Free Republic

The good news is that the Left has noticed what a scam college accreditation is. The bad news: They want the federal government to take it over. "Accreditors are self-regulating membership organizations," Ben Miller, David Bergeron and Carmel Martin write in a report released this month by the Center for American Progress (CAP). "This means that agencies' revenue comes almost entirely from dues and fees paid by the institutions they oversee." "This includes annual sustaining fees, as well as payments for specific functions such as an initial review to judge if an institution meets standards for approval or special visits...

WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the Clintons and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank.

The post-coup crackdown in Turkey has been been swift and brutal, concerning observers that the country may be pushed closer to authoritarianism and away from democracy and the rule of law. Some 6,000 people, mostly soldiers, have been detained on charges of high treason, and more than 2,700 judges and prosecutors were purged Sunday for alleged links to the coup plotters. Authorities issued arrest warrants for another 188 high court judges, and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said the ruling AKP party will consider bringing back the death penalty for perpetrators. On Monday, the government said 30 governors and 8,000...

New emails and documents uncover ties between the Clintons and an Islamic imam from Turkey who has been in self-exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. According to The Daily Caller, several pieces of evidence tie the Clintons to Fethullah Gulen, against whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan has launched a crackdown.

While Americans are suffering in the Obama economy, President Barack Obama is seeking to increase the money available to him after he leaves the White House. The Congressional Research Service reports that for requests for both 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, Obama's proposed federal budget would expand funding through the Former Presidents Act. In 2017 alone, Obama wants nearly an 18% hike in expenditures… $588,000. That means $3.865,000 in appropriations will be available to spend on former Presidents! The 2016 proposed budget includes an additional $25,000 increase. The Former Presidents Act, enacted in 1958, provides living former presidents with a...

Despite a population of just over 1 million people and just 3 electoral votes, Montana continues to be a hot bed of spending for billionaire’s and their political non-profit groups. (cut, jump) Liberal Swiss billionaire and Center for American Progress board member Hansjorg Wyss has received much attention in recent weeks after The Daily Caller revealed that he had paid $1.5 million to a Colorado woman to settle sex abuse allegations. Money from Wyss’ charitable foundation has proven quite important in Montana’s environmental movement.

Oops! As a byproduct of an internal dispute at the far left think tank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), it has been revealed that Palestinian advisers were brought into the Ferguson, Missouri demonstrations to advise the rioters. Exactly who paid for them to apparently fly halfway around the world (or otherwise build "strong relationships") and stick their noses into an American political dispute is unclear, though it has been bandied about that George Soros has played a major role in funding the #BlackLivesMatter movement that is ginning up black anger, and presumably 2016 election turnout for Hillary. The...

Billionaire investor George Soros has confirmed he wants to bring down Europe's borders, following the accusation made last week by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Last week, Mr Orban accused Mr Soros – who was born in Hungary – of deliberately encouraging the migrant crisis. "This invasion is driven, on the one hand, by people smugglers, and on the other by those (human rights) activists who support everything that weakens the nation-state," Mr Orban said. "This Western mindset and this activist network is perhaps best represented by George Soros." Mr Soros has now issued an email statement to Bloomberg Business,...

The freshly appointed chairman of a federal investigation into the Benghazi massacre is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. And to add insult to injury, at press time Tuesday evening the chairman of this new State Department panel, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, was poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.” The news comes on the heels of a new report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that found...

Maybe we shouldn’t expect anything much from a president who gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod filled with his own speeches, and who gave former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of American movies on DVDs that didn’t work in the U.K. But the way this White House is choosing to “welcome” Pope Francis is appalling. When Francis arrives at the White House on Wednesday for a welcome reception, his greeters will include “Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop who’s now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think-tank with ties to the...

The United States is one of the greatest nations in the world. But compared to our peers, we’re one of the worst when it comes to gun violence. In America, you can be shot at an elementary school. You can be murdered at a church or movie theatre. You can even be executed on live TV — and yet there’s no real expectation of gun reform. Gun-related violence and death is a real public health problem in America, researchers say. And these three charts illustrate why. 1. Gun-related deaths in America wildly outpace our peer nations

The State Department (which Hillary Clinton used to run and where she still holds significant influence) has been very clear about one thing. There is no relationship between donations to the Clinton Foundation and actions taken by the Secretary of State during her tenure there. Period. Full stop. End of discussion. Perish the thought. You’re all just a bunch of Clinton haters who are trying to stop the ongoing charity work of these wonderful people. And yet for some strange reason we keep seeing stories like this. Hillary hadn’t even finished unpacking her things in her new office at...

A prominent left-wing group helped formulate Environmental Protection Agency talking points designed to sell a controversial regulatory scheme to skeptical journalists, internal emails show. The emails show Joseph Goffman, the senior counsel of EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, circulating talking points from Center for American Progress climate strategy director Daniel Weiss among EPA colleagues attempting to sell the agency's controversial power plant regulations to a New York Times reporter. Weiss emailed Goffman in September 2013 with a series of suggestions for convincing the Times' Matt Wald of the commercial viability of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, a vital...

President Barack Obama is nominating a major fundraiser for his presidential campaign to be the next U.S. ambassador to Sweden. The White House says Azita Raji is Obama’s pick for the job. She’s a former investment banker who served as national vice-chair of finance for Obama’s 2012 campaign. She helped raise more than $500,000 for Obama’s campaign as a “bundler” in 2012. …

Judging by liberal reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on Tuesday, the Israeli Prime minister scored a direct hit at Obama's Arab-first policy. At least amongst the Arab-first crowd that Obama supports. "Given how much buildup the speech received," writes Matthew Duss in Slate, "and how much of America’s time has been wasted with the controversy surrounding it—it’s simply amazing that Netanyahu didn’t use the chance to offer any new or interesting ideas."And that's the best Duss has to offer in the Slate piece titled Netanyahu Just Did Obama a Big Favor.He never really gets to the big favor...

Hillary Rodham Clinton holds double-digit leads over potential Republican challengers Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney as the likely Democratic presidential candidate moves closer to entering the race, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds. Although Clinton, Bush and Romney are all longtime politicians and members of political dynasties, registered voters are less likely to count that familiarity against Clinton. That is a good sign for Clinton, a failed 2008 presidential candidate and the focus of Republican criticism that her time has come and gone. Clinton’s potential to make history as the first female U.S. president makes little difference to most...

Obama lackey John Podesta who founded the far left Center for American Progress is about as transparent as Obama. The Center of American Progress has been hiding it’s donor lists for month. Finally, today they were shamed into releasing a partial list of donors. Problem is Podesta’s Center for American Progress isn’t accounting for over $5 million in donations from ‘anonymous sources.’ Podesta will likely be a big part of Hillary Clinton’s run next year, if the old granny does in fact run. Wonder if she’ll get questions about her buddy Podesta’s missing $5 million. Funny too that you don’t...

The Center for American Progress, the preeminent liberal think tank in Washington, is poised to exert outsized influence over the 2016 president race and — should Hillary Clinton win it — the policies and agenda of the 45th President of the United States. CAP founder John Podesta is set to run Clinton’s presidential campaign, and current CAP president Neera Tanden is a longtime Clinton confidante and adviser. CAP recently rolled out a major blueprint for combat wage stagnation and inequality that many view as a template for a Clinton economic agenda, and there are surely more major policy statements to...

"...The most recent person to distance herself from the embattled MIT economist is Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress, who wrote an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Thursday claiming that “Mr. Gruber was not, as many claim, the architect of the health-care law.”......... [snip of her denial] [picking up with the facts].....According to Tanden, Gruber provided essential budgetary information that the Congressional Budget Office needed to score the bill. “The most important arbiter of everything was the C.B.O.,” Tanden told The New York Times for a profile of Gruber. “We knew the numbers he...