Free Republic

CNN’s Rick Sanchez misspeaks on CNN’s behalf .

An outside review of the beleaguered community group ACORN has found “serious management challenges,” but no pattern of illegal activity. The review, commissioned by ACORN in the wake of a hidden video expose that showed a few of its employees appearing to offer tips on how to break the law, also largely absolved the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s current management, laying much of the blame on founder Wade Rathke for lax oversight and dangerously rapid growth. Scott Harshbarger, the former Massachusetts attorney who led the inquiry for the Proskauer Rose law firm, found that ACORN is not...

In the age of balloon boys and party crashers, regular people just don't know what to believe any more. Last week, I spent more than my share of hours trying to track down the truth about an incident on an AirTran flight out of Atlanta on Nov. 17. Flight 297 to Houston, with about 70 passengers onboard, departed gate C-16 at 4:43 p.m. Until something happened that caused the pilot to turn around and come back. Two and a half weeks later, the incident is in high dispute, thanks to some passengers who have spoken out on the Internet about...

What's become known as "Climategate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly damaging," says Horner, who suspects, based on the public record, the same type of data fudging, manipulation and suppression that has occurred at Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU)....

If you've used Google, you've probably noticed the "autosuggest" feature. Type a few letters, and a drop-down box appears of phrases which might complete your search term. For example, if you type "tekt" you'll get several suggestions, including "tektronix" and "tektronix oscilloscope." Now try typing "climategat" (without the final "e"). All you get is "climate guatemala" (4,180,000 results) and "climate guatemala city" (1,120,000 results), even though g-a-t doesn't spell "guatemala." And yet if you search for "climategate" in full, you'll see over 20 million results (as of this writing). I've found no subset of "climategate" which actually causes Google to...

Science: For two years, our space agency has refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has repeatedly corrected its climate figures. A leading researcher threatens to sue to find more inconvenient truths. What's become known as "Climate-Gate" may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his FOI requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors. "I assume that what is there is highly...

LONDON (AFP) – A top UN panel is to probe claims that British scientists sought to suppress data backing climate change sceptics' views, its head said on Friday ahead of the landmark Copenhagen summit. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the claims -- which led a top expert to leave his post temporarily this week -- were serious and needed to be investigated. Professor Phil Jones has stood aside as head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, after emails allegedly calling into question the scientific basis for climate change...

Warming Scandal: Despite the incriminating e-mails, administration science adviser John Holdren still thinks man causes global warming. And Sen. Barbara Boxer thinks it's the whistle-blowers who should be arrested. Time was when Barbara Boxer thought it was just fine for the New York Times and Washington Post to spill national military secrets and war plans on their front pages. The people had a right to know where and how they were being led. But we are not dealing here with the Pentagon Papers, the location of terrorist prisons or the surveillance of al-Qaida and its operatives. Boxer, top Democrat on...

The climate-gate revelations have exposed an unprecedented coordinated attempt by academics to distort research for political ends. Anyone interested in accurate science should be appalled at the manipulation of data "to hide the decline [in temperature]" and deletion of e-mail exchanges and data so as not to reveal information that would support global-warming skeptics. These hacks are not just guilty of bad science. In the United Kingdom, deleting e-mail messages to prevent their disclosure from a Freedom of Information Act request is a crime. The story has gotten worse since the global-cooling cover-up was exposed through a treasure trove of...

A reader called me, then sent me an email Wednesday morning about an incident that occurred Nov. 17 on an AirTran Airways flight. According to an Atlanta Journal Constitution story, the flight was delayed two and a half hours after a confrontation between some passengers and the flight crew. The AJC story quoted a passenger sitting toward the back of the airplane who recounted what she saw. That passenger thought it was just a problem with miscommunication. But there's an email circulating, apparently going viral, from a Texan on the flight, who describes what appeared to him to be a...

This squib appeared on the KHOU website on November 18 but is seems to be only a fraction of the story. Read the comments below the story please. ATLANTA -- AirTran Airways says a flight from Atlanta to Houston with more than 70 passengers on board was delayed when a passenger refused to end a cell phone call. ... Flight 297, a Boeing 717, was taxiing on the runway in Atlanta Tuesday afternoon when a crew member asked a passenger to turn off his phone. ... after several failed attempts by the crew member to end the conversation, the captain...

Warming Scandal: The architect of climate fraud steps down, the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" is investigated, and Australia's parliament defeats cap-and-trade. We love the smell of truth in the morning. As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion" prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard. The gospel of climate change, once expressed with the messianic fervor of an Elmer Gantry by Al Gore, is now expressed with the stammering incoherence of an Elmer Fudd...

WASHINGTON -- Top White House science officials defended the validity of global warming research against repeated Republican attacks Wednesday that cited leaked e-mails from some climate researchers. The e-mails from a British university's climate center, were obtained by computer hackers and released last month. Climate change skeptics contend the messages reveal that researchers manipulated and suppressed data and stifled dissent. In the first Capitol Hill airing of the issue, House Republicans read excerpts from at least eight of the e-mails, saying they showed the world needs to re-examine experts' claims that the science is settled. One e-mail from 2003 was...

Dear Eldrick: First, sorry to hear about the second most famous “crash” last week. (I’m sure in retrospect, you wish you were with those other “crashers” at the White House, rather than being eased out of your Escalade at 2 in the morning.) Second, I know you and the lovely Elin have been ducking the local fuzz in terms of elaborating on what happened and you tried to extinguish the fire with yesterday’s half-baked statement but... Third, as much as you don’t want to hear it, your only choice now is to take the “penalty stroke” and fess up about...

ClimateGate: Britain's Climate Research Unit now says it will release all its data. Does that include the data that have been shredded, deleted and denied publication? In a statement released Saturday by the University of East Anglia, where the CRU is located, it was announced that all unit data, including data that had been denied climate skeptics, would soon be released to prove this is much ado about nothing. Unimpressed by the news is David Holland of Northampton, a grandfather with a background in electrical engineering, who is seeking prosecution of the CRU scientists involved in suppressing and even destroying...

The BBC received copies of some of the CRU emails more than a month ago, but did nothing about them, sitting on explosive evidence of fraud. The UK Daily Mail reports: .. The sequence of events strongly suggests that an insider leaked some emails to the BBC (and for all we know, others), hoping that they would be incriminating enough to intrigue anyone. When faced with a media stonewall, the insider then chose to post the complete files where they could not quickly be extinguished.

Snatching a page from ACORN, scientists at the CRU have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. That means the basic calculations used to create the man-made global warming hysteria cannot be checked by neutral observers....

The Obama Administration remains addicted to the "Chicago Way" of hardball politics. One of the clearest examples was last June's firing by the White House of Gerald Walpin, inspector general of the government service program AmeriCorps. Mr. Walpin complained at the time his ouster was due to his dogged investigation of misspent AmeriCorps money in a program run by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a major Obama backer. Mr. Walpin's firing by the White House was done in direct contravention of a 2008 law meant to protect inspectors general from political retribution. Mr. Obama himself co-sponsored the law as a Senator....

Climate Change: Major U.S. corporations have set up a Web site calling for a global climate treaty to be signed in Copenhagen. Considering recent evidence of massive climate fraud, perhaps they should reconsider. Many will remember the classic soft drink ad campaign where young people from many nations gather on a mountaintop and sing that they'd like to buy the world a Coke, the theory being that sharing a soda was the key to world peace. That sort of naivete has led peoples and governments around the world to accept at face value the outright fraud perpetrated by the Milli...

Oversight: After an unjust firing and campaign of character assassination, the former AmeriCorps inspector general has been cleared of acting improperly. Now where does he go to get his job and reputation back? On June 10, Gerald Walpin was fired with one hour's notice as the watchdog of AmeriCorps in violation of a federal law requiring Congress to be given a heads-up 30 days in advance. He then fell victim to a campaign of character assassination. When pressed for a reason for the sudden and improper dismissal of a federal watchdog, the White House responded with a letter to Sens....

Even as congressional investigators demolish White House explanations for its firing last summer of a key inspector general, new documents show that an entire second area of misleading administration statements has gone largely unexplored. Each new revelation in the case suggests that Gerald Walpin, the fired IG for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), ought to be reinstated to his job. We'll get to that second area of dispute in a few moments; it's a doozy. First, though, because this is all rather confusing, a review of the particulars is in order. ~snip~ Yet just two days after...

Junk Science: Hacked e-mails from Britain's Climate Research Unit are only the latest evidence of climate fraud. Just ask NASA's James Hansen about the faking of climate data or EPA employees about the suppression of climate fact. For years, noted scientists and other global warming skeptics have been accused of being on the take, their research tainted and funded by grants from Big Oil and other fossil-fuel interests. Now, it turns out, it's the warm-mongers who are fudging the numbers and concealing the inconvenient truth. We don't know who "Deep Throat" is. But according to an interview in Investigate Magazine's...

Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding as “Climategate”. Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”. “The files contain so much material that...

Senator Inhofe: Well, on this thing, it is pretty serious. And since, you know, Barabara Boxer is the Chairman and I’m the Ranking Member on Environment and Public Works, if nothing happens in the next seven days when we go back into session a week from today that would change this situation, I will call for an investigation. ‘Cause this thing is serious, you think about the literally millions of dollars that have been thrown away on some of this stuff that they came out with. Melanie Morgan: So what will you be calling for an investigation of? Senator Inhofe:...

Just more evidence that your common criminal is just plain retarded: On October 1st, 2009 California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced that an investigation had been opened into ACORN’s activities in California, resulting from undercover videos showing employees seemingly offering to assist the undercover film makers with human smuggling, child prostitution and even tax advice to boot. Although ACORN has denied any wrongdoing, some of the employees involved were terminated, and ACORN has publicly stated that they would fully cooperate with any investigations that followed. Interestingly, the local head ACORN organizer in California, David Lagstein was caught on tape earlier...

This is the global warming version of the Pentagon Papers, when Daniel Ellsberg stole a top-secret study of American Decision making during the Vietnam war and gave it to the NY Times. A Hacker got into the files of the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites these confidential files onto the internet. What these files outline is a systematic cover-up of science disproving global warming the climate change moonbats. According to the BBC, A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tapped a former senior defense official to lead a broad Pentagon review of the circumstances surrounding the Fort Hood shootings, The Associated Press has learned. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will announce Thursday that the unified review will involve a number of components, and will call for a quick, short-term report, followed by a longer, more extensive study, according to an administration official. Components of the wide-ranging probe could include self-examinations by the Army and the military's medical community, and likely look at personnel policies and the availability of mental health services for...

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is joining Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., in publicly declaring that the attack on Fort Hood is likely an act of Islamist terrorism. Cornyn wrote a letter to President Barack Obama today urging the White House not to let "political correctness" get in the way of investigating the Nov. 5 massacre that left 13 people dead and more than 30 wounded.

Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) issued the following statement regarding the postponement of a full Committee briefing on information related to the Fort Hood shooting: Here's the full text: "Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings.

The Senate Armed Services Committee postponed its Monday briefing on the deadly Fort Hood massacre at the request of the White House -- despite calls from some lawmakers to press forward with a congressional investigation into the shooting rampage that killed 13 and wounded 29. The Senate Armed Services Committee postponed its Monday briefing on the deadly Fort Hood massacre at the behest of the White House, despite calls from some lawmakers to press forward with a congressional investigation into the shooting rampage that killed 13 and wounded 29. An aide to committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told Fox...

Police in Cambridge, Mass., gave state Sen. Anthony Galluccio a ride home because acquaintances told them he was too drunk to drive about 13 hours before he was involved in a hit-and-run accident. Police were called to a gas station in Cambridge about 4:40 a.m. Oct. 4 after receiving a call about an intoxicated man. The station attendant told police he believed Galluccio was too drunk to drive. Police said another man told them he was trying to drive Galluccio home but couldn't find his house. Police said they drove Galluccio home in their cruiser. About 13 hours later, a...

Freepers!...we're losing the image war. Photographs of the wounded at Fort Hood do not circulate among the major media. The wounded in Vietnam were commonly depicted in a way which maximized the public disgust with the war effort but the victims of jihadists are not shown in such an emotional way. The blood of civil rights demonstrators and marchers were commonly shown in the '60s and the image of the murdered and mutilated Emmett Till is a common icon to this day. But there is a lack of circulation of 9-11 pics (outside conservative media), mall shootings, Jihad victims, and...

The ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee on Tuesday night accused the White House of withholding information on the Fort Hood attack. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) said administration officials delayed briefing members of Congress about the alleged gunman, raising "red flags" about what the White House was hiding. "When they withhold information, you always start asking questions," Hoekstra told Fox News. "That's what raises red flags. What do they know that they don't want us to know?" Hoekstra linked President Barack Obama's handling of Fort Hood to a chain of other GOP criticisms of the president, including the administration's...

Islam Remains Innocent thelastcrusade.org A conservative media watchdog organization says for the most part, the mainstream media networks have downplayed the Muslim connections with terrorism in the Fort Hood massacre.The Media Research Center (MRC) says that when authorities first announced the Fort Hood shooter was Major Nidal Malik Hasan, CBS and NBC purposefully avoided mentioning his name for fear of offending Muslims. The Center points out that ABC's Charles Gibson suggested Hasan was a "Muslim convert," which was not a correct statement, but adds at least Gibson was not trying to play "hide and seek" with the facts.The MRC...

Warming: After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed. In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway. Williams and Zabel do not deny...

Whoops, sorry -- this isn't backlash against the poor, innocent Muslims being terrorized and victimized by the thousands after the Fort Hood Nothing-To-Do-With-Islam attack. This is just the familiar Muslim backlash against non-Muslims, which will increasingly be a feature of American life in the coming years. Nothing to see here. Move along. "Man arrested for 'anti-Christian' mall disturbance: Kiosk employee allegedly tore a crucifix from someone's neck," by Emily West for the Danville Express, November 10 (thanks to Bob): Police arrested 22-year-old Abdul Walid Hamid of Hayward on the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 4, after he reportedly tore a crucifix...

I want to see the whole thing. Every American should demand to see the whole damned thing. And then you need to demand to know the names of every higher-ups in the military and the government who read or saw this thing and did nothing about it. I’m talking about the chilling slide presentation that Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan gave at Walter Reed Hospital while a senior-year psych resident in June 2007. The Washington Post publishes details of the slide presentation, though not the original document itself. [Update: Good! WaPo publishes the full slide presentation here.] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/11/10/GA2009111000920.html Goodbye, “Do...

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization. Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the...

A new court filling in the HOLLISTER v. SOETORO case:Hollister-v-Soetoro-Hemenway-Reply

from an interview on NPR this morning . . . ZWERDLING: I want to add something else about Hasan at Walter Reed. The psychiatrist I talked to today said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway, saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird? And now, apparently, Walter Reed is in a lockdown mode where they've been instructed - all the staff has been instructed: Do not talk to anybody about this investigation, except military people. Do not talk to the FBI, because they're afraid, potentially, what...

Neither the CBS Evening News nor NBC Nightly News, in their East coast feeds Thursday night, noted the Muslim religious beliefs of the mass killer at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, but ABC anchor Charles Gibson wasn't cowed by political correctness as he teased World News, “Fort Hood tragedy: An Army officer, a Muslim convert, is the suspect in a shooting spree...” Introducing his first story, Gibson referred to how Major Nidal Malik Hasan “an army officer, a Muslim, opened fire with handguns...” (With a range of frequency, during late afternoon/early evening coverage, CNN, FNC and MSNBC all...

Remember the case of the Census worker who was found hanging from a tree with the word ‘fed' scrawled across his chest? You remember - he died at the hands of right-wing commentators and anti-government tea partiers. He was killed because of an overwhelming case of right-wing paranoia. He was murdered by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Fox News. Keep this quiet though... While the death of Bill Sparkman was a media sensation for pushing anti-conservative sentiments just a couple of months ago, it is receiving little to no coverage currently. Why? Because, as investigators have recently speculated,...

Bryan, TX (LifeNews.com) -- Planned Parenthood is attempting to silence a former abortion center director who quit working for the abortion business after seeing an ultrasound of an abortion procedure. Officials with the group are pushing a request for a restraining order on Abby Johnson and a pro-life group that helped her conversion.Johnson had been the director of the Planned Parenthood center in this southeast Texas city that is home to Texas A&M University.She turned in her resignation on October 6 after years of a local pro-life group helping her see the problem with abortion. After the ultrasound, she decided...

WASHINGTON -- Internal investigations into the conduct of several House members have been exposed in an extraordinary, Internet-era breach of security involving the secretive process by which Congress polices lawmaker ethics. Revelations of the mostly preliminary inquiries by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct -- also known as the Ethics committee -- shook the chamber as lawmakers were immersed in a series of scheduled votes Thursday. The panel announced that it was probing two California Democrats -- Reps. Maxine Waters and Laura Richardson -- even as its embarrassed leaders took pains to explain that several other lawmakers also...

Did Judge Clay D. Land sanction me $20,000 in order to silence me and cover up Obama’s criminal activity in GA. Please, notice that Obama used 2 social security numbers of other individuals in Land’s hometown of Columbus GA. Any judge with integrity and any respect for the law and the Constitution not only would not sanction me and would grant me further discovery, but would sua sponte forward a copy of the pleadings to the local DA, to Atty Gen of GA , local US atty, police and FBI for criminal inveastigation . Additionally now there is a mountain...

By AP - newtimesonline.com Tue, 04 Nov 2008 | Print | E-Mail | PDF | Graphics Version Americas Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 After almost two years of campaigning, Democrat candidate Barrack Obama, Republican, John McCain yesterday brought their train to a halt in their respective home states to await the verdict of Americans. So far, the odds favour the once underdog in American politics, Obama, the African-American Senator from Illinois State . A Congressional Quarterly (CQ) politics monitored on BBC put the Kenyan born American ahead of his rival, Senator McCain. Even though Senator Obama leads in all polls, unlike in...

Over the past month, rumors circulated that he was in a coma and his ruthless son Mojtaba was ruling (with Ahmadi-Nejad's help) in his father's name. This son visits prisons just to watch and participate in torture sessions of arrested demonstrators and take pleasure in raping some of them himself! Denial of Khamenei Senior's death has to overcome some visible changes: 1. Government buildings are being draped in black cloth. (Reports on this come from multiple Twitters). 2. All Islamic Iranian TV announcers have suddenly turned to wearind all black clothing. 3. Bassiji Suppression forces have poured into the streets...

In its pages, Omar (and his mother) reveal that the Clinton administration failed in a major assassination attempt of Osama bin Laden, just days after the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. This is something that has often been speculated but never confirmed. Former insiders like Richard Clarke say Omar bin Laden’s account of the assassination failure appears to be credible. And if this is the case, it might explain a little more about what documents Sandy Berger really had stashed away.

State police have refused to release information that might shed light on the response of its Pocono barracks to a February crash off Interstate 476, the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, that led to the death of a Taylor man. The agency has failed to provide even basic information on the incident since The Times-Tribune began making inquiries in August. State police have classified the crash a "nontraffic incident," which directly conflicts with a Lackawanna County coroner's report that found 47-year-old Sam Turoni died from injuries suffered in a vehicle crash. A call reporting the crash was only briefly...

Public Discourse: Our energy secretary applauds and encourages companies to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on climate change. Should any Cabinet secretary, with the powers of government behind him, be threatening U.S. companies? Part of the climate-change mantra is that the debate is over and the science is settled. Just to make sure, environmental groups have sought to pressure businesses to go green or at least keep silent. Now it would appear the whole weight of the federal government is being thrown behind this campaign to coerce and silence real and potential opposition. On Thursday, Steven...