Free Republic

The Federal Election Commission has launched an audit into President Barack Obama's record-breaking 2008 campaign. Individuals familiar with the campaign told Roll Call Friday that the FEC has been investigating the financial records of Obama's previous campaign. The scope of the probe, which began approximately two years ago, is unknown. Presidential audits typically take years to complete and can cost millions of dollars. The newly formed 2012 Obama campaign did not deny there was an audit, but a spokeswoman called it a "review." "The FEC is conducting a routine review — as is true with the McCain Campaign, the Romney...

Apart from the sheer mass of the Clintons’ earnings, perhaps the most intriguing revelation contained in the release of the Clinton tax data last week was that Bill Clinton received a whopping $15 million advance in 2001 for what would become his autobiography, My Life. As even the New York Times noticed, this was significantly “larger than previously thought” — or, more exactly, than previously reported. For example, an August 7, 2001 article in the Times puts the figure vaguely at “over $10 million.” A Wall Street Journal report from the following day cites a more concrete figure of “close...

The Democrats, including President Obama, have embarked on a disastrous campaign impugning the US Chamber of Commerce as a source of nefarious foreign money corrupting our campaigns. Not only has the accusation failed to resonate, it has opened a door that Democrats would prefer remain closed. And because Washington Post writer Marc A. Thiessen has taken up the question, it will be impossible to contain the very valid questions raised: ...one of the largest labor unions in America, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), ... is spending lavishly to elect Democrats. The SEIU claims 100,000 members in Canada. According to...

As we gallop toward the date of the Democratic apocalypse, Democrats are pulling more tricks out of their bag to bamboozle (as Barack Obama would say) voters into pulling the lever for them come November 2nd. How low will they go is the question? Let's take another tour of the political landscape to see what these geniuses have cooked up to deliver to us through their friends in the media world. "Well, we've got your puppy-killing Republican running for Governor in Illinois. Here is the ad the hapless Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn (successor to the recently convicted Rod Blagojevich) has...

Two top Republicans lit into President Obama and the Democratic Party Sunday over accusations that the GOP strategists and the Chamber of Commerce were using foreign contributions to influence the election, calling the claim a "baseless lie" and accusing the president of "abuse of power." Karl Rove, a Fox News contributor, said on "Fox News Sunday" that the president had gone too far. "Have these people no shame? Does the president of the United States have such little regard for the office that he holds that he goes out there and makes these kind of baseless charges against his political...

PLAYING WITH FIRE

The ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee accused the imam behind the mosque project near Ground Zero of arm-twisting and "blackmailing" to push Park51 through. "To me, it's almost as if he's blackmailing and threatening the United States that somehow if the mosque is not approved or people speak out against his mosque, you have to worry about being attacked by Islamic terrorists," Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf on Fox Business Network on Friday. King said that the Islamic center was being "put their to make a statement, not to build bridges, but...

If freedom of religion means anything in the United States, it means that Mus lim-Americans have a right to congre gate and worship wherever they please -- including places those with vivid memories of 9/11 may find distasteful. But that doesn't mean the people behind a planned mosque blocks away from Ground Zero are acting like good neighbors -- or good citizens. Exhibit A: Their secrecy about who'll actually be funding the project. Granted, the groups leading the mosque-building effort seem just fine. The Cordoba Initiative, led by Kuwaiti-born Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, says it's devoted to "interfaith tolerance," while...

In the 1960s, my parents left their despotic motherland of Syria for the promise of genuine liberty and religious freedom in America. In the decades since, we have led the construction of a number of mosques in the towns where we lived. Some went up without challenge from the local community, but others met with palpable local discontent. In those cases, the law and the natural American affinity for religious freedom eventually paved the way to the ribbon cutting. These were all humble mosques, funded locally by our congregations. It's plain the planned "Ground Zero mosque" is something very different....

A million-dollar backer of the Clinton Foundation was barred from boarding a corporate jet in New Jersey last month after officials discovered his name was on the federal no-fly list. Gilbert Chagoury, a billionaire Nigerian businessman, was departing Teterboro airport on his way to France when the FBI stopped him for questioning. Chagoury eventually obtained a "waiver" from Washington to continue his trip, and the office of former President Bill Clinton said it had "no role whatsoever" in securing the special permission. A spokesperson for the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center said the no-fly list is "fluid," but that "an individual's...

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu isn't just one of The New York Times Co.'s creditors anymore -- he's now one of their biggest stockholders, according to a Security and Exchange Commission filing Friday. Slim exercised warrants for 15.9 million in Class A shares for a strike price of $6.3572 through his companies Inmobiliaria and GFI, raising his stake in the Times Co. to 16.3% from 6.9% at the time he was approached to loan a substantial sum to the venerable publisher. Slim got the warrants in January 2009 when he lent the Times Co. $250 million. The company said that...

President Obama refunds cash to Kenyan aunt, convicted murderer, lobbyists By: Kenneth P. Vogel July 28, 2009 04:44 AM EST More than eight months after President Barack Obama won the White House, the remnants of his campaign organization is struggling to deal with some unfinished business: returning about $669,000 in tainted or illegal campaign contributions to a motley assortment of donors, among them a convicted murderer, Washington lobbyists and a number of foreign nationals, including his own aunt. But the 11 Chicago-based staff members still on the campaign’s payroll are finding it was a lot easier to rake in a...

Sometime early next year, the six commissioners who run the Federal Election Commission will face an interesting dilemma--whether to approve a "for cause" audit of the presidential campaign of a sitting president, Barack Obama. From a legal standpoint, this should be an easy vote. Serious issues were raised in numerous media reports chronicling the Obama campaign's probable violations of federal law. If the career staff at the FEC follow the ordinary, regulatory model of investigations, they will recommend such an audit to the commissioners. However, the odds are that the three Democratic commissioners will be under enormous pressure to vote...

On Dec. 19, 2008. at 2 p.m., the New York-based Alavi Foundation, which supports Iranian causes, contributed between $25,000 and $50,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation. This can be best described as the ultimate chutzpah, for on the very same day, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York indicted the president of the Alavi Foundation, Farshid Jahedi, "on a charge of obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying documents required to be produced under a grand jury subpoena concerning the Alavi Foundation's relationship with Bank Melli Iran and the ownership of a Manhattan office building."

There is now growing evidence that Sen. Barack Obama bought the White House by using illegal and fraudulent fundraising, but that's a story you won't read in the mainstream media. You will read about it here today. While that story of Obama election law violations is still developing, what is the mainstream media reporting on? The New York Times isn't interested in election fraud ... if committed by Sen. Obama and the Democrats. So it is using its resources to investigate the amount of money the McCain campaign spent on hair stylists for Gov. Sarah Palin. (New York Times, Dec. 6,...

Is there some way to get this to the FEC or anyone? If you go to the blog you will see that this is Barack Obama advertising and asking for donations from Kenyans. I think that it is illegal even if you get a mere $5 donation from any foreign sources? It never ends does it...

Has the Obama campaign made a regular practice of accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions, as the research of Kenneth Timmerman suggests? Well, if one is to judge by an article published last month by the Italian columnist Maria Laura Rodotà, in certain European circles such solicitation would appear to be an open secret. Moreover, Rodotà’s account of being inundated by emails from the Obama campaign suggests that the campaign may not only have been accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions, but that it may have been soliciting them. Here is what Maria Laura Rodotà writes in her October 2 column in...

On Monday, I chided the Washington Post’s Matthew Mosk for missing a key point in the story of credit-card fraud in Barack Obama’s campaign. Today he puts that point front and center in his follow-up report. Team Obama deliberately turned off the systems that would have guarded against the kind of fraudulent donations that have accrued millions to their coffers: Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign...

Obama is on pace to spend more on TV in the final 25 days of this election than John McCain's entire $85 million matching-fund check. For those keeping score at home, Obama has aired more than 25,000 commercials in the past four days alone. McCain is in a shouting match against a man with a bull horn. Whatever McCain does in the final 25 days, it will not be enough to break through the noise unless his campaign finds a message that connects with voters. Timing is everything in politics, and McCain's campaign may have waited too long to play...

The Republican national committee (RNC) said Mr Obama had accepted contributions from foreigners and taken more than the $2,300 maximum from donors who give in small amounts. RNC officials want the Federal Election Commission to examine Mr Obama's records in detail to determine the extent of the problem. An Obama campaign spokesman denied the charges. Bill Burton said: "Our campaign has shattered fund-raising records with donations from more than 2.5 million Americans. We have gone above and beyond the transparency requirement." Democrats are viewing the Republican claim as the latest example of a smear campaign against Mr Obama. On Saturday,...