Free Republic

President Barack Obama met with over a dozen prominent columnists and magazine writers Wednesday afternoon before calling for an escalation of the war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in a primetime address that same night. The group, which met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in an off-the-record session, included New York Times columnists David Brooks, Tom Friedman and Frank Bruni and editorial writer Carol Giacomo; The Washington Post's David Ignatius, Eugene Robinson and Ruth Marcus; The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins and George Packer; The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Beinart; The New Republic's Julia Ioffe; Columbia...

TribLIVE | Opinion/The Review A misdialed number suggests a criminal conspiracy in the IRS scandal By The Tribune-Review Friday, Sept. 12, 2014, 8:57 p.m. Had Brian Fallon, Attorney General Eric Holder's communications director, just said, “Sorry, wrong number,” and hung up a week ago Friday, his apparent attempt to coordinate a document leak with staff for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, wouldn't be the IRS targeting scandal's latest twist. But Mr. Fallon didn't realize he had actually called staff for the committee's Republican majority before saying he wanted to leak documents...

MSNBC’S Andrea Mitchell claimed President Barack Obama’s new cabal of foreign policy advisers “looks like a review of our guest list” on the liberal cable news network, with the AP’s Julie Pace explaining that the White House is trying to bring the commentators “into the fold.” Mitchell spoke Tuesday with Pace about Obama’s Monday night dinner with the DC foreign policy intelligentsia, presumably designed to help craft a strategy to contain an aggressive Russia and defeat ISIS in the Middle East. But as the MSNBC host ticked off the guests — including former Clinton aide Sandy Berger, longtime Democratic adviser...

A senior communications aide to Attorney General Eric Holder seemingly called House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa's staff by accident and asked for their help spinning new revelations about the IRS scandal, Issa said in a September 8 letter to Holder. The aide, Brian Fallon, is a former senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a well-known personality on Capitol Hill. The letter describes Fallon as “audibly shaken” when he realizes his request to leak documents to help get ahead of news stories about them was mistakenly made to the very office he was seeking to undermine. Issa believes...

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. ... “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda [?], and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant said. ... “Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority. ... The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use...

Recently, 130 environmentalist groups gathered in an UN-backed event in Venezuela to gather more civilian support to combat climate change, reports the Daily Caller. A number of them signed the Margarita Declaration which calls for an end to the “hegemonic capitalist system” as the only solution to human-caused climate change. The environmentalists argued that measures such as carbon capture and trade and conservation efforts are not sufficient to prevent the environmental disasters they are predicting; instead, they demanded a radical system change. Although they did not spell out what their ideal social system would be, we can assume they want...

Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of President Obama's national debut at the Democratic National Convention. He was tasked with giving the keynote address at the 2004 event. He told a New York Times reporter the week before the convention, ''It came as a surprise that I'd be selected for such a privileged position. As my wife reminds me, I better not screw it up.''

ALBANY, NY – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday he would form a new third party in the state centered around his late-term abortion expansion program. The formation of the Women’s Equality Party, which is designed to further the Democrats' national “war on women” campaign theme, was announced at a gala on Thursday.

The TV reporter was caught up in a discussion about the rarity of openly gay CEOs when he said, ‘I think Tim Cook is open about the fact he’s gay.’ Simon Hobbs is likely wishing he could press rewind. The CNBC co-anchor spoke too soon during a live segment of "Squawk on the Street" Friday when he accidentally outed Apple CEO Tim Cook. New York Times columnist and CNBC contributor James B. Stewart spoke about his recent column dealing with the "tortured life" former BP chief John Browne led as a closeted gay CEO. "I just found it very, very...

“It’s good to be King,” said Mel Brooks as Louis XVI in the director/actor’s “History of the World, Part 1.” No question Brooks was onto something as the Internal Revenue Service–one of the principle organs of Barack Hussein Obama’s 2012, Reelection Campaign—just paid $50,000 dollars to settle a lawsuit brought against the Service by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). Of course the settlement was paid with taxpayer dollars. During the 2012 presidential campaign, NOM accused the IRS of leaking information concerning the group’s contributors to Joe Solomese, head of the far-left Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The Huffington Post then...

The IRS will pay the National Organization for Marriage $50,000 to settle a lawsuit over claims the agency improperly disclosed confidential tax information, according to a consent judgment released this week. The lawsuit stemmed from information an IRS worker sent to an individual who identified himself as a member of the media who requested it in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign, which he then sent to the pro-gay rights group Human Rights Campaign. The Huffington Post then ran a story noting a political action committee linked to Mitt Romney had been a donor to NOM. John Eastman, NOM’s...

When CNN rolled out the red carpet for Hillary Clinton’s town-hall interview with Christiane Amanpour, they did more than just build a set and invite an audience to participate. According to the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, who attended the event, CNN warmed up the crowd for Hillary and even coached them on how to cheer and make noise to demonstrate enthusiasm for the former Secretary of State. Note the whoops at the beginning of the broadcast, and near the end of this clip when Amanpour asks about her decision on running for President — cheers that were part of the...

Jamie Estrada, 41, of Los Lunas, N.M., pleaded guilty Monday to the unlawful interception of electronic communications and false statement charges arising out of the unlawful interception of wire communications intended for others, including New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and members of her staff. Estrada briefly served as campaign manager in 2009, as Martinez was beginning her bid for governor. The Republican won election in 2010 and took office in January 2011. “Each and every one of us has a right and an expectation of privacy in our electronic communications, including our emails, and those who violate the law by...

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...

Still wondering why Lois Lerner took the Fifth or if there is indeed a “smidgen” of corruption in the IRS targeting scandal? It now appears that the IRS was not only engaged in an illegal witch hunt of conservatives applying for tax-exempt status, but that it was actively pushing criminal investigation of already approved groups. The latest revelations from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s investigation of the IRS are that Lois Lerner sent the Obama Administration’s FBI a 1.1 million document file of then-current 501(c)(4) organizations. This file, given to the FBI just weeks before the 2010 elections,...

The Internal Revenue Service may have been caught violating federal tax law: In October 2010, the agency sent a database on 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups containing confidential taxpayer information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to documents obtained by a House panel. The information was transmitted in advance of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s meeting the same month with Justice Department officials about the possibility of using campaign-finance laws to prosecute certain non-profit groups. E-mails between Lerner and Richard Pilger, the director of the Justice Department’s election crimes branch, obtained through a subpoena to Attorney General Eric Holder, show Lerner asking about the format in which...

A pro-family group in Florida wants to know why Disney doesn't hold its homosexual pride event after hours – the same as an annual Christian music concert. Why does Disney continue to allow the annual observance of 'Gay Day' at the Magic Kingdom? Families are being warned to consider staying away from the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, especially Saturday, when Orlando's annual "Gay Days" includes a visit to the Disney theme park by thousands of homosexuals. David Caton of the Florida Family Association tells OneNewsNow that homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people will be in the park for "Gay Day."...

White House Administration official apologizes for tweets suggesting Bergdahl platoon 'psychopaths' Published June 05, 2014 FoxNews.com WASHINGTON – An Obama administration official apologized Thursday after suggesting on Twitter that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon might have been filled with “psychopaths” – in an apparent attempt to defend Bergdahl against criticism from his fellow soldiers. Brandon Friedman, deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, sent out a series of tweets Wednesday night questioning those soldiers trying to “smear” Bergdahl for abandoning his post in 2009. The first said: “Here's the thing about Bergdahl and the...

Despite President Obama’s claim Thursday that he’s “never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington,” the administration and its fans are struggling to tamp down widespread criticism of the deal that traded one soldier — who fellow infantrymen say deserted them — with five top Taliban prisoners held at the U.S. prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It’s a fair bet, given President Obama’s triumphant announcement in the Rose Garden featuring Bowe Bergdahl’s parents, that those in his inner circle severely miscalculated how such a presentation would go over with Americans. As they scramble to respond, they’ve made...