Free Republic

Every week in America brings another spate of defeats for freedom of speech. This past week it was Ann Coulter's turn (yet again) to be banned from speaking at Berkeley for what the university authorities purport to be "health and safety" reasons -- meaning the health and safety of the speaker. Each time this happens, there are similar responses. Those who broadly agree with the views of the speaker complain about the loss of one of the fundamental rights which the Founding Fathers bestowed on the American people. Those who may be on the same political side but find the...

Donald Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon has called the president’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner a “cuck” and a “globalist” during a time of high tension between the two top aides, several Trump administration officials told The Daily Beast. The fighting between Kushner and Bannon has been “nonstop” in recent weeks, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. It’s been an “open secret” that Bannon and Kushner often clash “face-to-face,” according to senior officials.

Facebook has announced plans to check for 'fake news' using a series of organizations to assess whether stories are true    One of them is a website called Snopes.com which claims to be one of the web's 'essential resources' and 'painstaking, scholarly and reliable'    It was founded by husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to start their research  Now they are divorced - with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled $98,000 of company money and spent it on 'himself and prostitutes'    In a lengthy and bitter legal...

I am so sick of the lack of logic used on Free Republic when some argue either for or against Trump or Ted Cruz whom I do not support, or at least a declaratory opinion/argument by a creeper who AT LEAST explains his or her line of reasoning/thinking. All of the blustern(either made up in someone's mind) or taken directly from either of the campaigns (which are not based ON ANY evidence other than the candidate or a surrogate's opinions are worth NOTHING). As conservatives, libertarians, tea partiers, Christians, constitutionalists, nationalists/Proud Americans, Republicans, yes even some moderates, shouldn't we at...

**SNIP** One of the most persistent and widespread of these conspiracy theories gets more specific than its American variant: Obama isn't just a Muslim, this theory goes.... he's a Shiite Muslim. This week, as the Obama administration announced that it was lifting sanctions on Iran as a result of a U.S.-led nuclear deal with Tehran reached in July, Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, the head of general security for the emirate of Dubai, suggested that Obama's "Shiite roots" had helped him get elected in a bid to bring the United States and Iran closer. "Mission accomplished," he added.

Old enough to remember when the liberal media tried to pin the "wimp" label on George H.W. Bush, the guy who lied about his age to get into WWII and was still jumping out of planes decades later? John Heilemann of Bloomberg TV has taken things a vulgar step further with another member of the Bush family. On his With All Due Respect show today, Heilemann called Jeb the "low-T" candidate. A laughing Josh Green, subbing for Mark Halperin, suggested that "there are pills for that but Jeb is not taking them." View the video here.

TRUE HISTORY, NOT SO LONG AGO

The Iranian parliament’s nuclear committee has released a fact sheet regarding the framework agreement reached in Lausanne over its nuclear program, and it differs significantly from a previous US version. The US released its fact sheet after Washington and other major powers reached a framework agreement with Iran on April 2 on curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, which is supposed to lead to a final deal by June 30. “The [Iranian] fact sheet urges operation of 10,000 centrifuge machines at Natanz and Fordow, a maximum five-year-long duration for the deal and for Iran’s nuclear limitations, [and] replacement of the...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Thursday accused left-leaning reporters and editors of practicing a new brand of “yellow journalism” in the form of fact check articles, which he said purport to catch politicians stretching the truth, but instead tend to advance the Democratic agenda. Cruz, who is running for president in 2016, sat down with CNBC for an interview, and was asked about his joke that the U.S. should send 125,000 IRS agents to the border. CNBC reporter John Harwood host pointed out that there are only 25,000 IRS agents, and the rest are just IRS workers. Harwood also asked...

LONDON — The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who was born in New York and holds both American and British passports, recently said that he would not pay a tax bill from the United States on capital gains from the sale of his home in the London borough of Islington. Mr. Johnson pointed out that he hasn’t lived in America since he was 5. He’d like to renounce his citizenship, but said the process was “very difficult.”It is, but I am doing it. My “in-person final loss of citizenship appointment” is scheduled for Jan. 14 at the United States Consulate...

In the National Journal recently, columnist Ron Fournier put it bluntly: “Everyone’s Lying to You About Benghazi.” He said Americans were faced with a choice of two evils — White House spin and GOP conspiracy theories. Having examined this issue repeatedly since it first burst into the news, The Fact Checker could not agree more. Neither side has covered itself with glory here.With all due respect to Rep. Gowdy, the chairman of the new select House committee on the Benghazi attacks, many of the questions he posed have already been answered — and fact-checked. Meanwhile, the White House has done...

To those of us who have been following the climate debate for decades, the next few years will be electrifying. There is a high probability we will witness the crackup of one of the most influential scientific paradigms of the 20th century, and the implications for policy and global politics could be staggering.

FACT CHECK: Flunking geography, history ROMNEY: "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea." THE FACTS: Iran has a large southern coastline with access to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. And it has no land border with Syria.

First Lady Michelle Obama’s pitch to voters last night relied on the premise that she and her husband understand what it is to struggle to make ends meet. She spoke movingly about their early years--about how a young Barack Obama drove a car that was “rusted out" and found his furniture “in a dumpster,” how they both came from families that had to “scrape by.” Her fairy tale--however well-delivered--was one great, big, colorful lie. Both Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama began their adult lives with a leg up on the rest of America. They attended elite schools: Michelle went to...

Now that it has been established that a candidate's teenage years help define the man to come, it might be time to take a new look at the adolescent Obama and his then-mentor, the late Frank Marshall Davis. I would guess that not one Obama voter out of one hundred could identify Davis by name, and I doubt if one media person out of a thousand has read his memoir, Livin' the Blues. This is unfortunate on any number of levels. For one, Davis's book captures the ebb and flow of 20th-century black American life as well as any ever...

“With Barack Obama in the White house, there is simply no one in the administration to make fun of. It’s been a very frustrating few years. On the other hand, if Romney is elected, there will be limitless material. Romney is funny, you see. The Obamas? I mean, there is just nothing that lends itself to parody.” - Anonymous NBC producer

A summary of Emmet Scott's painstakingly detailed and scholarly new book, Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy is posted at New English Review .

The ABC News politics and government teams offer a live fact check of President Obama’s first press conference of the year, which takes place, coincidentally, as Republicans in 10 states are voting for which candidate they want to challenge him in November. Fact Check 1 – Millionaires and billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Fact Check 2 – It’s not a matter of “if” Bashar Assad will fall in Syria, but “when.” Fact Check 3 – Iran is more isolated than ever. Fact Check 4 – Obama Jukes Fluke Question and is there a “war on women?”...

Hagen Road Elementary school principal is asking parents to tell kids they will be getting a "special snack" before the test that will boost brain power. (Handout, Sun Sentinel / February 27, 2012) At least one South Florida campus is hoping that feeding students a "special brain snack" will trick them into thinking it will boost their FCAT performance. From skydiving to mohawk hair cuts, school principals have tried various stunts to pump up test scores. The latest? Administrators at Hagen Road Elementary want kids to think eating an "FCAT power bar" will guarantee great results on the exams...

Yes this is old news...this is dated in Feb 1999 .....almost 13 years ago Years after it happened I had an argument with a family member who was and is a liberal and who worked in the news business. The argument was about Clinton and his problems and I mentioned this story. The family member had never heard of it.But then the news media did a good job of keeping it under wraps He sneered that it must be some bimbo making unfounded accusations against Clinton. So much fo staying up on the news. Seeing as how we now hear...