Free Republic

In a pregame Super Bowl interview, President Barack Obama told Fox News's Bill O'Reilly that there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" involved in the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups. Obama's bold statement stands in contrast to established facts. Even the left-leaning journalism group ProPublica has admitted that the IRS office that harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the 2012 election cycle gave ProPublica nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt statuses were pending. Moreover, ProPublica noted that the documents it received were "not supposed to be made public" but that "no unapproved...

An unnamed Muslim woman from Austria was told to marry the man that allegedly raped her after she reported the crime, which took place during a visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The woman, 29, was told that her albeit unwilling participation still constituted extra-marital sex, which is illegal in the Gulf country. She was also set to be charged with alcohol consumption, also illegal, before the Austrian Foreign Ministry intervened and ensured her safe passage home. The attack reportedly took place after a party in a hotel in Dubai. The attacker was described as a Yemeni man who...

President Barack Obama twice blamed Fox News Channel for misinforming the public on issues that have bedeviled his presidency in the past year during a pre-Super Bowl interview with the network's Bill O'Reilly. The two sat down in the White House on Sunday for a live pregame interview that started about 4:35 p.m. and aired for less than 10 minutes. O'Reilly first noted that Obama's detractors believe he did not initially say the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead was terrorism because it happened in the heat of...

IMMIGRATION: America has had the opportunity to grow and thrive because we have attracted and welcomed the most talented and the hardest working people to our shores. The U.S. Chamber has collaborated with a variety of odd bedfellows including faith organizations, law enforcement, and ethnic groups to build a movement for commonsense immigration reform that strengthens border security, expands the number of visas for high- and lesser-skilled workers, makes improvements to the federal employment verification system, and provides an earned lawful status for the undocumented with no future bar to citizenship. The door to the American dream must always remain...

Prince Charles has called people who deny human-made climate change a "headless chicken brigade" who are ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence. The heir to the British throne, a dedicated environmentalist, accused "powerful groups of deniers" of mounting "a barrage of sheer intimidation" against opponents. He made the comments at a Buckingham Palace awards ceremony on Thursday. Charles said it was "baffling ... that in our modern world we have such blind trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us about everything — until, that is, it comes to climate science." He praised finalists for the Prince...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) thinks that the House GOP leadership’s renewed push this week to grant amnesty to illegal aliens would destroy the Republican Party’s chances at retaking the Senate in 2014. Cruz questioned how establishment Republicans unilaterally caving to Democrats on everything from the farm bill to the budget to the debt ceiling and more could think amnesty is a good idea at this time. "Right now, Republican leadership in both chambers is aggressively urging members to stand down on virtually every front: on the continuing resolution, on the budget, on the farm bill, on the debt ceiling,” Cruz...

One of the significant political arguments made against the House’s taking up a big series of immigration bills this year has been that the debate over these bills would divide the Republican party and the Right heading into the 2014 elections. A victory for the president’s immigration agenda would dispirit many in the conservative base while also damaging Republican efforts with the working class. But, even if conservatives are able to stop a big-government anti-integration and anti-opportunity immigration bill, the months of in-fighting will have taken their toll on party unity and grassroots energy. The past 24 hours give a...

In a wide-ranging interview with the New Yorker, President Obama characteristically saw fit to cast aspersions on those who disagree with him. Obama told David Remnick: There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who really just dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President. Now it’s true that Obama went on to say that there are many voters, both black and white, who give him the benefit of the doubt on account of his race. What this indicates is a man who sees everything in terms of race. Or put another way, Obama views the world...

First Lady Michelle Obama says Jane Fonda is one of her role models, and that she admires her political savviness. During an interview with People Magazine, Obama listed "Hanoi Jane," as one of the people she would like to look and live like when she's 70 or 80 years old. "There’s Jane Fonda, a beautiful, engaged, politically savvy, sharp woman," Obama said. The comment is likely to enrage Vietnam War veterans who still remember how Fonda, now 76, went to North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery. Fonda denounced U.S. military leaders as "war criminals"...

John Cornyn and many other Republican incumbents face significant primary challenges. They may have gotten away with symbolic conservatism for years, but today voters are looking for positive change in he Republican Party and for a more authentic and consistent conservatism, as exemplified by Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in the Senate. It is not that John Cornyn is not conservative. He is just not the right kind of conservative for the post-Bush Republican Party. There was a time when it was enough to be pro-life and pro-gun. That standard has fallen by the wayside for something much...

New York's Governor Cuomo really stepped in it this weekend when discussing his views on the state of the GOP: "Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves," he said. "Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that's who they are and they're the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that's not who New Yorkers are." Cuomo can walk this statement back all he wants, but the fact is, when liberals speak off the cuff and...

Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor of Texas, has admitted that a number of key details in her public personal narrative do not match up with the reality of the facts. The Texas state senator who rose to national fame for her successful 13-hour filibuster against new abortion restrictions, acknowledged to The Dallas Morning News that there are some chronological errors and incomplete details in what she and her advisers have said about her life. "My language should be tighter," she told the paper. "I'm learning about using broader, looser language. I need to be more focused on the...

On Sunday, The New Yorker released an interview with President Barack Obama in which the president stated that his approval ratings had been suppressed due to racism. “There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president,” Obama stated. “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president.” Obama’s current approval rating is down to 39 percent according to Gallup; his approval...

<p>While 2013 was a year of Second Amendment advocates on defense, 2014 is lining up to be a year of gaining ground on gun rights.</p> <p>President Obama continues to issue his dictates. Michael R. Bloomberg is still throwing around millions of dollars. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is just keeping a finger in the dike on Capitol Hill until the midterms.But the American people are ready to get back to strengthening their rights to keep and bear arms.</p>

Talk about words more costly than gold. The giant federal budget bill that Congress passed late Thursday will cost taxpayers nearly $3 million per word, or if you want to really think big, almost $700 million per page. The bill authorizes $1.1 trillion in spending. It is 1,582 pages long. An Internet word counting program said it has 370,445 words, numbers and symbols. So simple math comes up with $2.9 million per word average and $695 million per page average, though different parts of the budget package spend more than others sections. By comparison, there are only 4,543 words in...

The Census Bureau’s holiday treat is its release of annual state-population estimates, to be digested slowly in the new year. The headline from this year’s release is that population growth from July 2012 to July 2013 was 0.72 percent, lower than in the two preceding years and the lowest since the Great Depression 1930s. This reflects continuing low, below-replacement-rate birth rates and lower immigration than in 1982–2007. Net immigration from Mexico evidently continues to be zero. The nation’s economy may be growing again, but Americans — and potential Americans — are not acting like it. There’s a parallel here with...

Here’s NBC News explaining why the media of course thinks bridge lane closings in New Jersey are a thousand times more interesting than four dead Americans in Benghazi, and the continued unraveling of the Administration’s endless lies about it: As NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “Nightly News” last night, “The Senate Intelligence Committee has categorically blamed the State Department for ignoring multiple warnings and failing to provide adequate security.” And here’s the New York Times headline: “Benghazi Attack Called Avoidable in Senate Report.” But there are some significant differences between the two stories as far as political implications go for...

Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire appeared to gasp and convulse for roughly 10 minutes before he finally died Thursday during his execution by lethal injection using a new combination of drugs, reporters who witnessed it said. He was convicted in 1994 of the rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart, who was seven months pregnant. Her relatives were at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville to witness his death, according to tweets from television reporter Sheila Gray. McGuire's "children and daughter-in-law were crying and visibly upset," Gray tweeted. Killer executed in Ohio A Dayton Daily News reporter who also watched the...

The news that the demographic mix of Obamacare enrollees is not yet where the law’s proponents had hoped appears to have only reinforced the certainty in some quarters that the law’s epic collapse is underway. This, even though there are still two and a half months to go in the open enrollment period, and there are good reasons not to reach any broad conclusions just yet about the law’s long-term prospects. However, in one sense it’s a positive for there to be as much certainty as possible among Republicans about the law’s inevitable doom. Politico reports this morning that leading...

Congressional negotiators released the details of a massive $1.1 trillion spending bill that would fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year and end the lingering threat of another government shutdown. So, what's in it? We quickly sifted through the legislation, consulted supporting documents from Democratic and Republican aides, and called out some of the more notable and controversial elements below. (If you want a detailed report on each of the 12 pieces of the broader spending bill, it's all here.) ABORTION The bill once again bans the use of federal funding to perform most abortions, bans federal...