Free Republic

During a panel discussion on the Department of Justice seizing the phone records of Fox News’ James Rosen, Bret Baier revealed that the seizure included the phone records of Rosen’s parents. The entire panel agreed the scandal was an outrage, with Kirsten Powers pointing out that there have been a number of high-profile leaks from the Obama administration, but the only ones they seem interested in going after are the ones that make them look bad. Charles Krauthammer found it amazing that the government would make such a “huge assault on the first amendment” in trying to go after Rosen...

First Amendment: For awhile, it looked like the White House wanted just to control "the narrative." But its seizure of AP phone records and surveillance of Fox employees now show its real aim: to control the news. The Obama political team at the White House has always prided itself on its media savvy. After all, they got a candidate with an otherwise unsalable socialist past elected on a campaign that sold his personality, not his platform. They won saintly press coverage, with much blather, mostly from the Washington Post about how Obama was all about "storytelling" and selling a "narrative."...

At the Senate committee hearing today on the IRS targeting scandal Senator Mike Enzi said the IRS is even targeting Christian churches in Wyoming. Acting Commissioner Steven Miller, former Administrator Doug Shulman, and Inspector J. Russell George testified today in front of a senate committee. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who headed the tax-exempt division when the targeting of tea-party groups took place, plans to invoke her Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions before Congress on Wednesday. But Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House oversight committee where Lerner was to appear, has issued a subpoena to Lerner anyway. The subpoena was delivered after the committee received the letter from Lerner's attorney, a committee aide said. Her attorney, William Taylor, said in a letter obtained by National Journal, that Lerner had "not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation" but that...

Carney: Obama Didn’t Ask Why He Didn’t Know about IRS Before News Reports By Andrew Johnson May 21, 2013 4:12 PM Comments 21 Jay Carney told reporters that President Obama did not ask his senior staff why he was learning about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for the first time through news reports two weeks ago, rather than from his staff. The administration has admitted that White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was informed in late April of the inspector general report detailing the targeting and that she shared the information with members of the the president’s senior staff. The...

ARMED DHS GUARDS GREETED TEA PARTY PROTESTERS TODAY AT THE ST. LOUIS IRS RALLY– No sign of the Light-Armored Tanks yet…

ARMED DHS GUARDS GREETED TEA PARTY PROTESTERS TODAY AT THE ST. LOUIS IRS RALLY– No sign of the Light-Armored Tanks yet… But there were DHS vehicles parked outside the IRS office just in case the Tea Party protesters got violent. Alex Cohen holds a Gadsden flag at the IRS building. It was his first Tea Party rally. Over 300 Tea Party protesters turned out for the rally against IRS harassment and intimidation. Tea Party protesters at the St. Louis-Town and Country IRS protest today wore targets on their backs. There were plenty of American and Gadsden flags at the rally....

In the wake of one of the worst abuses of government power in recent history, many are rushing to frame the Internal Revenue Service scandal as simply an attack on conservative activists. That view risks creating a partisan political football and misses a fundamentally scarier abuse that exceeds the scandals of Watergate or any other prior government abuse. The IRS has admitted that since May 2010 it targeted grassroots-conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, unfairly subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny due to their political leanings. Such groups were told they were required to comply with IRS requests, no...

Via the Examiner and NRO, a few more credible, confidence-inspiring breadcrumbs from this morning’s Ways and Means hearing. It’s starting to make sense now why protesting Planned Parenthood might present a risk to your tax-exempt status, isn’t it?The second clip is of Miller saying that he did indeed ask his underlings who was targeting conservative groups, and they told him, but now he can’t remember the answer. Really. The disdain this guy harbors for the proceedings is palpable, but that’s probably in his best interest: The more antagonistic he is, the more liberal support he’ll have when the administration inevitably...

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that he believes President Barack Obama owes the American public explanations for both the seizure of Associated Press phone records by the Department of Justice and the IRS targeting of conservative groups. “I don’t think anyone truly believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer for America, much less the press,” Rangel said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think this is just the beginning and the whole idea of comparing this with Nixon, I really think is just, it doesn’t make much sense. But the president has to come forward and share...

Press Secretary Jay Carney defended the Obama administration as it faces scrutiny for the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. Today on The Five, Eric Bolling voiced his concern, saying, “2011, I was pretty vocal against four more years of President Obama. […] I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not but I did get an IRS audit in 2012 for my 2011 tax returns. I’m not sure if there’s any correlation.”

Washington - U.S. lawmakers accused the Obama administration on Wednesday of trampling on free speech rights and evading questions about the Justice Department's secret seizure of Associated Press telephone records. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying before a House of Representatives panel, provided limited responses on the issue, noting he had been recused from the probe into a government leak that led to the records seizure.

I had the same thought as Matt Lewis when reading through the news this morning. There’s too much smoke now from the IRS, DOJ/AP, and Benghazi scandals to pretend there’s no fire. If you’re sympathetic to O, it’s time to shift messages from “what fire?” to “Obama should have done more to put out these fires set by other people,” which conveniently leaves Bambi in the virtuous role of firefighter. It’s a classic plea bargain: He’s guilty of negligence, maybe, but of nothing more serious. Lewis: The media is helping. Obama isn’t a bad guy, he’s merely out of the...

Often a phenomenon of bad marriages, “selective deafness” is when one hears only what is convenient. The same failing manifests itself in government when politicians and judges hear the Constitution talk only when it sings their tune. Worse still, sometimes these people behave as if the document says things it doesn’t. This is the equivalent of hearing things. Kansas governor Sam Brownback heard something recently. He received a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder stating that Kansas’ newly enacted legislation prohibiting government agents from enforcing federal gun laws in the state “directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional.”...

Tyranny: Perhaps the most sinister aspect of the president's parade of scandals is that just days before they broke, he mocked as paranoid those concerned about government excesses. On May 5, while giving the commencement address at Ohio State University, President Obama advised graduates to put all their trust in government and reject those shrill "voices" that say it's the source of our problems. Ignore these limited-government types, he told the class of 2013, who warn "tyranny lurks just around the corner." Only, Obama himself has proved our fears are well-founded. Government, particularly governance by this rogue regime, needs more...

Boy, oh boy. What many called the worst week yet for the Obama White House has spilled over into another, with news that the Department of Justice secretly obtained telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors to root out the cause of a (rare unwanted) leak of national security information. Is it a fishing expedition, a witch hunt or something in between? Time will tell — if, that is, anyone ever comes forward with an explanation. Whether on Fast and Furious or Benghazi, the typical M.O. of the administration has been to slow-play answers and hope that we all...

As predicted, Wednesday afternoon's testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder focused heavily on revelations that the Department of Justice subpoenaed phone records from the Associated Press following their publishing leaked information about a terror attack. The House Judiciary Committee had the wrong guy at the witness table, though, since Holder, who'd recused himself from the matter couldn't offer much new information. This left the committee members to fill the time by attacking their opponents, and allowed for a dispute that resulted in Holder calling a Congressmember's behavior "unacceptable and shameful." At the start, it seemed as though the focus might...

California congressman Darrell Issa and Attorney General Eric Holder are not friends. Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has pestered Holder about the controversial Fast and Furious gun-walking program for years. His committee even voted to hold Holder in contempt for his refusal to turn over certain documents. During a hearing today, Holder's feelings for Issa burst out into the open when he called the congressman's behavior "unacceptable" and "shameful," and, getting more personal, "too consistent with the way in which you conduct yourself as a member of Congress."

The Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters from penalties for refusing to identify confidential sources, and that would enable journalists to ask a federal judge to quash subpoenas for their phone records, a White House official said. The official said that President Obama’s Senate liaison, Ed Pagano, called Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who is a chief proponent of a so-called media shield law, on Wednesday morning and asked him to reintroduce a bill that he had pushed in 2009. Called the Free Flow of Information Act, the...

"Imagine the story on Fox if that were to happen..."

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, I've had people say, "Rush, how do we handle this? What's the best way to deal with all this?" See if you agree with this. Dr. Krauthammer on Fox News Special Report during the All-Star Panel last night, Bret Baier said, "Charles Krauthammer, when the president says there's no 'there' there, it almost seemed that he was challenging reporters to say, 'No, really, there's no "there" there.'" KRAUTHAMMER: The one advice I'd give to Republicans is stop calling it a huge scandal. Stop saying it's a Watergate. Stop saying it's Iran-Contra. Let the facts speak for...

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's clear that that the press has turned. I'm not sure how permanent it will be but this is surely different than what we've seen over the four years being acolytes and cheerleaders and really supine. And the reason I think, a, is the accumulate of scandals all at once and the remarkable coincidence that the president was speaking early on about conspiracies and don't worry about government, tyranny, you know. The IRS scandal, which is the second most powerful agency in government as an agent suppression of political speech is almost a definition of tyranny. But that...

Ok. Like all of us here---I have been paying a LOT of attention to the scandals that have just "popped up" lately for the Regime. It does NOT look good for him, or perhaps the whole demo party!! I am hearing rumors of just "how this could turn out"--from "he will walk, maybe a little bit less trusted" to "this could OVERTURN the whole 2012 election (considering that the IRS supplied personal info to the libs about Romney--which was then used in an illegal way in the campaign). I would NOT mind that--but I do not expect it to happen....

“I don’t want to jump to judgment here because many of us did call on the administration to investigate leaks; I am struck by what appears to be a very broad net and not a very targeted look,” said Sen. Cornyn, Buzzfeed reports. He said the best approach would to bring Attorney General Eric Holder before the Senate Judiciary committee. Holder is coming before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon. “The problem is, we have so many things happening now that cause people to question the motivation and the actions of the executive branch that it’s easy to sort...

During his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said there is nothing in writing verifying he actually recused himself from the Associated Press phone records seizure scandal. “We looked,” Holder said when being questioned by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). “I don’t think there is anything in writing with regard to my recusal.” Lofgren was asking Holder to explain why Deputy Attorney General James Cole had the authority to authorize the subpoena to secretly seize phone records of at least 20 AP reporters and editors over a two month period when federal code requires the...

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he isn’t sure how many times he’s seized reporters’ records. “I’m not sure how many of those cases … I have actually signed off on,” Holder said in an interview with NPR’s Carrie Johnson. “I take them very seriously. I know that I have refused to sign a few [and] pushed a few back for modifications.” Holder’s answer serves as confirmation that the Justice Department’s secret seizure of The Associated Press’s phone records is not an isolated incident. Though the decision to subpoena information from media organizations normally falls to Holder, he insists...

Media Matters has weighed in on the news that the Justice Department secretly seized extensive phone records from the Associated Press, and the left-wing advocacy group is siding with the government. “The AP revealed yesterday that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of reporter and editor phone records from 2012, likely as part of an investigation into leaks around a counterterrorist operation in the Arabian Peninsula,” reads a Tuesday afternoon post on the Media Matters Action Network website. “If the press compromised active counter-terror operations for a story that only tipped off the terrorists, that sounds like it should...

Dear Members of the American Press

MULDROW -- It was standing room only in the spacious Muldrow Public Schools cafeteria as hundreds of area residents crowded into a School Board meeting Monday to discuss the Ten Commandments plaques posted in each classroom for two decades. The plaques, which had been donated to the district in the early 1990s, were removed by Monday. Many attendees arrived in vehicles upon which Christian slogans were written or posted. Many wore clothing proclaiming their religious beliefs. Many teens attended, wearing black "Don't Quit for Christ" T-shirts. Several elderly attendees clutched Bibles. Attendees' ages ranged from infant through senior citizen. Muldrow...

Who would have thought something like this would happen? President Obama has been in the White House for over four years and if there is anything we have learned in that time, it is that he has no better friends than the ones he has in the media. I have lost count of the number of times the media has covered Obama's backside and prevented scandals from coming to light. Fast and Furious, Benghazi, etc., etc. These are all stories that should have highlighted exactly how incompetent and dangerous the Obama administration is, but none of them have gained traction....

Can anyone point to the map and tell me where Muldrow, Oklahoma is? If you have not learned where this little town is by now, let me give you an education. It is near the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas and it has become the latest community to undergo a steady attack on Christianity. It is also the town where I grew up. I graduated from Muldrow High School in 1980 and I never dreamed it would be the center of so much attention. We were known for having a terrible football team, but great basketball players. We also produced...

Joe Biden endorses a tax on blood and goreTaking legal advice from Joe Biden is dangerous, like taking his tips on home defense. The vice president who urges the ladies to deal with intruders by firing a shotgun at the dark now says there’s no “legal problem” with imposing a violence tax on movies and video games. Mr. Biden endorsed the idea, proposed by the Rev. Franklin Graham at a White House meeting to plot strategy for enacting the president’s gun legislation. A sin tax would be imposed on video games such as “Call of Duty” and movies such “Django...

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws. You won’t find that anywhere in the charges against him, of course. As a practical matter, though, everyone knows that Nakoula wouldn’t be in jail today if he hadn’t produced a video crudely lampooning the prophet Muhammad. In the weeks after the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, the Obama administration claimed the terrorist assault had been the outgrowth of a demonstration against the Nakoula video. The administration ran...

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY is being redefined in America, or at least many would like it to be. Our secular establishment wants to reduce the autonomy of religious institutions and limit the influence of faith in the public square. The reason is not hard to grasp. In America, “religion” largely means Christianity, and today our secular culture views orthodox Christian churches as troublesome, retrograde, and reactionary forces. They’re seen as anti-science, anti-gay, and anti-women—which is to say anti-progress as the Left defines progress. Not surprisingly, then, the Left believes society will be best served if Christians are limited in their influence on...

The Foundation for Individual Rights In Higher Education (FIRE) is the premier non-partisan organization fighting to protect free speech and other constitutional rights on campus.  The FIRE defends everyone’s rights, regardless of political affiliation.We have cited The FIRE numerous times here and at College Insurrection, and they have submitted a few guests posts on campus issues.The FIRE is not an organization prone to hyperbole.So when I received this email late this afternoon from FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley, it got my attention: THIS. IS. OUTRAGEOUS. The government has mandated speech codes on all campuses. I hoped I would never see this day, but...

Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom. As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events...

Members of a boys 4 X 100 meter relay high school track team in Texas were left in tears last weekend after the University Interscholastic League of Texas disqualified them from competing in the state championships because the team's anchor runner made a "religious gesture" as he crossed the finish line to win their regional title. The runner, Derrick Hayes reportedly lifted a finger to the sky in celebration, as he wrapped up the win for Columbus High School. According to his father, K.C. Hayes, he was simply pointing to God. But UIL officials disagreed and slapped the team with...

The U.S. Senate is expected to take action today on the next set of infringements on that which shall not be infringed. The promised filibuster by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and at least thirteen other senators appears unlikely to be enough to defeat today's planned "motion to proceed" vote, thanks to something like a quarter of GOP senators refusing to do their part to keep this dangerous legislation from gaining any ground. Meanwhile, we are told that Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), narrowly elected to his seat in 2010 only with the help of gun owners, in closed-door negotiations with supposedly...

In its March 28 issue, The New Yorker published an article titled “Bitter Scalia Leaves U.S.,” by Andy Borowitz in his Borowitz Report. The article presents Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s supposed decision to resign from the Court and leave the United States. It also quotes Scalia as saying that this past week of hearings concerning same-sex marriage had been “by far the worst week of my life.” The article went on to include contrived quotes about his considered choices of new national citizenship and described his supposed angry outburst at his fellow Justices upon his dramatic exit. The article...

Last week, I gave 12 examples of how religious liberty has been assaulted in just the past two years in the U.S. Here are about two dozen more instances just for good measure, as reported by the Family Research Council, the office of Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., and various media outlets. --The following public institutions recently have joined the growing ranks of those that have banned the use of the word "Easter" in order to diminish or eliminate references to religion: East Meadow School District in New York, Prospect Heights Public Library in Illinois, Heritage Elementary School in Alabama,...

<p>Middlebury baker and artistic cake designer Jennifer Montalto, owner of Jenny-Lu’s, has suddenly found the semi-professional bakery she runs out of her home kitchen is garnering a lot of attention — though not all good.</p> <p>The sudden interest in Montalto’s baking stems from a life-like AR-15 gun cake she made for a 51st birthday party held at the annual Friends of NRA dinner. While many have praised the cake for its detail and design, others are calling it “insensitive,” as the weapon was used in the brutal shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14.</p>

It's Holy Week, but what's not so holy is the assault on religious liberty in the U.S. Religious liberty has been called rightly America's "first freedom," not only because the right is contained in the First Amendment but also because it predates the U.S. and has its origin in God, not government, and the freedoms he endowed within us. But over the past few decades, that basic freedom has come under assault -- particularly, in recent years, regarding Christianity. Last week, I discussed how religious liberty in foreign countries is being suppressed. This week, I will begin to address...

Tennesee’s outspoken African American female Senate candidate in 2014 spoke to Guns & Patriots about gun rights, racism, and the Bill of Rights.“Gun control historically begins with blacks who were forbidden from owning guns,” said Brenda S. Lenard, a 2013 political science PhD candidate from the University of Tennessee and a resident of Kingston.“It was very easy for slave owners to keep and control blacks with gun control,” she said.The same thing is happening today, she said. “It is a slow process of gun confiscation.”It starts with certain groups of people, or certain types of rifles, and turns into...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops filed comments with the Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday stating that the regulation that HHS issued under Obamacare that requires most health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs continues to be an “unjust and unlawful mandate” despite "accommodations" the administration proposed last month. The bishops reiterated their position that "the mandate should rescinded." "In short," said the bishops' comments, "the Administration continues to propose: (a) un unjust and unlawful mandate; (b) no exemption or 'accommodation' at all for most stakeholders in the health...

The Philadelphia Human Relations Commission has launched an investigation at the request of the mayor after a well-known magazine published an essay that explored perspectives of white citizens on the issue of race relations. Mayor Michael Nutter called on the commission to consider rebuking both Philadelphia Magazine and writer Bob Huber noting that “the First Amendment, like other constitutional rights, is not an unfettered right.” Nutter’s fury was directed at a cover story titled, “Being White in Philly.” The story included conversations with mostly anonymous white residents who detailed race relations in the City of Brotherly Love. “In a city...

Over the course of the last twenty years, I have taught hundreds of cases highlighting constitutional violations in criminal investigations and adjudications. Some of the cases are so outrageous that it is hard to believe they actually happened in America. Until recently, I considered the 1964 juvenile adjudication of Gerald Gault to be unparalleled as a mockery of due process. Gault was accused by a neighbor, Ora Cook, of making a lewd phone call that would have been punishable by a maximum of two months in jail and a fifty dollar fine had Gault been an adult. But he was...

Since the 1950s the Longview, Wash. City Council has opened its public meetings with prayer, as Congress has done for 239 years. But fear of a lawsuit from groups like the ALCU has caused the mayor to tell the local ministerial association that it is “not acceptable” for ministers who volunteer to give a Christian prayer that refers to Jesus. To their credit, the ministers refused to give a generic prayer that violates the convictions of their faith. So, for fear of an ACLU threat, city officials decided to exclude ministers simply because their faith teaches them to pray...

I believe in the First Amendment, so I would never support legislation to restrict political speech or curtail the ability of people to petition the government. That being said, I despise the corrupt Washington game of obtaining unearned wealth thanks to the sleazy interaction of lobbyists, politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups.So you can imagine my unfettered joy when reading about how this odious process is being curtailed by sequestration. Here are some cheerful details from story in Roll Call.…sequester cuts…reflect not only Washington’s political paralysis but a bitter lobbying failure for K Street interests across the board. From university professors...

Hooray for the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Unlike all too many liberal courts throughout the country, which have held that atheist hate speech against Christians is perfectly okay, the Sixth ruled last week that such anti-religious malice is not protected by the First Amendment. The case dates back to 2010, when the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist hate group based in Madison, Wisconsin, wrote a series of letters to Jim Fouts, Mayor of Warren, Michigan, demanding that the city remove a nativity scene from a holiday display it has put up for years. Mayor Fouts told the...

CBS's Bill Plante: Obama Administration 'Undercutting First Amendment,' 'It's State-Run Media' By Noel Sheppard Created 02/24/2013 - 4:01pm Bill Plante, CBS News Senior White House Correspondent, made a rather shocking statement Sunday about the Obama administration's media strategy. Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, Plante said that to the extent the White House is able to "put out their own material" without the Washington press corps, "they're undercutting the First Amendment...it's state-run media" (video follows with transcript and commentary): HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Bill Plante, you've been patrolling that building since Ronald Reagan. Does the White House press look a little self-involved,...