Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Failing to overhaul the nation's immigration system, currently a backburner issue for Congress and President Barack Obama, could play a pivotal role in key mid-term election races in November, according to a new study on Latino voting patterns. The report by America's Voice, which supports comprehensive new immigration policies, says revising the laws is the defining issue for Latino voters. The report says that progress - or the lack thereof - in revamping immigration laws and regulations could affect as many as 40 congressional races in areas with sizeable Latino populations, including the re-election bids of Senate Majority...

Since the election of our first ex-community organizer as President, organizing for progressive change has declined. The reasons range from sharply reduced funding for organizers, to complacency after Democrats’ sweeping 2008 victories, to labor unions being forced to focus on protecting current workers from contract givebacks rather than organizing new members. The net result is that grassroots organizing – which prioritizes face-to-face contacts with the unconverted, empowers people rather than simply asking them to fulfill a task, and builds local coalitions for pressure campaigns targeting politicians – is being replaced by less effective e-mail mobilizations and other short-cuts. As the...

Protest at Acorn San Diego offices San Diego,Calif - About 20 neo-Nazis held a rainy protest for two hours today outside an ACORN office, under the eye of at least 20 law officers, but no arrests were made, police said. Protesters carried U.S. and Nazi flags, said National City police Sgt. Mike Harlan. The movement describes itself on its Web site as the largest white nationalist group in the nation. There was no formal counter-protest, but four hecklers appeared for a short time. One man used a bullhorn for about five minutes, and later, three other three men stood in...

Craig Becker Uses Rules for Radicals For #1 SEIU-Obama priority, the ends justify the means President Obama’s radical union-backed nominee to the National Labor Relations Board lied to a Senate confirmation panel earlier this week about his ties to the embattled leftist advocacy group ACORN. The nominee is Craig Becker, who, at least until recently, was longtime associate general counsel to SEIU. Becker is considered radical in part because he believes that “employers should have no role in the unionization process,” according to Brian Johnson, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom. During a hearing Tuesday by the Senate...

The sooner the whole truth about Obama and his radical enablers is generally known, the better. Law students are told not to assume. It's good advice for everyone, especially when it comes to President Obama, about whom much is assumed and much is not generally known. Support for Obama's radical policies, like Obamacare, has plunged, but Obama's personal popularity remains high, thanks to the liberal media establishment's lack of scrutiny of, and willingness to turn a blind eye or even cover up or lie for, Obama. As I reported on October 22, 2008: ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief "had been working...

Since my earlier blogpost on the results of the February 2 Illinois primary, I’ve had the chance to crunch some more numbers, with help from the websites of the election boards of Chicago, suburban Cook County and the other 101 counties of Illinois. Here are the results in tabular form, with the number of votes cast for senator in the Republican and Democratic primaries. I’ve listed separately the results in Chicago, suburban Cook County, the Collar Counties and Downstate. The Collar Counties are DuPage, Kane (including the city of Aurora), Kendall, Lake and Will; returns from McHenry were unavailable and...

Please join Phil Berg, Jeff Kuhner and others at 12pm Eastern to hear updates and events surrounding the Constitutional issues regarding Barry Soetoro a/k/a Barack H. Obama serving as the President of the United States. Kuhner pre-show trailerhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7n_kSVRpBQ

Al Franken has become the voice of the progressive left in the Senate. Yup, Stuart Smiley himself. Franken this week led the Democrat charge against the Obama Administration. Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats. Sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room, although he certainly seems to be the leader.

The scandal-ridden Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, needs money. And more than ever it's counting on the federal government to deliver it. A December 11 ruling by a federal judge in New York overturning a funding ban in the current budget may well reopen the floodgates. Ironically, it's the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that stands in the way. On December 16, the department filed a memorandum opposing the New Orleans-based nationwide radical nonprofit "anti-poverty" network's claim that it had been unjustly singled out for a funding cutoff for Fiscal Year 2010. In other words, the...

all hell has broken loose because O'Keefe and his faux telephone repairmen were up to something tricky on federal property. Now if they claimed to be members of a protest movement and were disorderly in a senator's office, Liberals would remain tranquil. In fact. Liberals did remain tranquil when this happened at Senator Lieberman's office last November. Or if they claimed to be environmentalists they could disrupt a member of Congress's office with no Liberal outrage. This happened in 1997 in Congressman Frank Riggs's office. Or for that matter they might claim to be associates of filmmaker Michael Moore and...

Tonight we'll talk about the bizarre push inside the Democrat Party to stifle free speech and eviscerate the 1st Amendment... plus New Terror Threat- Explosive Boob Jobs... Shooting the Messenger- The Left vs. James O'Keefe... Live at 9PM edt

WASHINGTON — In the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling that ended most restrictions on corporate funding in elections, a congressional panel was asked Wednesday to enact greater limits on the influence of foreign companies in U.S. elections. At the hearing of a House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee, experts also sought congressional intervention to restrict contributions from out-of-state corporations. The 5-4 decision last month in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has sparked debate about the prospect of a possible surge in corporate spending on election campaigns. How to sort out who owns or controls a multinational corporation —...

Newser) – Moderate Mark Kirk has won Illinois’ Republican Senate primary, blowing away two conservative opponents backed by tea-party contingents. The congressman has 56% of the vote with more than 82% of precincts reporting—giving him a 37% lead over Patrick Hughes. Analysts predicted that a clear Kirk victory would take much of the steam out of the tea-party movement. On the Democratic side, the Chicago Tribune reports, state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias looks close to clinching the nomination, setting up a fight with Kirk for the Senate seat vacated by President Obama.

Dear Mr. President, We are still a free country with a constitution and our God-given unalienable individual rights. You can't just order people to purchase your health insurance plan. The congress does not have the constitutional authority to enact your socialist health care plan anyway. The federal government has no authority to involve itself in health care issues. And your plan is most definitely socialism whether you care to admit it or not. And it's unconstitutional. But I do love your methodology. No matter what the problem, all we have to do is throw more federal money at it and...

A new poll of self-identified Republicans released Tuesday shows a large slice of the GOP believes President Barack Obama is a “socialist” who was not born in this country, should be impeached, wants the terrorists to win and only won the 2008 election because ACORN “stole” it for him. The survey of 2003 self-identified Republicans, who typically trend much more conservative than voters who “lean” Republican, was conducted by Research 2000 for the liberal blog Daily Kos. According to the poll, 63 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a socialist; 39 percent think Obama should be impeached; 24 percent said...

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told CNSNews.com that there are “a number” of federal programs in existence for “no good reason” that the United States could “do without” to help trim the federal budget, which, for 2010, is estimated to have a $1.4 trillion deficit. In an interview about the deficit and federal spending at the U.S. Capitol last week, CNSNews.com asked Hatch, “Is there a federal agency that you think should be closed?” Hatch said, “Give me a chance. I’ll show you a number of them that I think we could do without.” “I’m not saying that there...

ACORN and other left-wing advocacy groups could be eligible for up to $3.99 billion in federal funding included in the $3.83 trillion fiscal 2011 budget blueprint that President Obama unveiled yesterday. The $3.99 billion comes from a congressional slush fund known as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) $48.5 billion fiscal 2011 budget. CDBG grants, which are awarded to states and localities, pass indirectly to ACORN.

What fun is it to be President if you can't take care of your friends. Matthew Vadum has uncovered a special $3.83 billion slush fund the President's new budget sent to congress yesterday. The money would come from the the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) $48.5 billion fiscal 2011 budget. CDBG grants, which are awarded to states and localities, then pass to groups such as ACORN. How is more funding of ACORN possible when Congress passed a ban on funding the group and its affiliates just last...

And why has a second false article not been corrected or retracted? Many reporters and news outlets have been scrambling lately to avoid a lawsuit by activist-videographer James O’Keefe. They’re issuing corrections or retractions to their published false claims that he was charged by the FBI with “bugging” and/or “wiretapping” during his recent service call to Senator Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana office. But even as the press backtracks, the slanderous statements are being widely (and wildly) repeated. Some sources are correcting themselves voluntarily, and some after on-air haranguing and corporate reprimands. These include The Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The top federal prosecutor for New Orleans has removed himself from the case of four conservative activists arrested last week while trying to capture hidden camera footage in a senator's office, the Department of Justice said Monday. A Justice Department news release said Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, recused himself from the case a day after the Jan. 25 arrests in Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans. Letten's top lieutenant, assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann, has taken over. The news release didn't say why Letten removed himself, and his...

James O'Keefe, accused of trying to tamper with the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, was "framed" by the media and the U.S. attorney's office, Andrew Breitbart, publisher of BigGovernment.com, told Fox News Monday. The same day the man who first published James O'Keefe's explosive videos exposing wrongdoing at community organizer ACORN came to his defense Monday, claiming the conservative filmmaker "sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney" while the prosecutor made his case to the media, the U.S. attorney involved stepped down. O'Keefe, accused of trying to tamper with the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary...

A new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, conducted among 2,000 self-identified Republican respondents nationwide, gives an interesting peek into the psyche of the minority party's base. Kos has not yet released the full numbers, but here's some early info on the poll that he has posted on his Twitter account: • 39% of Republicans want President Obama to be impeached. • 63% think Obama is a socialist. • Only 42% believe Obama was born in the United States. • 21% think ACORN stole the 2008 election -- that is, that Obama didn't actually win it, and isn't legitimately the president, with...

James O'Keefe, accused of trying to tamper with the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, was "framed" by the media and the U.S. attorney's office, Andrew Breitbart, publisher of BigGovernment.com, told Fox News Monday. The same day the man who first published James O'Keefe's explosive videos exposing wrongdoing at community organizer ACORN came to his defense Monday, claiming the conservative filmmaker "sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney" while the prosecutor made his case to the media, the U.S. attorney involved stepped down. O'Keefe, accused of trying to tamper with the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary...

These men were journalists trying to get a story. They didn't even touch a phone as far as I can learn. They were undercover reporters and TV operators. But that doesn't matter. Their real crime was disturbing the peace and quiet of the nation's liberal establishment and embarrassing ACORN. For this, these young overeager guerrilla journalists are charged with a federal crime. ("First Amendment? What's that?") Meanwhile, no charges against those thugs with the clubs at the polling place. Does this give you the feeling that maybe the prison orange for Mr. O'Keefe and his pals is a mark of...

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What goes around, comes around. Four months after James O'Keefe became a conservative movement hero with heavily doctored videos surreptitiously shot in several ACORN offices around the nation, the twentysomething prankster faces up to 10 years in prison for allegedly organizing an effort to tamper with phone equipment in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in New Orleans. According to an FBI affidavit, O'Keefe, along with Joseph Basel, Robert Flanagan and Stan Dai, posed as phone repairmen and told a series of lies to muck around with the phone equipment in the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu and the central switching...

Progressives, scourge of society, bane of all free people, and they are back in a big, big way. The progressive movement did not die with Roosevelt and Wilson, it just went underground, lurking in the shadows and weaving its way into the fabric of America. The Democratic party has been hijacked by the progressives and they are leading them to the brink of disaster, just like they did so long ago.

Because Hannah Giles (the femme fatale of the ACORN sting) is my daughter, as soon as the news of her ACORN companion James O’Keefe’s arrest in the Big Easy hit the fan, our phone lines lit up like a Christmas Tree with inquiries from friends and family, talk show hosts, bloggers and the Associated Press wanting to know what the heck was going on. Matter of fact, my cell phone vibrated so much that when I got sick of answering it I put it to work on my shoulder to massage a knot the size of a monkey’s fist that...

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Nappertaliano announced that “our efforts against terror have taken a significant step forward with the arrest of James O’Keefe and his accomplices in Louisiana this past week.” O’Keefe is the journalist who gained notoriety last September for exposing corruption in the offices of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). He and three associates were arrested in the Louisiana office of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La) and accused of attempting to “bug” the Senator’s phone lines. “Based on his past activities, it is clear that Mr. O’Keefe represents a real threat to the government...

After Scott Brown’s upset senate victory in Massachusetts, everyone -- left and right -- is left wondering how big an omen it is for November. In the Tuesday Republican primary for the Illinois governor’s race, Adam Andrzejewski may provide the answer. The importance of the ACORN story last summer proved that conservatives have begun to break the mainstream media’s stranglehold on political news. The visual confirmation -- distributed virally by alternate media willing to expose it, provided proof of ACORN’s deep-seated corruption. Bringing the story out invigorated both mainstream conservatives and Tea Party activists. Scott Brown’s victory has had the...

The government has now confirmed what has always been clear: No one tried to wiretap or bug Senator Landrieu’s office. Nor did we try to cut or shut down her phone lines. Reports to this effect over the past 48 hours are inaccurate and false. As an investigative journalist, my goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions, as I did last year when our investigations revealed the massive corruption and fraud perpetrated by ACORN. For decades, investigative journalists have used a variety of tactics to try to dig out and reveal...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Four conservative activists accused of trying to tamper with a senator’s phones were just trying to record embarrassing undercover video of her staff ignoring phone calls from constituents angry that she supported health care reform, one of their attorneys said Thurday. The four, including activist James O’Keefe, known for posing as a pimp and using a hidden camera to target the community-organizing group ACORN, were arrested Monday after targeting Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in a New Orleans federal building. Attorney J. Garrison Jordan denied they were trying to disable or wiretap the phones in Landrieu’s...

Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time. At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe. My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study. So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized...

When the ACORN scandal broke, the New York Times dragged its feet for six days before issuing a story on the devastating footage from conservative activist and guerilla film-maker James O'Keefe, who caught on video the left-wing housing group giving advice to a "prostitute" and "pimp" on how to shelter illegal income from taxes. But following Tuesday afternoon reports of the Monday arrest of O'Keefe for attempting to tamper with the phones of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, the Times wasted no time issuing a story for Wednesday's print edition.

What is going on? I thought Kirk - if it is his name - was not legally allowed to vote after last week elections??? 2 VERY BAD votes today with still a 60 majority in the senate...WHERE IS SCOTT BROWN and plus, where is the outrage of the republicans...again??? The speed these people pass laws to destroy America is astounding!!! HELLO...ANYONE OUT THERE TO SAVE US???

STAND UP AMERICA, GET OUT OF THE FETAL POSITION AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD - MASSACHUSETTS DID! Welcome to the GLENN BECK television thread...Glenn will comment on last nite's SOTU! Everyone is welcome to participate in the thread! Join us won't you!

Holy Cow...Breitbart and Shuster from MSNBC just went to war with each other live on TV for nearly 7 mins from ACORN to the O'Keefe scandal to Obama and Holder. Unreal TV. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJSquVg-5vY

"At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector. InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States. InfraGard Chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories." Among the groups reporting to the DOJ, DHS, FEMA and FBI are: ACORN; The ADL; Thousands of Community Organizations; Americorps; Citizen Corps; Militias; Your neighbor; Your family. Obama's private army. N'est-ce pas? This is not a joke - Laura came...

A law enforcement official says the four men arrested for attempting to tamper with the phones in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls.

Poll in need of serious freeping. Acorn winning 67-33. Poll is halfway down in middle.

The Washington Post reports that James O’Keefe stands accused of a plot to “bug� Mary Landrieu’s office: When I first read a news story about this yesterday, it sounded to me like O’Keefe and company were being accused of an attempt to wiretap or bug Landrieu’s phones. Indeed, that’s the way I characterized the Government’s claim in my post based on a news story. But now I have had a chance to review the affidavit. And it doesn’t say that.The link to the affidavit is here. I challenge you to find me the language that accuses O’Keefe et al. of...

There's a negative media pile-on afoot. Led primarily by the New York Times, a variety of news organizations are attacking the National Tea Party Convention, scheduled to begin Feb. 4 in Nashville, Tenn., with Sarah Palin as the keynote speaker. The Times claims the event is a "profiteering" enterprise, suggesting that the convention violates the grass-roots nature of the "tea party" movement. "Fractiousness," territorial disputes and suspiscions have cast a shadow over the effort, the paper says.

**snip** MSNBC and other “news organizations” are even billing this developing story as “Watergate”. What do Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow know? And when did they know it? I’m sure they would like to believe O’Keefe is stupid enough to try to “wiretap” a sitting U.S. senator in broad daylight during office hours, while recording the entire sequence of events on his cell phone camera. And they’d like you to believe it, too. But there is absolutely no allegation in the criminal complaint that “wiretapping” or “bugging” is any part of this case, just the charge that O’Keefe and the...

The conservative young filmmaker who tarnished the reputation of a liberal activist group with his undercover videos has been arrested for allegedly trying to bug Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans. Federal investigators allege that James O'Keefe was among a group of four men who created a ruse to enter Landrieu's downtown office for the supposed purpose of repairing the lawmaker's telephones. O'Keefe and another man, Stan Dai, are accused of aiding the plot, while two others, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, are accused of pretending to be telephone company employees, according to federal court records (PDF) unsealed...

snipThe first I heard of it was an e-mail early this afternoon from the Times-Picayune asking for my comment on it. I have not heard from anyone. I’ve issued a statement that I could read to you that in essence says I had no prior knowledge of any of this stuff, and I know nothing, quite frankly about this, and I’m going to wait until I hear from someone with information here. There’s obviously an attempt to use this for political purposes right now, and I see that Media Matters is referring to this group of gentlemen who were arrested...

Serious question: was Keith Olbermann this upset over Umar Mutallab's attempt to kill everyone aboard NWA 253? Olbermann predictably led this evening's Countdown with the James O'Keefe story—the arrest in connection with the apparent attempted interference with Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone system of the young man who exposed ACORN. Faith-based readers should actually be encouraged, because Olbermann appears to have gotten religion. Keith is clearly praying—fervently—that this will turn out to be, as the Countdown graphic suggests, "Watergate Jr.," with Republican officials revealed to be behind O'Keefe's latest venture. Read more:

The boss is skeptical, as am I. Remember when I said earlier that their defense would likely be that they never really intended to tap any phones but were simply trying to show how easy it would be to do so? Well, er… An official close to the investigation said one of the four was arrested with a listening device in a car blocks from the senator’s offices. He spoke on condition of anonymity because that information was not included in official arresting documents… ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said the arrest calls O’Keefe’s credibility into question, and used the opportunity...

HowardKurtz O'Reilly didn't mention O'Keefe arrest. Hannity is leading with WH talking points for SOTU. What about the "pimp" that Fox made famous? O'Keefe has jumped the shark

The FBI, alleging a plot to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in downtown New Orleans, arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility. FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes alleges that O'Keefe aided and abetted two others, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who dressed up as employees of a telephone company and attempted to interfere with the office's telephone system. A fourth person, Stan Dai, was accused of aiding and abetting Basel and Flanagan. All four were charged with entering fedral property under false pretenses...

Developing ... James O'Keefe, of ACORN sting video fame, and three other suspects have been arrested by the FBI for interfering with LA Senator Landrieu's phone system on federal property.