Free Republic

Edward "Ed" Mezvinsky, born January 17, 1937. Then you'll probably say, "Who is Ed Mezvinsky?" Well, he is a former Democrat congressman who represented Iowa's 1st congressional district in the United States House of Representatives for two terms, from 1973 to 1977. He sat on the House Judiciary Committee that decided the fate of Richard Nixon. He was outspoken saying that Nixon was a crook and a disgrace to politics and the nation and should be impeached. He and the Clintons were friends and very politically intertwined for many years. Ed Mezvinsky had an affair with NBC News reporter Marjorie...

Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh philanthropist and reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, whose support for right-wing causes laid the foundations for America’s modern conservative movement and fueled the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, died on Friday. He was 82. Mr. Scaife’s death was reported by the The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a newspaper he owned. He had announced recently that he had cancer. Decades before David and Charles Koch bankrolled right-wing causes, Mr. Scaife and Joseph Coors, the beer magnate, were the leading financiers of the conservative crusade of the 1970s and ’80s, seeking to reverse the liberal traditions...

A few days ago, the Free Beacon published an old interview with Hillary Clinton from the 1980s, in which she described pro bono work she did as a court-appointed attorney for man accused of raping a twelve-year-old girl. Clinton described how she attacked the prosecution’s handling of key evidence and won a light sentence on reduced charges for a man she knew was guilty — which is what defense attorneys do. However, her laughter and clear delight in retelling this story provided a discordant note to Hillary’s claim to be a defender of women, and some questioned whether Hillary...

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the suspect captured by U.S. special forces on Tuesday for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, reportedly said he was motivated in part by the anti-Islam online video made in America, according to the New York Times. "What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video," Times reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote in a story...

Obama Inc. keeps insisting that Qatar could be trusted when it was already concluded by the 9/11 Commission that the Islamist tyranny had ties to the attack on the United States. Since then Qatar has become so out of control in its backing of Jihadists that it has been disavowed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but that just made Obama embrace it even harder.Consider this. Obama is hugging a regime that the Saudis think is too extreme. That’s how bad things are. This latest revelation is no surprise at all. The New York Times had already let slip that...

Former first child (now with child) Chelsea Clinton had a $600,000 annual contract at NBC News, Politico reports, where she served as a "special correspondent" and was deemed to be mostly useless, if not "one of the most boring people of her era." That deal is over now, but Clinton is still being paid by the network (which has also hired Luke Russert, Meghan McCain, and Jenna Bush ... ) on a month-to-month basis, with complicating factors including her pregnancy and the good odds her mother is running for president. -snip- That work included little of note, either journalistically or...

The shabby practice of selling the Office of the President to the highest bidder has become common these days. But the Clintons have taken it to new heights, or depths. Not only has former President Bill Clinton amassed a fortune cashing in on his presidency, Hillary Clinton is cashing in as well, and she is not even president yet, but only president in waiting. And if you don't think there is money to be made in the modern, grubby game of American politics, just watch the Clintons. They represent the American Dream, or American Nightmare, on steroids. We have come...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was forced to explain — and recast — what she meant when she complained of her family’s financial struggles after leaving the White House. The subject was broached on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” when host Robin Roberts asked Mrs. Clinton if she could understand America’s head-scratching reaction to her claim that the Clintons were “dead broke” upon leaving the White House and needed to hit the lucative speaking circuit to build their bank accounts. “Yes I can, but everything in life has to be put into context,” she said, The Hill reported. “As I...

It's not just Madame Hillary, either. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Intelligence Committee, also turned on Obama - she said he was "totally not following the law!" - and was immediately attacked by Harry Reid this morning. Obama's gambit to distract America from the VA scandal is turning into the most devastating scandal of his crime-riddled presidency, its mega-tonnage amplified by the way it's causing Democrats to turn on each other. I think we'll see more of that over the next couple of days, as the implosion effect of this nuclear scandal blast sucks Obama's party into a blue-on-blue...

WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton is firing a preemptive blast at her fiercest critics on the Benghazi issue, accusing them of “flat-out deceit” in her forthcoming book. Moving to confront a lingering issue that is certain to draw attacks in any 2016 presidential contest, Clinton is training fire on Republican lawmakers who have launched a series of probes into the attacks that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. the late Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. “Many of these same people are a broken record about unanswered questions. But there is a difference between unanswered questions and unlistened to...

Whether Hillary Clinton likes it or not, her husband is one of the big reasons she is the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination if she runs in 2016. The charismatic, popular former president has talents as a surrogate and fundraiser that are unprecedented for a would-be presidential spouse. But recent days have also underscored that Bill Clinton can be as much a liability as an asset to his wife. During a speech last week to the Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit, the former president flashed some of the irascibility that gave his wife's campaign heartburn during her...

In the Atlantic, resident racial theorist Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the idea that opposition to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s was due to racial animus, just like today! Famously known as the “first black president,” Coates explains that racism caused people to turn against many of his policies, eventually leading to his impeachment. She claims that it was opposition to Clinton’s supposed policies to help blacks that many Americans opposed him– and that racism animated most American politics: White supremacy birthed American politics. In the 1990s, as today, the Democratic Party was perceived by many as the party of black...

I stand by every word of it. And it’s even worse today. Of the thousands of Clinton presidential records released to the public last week, one among them has received of the bulk of attention: a 332-page memo from 1995. The memo, which offers an in-depth analysis of the right-wing media, describes how conservative conspiracy theories about the Clintons passed from the fringes to the mainstream. (...) Let’s go all the way back to the summer of 1995. At the time, my then colleague (and current business partner) Mark Fabiani and I were working at the White House as lawyers...

[rest of title] who had 'regular' orgies at his Caribbean compound that the former president visited multiple times The former president was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, a financier who was arrested in 2008 for soliciting underage prostitutes A new lawsuit has revealed how Clinton took multiple trips to Epstein's private island where he 'kept young women as sex slaves' Clinton was also apparently friends with a woman who collected naked pictures of underage girls for Epstein to choose from He hasn't cut ties with that woman, however, and invited her to Chelsea's wedding Comes as friends now fear that if...

New Hillary Clinton memoir set for June 10 release AFP 1 hour ago Washington (AFP) - Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state who is contemplating a second run for the White House, will release a new memoir on June 10, her publisher announced Wednesday. A website owned by Simon & Schuster was allowing users to sign up and pre-order the book, which the publisher said would consist of "candid reflections about key moments during her time as secretary of state as well as her thoughts about how to navigate the challenges of the 21st century." The book, and...

A verified @Faith4Hillary Twitter account purporting to be the "Faith and Value Voters for Hillary Clinton 2016" appears to have purchased a large percentage of its 42.6k followers. The website Twitter Audit determined that more than half of the account's followers were obtained by "inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means," and the similar website StatusPeople calculated that only 18 percent of the account's followers were "good." Per StatusPeople, the rest of the followers were either fake accounts or accounts that are inactive. Additionally, the account has a comparatively small amount of interaction via retweets and favorites compared to the amount of...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in New York that the news media has a “double standard” against women in powerful position, and offered advice to younger women on how to overcome it. “There is a double standard,” Clinton said, according to Politico. “We have all experienced it.” Clinton was speaking on a panel at the “Women in the World” conference in New York Thursday, along with International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and moderated by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “The double standard is alive and well, and I think in many respects the media...

Among the thousands of pages of documents released by the Clinton Library recently, two had this tantalizing notation at the top: “Tape One, Side One.” That stamp appeared on transcripts of two conversations Bill Clinton had behind closed doors with aides inside the Oval Office. They included the president’s ribald remarks on race, frank talk about gays, and even how to prepare for Y2K. And they were captured on cassette tapes. All of which raises the question: Could there be “Clinton Tapes” — in the tradition of Nixon, Kennedy and LBJ? Might we hear Clinton in his famous Arkansas twang...

Bill Clinton uses a car-racing metaphor to explain the difference between rash and calm decision-making in politics. “The great drivers, when the cars get close, the turns get hairy, they calm down, and they see everything, and they act,” he says. “The ones who are fearful and can't concentrate and can't calm down, run into the wall.” Republican leaders should pay attention, because on the issue of whether Clinton’s sex life is relevant 14 years after he left office, they’re once again careening toward a wall. Sen. Rand Paul dredged up Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent impeachment,...