Free Republic

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post writes today about a trend at the White House—and throughout journalism—that threatens the quality and credibility of news-gathering: Public-relations "minders" are injecting themselves into our interviews with politicians, CEOs, and other policymakers. Minder madness joins the surge of "background briefings" and the decline of access to decision-makers as evidence that the White House—and other big instititutions—are manipulating the press. It's that, but it's also something worse: It's evidence that journalists are ceding control when they should be seizing it, accepting canned news rather than breaking it. Farhi writes, "Almost every officially sanctioned exchange between...

UN-backed event ends with unusual call from civil society groups to end capitalism A UN-backed conference in Venezuela has ended with a declaration to scrap carbon markets and reject the green economy. The Margarita Declaration was issued at the end of a four-day meeting of around 130 green activist groups, which the Venezuelan government hosted in order to raise the volume of civil society demands in UN discussions on climate change. “The structural causes of climate change are linked to the current capitalist hegemonic system,” the final declaration said. “To combat climate change it is necessary to change the system.”...

Russia could ask its richest citizens to help foot the bill for the annexation of Crimea by paying a "solidarity tax" proposed by a group of lawmakers. Deputies from the State Duma lower house of parliament, which is dominated by backers of President Vladimir Putin, have drawn up a draft law that would increase income tax for people earning more than more than 1 million roubles ($28,700) a month. It would affect less than 2 percent of the working population but the amounts could be huge for some individuals because the daft proposes they pay up to 30 percent of...

"I can't find anything. Prices are climbing daily," said Jesus Ramirez, a taxi driver who has spent a year trying to replace the 2008 Renault he purchased new for $7,441. He sold the car for over $30,000 five years later. With inflation at 60% a year, among the highest in the world, Venezuelans protect their earnings by buying cars, among other big-ticket items. Car parts needed to keep vehicles on the road have also become difficult to find. That has led thieves to steal parts such as batteries from parked cars. The owner of a Caracas car dealership who said...

We’ve never had a “community organizer” as our President before. And we are seeing the disastrous consequences of putting this community organizer at the head of the most powerful nation in the world. He has taken the apparatus of government and used it solely to organize, or as he calls it, fundamentally transform, the nation into a characterization of his ideal world.

It is no surprise that young people are enamored of communism. Their teachers have been indoctrinating them for years into the utopia of “social justice,” “environmental justice,” the “evil” middle class, and the spectacular equality for all as envisioned by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Communism is “cool” in the land where wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt is a hypocritical political statement made while enjoying capitalist amenities. But we expect them to mature eventually and give up the absurdity that communism has not succeeded because the wrong people were in charge.

As the sorry ramifications of situational morality play out on virtually a daily basis, many of us wonder where this all came from. With no hard edges on ANY concept these days, let alone good and evil, we observe the seeming paradox that with endless shades of gray comes not compromise, but more division! Of course, there is one thing on which we can all agree: money and debt. If I owed you $1000, you would consider yourself cheated unless I paid back every penny. There is a clear standard here. It’s the economy, stupid! Now throw into the mix...

The White House has picked the first female general to head the Air Force in the Pacific, which will make her the first non-pilot to command air power in such a large theater of operation. The Pentagon announced this week that Air ForceLt. Gen. Lori J. Robinson has been nominated for promotion to four-star general and as commander of Pacific Air Forces, the Air Force component of U.S. Pacific Command. It is a major combatant command whose air, ground and naval forces have broad responsibility for security in the Asia-Pacific region. Her nomination was sent to the Senate for confirmation.

Google has a penchant for honoring left wing ideologues, facilitators, criminals by including them in their Google Search icon, symbolic of the high regard they have for left wing, liberal scum. Today is no different. July 18, 1918 is the birthday of the man who became the symbol of the African National Congress, served in many positions within the organization.

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Advancements in technology have fueled this White House's obsession with controlling the message. Jay Carney is free. But not loose – at least so far. After resigning as the press secretary for President Obama on June 20, Carney gave insight into the Obama administration’s handling of classified documents, and responded to criticism that this administration has been the most Orwellian in recent history. “I know — because I covered them — that this was said of Clinton and Bush, and it will probably be said of the next White House,” said Carney in a recent New York Times Magazine interview....

(Reuters) - A Beijing court has ruled against Apple Inc by upholding the validity of a patent held by a Chinese company, clearing the way for the Chinese company to continue its own case against Apple for infringing intellectual property rights. Apple had taken Shanghai-based Zhizhen Internet Technology and China's State Intellectual Property Office to court to seek a ruling that Zhizhen's patent rights to a speech recognition technology were invalid. But the Beijing First Intermediate Court on Tuesday decided in Zhizhen's favour, the People's Daily state newspaper reported on Wednesday.

6 days before tax day liberal Christmas in 2013 Lois Lerner was emailing with one of her fellow cronies and warning them to be careful, “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails”.

The distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss was supposed to have said that the only two things in life really worth talking about are God and politics. That’s because at a most fundamental level they are inextricably intertwined. A skewed notion of the very nature of God and whether man acknowledges him—or tries to substitute himself for God—is at the crux of the turmoil, fanaticism, and destructiveness of the politics of our day and of much of the last hundred years.This is seen well in two books of the last decade. Robert R. Reilly’s The Closing of the Muslim Mind...

Big name Republicans giving their full-throated support to the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms don’t dwell too much on what they are. They don’t look good in close-up. Common Core State Standards “Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in math were developed to address the criticism that national math curriculums were ‘a mile wide and an inch deep,’” Sarah Perry writes in a Family Research Council (FRC) issue brief. “The drafters sought to develop more focus and coherence through the standards, with the belief that those students who can explain mathematical rules would have a better chance at succeeding in...

There was a time, before the baby-boom generation took over, when we took pride in the achievements of our builders, producers, and innovators. There was always great celebration when settler families got a phone, a tractor, a bitumen road, or electric power. An oil strike or a gold discovery made headlines, and people welcomed new businesses, new railways, and new inventions. Science and engineering were revered, and the wealth delivered by these human achievements enabled the builders and their children to live more rewarding lives, with more leisure, more time for culture and crusades, and greater interest in taking better...

Everyone believes in "standards" don't they? So what could possibly be wrong with "Common Core" (the US education system's "Common Core State Standards Initiative")? After all, is it not "a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English... created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live"?* Not according to Dr. Duke Pesta, professor of English at The University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, who joins us for an extended and detailed interview on the genesis, content and ideology of Common Core...

T he head of the Russian Orthodox Church has awarded Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov with an order for "glory and honor." Patriarch Kirill gave the order to Zyuganov in Moscow on June 27, one day after the longtime communist leader celebrated his 70th birthday. Kirill said Zyuganov -- who in 2010 called for the re-Stalinization of Russia and has called the Soviet Union "the most humane state in human history" -- deserves the award as "one of the most famous Russian politicians who has expressed interest in the welfare of the nation and the protection of traditional moral values."...

That National Public Radio has nice things to say about socialism shouldn’t be surprising. After all, “Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public,” explains NPR’s own website. “Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism…and eventually the loss of public radio stations.” NPR’s brand of journalism came under fire most recently when Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn sponsored a bill in 2011 to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. “Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds programming for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, has received...

A blackout cut power to much of Venezuela on Friday, snarling traffic in the capital Caracas and other major cities as authorities scrambled to restore electricity after the outage, which twice interrupted a presidential broadcast. Pedestrians streamed into the streets of Caracas as the blackout shuttered the underground metro trains and left frustrated drivers honking in the chaos without stoplights. The OPEC nation has suffered an increasing number of power outages in recent years, which critics have attributed to low electricity tariffs and limited state investment following the 2007 nationalization of the power sector. Critics call the power problems a...

Hospitals across the country are struggling to deal with a shortage of one of their essential medical supplies. Manufacturers are rationing saline — a product used all over the hospital to clean wounds, mix medications and treat dehydration. Now drug companies say they won’t be able to catch up with demand until next year. ...“The Most Expensive Drug Shortage in History” The burden ultimately falls on hospitals, clinics, and dialysis centers to come up with their own workarounds. And all that staff time adds up. Hospitals spend $216 million a year on the labor costs of managing drug shortages, according...

<p>RussianFrom the middle of May to early of June 2014 the RUSSIAN FEDERATION undertook two large command-staff exercises testing the realization of a local nuclear attack. According to military experts there were never such dense and extensive testing scenarios of nuclear war even in the SOVIET UNION.</p>

The man who convened the meeting that buried the Soviet Union in 1991 has warned that it is being restored in his native Belarus and across the post-Soviet space. Stanislav Shushkevich – the politician who hosted the 1991 summit at which Belarus, Ukraine and Russia signed the USSR into obsolescence and paved the way for independence – said a mixture of despotic leaders, KGB-revivalism and Putin’s Ukraine interference all remind him of the worst of the Soviet Union. “What we see now is the restoration of Soviet order, in Belarus most of all,” Shushkevich said in his study in the modest central Minsk...

Venezuela, a country that takes great pride in its looks, is dealing with an issue that has the country in a major tizzy – shortages in beauty products. That means women and men so accustomed to looking their best are now having to do without shampoo, cosmetics and, hold your breath, even deodorant. The cash-strapped government has been dealing with all sorts of scarcities – from staples like milk to medical supplies – because the country has put controls on the purchase of hard currency. And while certain shortages have been more critical – like diapers and coffins – Venezuelans...

Media urge China to 'not interfere' in Iraq Many families have fled the ongoing violence in the Iraqi city of Mosul Media advise China to not interfere in Iraq, while criticising the US for "creating a mess" in the Middle East. President Barack Obama says the US will send 300 military advisers to Iraq to help fight Islamist-led insurgents. Sunni radical group Isis has taken control of several Iraqi cities and towns in the past few days, report say. Mr Obama said the US was prepared for "targeted and precise military action, if and when" required, but added that US...

Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers voted Friday in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform that has alarmed Beijing and sets the stage for a possible showdown with the government, with mass protests aimed at shutting down the Chinese capitalist enclave’s financial district. Tensions are boiling over in Hong Kong, which came back under Chinese control in 1997, over how to choose the city’s next leader. Since the end of British colonial rule, Hong Kong’s leaders have been picked by an elite pro-Beijing committee. Beijing has pledged to allow Hong Kongers to choose their own chief executive starting in 2017....

Ex-Rep. Joe Walsh ‘kicked off the air’ over racist terms on radio Fri, 06/20/2014 - 3:37am Mitch Dudek According to posts on former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh’s Twitter account Thursday night, the conservative radio talk-show host was kicked off the air on WIND-AM (560) for using racial slurs while trying to have a discussion about racial slurs. In a series of tweets posted about 7 p.m., Walsh says: “Just got kicked off the air until further notice. Tried to have honest discussion about racist terms and management censored my language.” And: “I’m trying to have an honest, adult conversations about...

Barack Obama has integrated promotions of homosexuality and other alternative lifestyle choices into his policy and practice since his election, successfully promoting the “gay” lifestyle in the U.S. military and forbidding the enforcement of the federal law called the Defense of Marriage Act that supported traditional marriage. The extent of the reach of his actions perhaps was epitomized by last week’s announcement that the U.S. Embassy in Israel was flying a rainbow flag – representing homosexual activism – along with Old Glory. But now a coalition in Congress, made up exclusively of Democrats, wants to take the effort further and...

Benghazi’s biggest whistleblower just came forward. Her name is Cindy Lee Garcia and she has revealed that the producer of the video the Obama administration blamed for the Benghazi attacks admitted to her that he is a Muslim. This is a game changer. It means that the narrative we’ve been fed – that filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was a Coptic Christian is not only false but also a blood libel against Christians. ... what Benghazi was all about. It was agitprop (agitation / propaganda to push communism), a vehicle to be used by the Obama administration to launch an all...

Four Russian strategic bombers triggered U.S. air defense systems while conducting practice bombing runs near Alaska this week, with two of the Tu-95 Bear H aircraft coming within 50 miles of the California coast, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) confirmed Wednesday.  “The last time we saw anything similar was two years ago on the Fourth of July,” Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Norad spokesman, told the Free Beacon. Davis said the latest Bear H incursions began Monday around 4:30 p.m. Pacific time when radar detected the four turbo-prop powered bombers approaching the U.S. air defense zone near the far...

It was called Operation Northwoods and it is no conspiracy theory. In order to justify a military attack on Fidel Castro in 1962, the highest military officials under John F. Kennedy considered generating fake terrorism in the United States and abroad as a pretext for war with Cuba as a part of “Operation Mongoose.” The Top Secret plan was endorsed by all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and offered various scenarios that would build public support for a war against the Communist regime. Forty years later, the report was finally declassified.

The Los Angeles Unified School District wants to disprove the old saying that there's no free lunch. The district on Thursday said it will serve free lunches through summer to children and the disabled at 317 school campuses along with 105 parks and recreation centers. District Director of Food Services David Binkle says he expects the program to dish out 4.5 million meals.

How Little They've Learned: FPIC and Neo-Colonialism By Benjamin Wolinski There was a time when Western Europeans, armed with the technology and flush with the wealth of the Industrial Revolution, went to the nations of Asia, conquered them, and harnessed the resources of foreign lands for whatever purposes they chose. By the mid-20th Century, the nations of Asia had finally had enough of these imperialists and, one by one, sent the Europeans home. Now it's the 21st Century and Western Europeans, this time armed with the technology and flush with the wealth of the Information Technology Revolution, have returned to...

Saul Alinsky described in his book, Rules for Radicals, the eight levels of control necessary to create a socialist regime. Healthcare, welfare (food, housing, income), and education must be controlled by the state. Religion must be made irrelevant by removing it from government and schools. Guns must be confiscated in order to create a police state. Create as much poverty as possible. Poor people are easier to control. Explode national debt to unsustainable levels by out of control spending fueled by new and suffocating taxes that create more poverty. Use escalating class warfare rhetoric to fuel the division between “rich”...

Bernanke used to make $200,000 a year during his eight years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He can make that in a single hour now on the international speaking circuit. He left office in February. By March, he was making up to three stops a week around the world. Bernanke is walking a well-worn path of former policy makers who leave power. Former presidents, former cabinet officials and former members of Congress have all turned their experience in public service into millions.

China's vast censorship machine does its utmost to wipe the slightest reference to the Tiananmen crackdown from books, television and the Internet, scrubbing the issue from public discussion and even from the minds of its younger generation. In an example of George Orwell's "1984" dictum that "who controls the present controls the past", it reflects both the ruling Communist Party's immense power and its enduring sensitivity about its actions on June 3-4, 1989.

A quarter century after the (Tiananmen Square pro-democracy) movement’s suppression, China’s communist authorities oversee a raft of measures for muzzling dissent and preventing protests. They range from the sophisticated—extensive monitoring of online debate and control over media—to the relatively simple—routine harassment of government critics and maintenance of a massive domestic security force. The system has proven hugely successful: No major opposition movement has gotten even a hint of traction in the 25 years since Tiananmen. President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping seems intent on ensuring things stay that way. […] Some degree of labor activism has been permitted, especially...

Earlier this week, Representative Joe Garcia (D-FLA) said that “poverty and crime in this country could be cured if we had a communist economic system. Under communism everybody has a good government job. No one has to go without the basic necessities. No one has any need to commit crimes.” Contrary to Garcia’s thesis, though, Washington, DC, which has a very high ratio of government jobs, also has one of the highest crime rates in the nation. As for government employees having no need to commit crimes, well, over 300,000 current and former federal workers owe more than $3 billion...

On may 15, 2014 Senate Socialist Bernie Sanders went on CNN to defend the VA adminisration. Sanders told Chris Cuomo: “People die every day.”(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Examiner reported: In a recent exchange with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, sparks flew as the CNN anchor held Sanders to task if the secret scheduling delays at the Phoenix medical facility led to negligent death. As Sanders attempted to get off that vein of discussion: "We know that people die every day. We don’t know why they die. All right – anyhow, Chris, I don’t want to argue that point until the cows come home. Here’s what...

“There can be no aspect of your daily life that’s removed from politics,” Jim Treacher writes at the Daily Caller, “Now you will be monitored by your own children for expressing unapproved opinions. You’d better watch what you say at the dinner table, Mom and Dad.” Jim links to this post at The Blaze: First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to monitor their older relatives, friends and co-workers for any racially insensitive comments they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they’re made. The first lady spoke on Friday to graduating high school students in Topeka, Kansas,...

Only Charlie Crist Can Go to Communist Cuba Posted By Daniel Greenfield On May 22, 2014 In The Point Charlie Crist has been a Republican, an Independent and a Democrat, switching parties after every defeat. If he loses this time, he might be thinking of going Communist. He’s not quite red, but orange might be close enough. Now Crist is going to Cuba. After originally playing anti-Communist and anti-Castro, Crist is throwing out yet another plank of his platform now that he’s a Democrat. Now Crist is all about the Communism. “I understand that it’s important not to go to...

U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia (D-FL) misstated basic facts while praising communism in an online video conference this week. Garcia, who represents southernmost Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives, told video conference participants, “We’ve proved that communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.” Garcia made his comments while discussing immigration, border security agents, and crime rates in El Paso, Texas. “Let me give you an example, the kind of money we’ve poured in,” said Garcia. “So the most dangerous — sorry, the safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be...

In an exclusive interview with NBC 6, Congressman Joe Garcia tried to clear the air about a recent analogy he made regarding communism. Rep. Joe Garcia told NBC 6 in an exclusive interview Wednesday that communism is "evil," as he tried to clarify a recent remark on communism that had sparked conservatives' ire. The freshman Democratic congressman had said during a Google chat about immigration reform that "communism works." He distanced himself from the comment Wednesday, telling NBC 6's Adam Kuperstein he had tried to make an analogy that fell flat. "Look, clearly I don’t believe it works," he said...

Proving that communism has worked no better for students at a University of California-San Diego cooperative living space than it did for the billions of citizens of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the aptly-named “Che Cafe” is quickly running out of cash. In the cleverly titled article, “In the Red,” The UCSD Guardian noted that the Che Cafe–a student-run co-op named after mass-murdering dictator Che Guevara and governed by the communist philosophy–has become a “money pit consistently plagued with safety issues.”

EAST GREENWICH, R.I. —Citing concerns about the “exclusive nature” of the annual honors night at Archie R. Cole Middle School, school officials have decided to scrap the tradition. Instead, students who would normally be recognized at the annual spring tradition will be honored during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation. The notice was sent to parents over the weekend in an e-mail signed by School Principal Alexis Meyer and Assistant Principal Dan Seger. “Members of the school community have long expressed concerns related to the exclusive nature of Honors Night,” the email stated.

It’s now clear that the end of the Soviet Union heralded an era of democratic complacency. Without a rival system to test them, democratic governments have decayed across the globe.... [....] The answer is to use Lee Kuan Yew means to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level. At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic. Politicians are campaigning all the time and can scarcely think beyond the news cycle. Legislators are terrified of offending this or that industry lobby, activist group or...

Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia — fresh off being caught eating his own earwax on camera — was caught red-handed (or is it yellow-fingered?) in another gaffe this week, claiming that low crime rates in border cities with lots of federal immigration workers is proof that “Communism works.” Garcia made the comment during a Google hangout he convened last week to talk about comprehensive immigration reform with supporters. The Democrat attempted to point out how, for all their talk about limited government, many Republicans are fine spending loads of government money on border security. “Let me give you an example,...

To build a utopian America where everything is perfect as defined by our wise liberal ruling class, first the old America must be eradicated. That means erasing the heritage that makes the country what it is. National treasures like Mark Twain have to go: An effort to name a Lake Tahoe cove after American literary icon Mark Twain has been scuttled for the second time in three years, citing opposition from a tribe that says the writer held racist views of Native Americans. It should be noted that most everyone who lived in the 19th century held views of Indians...

The United States and Russia are approaching "a second Cold War," and President Barack Obama is to blame for the deteriorating relations between the countries, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Medvedev said Russia is preparing retaliatory steps in response to the sanctions the United States imposed on the country due to the escalation of conflict in Ukraine. "We are slowly but surely moving toward a second Cold War, which no one needs," Medvedev said. "Why am I saying this? Because a competent politician knows how to make reserved, careful subtle, wise, and intelligent...

Most scientists will tell you that race has no biological basis—it is, in academic-speak, a “social construct.” But a new book by distinguished journalist Nicholas Wade challenges that assumption, concluding that race is real and human social behaviour is subject to natural selection just like everything else. As the New York Review of Books put it, in its coverage of Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, there is now a “statistical sense” in which races are real. Scientists can tell, based on genetic variance, which continent a DNA sample comes from. That might not sound revolutionary to...