Free Republic

For the third year in a row, a narrow majority of Americans consider gay and lesbian relations morally acceptable, signaling that this is the new “new normal” in public opinion, according to a new Gallup Poll released Monday just days after President Barack Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. More than half of American adults, 54 percent, say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable — including 66 percent of Democrats and just 36 percent of Republicans — while 42 percent think they are morally wrong, Gallup found. Since 2010, a slight majority of Americans have found gay relations...

Lilia Luciano, a Miami-based NBC News correspondent, is no longer working for the network, TVNewser has learned. Luciano last reported for NBC News March 31. Until that point, she had been reporting mainly on the Trayvon Martin story. Sources tell TVNewser Luciano’s dismissal came after an investigation which also led to the firing of a seasoned NBC News producer over a similar, misleading edit. In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, Luciano used part of the George Zimmerman 911 call in which an entire phrase (italicized below) was taken from a later part of the conversation: Zimmerman:...

Last Sunday, CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast “Christians of the Holy Land,” by Bob Simon, largely blaming Israel for an exodus of Christians from the Holy Land. The showing coincides with a growing international campaign to portray Israel as anti-Christian, showcasing Palestinian Christians as evidence. “Palestinian Christians, once a powerful minority, are becoming the invisible people, squeezed between a growing Muslim majority and burgeoning Israeli settlements,” the segment opened. “Israel has occupied the West Bank for 45 years.” But the harsher indictment came from a Palestinian Lutheran pastor and critic of Israel. “If you see what's happening in the West Bank,...

You won’t hear it anywhere else but here – insiders have told us WTVJ reporter Jeff Burnside was fired last Friday for allegedly editing the Trayvon Martin 911 tape, the same tape NBC aired on ‘Today’ in early April. Allegedly, his firing wasn’t announced internally and so far there is no information whether NBC made a conclusion if the edit was misleading on purpose or if it was an oversight.

NBC News' decision to air an edited call from George Zimmerman to police in the moments before he shot Trayvon Martin was "a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call," according to the president of the network's news division. The edit in question, which aired on the network's flagship "Today" morning show last week, made it appear that Zimmerman told police that Martin was black without being prompted, when, in fact, the full tape reveals that the neighborhood watch captain only did so when responding to a question posed by a dispatcher. Under growing public pressure...

NBC News President Insists Zimmerman Edit 'Not a Deliberate Act to Misrepresent' By Matthew Sheffield Created 04/08/2012 - 2:12am Following a series of anonymous leaks, NBC has released its first on-the-record statements regarding the internal investigation into its misleading audio clip of George Zimmerman's 9-1-1 call. According to NBC, the controversial clip, which appeared during its "Today" morning news show, was edited deliberately by the producer to fit within time constraints and not for some other reason. Speaking to Reuters, NBC News president Steve Capus asserted that the individual, who has been fired but whose name has not been disclosed,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Safe to say that the media has destroyed George Zimmerman. They set out to destroy George Zimmerman, and they've done it. It's unconscionable what they've done. George Zimmerman doesn't have a microphone, can't fight back. He was just singled out and destroyed. The third network has come forward today and admitted that their original interpretation of a tape involving words spoken by Zimmerman may now not be correct. The third network. The first was NBC, which admitted doctoring a 911 tape. This is not an accident that takes place in the hustle and bustle of putting together...

The track record of Barack Obama's pronouncements on a wide range of issues suggests that anything he says is a message written in sand, and easily blown away by the next political winds. Remember the "shovel-ready projects" that would spring into action and jump-start the economy, once the "stimulus" money was available? Obama himself laughed at this idea a year or so later, when it was clear to all that these projects were going nowhere.

A key argument of the Obama Administration’s legal defense of the President’s signature health care legislation was called into question by acting White House budget director Jeff Zients’ testimony before the House Budget Committee. Zients was arguing that the penalty assessed by Obamacare on a person who fails to purchase insurance is NOT a tax. On the other hand, Obama’s lawyers have been arguing that the penalty IS a tax. This argument is necessitated in order for the Obamacare law to appear to be Constitutional. While Congress lacks the authority to require a person to purchase a product—heath insurance being...

Up to now, President Obama has railed against so-called “super PACs” that bundle money to conduct “independent” campaigns on behalf of favored candidates. But as his efforts to raise funds for his own campaign have bogged down he is urging his supporters to donate to “Priorities USA,” a super PAC led by two former Obama aides that is dedicated to his reelection. “I wouldn’t call it a ‘flip-flop’ so much as a demonstration of nimble flexibility,” said Obama campaign spokesman David Axelrod. “I think it was Emerson who said that ‘consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’ The President shouldn’t...

Democrat and Republican members of Congress admittedly did not write or read law they approved impacting both the financial and personal behavior of every citizen of every age.Now this gang of fraudulent, deceitful, scurrilous hucksters pretend egregious shock at the fact that their free fall defense of our Constitution gave over to the administrative branch the ability to create regulations having the enforcement of law whereby religious liberty is no longer a fundamental right of Americans. Rather, it is a conditional concept susceptible to the capacious whim of a federal civil employee.Now come the ‘leaders’ of Congressional thieves of money,...

General Motors' CEO, Dan Akerson, is scheduled to testify at congressional hearings on the NHTSA delay in reporting Chevy Volt fires. GM and the government agency waited about five months to report an incident involving a Volt which erupted in flames weeks after a crash-test. Up to this point, Akerson has not exactly been honest about the Volt; can we now expect him to come clean? A culture of deceit has been evident at GM since the Obama Administration orchestrated a manipulated bankruptcy process that favored the politically powerful UAW over other classes. It was during the time of...

Attorney General Eric Holder used Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on the anniversary of the civil rights leader’s birthday Monday to emphasize the Obama administration’s dedication to protecting the American people from discriminatory voting practices. “Despite our nation’s record of progress, and long tradition of extending voting rights – today, a growing number of citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions, and problems that Dr. King fought throughout his life to address and overcome,” Holder said at an MLK Day event in Columbia, S.C.

Several weeks ago All-American Muslim debuted on TLC to a storm of publicity and high ratings, but the publicity has vanished and the ratings are dribbling away. The series had premiered to a 1.7 rating, but last Sunday’s episode had dropped to a 1.1 rating. The television ratings for this week aren’t in yet, but the news for TLC and the producers of All-American Muslim isn’t likely to be any better. All-American Muslim had originally finished ahead of the terrorism drama Homeland which airs in the same timeslot, but last week Homeland finished ahead of it, and not because its...

Evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress when he denied any knowledge of the “Fast and Furious” plan to arm Mexican drug gangsters is fueling calls for his resignation. The evidence is in the form of memos indicating that Holder was briefed on the plan a year before he told Congress he knew nothing about it. “Just because there are memos addressed to me doesn’t prove that I received or read them,” Holder argued. “Surely, members of Congress have received many items addressed to them that they haven’t read.” “And even if I did read them, couldn’t I...

RUBES: The REAL Sarah Palin Haters © 2011 By Anthony James There’s a new book out, purportedly an “exposé” on the “real” Sarah Palin, by noted Palin hater Joe McGinnis. Joe is as well known for his questionable sources and frequently unattributable accusations as he is for his creepy fixation on all things Sarah. This is the guy who actually went to Wasilla last summer and rented the house next to the Palins so he could spy on them and be an aggravating thorn in their sides as he concocted his latest hit piece on America’s favorite Governor. Released on...

When reading Western reports dealing with Islam, one must learn to read between the lines. Many of these reports do state the actual facts; but without providing proper context, Western readers are often left to interpret the information according to their own understandings. One example: the ubiquitous term “sectarian strife” to describe Muslim-Christian clashes in the Middle East is factually correct; yet “sectarian strife” connotes comparable forces fighting one another, when in reality it is often nothing less than a vastly outnumbered Christian minority being grossly oppressed by Muslim majorities, as has happened for centuries. Sometimes it is easy to...

There are many here smarter than I, so please help me with this theory. In all the rush to pass the debt bill, did we get tricked? I think the Super Congress committee is an unbelievable power grab. They have locked out anyone who voted against the bill, so conservatives will not be part of the process. Yet these conservatives are elected representatives of the people. That's just not right. To concentrate the power of the pursestrings in such a small group seems like a dangerous thing and easily corrupted. I think this structure has been put in place and...

Speaker John Boehner's Powerpoint On The Deal TWO-STEP APPROACH TO HOLD PRESIDENT OBAMA ACCOUNTABLE Emerging framework has three main features: (1) cuts government spending more than it increases the debt limit; (2) implements spending caps to restrain future spending; (3) advances the cause of a Balanced Budget Amendment Framework accomplishes this without tax hikes, which would destroy jobs, while preventing a job-killing national default. NO TAX HIKES ‣ Same as House-passed bill, the framework includes no tax hikes. ‣ Under the framework, the Joint Committee of Congress will work off a current-law baseline, as required by the 1974 Budget Act,...

The best example of this is the plan's tax proposal, which alternately boasts that it cuts taxes by $1.5 trillion and raises them by $1 trillion, but which more likely will result in taxes going up by more than $3 trillion. According to the outline, the $1.5 trillion in "tax relief" is how the Congressional Budget Office would score the plan. But what the gang conveniently leaves out is that the CBO's forecast has $4.6 trillion in tax hikes already baked into it. That's because the CBO baseline assumes all the Bush tax cuts get repealed, that every other temporary...