Free Republic

The Office of Congressional Ethics has closed its investigation into Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) and their relationships to the lobbying firm PMA Group, and the OCE advised against a formal House ethics investigation, the lawmakers’ offices said Friday. George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said the OCE, which reviews potential rules violations and refers investigations to the House ethics committee, informed the Washington lawmaker on Dec. 2 that it had recommended the inquiry be dismissed. “In his case, there was never anything there,” Behan said. Murtha spokesman Matt Mazonkey and Moran spokeswoman Emily...

People such as George Soros and Michael Moore certainly talk a good game, but the next Mother Teresa they are not. Mother Teresa never criticized the free-market system; wealth just wasn't for her. Soros and Moore are quite the opposite. They will never take a vow of poverty and dedicate themselves to helping the poor. They just want our civilization to take a vow of poverty and become poor. This has caused many to wonder: How can someone preach socialism while being the most rapacious "capitalist" imaginable? Well, I have a theory about this. It has often been observed that...

Which Prostitution Scandal Is Worse, Tiger Woods or Max Baucus?December 11, 2009 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, Tiger Woods. New York Daily News today. It actually looks like an AP story: "Tiger Woods was into threesomes and shelled out more than $60,000 to cat around with high-priced hookers, a Hollywood madam claimed Thursday. 'One of his favorites was Loredana Jolie,' Michelle Braun told the Daily News, describing the gorgeous blond as a Playboy model from Sicily who's been living in New York since age 14. 'She's a stunning girl,' said Braun," who I guess is the madam here. "'He went out...

Which is why the self justifying manifesto of the Rochester egg man who went to a Borders Palin book signing event hoping to throw an egg at Sarah Palin is a document of considerable significance because, as we push beyond the usual adolescent pseudo-revolutionary posturing we can observe an uglier truth about the mindset of this weird gremlin, who Lenin would have filed as a “useful idiot”, and his more sinister dancing masters, the Chris Matthews, Geoffrey Dunns and Andrew Sullivans whose steady drumbeat of lies and crude, misogynistic vitriol has the sole purpose of dehumanizing Sarah Palin and, by...

Dyron HartA young African-American man from Mississippi who admitted in August to sending death threats over Facebook while posing as a white supremacist received three years of probation from a federal court judge in New Orleans on Wednesday.

A race for mayor of Atlanta headed for a recount on Wednesday after a knife-edge election that exposed a racial fault line running through the biggest city in the U.S. Southeast. Former state Senator Kasim Reed declared victory overnight when official results from the runoff vote showed him beating city councilwoman Mary Norwood by 758 votes out of 83,000 cast. But Norwood declined to concede defeat and is almost certain to demand a recount under rules that permit one when less than 1 percent of votes cast separates the candidates. Norwood, who led an initial round of voting November 3,...

Can’t stand a member of Congress and desperately want him or her out of office? There’s a blog for that. For many members, there are blogs or websites solely dedicated to making them look bad, designed to highlight all their foibles and offer news and commentary aimed at portraying them as unfavorably as possible. With names like Where’s Eric Cantor?, MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, these hater websites are proliferating on the Internet, providing aggrieved constituents and local activists with the opportunity to vent, usually anonymously, and offer an unvarnished partisan take on an incumbent’s performance. For the most part,...

Political analyst Charlie Cook says that the scandals enveloping Reps. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and John Murtha (D-PA) threaten to increase losses for their party in next year’s election. He writes: As House Democrats try to avert political disaster by limiting their 2010 losses to about 16 seats, the norm for post-World War II presidents' first midterm elections, dealing with their members' ethics problems may be one of their toughest tasks. The task is tough because of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to move against either one, notwithstanding her promise to “drain the swamp” of Congressional corruption and to  “create the most...

I think Obama's in a league with TR," observes historian and presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley. "He created his political reputation through the written word." To be sure, no one has ever accused Sarah Palin, a defeated vice presidential candidate, of creating her reputation thusly. One has to wonder, then, why her book, Going Rogue, would merit a fact check by no fewer than eleven Associated Press reporters when neither the AP nor any other mainstream outlet has spent a moment vetting the books of the "author in chief," as President Barack Obama was anointed in a November GQ article, "Barack...

Virginia Muslims are calling on McDonnell (R) to disavow comments made by the Virginia Beach religious broadcaster last week in response to the shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., in which Robertson asserted that Islam is "not a religion" but a "violent political system" and that those who practice it should be treated like members of a communist or fascist party.

Of all the sins of the campus left, the worst is hypocrisy. Academic freedom is a spigot they turn on and off at their convenience. This evening, Ray Luc Levasseur, a convicted terrorist who served 18 years of a 45-year sentence, will participate in a "Colloquium on Social Change" at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, sponsored by a "progressive" faculty group called "Social Thought and Political Economy." Levasseur was the leader of the United Freedom Front, which worked for social change from 1976 to 1984 by bombing government buildings, robbing banks, murdering a New Jersey state trooper, and attempting...

Remember how the Democrats reacted when the Bush Administration started replacing U.S. Attorneys? At least they were actually political appointees employed at the will and whim of the President.

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...

Had CNN spliced footage of a sparsely-attended Capitol Hill rally to discredit the reports of large numbers of attendees to the 9/12 rally in September, conservatives would have rightly howled about media bias. What will conservatives say about Fox News splicing footage of the 9/12 rally into coverage of Michele Bachmann’s otherwise well-attended rally last week? Jon Stewart gives Fox News a well-deserved poke in the eye for fudging the footage, as well as exposing rather clearly its source:

Reporting from Ft. Hood, Texas - President Obama is slated to speak at a memorial service today at this grieving Army base, where a military psychiatrist is accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage. The service, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. local time, will be a traditional military affair, with a sermon, a roll call of the dead and a rifle volley. About 3,000 spectators, as well as the families of the 12 soldiers and one civilian killed, are expected to attend. The tribute comes amid new questions about whether the shooting, in which dozens were also...

Here is video of Geraldo Rivera on "Fox and Friends" talking about the Ft. Hood shooting. Brian Kilmeade asked Geraldo "do you think it's time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim army officers, anybody enlisted?" Geraldo answered "Isn't this the headline, Brian, that there are 4 or 5 million American Muslims and how scant and few and far between these horrifying incidents are?" (Video)

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Officers are on the scene of a shooting in downtown Orlando Friday. According to Orlando Fire Department dispatch, several people were shot and were transported to a local hospital. The shooting happened at 1000 LEGION PL (see map) at the Gateway Center. No other details are available at this time. Click REFRESH for the latest updates from WFTV.com. Copyright 2009 by wftv.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

I've had these thoughts for some time, but have been reluctant to express them. Now so many others have voiced them that it's pointless to remain silent. I am frightened by the climate of insane anti-Obama hatred in this country. I'm not referring to traditional conservatives or Republicans. They're part of the process. I'm speaking of the lunatic fringe, the frothers, the extremist rabble who are sweeping up the ignorant and credulous into a bewildering and fearsome tide of reckless rhetoric.

President Obama called the 22-year ban on travel and immigration by HIV-positive individuals a decision "rooted in fear rather than fact" and announced the end of the rule-making process overturning the ban. The president signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 at the White House Friday and also spoke of the new rules, which have been under development more more than a year. "We are finishing the job," the president said. The regulations are the final procedural step in ending the ban, and will be published Monday in the Federal Register, to be followed by the standard...

How the jury voted in each of the charges in the torture-slaying trial of Lemaricus Davidson.Count 1: First degree felony murder of Hugh Christopher Newsom during the perpetration of robbery of Hugh Christopher NewsomA. Guilty of First Degree Felony Murder of Hugh Christopher Newsom, during the perpetration of Robbery of Hugh Christopher Newsom.[Guilty on all 46 counts including rape and torture of both victims, male and female]Count 29: Aggravated rape of Hugh Christopher Newsom by coercive anal penetration, while aided and abetted by one or more personsB. Guilty of Facilitation of Aggravated Rape of Hugh Christopher Newsom, by coercive anal...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry is calling on people to burn effigies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this Halloween, as part of a "Burn in Hell" video contest to protest the health care legislation in Congress. Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, said Tuesday that the contest serves as a political and spiritual statement that "gives people a chance to peacefully vent their rage." "If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid force us to pay for child killing and they die unrepentant, they will burn in hell for this," Terry said in a telephone...

For sale on Amazon.com for only $39.00 Teleprompters and Nobel Peace Prize not included

A spokesman for Rep. Alan Grayson is defending the Florida Democrat’s use of the word “whore” to describe a female official at the Federal Reserve, pointing to a secondary dictionary definition to argue that Grayson meant only that the woman had sold her soul for financial gain. “The attack was on her professional career, not her personal life,” Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “The second definition of ‘whore’ in the American Heritage Dictionary is 'A person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.’ “I think a reasonable person could believe that a person who...

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser. Snubbing the Dalai Lama. Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers. Freezing out a TV network. Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too. President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda. It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news...

And still no apology. Even when conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh runs with a fabricated story, he doesn't apologize for the error. Limbaugh, who seizes on every opportunity to blast Obama, ended up with egg on his face when he read an Internet satire piece that claimed President Obama dissed the Constitution in his college thesis at Columbia University. A transcript of his Friday broadcast remains Sunday at the top of Limbaugh's web page under the headline, "Obama's Disdain for Constitution: We Know He Thinks It, Don't We? When we discover a hoax, we correct it immediately." But apologize? You...

The Left, champions of strict separation of church and state, have come out in support of an American theocracy. How can this be? Could this possibly be the same political machine that ritualistically goes from town to town scanning courthouses for explicit references to God, or even worse, the Ten Commandments? Or the establishment telling little Susie she cannot pray at school? Or the organization forbidding the reading of scripture, even on a purely non-sectarian, academic basis? Surely we can't be talking about the same ideologues. But there is no mistake. The Left supports theocracy, as long as it is...

The Federal Communications Commission has unveiled the topics it is looking to discuss as it considers revising its media ownership rules, and one area it is looking to explore could have ramifications for future mergers between broadcast and cable companies and newspaper companies. Specifically, the FCC said it will probe whether it could continue to enforce regulations regarding media concentration by industry or should it find an "alternative structure to determine an ownership limit for all media within a relevant market." Cutting through the bureaucratic speak, what the FCC is saying is that currently it regulates broadcast, radio and cable...

The media is suddenly OK with using anti-gay "hate speech" to slur average Americans and the Tea Party movement. They use terms like "tea bagger." When will liberals be offended?

WASHINGTON --The International Monetary Fund on Thursday said it does not expect the collapse of Romania's government to deter a $17.1 billion aid package it has promised to the struggling eastern European nation...The Fund has extended a two-year loan offer to Romania and already has disbursed nearly $10 billion in aid to the country. Romania, however, has fallen into a political crisis after a no-confidence vote in its parliament earlier this week led to a collapse of its centrist minority government. The uncertainty in its political situation comes as the country also is battling a deep recession. Romania has tapped...

Celebrating Petrobras’ 56th anniversary, CEO José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo and the boards of Petrobras and of its subsidiaries held a press conference this Wednesday (10/07) at the company’s main office building, in Rio de Janeiro. snip "We are the world’s only major company that uses most of its production to feed its own refineries, which, in turn, market their products mainly in the domestic market. This characteristic is unique in the world," emphasized the CEO, who highlighted the role the company will play from now on, particularly in the supplier chain. "Petrobras will not only supply oil derivatives, natural...

Krauthammer on Special Report responding to the White House's new war on Foxnews,...(Video)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday sought to present a united front with Russia on the Iranian nuclear crisis, saying there was not yet any hurry for new sanctions against Tehran. On her first trip to Russia as chief US diplomat, Clinton praised Moscow for its "extremely cooperative" behaviour in the standoff over Iran's programme, which Western nations fear is a veiled attempt to build a nuclear bomb. Aides had said ahead of her visit that the trip was partly aimed at winning Russian support for eventual sanctions against Tehran if diplomacy did not work. But Clinton denied...

In today’s New York Times arts section, film industry correspondent Brooks Barnes analyzes Hollywood’s attitude to fugitive sex predator/Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski. Most prominent artists have lined up behind the push to let the famed director off the hook for having drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl over 30 years ago. Polanski fled the country to avoid sentencing after he plead guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor and has since lived in a cushy exile in Europe. After his recent arrest, Polanski is currently sitting in a Swiss jail awaiting possible extradition to the United...

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) mocked Republicans Wednesday who demanded he apologize for saying that they want people who get sick to "die quickly." "I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America," Grayson said on the House floor. The "holocaust," he said, was the 44,789 people who die each year in the United States each year because they don't have health insurance, citing a Harvard study. Republicans said Democratic leaders should force Grayson to apologize. “Alan Grayson not only refuses to apologize, he is doubling down on his despicable remarks...

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "These young men and women are heroes," Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. "The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong." In...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Activists gathered outside a downtown strip club Monday to denounce as racist a banner depicting President Obama as the Joker from Batman. "Not only is it an attack on the president, but also on all men and people of African descent," King Salim Khalfani, president of the Virginia NAACP, said of what he called "the abomination that's on the wall" outside Club Velvet. The banner, unfurled within the past few days, depicts Obama as Heath Ledger's grotesque Joker character from "The Dark Knight." The president is shown with smeared red lipstick, a white face and darkened...

At the conservative How to Take Back America Conference over the weekend, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., had some harsh words for President Obama. Franks told those assembled: “Obama's first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers' money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries. Now I gotta tell you, a president that will do that, here's almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. You shouldn’t, we shouldn't be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost...

I am so sick of the Left being allowed to make the rules. Imagine the absurdity of a competition in which one side is allowed to set the rules against their opponent. The Left tells us what is racist. The Left tells us what we can and cannot say. The Left published a cartoon depicting former black Secretary of State Condolezza Rice as an Aunt Jemima; another depicted Rice as a huge lip parrot for her Massa Bush. Neither were considered racist by their creators or publishers, or even widely condemned on the Left. In opposition to black Republican Michael...

DA: No charges for Hofstra gang-rape accuser September 25, 2009 By ANN GIVENS ann.givens@newsday.com The Hofstra University student who prosecutors say falsely accused five men of tying her up and gang-raping her in a dormitory bathroom will not face criminal charges as long as she admits she lied, gets psychological help and does 250 hours of community service, under an agreement she signed Friday with the Nassau County district attorney's office.

With all of the citizen-produced videos that expose "wrong doing" how come some are seen as great for cleaning up corruption yet others are viewed as violations of privacy (and the like). Just asking.

The current debate over whether Barack Obama’s opponents are motivated by his policy or his race dominated the Sunday news shows, with a general consensus emerging that policy was the main factor. It was nonetheless conceded that racism was a disturbing presence in many of the protest events. Sadly, no Republican spokesperson on the shows said anything to condemn the organizers that allowed and may have encouraged the ugly manifestations of racism. Many of the recent protests reminded me of rallies last fall at which Sarah Palin would talk about “taking back our America” and accuse Obama of “palling around...

TGL has been following the devolution of political discourse into fear-mongering and apparent race-baiting since Van Jones, the former adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, first got entangled in it. Like many commentators, this blogger has felt that the level of disrespect shown for Obama, and indeed the office of the president, of late was fueled by racism. At least as far as Rush Limbaugh goes, the nagging question has been answered. Limbaugh called for segregation of school buses in response to an incident in which a white boy was beaten up by two black boys. Here's the chain...

From September 16, 2004 through October 1, 2004, a COK investigator worked undercover in the hanging room of the Perdue Farms slaughter plant in Showell, Maryland. Using a hidden camera, he documented horrible—yet routine—cruelty to animals on a daily basis http://www.cok.net/camp/inv/perdue/ Or the government at work. I don't remember signing a consent form: Some Maryland high school students have found a way to trick the local speed cameras into sending other people tickets http://www.ridelust.com/maryland-teens-expose-weakness-in-speed-cameras/

Print Headline: "Patriots or Pinheads? Tea Party movement must contain its extremes" ... For its critics, the tea party was a rabble-rousing mob of right-wing hotheads and religious nuts who lack the education to know the difference between a communist and a Nazi – but who are sure that our black president is both. The truth is surely closer to what Byron York of The Washington Examiner said he saw – a wide variety of people espousing different points of view, united in their fear of the future and bedrock belief that Washington is not to be trusted.

VIDEO At Link HERE .A Houston man was handcuffed and assaulted by cops for posting anti-Obama flyers around his town, actions described as “criminal vandalism” by police and some local residents, despite the fact that giant pro-Obama murals are openly displayed in the same neighborhood for all to see. 21-year-old Mark Fuhre, an Alex Jones Show listener, decided to post the flyers even though the Infowars Obama Joker Poster Contest had ended, because he wanted to alert his neighbors to the cult of personality being manufactured around Obama and how the establishment is stifling any criticism of the President by...

Per Drudge

Flying home from London, where the subject of formal debate on the 70th anniversary of World War II had been whether Winston Churchill was a liability or asset to the Free World, one arrives in the middle of a far more acrimonious national debate right here in the United States. At issue: Should Barack Obama be allowed to address tens of millions of American children, inside their classrooms, during school hours? Conservative talk-show hosts saw a White House scheme to turn public schools into indoctrination centers where the socialist ideology of Obama would be spoon-fed to captive audiences of children...

Democrats must drop efforts to censure a GOP representative who shouted "You lie" during President Obama's speech, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. Democratic leaders Thursday were looking into what formal action the House could take against Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., whose outburst during Obama's address on healthcare reform to a joint session of Congress the night before, shocked the chamber, The Hill reported. "It's time for us to talk about healthcare, not Joe Wilson," said Pelosi, D-Calif. One option Democrats considered was censure. Pelosi nixed censure, as well as a call for Wilson to apologize on the floor. "I'm...

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, there are some of us who remember this world in the 1930s, when Hitler suspended the Bundestag to promulgate conservative ideology and not let people speak. It is a shame that the Republicans in the House, Mr. Chairman, have taken up that same ideology and are denying a chance for debate and open discussion of a budget. It does smack of fascism; and it is too bad, because the American people will recognize that and understand that in a free economy, and in a free country that created programs...

Specter wants Wilson censured Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), who's looked at POTUS from both sides now, was just on the Bill Press radio show suggesting the South Carolina firebrand Joe Wilson be censured for his heckle heard round the world. Said the Republican-turned-Dem: "He apologized immediately afterward but I don't think that’s adequate... If an apology is the consequence of an outburst I think we can expect more – that’s not a sufficient penalty that’s not a sufficient price to pay.. I'm not saying the guy should be kicked out of the House… But there ought to be some rebuke,...