Free Republic

In a stunning display of callousness, the Defense Department has announced that thousands of soldiers — many serving as commanding officers in Afghanistan — will be notified in the coming weeks that their service to the country is no longer needed. Last week, more than 1,100 Army captains — the men and women who know best how to fight this enemy because they have experienced multiple deployments — were told they’ll be retired from the Army. The overall news is not unexpected. The Army has ended its major operations in Iraq and is winding down in Afghanistan. Budget cuts are...

An ongoing lawsuit has pried loose new records linked to a family of Sarasota Saudis who left home in a hurry just before 9/11. It was Halloween night, 2001. The horrors of 9/11 were still fresh on the the minds of Americans. At a time when everyone was on edge, the sight of a man disposing documents in a dumpster behind a Bradenton storage facility aroused suspicion. Summoned to the scene, Manatee County sheriff’s deputies confronted the man, who had a Tunisian passport. According to FBI records, authorities searched the dumpster and found “a self-printed manual on terrorism and Jihad,...

Two years ago, on the morning of the 2012 election in the United States, I got an email with an urgent subject line: "You should write the story of how Facebook blew an opportunity to turn out 300k voters." The sender, a veteran progressive online activist who would prefer to remain anonymous, was upset for good reason. The election was bound to be close, and as of 10am that morning he hadn't yet seen an "I'm Voting" button on his Facebook page, nor had another colleague of his. Nor was one on my own Facebook page. Given that when Facebook...

FULL TITLE: Conservatives Are Purposely Making Their Cars Spew Black Smoke To Protest Obama And Environmentalists Pickup trucks customized to spew black smoke into the air are quickly becoming the newest weapon in the culture wars. "Coal Rollers" are diesel trucks modified with chimneys and equipment that can force extra fuel into the engine causing dark black smoke to pour out of the chimney stacks. These modifications are not new, but as Slate's Dave Weigel pointed out on Thursday, "rolling coal" has begun to take on a political dimension with pickup drivers increasingly viewing their smokestacks as a form of...

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — This spring, new research out of Canada's McGill University that reviewed historical temperature records and geological data (ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments) concluded with 99% certainty that our current climate change predicament cannot be ascribed to natural cycles. But many are still dubious that man-made climate change is real. What's more, some skeptics even claim climate change is a money-making scam. In reality, you can follow the "dark money" to see how targeted funding is perpetuating these misconceptions -- even as climate change awareness and research groups lose funding.The article attempts to attack "skeptic"...

NOTE: Gratuitous links that whine and beg for your precious disposable dollars have been trashed. Friend -- They've spent millions to fund climate change denial ... and they're just getting started. The Koch brothers and their allies just announced their plan to spend nearly $300 million this year to not only elect climate change deniers, but also to oppose President Obama's plan to curb carbon pollution from power plants. That's their game plan: spend as much as humanly possible to get their way. We're the ones who get to tell them that's not going to work this time -- our...

Friday at the daily briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeatedly dismissed concerns over Internal Revenue Service claims that two years of Lois Lerner's emails are lost forever as "conspiracy theories." "Turns out that there have been 13 months of multiple congressional investigations, including 14 congressional hearings, 30 interviews with IRS employees, 50 written congressional requests, and 750,000 pages of documents, and all of that has done nothing to substantiate false Republican claims of a broader political conspiracy," Earnest said.

"...the Obama administration actively sought to keep the lid on Robert Bergdahl and Michael Hastings’ reporting of Bowe Bergdahl, as secret FBI documents now reveal. A 22-page secret FBI report dated June 11, 2012, obtained by investigative reporter Jason Leopold, shows that both Hastings and former Afghanistan war veteran and co-writer Matt Farwell were under an intense FBI investigation in early 2012. The document is highly redacted; but it appears Hastings and Farwell were under direct FBI surveillance, including when they met with Bowe Bergdahl’s parents in 2012."

Following are excerpts from an interview with Palestinian-Lebanese researcher Walid Muhammad Ali, which aired on Al-Alam TV on April, 28, 2014: Walid Muhammad Ali: It is imperative that we uncover the truth about the Zionist movement's role in the crime [of the Holocaust], which was perpetrated against the Jews, as well as against the Gypsies and many other European minorities. Interviewer: Are you referring to the doubts over the extent of what occurred? Walid Muhammad Ali: Indeed, this is a matter of research, yet it is considered taboo in the West, because, obviously, the figures are inflated. On principle, we...

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers. Co-Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin sat down with “Top Line” to discuss their film, “Citizen Koch,” and why they say the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors, the Koch brothers, are such figures in American politics today. “Money – $100 billion now,” Deal said in explaining the Kochs’ influence. “When we started out making this film, their net worth was about $68...

The Taliban prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl might do some good, but fear and anger are getting in the way of a realistic appraisal.Richard Hofstadter opened his 1968 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," with this line: "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds." He continues, "Behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." One wonders...

In a matter of days, the news of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl's release has gone from what the government hoped would be a triumphant story of an American POW's safe return to a Homeland-esque tale that appears poised to become the next Benghazi. Bergdahl is still in a U.S. military hospital in Germany, but Republicans are already demanding an open hearing on the deal with the Taliban that led to his release. While the major issues raised by the trade — including Bergdahl's alleged desertion, returning five Guantanamo detainees, and the president's failure to consult Congress — are enough to fuel...

Could somebody make a pic of this, please. https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/s480x480/59782_376746869108367_275114552_n.jpg

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...

Sen. Rand Paul claimed in 2009 that former Vice President Dick Cheney exploited the 9/11 attacks in order to lead the United States into war in Iraq to benefit military contractor Halliburton, where Cheney had been CEO before heading to Washington, a video unveiled by blog Mother Jones' writer David Corn shows. In the video unearthed of a speech given at Western Kentucky University, Paul argues that Cheney opposed the first Bush administration's plans but changed his mind over Halliburton, Corn reports. "He's being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says it would be...

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) took a shot at Dick Cheney last night, saying the former Vice President wasn't in any position to be criticizing President Obama. "Well, I think he had his eight years and he's caused a lot of trouble for our country and he perpetuated a war in Iraq that was unnecessary and wrong-headed," Paul said of Cheney on CNN's Larry King Live. "So I would say that it would be best he not be so critical right now."

<p>David Corn over at Mother Jones unearths a 2009 video of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in which Paul suggests that former vice president Dick Cheney wanted to invade Iraq in order to benefit his former employer, Halliburton.</p> <p>In the video, shot at Western Kentucky University, Paul argues that Cheney thought the invasion was a bad idea in the first Bush administration but changed his tune after working for Halliburton.</p>

...Lyndon Johnson was a loutish psychopathic willing to do anything to advance his rise to power. His rise was fueled by graft, corruption, and murder. Yes, murder. LBJ's hitman, Malcolm Wallace, had killed seven other people in Johnson's rise to power, including LBJ's own sister, Josefa Johnson. ...As the rift between Kennedy and hardliners widened, into the void stepped Lyndon Johnson. Never to let opportunity go to waste, LBJ found the ultimate solution to his Bobby Baker scandal that was coming to a boil on Capitol Hill. LBJ's days were numbered, and he was facing possible prison. Kennedy was already...

Three Los Angeles City Council members want city, state and federal groups to look into whether hydraulic fracturing and other forms of oil and gas “well stimulation” played any role in the earthquake that rattled the city early Monday morning. The motion, presented Tuesday by Councilmen Paul Koretz and Mike Bonin and seconded by Councilman Bernard Parks, asks for city departments to team up with the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, the U.S. Geological Survey and the South Coast Air Quality Management District to report back on the likelihood that such activities contributed to the 4.4-magnitude quake....

What Pilots Think About The Crazy New Theory That The Missing Malaysia Jet Used Another Jet To HideAlex DaviesMarch 17, 2014 Not surprisingly, the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 with 239 people on board more than a week ago has led some people to come up with very interesting theories about what might have happened. On his Tumblr, self-identified hobby pilot and aviation enthusiast Keith Ledgerwood put forward the most elaborate and interesting suggestion we've heard yet. He argues the 777 could have flown over India and Pakistan, avoiding military radar detection by turning off its communications systems and following...