Free Republic

My Dad often said: "Intrigue only begat intrigue". He was usually right. One conspiracy leads to another like a room full of mirrors reflecting themselves. Still, here goes. I have been watching Youtube collections of stuff from the talking heads and interviews today. I am cementing my earlier view... this IRS abuse is a massive smoke screen to hide something even bigger from attention. A lose the battle win the war tactic. Sure, this IRS scandal is a big deal and it is just the kind of attack on liberty all the right can get behind. Just the kind of...

It is hard to admit that one of the most cartoonish and self-aggrandizing figures in recent political memory actually could have been a contender at one time, but I am now willing to cede that point. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin actually could have been, at the very least, a respected political figure over the course of the last decade, but she has squandered any capital or potential she may have had by being a rudderless buffoon. The only reason this comes to light again is because Palin is polling ahead of two other candidates for a potential open Senate...

The other day, I was in the middle of doing research online when I stumbled across a Planned Parenthood ad. Planned Parenthood, over the years, has run some pretty shocking ad campaigns. Without a doubt, this one is the worst I’ve ever seen: This ad proves that insanity can indeed reach new heights. Planned Parenthood recently coined its “Care. No matter what.” slogan, around the same time the abortion giant decided that claiming to be “pro-choice” wasn’t the best way to win people to their side. Now, it’s insane to claim to “care” when your work is actually killing. (Insanity...

Of course a day like today — replete with the incoming details of administrative scandals fraught with authoritative overreach and corruption — could, for this guy, only end with one possible explanation for all of the complaints about President Obama’s governing prowess. When in doubt, revert to that ol’ progressive standby: Racism and white supremacy, obviously. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) "The problem is there are people in this country, maybe ten percent, I don’t know what the number, maybe twenty percent on a bad day, who want this president to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he...

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Multiple scandals have coalesced and hit the White House like a tsunami, putting Obama on the defensive amid a rash of serious charges including prior gun running, terror spin, spying on journalists and targeting conservative political groups. The White House (Carney) said it is not involved. Jay Carney during his regular briefing, "I am certainly not aware... We haven't seen it, we don't have access... Obama will decide." Steven Miller, acting IRS commissioner, "the agency was simply trying to manage applications for tax-exempt status... in no way due to any political or partisan motivation."

https://wassermanschultz.house.gov/htbin/formproc.pl?/wassermanschultz/email-me.txt&display=/wassermanschultz/contact/email-me-thankyou.shtml&nobase

The idea of impeaching Obama is industrial-strength insane. Republicans will probably try anyway, predicts Michael Tomasky. When the histories of this administration are written, I hope fervently that last Friday, May 10, does not figure prominently in them. But I fear that it might: the double-barrel revelations that the White House hasn’t quite been telling the whole story on Benghazi and that some mid-level IRS people targeted some Tea Party groups for scrutiny are guaranteed to ramp up the crazy. But to what extent? I fear it could be considerable, and the people in the White House damn well better...

Fear peddlers want elected representatives to initiate investigations and draft bills to address fake threats. Once upon a time, the most outlandish fantasies of fringe political fabulists were confined to a narrow spectrum on the AM radio dial. They concocted delusional narratives that ranged from murderous first ladies to galactic alliances with Martians. It was an entertaining world of fiction and a guilty pleasure for some, even as the true believers were convinced of the frightening fate that was unfolding. Today, however, the boundaries between rational political discourse and raving madness have been erased. The extremist peddlers of nightmare scenarios...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20130509/NJOPINION0202/305090006/

The National Rifle Association just wrapped up its annual meeting in Houston back in the Lone Star State. Some highlights: Texas Governor Rick Perry fired a big gun for funsies, a bleeding Obama zombie target was banned, and Sarah Palin recieved a standing ovation for her speech. This is the same speech in which she represented her 4.5 million “brothers and sisters” of the NRA by wagging her finger at the “lamestream media,” a “poodle-skirted cheerleader for the president” and giving her audience the wink and nudge of the elbow with names in her family like “Trigg” and “Remington.” Palin’s...

I have a piece going up later today over at CNN.com on the NRA convention, but there's something I raise there that I want to elaborate on. If you look at the list of Republican politicians who spoke to the assembled firearm enthusiasts, it wasn't exactly the A-team. Last year Mitt Romney showed up, but this year they had failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum, failed presidential candidate Rick Perry, universally disliked freshman senator Ted Cruz, currently unpopular Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and former half-term governor and current punch line Sarah Palin. Every one of them would like to be president...

Sarah Palin showed up at the NRA convention the other day, which was merely perfect. She belonged there as much as anybody in the hall just because from the start, from the time John McCain picked her out of the chorus, Palin has most appealed to mean, dumb, angry crowds exactly like the one she found in Houston. Palin should have worn a prom dress, but on this occasion wore a T-shirt that read “Women Hunt.” In her case, that means hunting for attention. Or relevance. She wants to be a populist and a patriot, the way the phonies cheering...

An officer responding to a call about a suspicious person at a 7-Eleven on Wednesday about 12:30 a.m. arrived to find a man holding a phone at the store. After telling the man, later identified as Daylen E. Holloman, to sit on the curb, the officer began to question him, according to an arrest affidavit from the Daytona Beach Police Department. The officer asked the man whether he had called the cops. Holloman allegedly answered "I don't know" when the cop asked him more questions such as "How can I help you?" and "What is going on?" and "Where are...

How stupid does the Senate background-check vote look now, I ask the pundits and others who thought it was dumb politics for Obama and the Democrats to push for a vote that they obviously knew they were going to lose. I’d say not very stupid at all. The nosedive taken in the polls by a number of senators who voted against the bill, most of them in red states, makes public sentiment here crystal clear. And now, for the first time since arguably right after the Reagan assassination attempt—a damn long time, in other words—legislators in Washington are feeling political...

The pro-amnesty lobbyists who helped craft the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill included within the bill two "slush funds" amounting to $150 million that may be supplemented with additional taxpayer dollars for years to come. Slush fund grantees are "public or private, non-profit organizations" described in the bill as including "a community, faith-based, or other immigrant-serving organization whose staff has demonstrated qualifications, experience, and expertise in providing quality services to immigrants, refugees, persons granted asylum, or persons applying for such statuses." In other words, the grantees would include many of the groups involved in writing and promoting the amnesty. [IRS] Section 2537...

It’s not all that surprising that the suspected Boston bombers, particularly younger brother Dzhokhar, have already inspired passionate crushes in girls. (There is a Tumblr called Free Jahar, as his would-be girlfriends call him, anchored by a photo of him kicking back in his Timberlands.) As Rachel Monroe wrote last year in her excellent essay for the Awl, “The Killer Crush,” extravagant murderers like James Holmes (the Aurora, Colo., shooter) and the Columbine boys tend to bring on alarming fevers of admiration from teen-agers, and maybe some of them grow up to be the women who marry the guys in...

In a new chilling revelation, it has been now revealed that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted (with tweeter handle @J_tsar) the following the day of the blasts: ‘Lol those people are cooked.’ The tweet since deleted once again shows the duplicitous nature of the 19 year old who many friends have had a hard time believing was involved in the bombing whilst his tweeter feed on the other hand has shown a capacity for the venomous and sadistic. Less than three hours the attack, Dzhokhar also took to Twitter to post the following message at 5:05pm that Monday...

With the Supreme Court set to start hearing arguments on the constitutionality of bans on gay marriage next week, polls across the nation are showing that for the first time in history, more Americans support same-sex marriage than oppose it. The reasons for this dramatic shift in the American point of view are many. For starters, President Barack Obama flipped the script when he announced his support of gay marriage in an election year. A gutsy move and one that made it okay to be pro-gay. Since then, people have been coming out of the woodwork to support gay marriage,...

When it comes to sex, Germans are not known for being squeamish. Yet a sex-education book that has been circulating in Berlin elementary schools has some parents up in arms. The book, “Where Do You Come From?” („Wo kommst du her?‟), which is recommended for ages 5 and up, shows a couple, Lisa and Lars, in various stages of arousal. … The text also veers toward the explicit. …

Ordinarily, I’d thank you for writing. But truth is, I am not grateful you wrote; your note last week was one of the more troubling things I have read. I do not blame you for leaving it unsigned. “We stand together,” I had written. “We stand defiant. And we stand with Boston.” You disagreed. “Your wrong pal we do not STAND TOGETHER.OH MY GOD we need a CIVIL WAR.The American people against the LIBERAL DEMACRAT SCUM that we have let allow SCUMBAGS like those that would BLOW UP people in BROAD DAYLIGHT to be here ... WE NEED A CIVIL...

A Walmart employee in upstate New York allegedly made very productive use of his time during overnight shifts in the store. Unfortunately, he did so by advertising his services online as a prostitute, then meeting clients in a store bathroom during his breaks. Great efficient use of time, but also kind of illegal.According to state police, the store bosses became suspicious and alerted authorities about the 22-year-old’s possible side hustle. Police had an undercover officer set up an appointment and offer to exchange sex for money. The man was arrested and charged with prostitution, and has been suspended while Walmart...

My children have long been urging me to give them in a short story my experience in the Battle of Gettysburg. I was then a girl of thirteen, living on the Seminary Ridge which today is known to every child who studies the history of the Civil War. I shall never forget the June afternoon when I stood on the Seminary steps with my parents and other persons to see a Confederate host marching in the Chambersburg Pike. It seemed as if Pandemonium had broken loose. A more ragged and unkempt set of men would be hard to find. Many...

We’re often told that our liberties are under assault. The right warns that our Big Government nanny state is plotting to seize our guns and our Big Gulps, while strangling our economic freedom with taxes and regulations. The left rails against our Big Government security state—the drone warfare, indefinite detention and electronic surveillance that make the war on terror sound like an Orwellian nightmare. The National Rifle Association had just finished bellowing about background checks violating our Second Amendment rights when the American Civil Liberties Union started shrieking about the FBI violating the Boston bombing suspect’s Miranda rights. America was...

The online activism organization Change.org currently hosts a petition to President Obama asking him to guarantee “wrongfully accused” Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a “fair trial,” citing a lack of evidence to condemn Tsarnaev. Change.org, which receives funding from groups including Amnesty International and the Humane Society, features a petition entitled, “Petition to guarantee Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the right to a fair trial,” created by Anita Temisheva of Chicago, Illinois. The petition has already netted more than 2,000 signatures. “We believe that within the chaos caused by the Boston Marathon explosion, two young men were wrongfully accused of something they...

You might have thought that the mangled bodies of 20 dead children would have been enough to overcome the crazed obsessions of the gun lobby. You might have believed that the courage and exhortations of a former congresswoman — her career cut short and her life forever changed by a would-be assassin’s bullet — would have pushed Congress to do the right thing. You might have reasoned that polls showing overwhelming public support for a sensible gun control measure would have persuaded politicians to take a modest step toward preventing more massacres. You would have been wrong. The U.S. Senate...

Sounds like right-wing, anti-Obama rhetoric, doesn't it? In California, it is dangerously close to true. Thursday, the state legislature approved $24 million to expedite gun confiscation. They are coming for your guns! And if they show up at your door in California, without a search warrant, you still don't have much of a choice but to hand over the weapon. Does this sound like a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution? This is a very slippery slope. The text of the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,...

Filmmaker Michael Moore has now sounded off on the ongoing situation surrounding suspected Boston Marathon bombers and Muslim terrorists Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan. Naturally, he blames America:(TWEET-AT-LINK)

Governor Andrew Cuomo and his gun-grabbing allies are making some major moves in their efforts to violate the privacy of residents in New York, reportedly issuing subpoenas demanding psychiatrists turn over patient records to the State in the name of controlling firearms. There have already been reports of New York gun owners having their firearms confiscated in the State due to a provision buried in the State’s recently implemented draconian gun legislation, which permits denying 2nd Amendment rights to those who have been prescribed psychotropic drugs. A mental health provision in New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) act...

“How can something have 90% support and yet not happen?,” asked President Obama at his remarks today on the Senate’s inability to cross the 60-vote line to get universal background legislation passed. Many have already begun to lash out at the Democratic senators that refused to support the legislation and the usual liberal critique of Republicans is underway, but the real reason why the gun reform failed today is what no one wants to say. The gun legislation failed because Americans who wanted it did nothing, and if history is any indicator, will do nothing in the future on this...

What a beautiful racket the left has going. Those of us who dare not be liberal are literally paying, through our tax dollars, for NPR to smear us like this: (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Partial transcript: "The thinking, as we have been reporting, is that this is a domestic, extremist attack and officials are leaning that way largely because of the timing of the attack. April is a big month for anti-government and right-wing individuals. There's the Columbine anniversary, there's Hitler's birthday, there's the Oklahoma City bombing, the assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco."(continued)

As the investigation continues in Boston on the marathon bombings this week it is important to remember this— Odds Are the Boston Marathon bomber is either an Islamic terrorist or left-wing extremist. Since 9-11 committed Islamists have carried out more than 20,712 successful deadly terror attacks. The Religion of Peace has been tracking these deadly Islamist attacks. But, if the terrorist is not an Islamist, he is most likely a left-wing extremist. The FBI arrested 5 #Occupy Cleveland protesters for plotting to blow up the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Bridge in May. The terrorists repeatedly tried to blow up the...

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said today that the Senate immigration bill is even worse than feared, since it legalizes illegals' relatives and even those previously deported: "It's hard to believe, but the Senate immigration bill is worse than we thought. Despite assurances, the border is not secured before almost everyone in the country illegally is given amnesty. The bill guarantees there will be a rush across the border to take advantage of massive amnesty."

As the capital of the Confederate States of America, Richmond, Va. could hardly be described as a supporter of Abraham Lincoln; its grand Monument Avenue is chock-full of oversized statues of heroes of the Confederacy, including Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Jeb Stuart. But now, nearly 150 years after the Civil War ended, Lincoln – or at least the movie version of him – is Richmond’s new hero...To coincide with the movie’s recent release on DVD, Virginia Tourism Corporation has created several self-guided tours that follow Lincoln around the state...

Following what she describes as a “flood of vitriolic responses” from conservatives outraged at the implication that the state should have more responsibility for child-rearing than individual parents and families, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry took to the pages of MSNBC.com to mock concerns about the network promo’s implications. She said that conservatives’ fears may be illogically rooted in the fact that America has, in the past, seized and “re-educated” the children of African slaves and Native Americans. “One thing is for sure: I have no intention of apologizing for saying that our children, all of our children, are part of...

Girl Guides have thrown their support behind the “No More Page 3” campaign, in a bid to stop the perpetuation of the idea that “women are objects” in a family newspaper. Girlguiding UK has signed the campaign to try and force the hand of Rupert Murdoch, who hinted a few weeks ago that he is considering ending the publication of photographs of topless models on page 3 of The Sun—which he owns, as chief executive of News Corporation. …

Would somebody inform the unofficial leaders of the Republican Party — Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and also the agitators on Fox Cable and others — the election is over? The Republicans’ No. 1 goal of making Barack Obama a one-term president failed. It’s time to make their No. 1 goal improving the lives of the American citizens and world peace. Pat Robertson could use whatever influence he has to encourage Republicans to compromise instead of his constant criticism of the president. American jobs should be a priority, not politics. Sarah Palin and others are always poking fun...

The state of equality and justice in America is shameful-especially since the election of President Barack Obama. Unlike many of my friends who think America is going to hell in a hand basket, and have given up thinking things will get better for those who've been marginalized for so long, I still have hope for a better day. When Barack Obama was running for President of the United States, a close friend told me, "Mark my word. When Senator Obama is elected, some people will go absolutely crazy, and after he's re-elected, they will go mad!" His rationale was that...

Via Politico’s Dylan Byers, who’s apparently been rendered speechless by this spectacle. The idea here, I take it, was to show that supporting gay marriage is so obvious that even a five-year-old can arrive at the right conclusion if left to reason her way through it. That’s not how it comes off; you get the sense that this segment would have run for 20 minutes, with Krystal Ball nudging all the way, if that’s how long it would have taken to arrive at the favored result. I hope they keep this up and expand it to other hot-button issues. I’d...

Mayors Against Illegal Guns continues its push for commonsense gun law reforms today with a new ad and research highlighting the disturbing link between violence against women and guns. The ad features Elvin Daniel, a gun owner and NRA member whose sister Zina Daniel was murdered in the Brookfield, Wisconsin, spa shooting in October 2012. Several days after she obtained a restraining order against her violent estranged husband – which made him a prohibited purchaser – he bought a semiautomatic handgun from a private online seller without a background check, which he used the next day to murder her and...

Conservative,’” William F. Buckley said, “is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’” That was the main impulse behind the efforts in 11 states to amend their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage in 2004. Gay weddings had begun in Massachusetts in May, and conservative voters were determined to stop them in their tracks. But it wasn’t the only impulse behind getting gay marriage on the ballots. Karl Rove, the “architect” of George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, figured gay marriage would bring evangelicals to the polls. Nowhere was this as important as Ohio, the most important swing state that...

The effort to normalize child sex continues: "there is a growing conviction, notably in Canada, that paedophilia should probably be classified as a distinct sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Two eminent researchers testified to that effect to a Canadian parliamentary commission last year, and the Harvard Mental Health Letter of July 2010 stated baldly that paedophilia “is a sexual orientation” and therefore “unlikely to change”. Child protection agencies and many who work with sex offenders dislike this. “Broadly speaking, in the world of people who work with sex offenders here, [paedophilia] is learned behaviour,” says Donald Findlater, director of...

GLENDALE, Ariz. — There may be very few times that six elected officials surround themselves with pounds of marijuana and invite in photographers, television stations and newspaper reporters. But the cameras were rolling as six Nevada state legislators huddled Friday around a lit display case at Arizona Organix. They peered at an array of green cannabis buds with names like Gucci, Blue Elephant, Purple Kush and Platinum Dream.

Four years ago today, on St. Patrick’s Day 2009, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) filed a criminal complaint of treasonagainst Barack Hussein Obama after he allowed U.S. Army soldiers to deploy into Samson, AL to perform law enforcement duties in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which the Army Inspector General confirmed several months later after completing its investigation. The Post & Email can report that a group of Obama supporters at “The Fogbow” includes an attorney working in the White House by his own admission. Trolls who have reportedly been paid to post Obama-supportive and distracting comments register at...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is at the center of the latest "birther" conspiracy. But he's not the first to face this line of questioning. A handful of politicians have been targeted in the last few years with the same accusation -- that they are not fit for the Presidency because they do not meet the constitutionally-mandated eligibility requirement of being a "natural-born" U.S. citizen. Confusion around who qualifies as a "natural born" citizen has contributed to the debate, as the Constitution does not explicitly define the phrase. Some incorrectly presume it only includes people born within the boundaries of the...

Legislators and gun control advocates united Sunday afternoon to discuss and rally around state and federal gun control legislation being considered in the Illinois General Assembly and U.S. Congress. Progress Illinois was there for the unifying, and at points emotional, event. Steve Young (pictured), a member of St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Evanston, held up a photo yesterday of his late son Andrew in front of the nearly 500 people packed inside of Chicago Sinai Congregation’s sanctuary. Andrew was shot and killed in 1996 when he was 19 years old. “He was killed by a teenager with a gun originally...

Two twin sister pensioners have decided to retire as prostitutes after half a century in the sex trade, having slept with 355,000 men between them. Louise and Martine Fokkens, both 70, say they are finding it a ‘painful’ struggle to go on working in Amsterdam’s notorious ‘red light zone’. They claim to be the oldest prostitutes in the Dutch city and last year starred in a documentary film named Meet The Fokkens. Mother-of-four Louise admitted, though, that her arthritis means some positions are now ‘too painful’ – while mother-of-three Martine complained about a drop in custom. Only one elderly man...

A woman was attacked and killed by a lion while having sex with her boyfriend in South Africa. According to My Zimbabwe, the woman, identified as Sharia Mawera, was in a secluded spot in the bush near the northern town of Kariba when the lion pounced. It is believed her boyfriend managed to escape, fleeing when the lion lunged forward. "Unfortunately the woman was mauled to death by the lion, but her boyfriend managed to escape naked," a source told the news website. The source said the man was a fisherman and his girlfriend worked at the local market. The...

The European Parliament is preparing to vote on a proposal to ban all forms of pornography. A report detailing the ban was prepared by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality. Embedded under Article 17 of the report is a clause that, if eventually made into law, would effectively ban pornography across all types of media, including the Internet, in Europe. Freedom of speech campaigners have criticized the move, claiming that the clause has been quietly inserted into the legislation. They also described the inclusion of the article as an “unacceptable political invasion of people’s bedrooms”. …

With just 27 words in 1791, America's Second Amendment paved a blood-drenched trail for legal access to modern-day weapons used in videogame-like fashion to gun-down fellow citizens, military style. Now, after all the mass carnage of 222 years of "Freedom to Bear Arms" – with a murder-count so high that only God can accurately tally – there's a sudden political epiphany for urgent "gun control" to ostensibly curb the curse of innocent slayings. Given however an estimated 300 million legal guns, compounded by ever-rising volumes of illegal guns that already saturate society uncontrollably, the notion of "gun control" equates somewhat...

I’m not saying all Republicans are racist. I’m saying that as a party, ever since Goldwater and Nixon concocted the benighted, openly racist “Southern Strategy” in the ’60s, the Republican Party has profited from overt and covert racism. The Southern Strategy was designed to capitalize on Southern white resentment of court-enforced busing to end school desegregation, of the 1964 Civil Rights Act's prohibition of discrimination in interstate commerce, of enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to prevent historically racist Southern counties and states from discriminating against blacks who sought to exercise their right to vote where once they'd been...