Free Republic

Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst and Bush-era NSA whistleblower, claimed Wednesday that the intelligence community has ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats. He also made another stunning allegation. He says the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama back in 2004. “They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and...

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel found itself a friend in major American newspaper USA Today recently, when a press release about its efforts to have Alicia Keys cancel her upcoming show in Israel appeared almost verbatim in an article on the newspaper’s website. The American Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg first tweeted about the disturbing similarities Thursday, a day after the article appeared. “@USATODAY ran a BDS press release as a story. Here’s the newspaper piece Here’s the release” he wrote.

A Tel Aviv-based civil rights group warned Australian supporters Thursday of a proposed boycott against Israel that their activities were racist and in violation of Australian federal anti-discrimination laws. Recently faculty and students at Sydney University called for the severing of links with Israeli institutions. In letters sent to Associate Professor Jake Lynch, Professor Stuart Rees and others, Shurat HaDin – the Israel Law Center – threatened to take legal action if they did not immediately discontinue their boycott campaign.

SodaStream is an Israeli company which makes a really cool and really popular product, essentially a make your own soda at home device. I plan on getting one. Its U.S. division is SodaStreamUSA.This video shows the SodaStream story of building bridges between Jews and Arabs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl85AL1l0H0Nonetheless, SodaStream has been the subject of a vicious boycott by the anti-Israel BDS movement, that grouping of Islamist, anti-Israel leftists and academics and other fringe players like Code Pink, which seeks to delegitimize Israel. The latest iteration, as you know, was the pressure campaign which succeeded in convincing Stephen Hawking to boycott an Israeli conference.SodaStream...

For starters, to set back human progress. You would think the Left would love a country that has universal health care, prosperous trade unions, and same sex marriage. All of these things can be found in Israel. Yet where Israel is concerned, none of these count with the Left. -------------------------- Well, if not for Israeli science and technology, Stephen Hawking could not communicate with the world. As Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli attorney, stated, “His whole computer-based communications system runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should...

The academic boycott of Israel organized by the BDS movement claimed a big success when the Guardian ran an article yesterday, Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel. That report set off a furious response, since the academic boycott of Israel is anathema to almost all academics. In the U.S., only the disreputable actions of the Association of Asian American Studies, led by U. Mass-Boston Professor and Associate Provost Rajini Srikanth, have given any legitimacy to the boycott. The boycott, which singles out only Israel, attracts open and de facto anti-Semites and those in the leftist-Islamist coalition who seek Israel’s...

A British professor was caught red handed with Israeli products after calling for a boycott against Israel, according to a statement released by an International human rights organization. "Hawking's decision to join the boycott of Israel is quite hypocritical for an individual who prides himself on his own intellectual accomplishment. His whole computer-based communication system runs on a chip designed by Israel's Intel team. I suggest that if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet" – this according to Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin – Israel...

The Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) voted 11-9 to divest from companies affiliated with the IDF on Thursday, the Daily Californian reported. ASUC is made up of the elected representatives of the UC Berkeley student body. … SB 160, authored by Student Action Senator George Kadifa, calls the UC system a “complicit third party” in what is called Israel’s “illegal occupation and ensuing human rights abuses” and seeks the divestment of more than $14 million in ASUC and UC assets from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Cement Roadstone Holdings. According to the bill, these companies provide equipment, materials and...

Just wondering...

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said there was “zero” chance that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and then-Sen. Barack Obama would have supported giving President George W. Bush the power to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, as they propose giving the chief executive today. … “Do you think that Senator Reid or then-Senator Obama would have ever given to President George W. Bush the unlimited ability to raise the debt limit?” Boehner said. “They’re talking about doing it now,” a reporter replied. “I know they’re talking about doing it now,” Boehner said, jokingly. “Do you think there’s any chance...

Everyone knows we’re approaching a date that lives in infamy in American history – Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. But there’s another more recent date in American history that should live in infamy. It’s Dec. 16, 2008. That’s the date on which President George W. Bush admitted what he did with the bailouts of the major investment firms and banks that were “too big to fail.” Here’s what he said in that infamous admission: “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the...

Despite much evidence to the contrary, a recent Gallup poll indicates that Barack Obama's scam of "what I inherited from eight years of Bush" is still working -- with some 68 percent of Americans still believing that George W. Bush is primarily responsible for America's ever-exploding budget deficits, our painfully high and long-lasting rates of unemployment, and our incurably anemic rates of economic growth. But as the 35-year chart displayed below clearly demonstrates, this "inheritance" was not from the relatively healthy and steadily improving George Bush economy of 2004-06, but rather from the disastrous Pelosi-Reid congressional economy of 2007-08. It...

What do Middle East studies professors do when they're not in the classroom? Write books? Engage in research? Advance important scholarship? Conduct outreach to students? In the case of two anti-Israel activist professors—Mark LeVine, University of California, Irvine history professor, and Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies and director of the Middle East studies program at the University of San Francisco—plotting strategies for furthering the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is the unfortunate answer. In his latest Al-Jazeera op-ed, LeVine conducts an interview with Zunes on the all-important question, "Can the BDS Movement Go Global?"...

The administration of US President Barack Obama reacted sharply to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent comment that Obama had “thrown allies like Israel under the bus” regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that assistance “… provided to Israel by the United States has never been greater than it has been under President Obama. We have an extremely close relationship with Israel, which is appropriate given our unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” Barack Obama an erstwhile supporter of the Zionist enterprise? Such drivel may stick with Hollywood’s glitterati, but outside of Tinseltown, the...

Former President George W. Bush will not attend the Republican convention next month in Tampa, POLITICO has learned. “President Bush was grateful for the invitation to the Republican National Convention,” Bush spokesman Freddy Ford wrote in an e-mail. “He supports Governor Romney and wants him to succeed. President Bush is confident that Mitt Romney will be a great President. But he’s still enjoying his time off the political stage and respectfully declined the invitation to go to Tampa.” Asked if the former president had been invited to only attend or whether he was also asked to speak, Ford said the...

Vice President Joe Biden was in town this afternoon. Here's The Bee's pool report from the event: Vice President Joe Biden arrived before 3 p.m. - a bit earlier than expected - at a fundraiser at the Sutter Club, near the state Capitol in downtown Sacramento. Pool was ushered into the hall about 3:17 p.m., just in time to hear Gov. Jerry Brown at the podium ahead of Biden. Biden started speaking about three minutes later to a crowd of about 130 people. "Nothing has changed," Biden said of Brown, who was governor before from 1975 to 1983. Biden said...

Protesters will denounce torture, and the University of California’s continuing connection to torture, outside tomorrow's commencement ceremony at UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall). As in previous years’ graduation demonstrations, protesters including those costumed to represent prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other sites where the U.S. currently manages a regimen of illegal rendition, detention, and torture, will gather outside the commencement before and during the ceremony. They will call for an end to, and accountability for, this illegal program wherever it has been operating. Berkeley Law professor John Yoo is on the list of Bush Regime officials who they say...

It’s been nearly eight years since Dan Rather’s long career at CBS came to a close after he ran a story that could have derailed President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection. Instead, the story about Bush’s supposedly questionable National Guard service wound up giving the media a black eye after some of the documents used to in the report turned out to be fake. Nonetheless, Rather is still at it, making the case that he was in the right and that the only reason he was forced out at CBS was because of pressure from his corporate superiors. Rather made...

(CBS News) Vice President Joe Biden said Florida's "Stand Your Ground" gun laws will be a topic of debate in light of the controversy surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin. "It's important that people be put in a position where their Second Amendment rights are protected, but that they also don't, as a consequence of the laws, unintendedly put themselves in harm's way," Biden told anchor Bob Schieffer in an interview to air on "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from landlocked Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast, is a “no-brainer” that would create jobs and bolster the economy, former President George W. Bush said on Tuesday. The $7.6 billion Keystone XL line would generate private-sector employment and government revenue, he said at an American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers conference in San Diego. The U.S. government’s budget deficit is unsustainable and must be reduced by supporting industry, Bush said. “The clear goal ought to be how to get the private sector to grow,” said Bush, who spoke during a luncheon at...