the final laugh. As CBS recounts, in October 2008, after Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia emerged as a foreign policy flashpoint in the homestretch of a heated campaign, Palin told an audience in Nevada, “After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.” Just as amusing was the response to Palin’s comments by foreign policy...

Many Americans still remember the joke made by Tina Fey in a return to SNL to play the role of Sarah Palin back in 2008. While introducing herself, Fey’s version of Palin stated in a folksy, matter-of-fact way that she could, “see Russia from [her] house.” As funny as it was at the time, this joke was actually borrowed from an interview with ABC News‘s Charlie Gibson: Palin: …We have got to keep our eyes on Russia…And, Charlie, you’re in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They...

Since losing the 2008 presidential election and almost completing a full term as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has remained on the edge of the national consciousness. She's like America's racist aunt; not evil, just painfully ignorant and around the holidays she usually opens her mouth and says something embarrassing. Her newest book Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas is like her others: a delightful read if you're able to disconnect the hate part of your brain and just focus on the imaginary world she creates. It's an amusing, Seussian world, featuring combinations of real and...

For over five years, a consistent media claim has been that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin hurt Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008 and that he would have fared better with anyone else on the ticket besides her. A recent study by political science professors at Bradley University debunks this claim concluding instead that Palin was a net plus for McCain including with independents and moderates. The first serious study on this matter was conducted by University of Central Florida political science professor Jonathan Knuckey and was published in Political Research Quarterly in April 2011: Using data from the...

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...

<p>Meghan McCain said she’s already defied the odds by not disappearing from the public stage after her father’s failed 2008 presidential campaign, and that part of the reason is some regard her as the new face of the Republican Party.</p>

"'Your No. 1 client is the government,' John J. Mack, Morgan Stanley's chairman and chief executive from 2005 to 2009, told current CEO James Gorman in a recent phone call. Mr. Gorman, who was visiting Washington that day, agreed." - Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2013. The five year anniversary of the ‘financial crisis' has predictably generated all manner of commentary about its presumed causes. What's most unfortunate five years later is that ‘financial' and ‘crisis' are still used together. It's unfortunate simply because despite what you read, the crisis was decidedly not financial, nor was it caused by a...

One big question raised by IRS political targeting is whether Obama officials or their bureaucratic allies unleashed the power of the administrative state for partisan ends. Now evidence is emerging that officials at another agency, the Federal Election Commission, used their enforcement power as an anti-conservative sword. The House Ways and Means Committee this week released emails showing that, in 2008 and 2009, the FEC's general counsel staff sought tax information about conservative political groups from Lois Lerner of the IRS. Ms. Lerner is the IRS official who took the Fifth before Congress rather than tell her side of the...

In a wide-ranging interview with The New Republic published Tuesday, Sen John McCain (R-AZ) praised former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, his running mate in the 2008 presidential race, for "exciting" the GOP base in a way the senator couldn't achieve. Asked if it "bothered" him when people said his legacy was choosing Palin as his running mate in 2008, McCain said "no." "We were four points down when I chose her and three points up afterwards," he told the magazine. "She held her own and, some people said, won a debate with the vice president. She did everything I ever...

Full Title: Governor Palin: I’ll Be on Greta’s "On the Record" Tonight, Updated: ‘I Was Forbidden from Telling the Truth About Obama in 2008′Via Facebook: I’ll be on Greta’s "On the Record" tonight talking about Obama’s "phony scandals" claim. The Democrat Party’s leadership is obviously a lost cause, but take note that the GOP’s out of touch hierarchy is disappointingly not doing the job of calling Obama out and holding the media’s feet to fire, and consequently Obama gets away with claiming that these very serious government scandals are "phony." They have the mic, but they selfishly don’t use it...

Russia proposed to China that the two nations should sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 to force the US government to bail out the giant mortgage-finance companies, former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson has claimed. The allegation is in his memoir On the Brink in which he also suggests that Alistair Darling, the UK chancellor, blocked a rescue takeover of Lehman Brothers by Barclays Bank when he refused to support special treatment by UK regulators. “Russian officials had made a top-level approach to the Chinese, suggesting that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings...

So, how did Sarah Palin do on her big national debut last night...?

The White House insists President Obama is "outraged" by the "inappropriate" targeting and harassment of conservative groups. If true, it's a remarkable turnaround for a man who helped pioneer those tactics. On Aug. 21, 2008, the conservative American Issues Project ran an ad highlighting ties between candidate Obama and Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground. The Obama campaign and supporters were furious, and they pressured TV stations to pull the ad—a common-enough tactic in such ad spats. What came next was not common. Bob Bauer, general counsel for the campaign (and later general counsel for the White House), on...