Free Republic

The Democrats on the FCC are working towards the creation of massive regulations on the internet. Preparing them in secrecy, they apparently have 322 pages worth of regulations that they’re prepared to vote on later this month. Meanwhile at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Democrats want to create massive regulations for speech on the internet. Apparently the Democrats aren’t happy with recent Supreme Court decisions which limit the government’s ability to prohibit people from donating money to campaigns and PAC’s. Their solution is to have government regulate internet speech. Some of the rules they’re talking about would regulate blogs, even...

The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank. Leaked files from HSBC’s Swiss banking division reveal the identities of seven donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation with accounts in Geneva. They include Frank Giustra, Canadian mining magnate and one of the foundation’s biggest financial backers, and Richard Caring, the British retail magnate who, the bank’s internal records show, used his tax-free Geneva account to transfer $1m into the New York-based foundation. Hillary Clinton has expressed concern over...

David Brock on Monday abruptly resigned from the board of the super PAC Priorities USA Action, revealing rifts that threaten the big-money juggernaut being built to support Hillary Clinton’s expected presidential campaign. In a resignation letter obtained by POLITICO, Brock, a close Clinton ally, accused Priorities officials of planting “an orchestrated political hit job” against his own pro-Clinton groups, American Bridge and Media Matters. Those groups — along with another pro-Clinton group, the super PAC Ready for Hillary — had their fundraising practices called into question last week by a New York Times report. It pointed out that veteran Democratic...

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified. Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been...

The mother of a mentally disabled man allegedly beaten at a Gordon facility that cared for disabled adults has filed suit seeking punitive damages. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Betty Gill in Bibb County Superior Court, claims that her son, Joseph Allen Cason Jr., also was taken to vote in the 2013 Gordon city election, although he lived in another county. Employees, while acting in their scope of employment, allegedly took Cason and other residents to the polls to vote for the sister of the facility’s owner, who was running for mayor, according to the suit.

In a hearrt-warming reminder that Brian Williams’ heroism doesn’t just extend to taking enemy fire while riding in a helicopter in Iraq – oops – but saving puppies, Williams wrote in 2011 while he was still peddling his war-time heroism that he once joined firefighters and saved a puppy from a burning house. Williams boasted of his heroic exploits for USA Today.... SNIP "My firehouse was a modest engine company — three engines, three garage doors and about 30 of the best men I’ve ever known. "We fought all the usual fires that break out in the suburbs: brush fires,...

On Wednesday night, NBC News anchor Brian Williams apologized to the American people for lying for well over a decade about a heart-stopping war story starring himself. Williams claimed for years that he had ridden a Chinook hit by an Iraqi RPG. Last night, Williams stated, “I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft.” He then added, “We all landed after the ground-fire incident and spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraqi desert.” Sadly, Williams’ apology is chock full of...

Writing for the Baltimore Sun, media journalist David Zurawik called for Brian Williams to resign or to be fired by Friday. “If credibility means anything to NBC News, Brian Williams will no longer be managing editor and anchor of the evening newscast by the end of the day Friday,” Zurawik writes. Wednesday evening, after being caught lying, the Nightly News anchor admitted that for the last 12 years he has repeatedly lied about being shot down in a helicopter over Iraq.

The Brian Williams scandal has burst onto the public square through a feat of Internet accountability. After NBC Nightly News last week posted to Facebook a clip of the anchor reminiscing about having embedded with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, some Facebookers took issue with the particulars. Whereas Williams claimed that he was riding in a helicopter that was forced down after being hit by an RPG, others had a different recollection. “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me...

NBC'S Brian Williams admits on air to lying On 02/04/2015 Front Page,U.S.,World NBC News’ Brian Williams has been caught in a lie and forced to recant. The nation’s top-rated news anchor apologized on the air Wednesday evening for fabricating a story of personal heroics, claiming to have been aboard a helicopter in Iraq in 2003 when it was hit by enemy fire. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said. At the time Williams reported the original incident, he did not claim to be on the Chinook copter that was hit by a rocket-propelled...

A warning to herbal supplement users: Those store-brand ginkgo biloba tablets you bought may contain mustard, wheat, radish and other substances decidedly non-herbal in nature, but they’re not likely to contain any actual ginkgo biloba.

Once upon a time, within the art-adorned walls of a lakeside mansion in Deephaven, Minnesota, there lived a lord and a lady. That’s what Colin and Andrea Chisholm often called themselves, anyway. The Chisholms’ total assets amounted to $97 million, including some $3 million in cash. The “lord and lady” spent lavishly on traveling, upscale restaurants, entertaining guests, massages, original works of art, a collection of purebred dogs and even a million-dollar yacht. In April 2011 alone, they shelled out more than $23,000 just on travel and luxury items. But there were some expenses—like groceries and health services—which they avoided...

With its case against Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services nearing the finish, the Justice Department has turned its attention to another credit-rating firm under fire for issuing rosy grades on mortgage deals in the buildup to the financial crisis. Justice Department officials in recent months have quietly met with multiple former executives of Moody’s Investors Service to discuss ratings of complex securities before the crisis, according to people familiar with the situation. The Justice Department lawyers probing Moody’s are still in the early stages of their investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. It isn’t yet clear whether it...

So far, every for-profit enterprise started by Al Sharpton and known to National Review Online has been shut down in at least one jurisdiction for failure to pay taxes, a review of public records in New York and Delaware reveals. Records show that Sharpton’s beleaguered for-profit entities often overlap and intertwine, some sharing ties with the reverend’s nonprofit organization, National Action Network. Their financial records are copious, confusing, and sometimes outright bizarre, and together, they depict persistent financial woes for Sharpton, who also personally owes New York State nearly $596,000, according to active tax warrants. “He clearly appears — based...

In 2010, Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest agreed to pay the state $345,000 after settling a 2009 audit that uncovered the clinic used incorrect codes and provided insufficient documentation for some claims billed to Medicaid. The original audit finding estimated the Spokane family-planning organization improperly billed Medicaid more than $629,000 for 333 patient procedures from March 2004 through February 2007. During that time, the clinic collected about $7.6 million from Medicaid. Planned Parenthoods in New Jersey were also investigated that same year. In 2012, a published report said that Illinois Medicaid’s inspector general was investigating the billing practices of...

The Likud party intends to hold a press conference in Tel Aviv Sunday in which it will expose details about “V15 – Victory in 2015,” a campaign it says is using foreign money, and lots of it, to boost Labor and Meretz in the elections. Likud has filed a motion to the Elections Committee, according to which V15 is carrying out an illegal indirect campaign with a connection to Labor and Meretz. V15 is “making criminal use of foreign sources of funding,” adding that the sums involved were “very high” and their sources unknown. Likud's press conference will include MK...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A judge granted bond to two defendants charged in a wide ranging fake diploma scheme. Stanley and Yessica Jean will have a lot of restrictions on them but could soon be out of jail. Detectives say the evidence against the couple continues to mount every day, but a judge found they are not a flight risk and should be granted a bond. Yessica Jean took to the stand promising she and her husband would not run away if allowed out on bond in their fraud case. Channel 2 Action News first broke the story about...

An attempt to mend the relationship between citizens and police in St. Louis broke into a shouting and shoving match late Wednesday — between citizens and police. Council members considering a bill to establish a civilian oversight board over police work were holding a public meeting when Jeff Roorda, the business manager of the city’s police union, and a woman appeared to get into a confrontation, an online video shows. The room erupted into shouts and profanity, as people rose to their feet and crowded in on the two. The bill was sponsored by Alderman Antonio French, an active participant...

The head of the Nevada AFL-CIO proclaimed Tuesday that “working families are under attack” by Republican lawmakers who want to weaken collective bargaining laws and pensions now that they control the Legislature.Danny Thompson, executive-secretary treasurer of the organization, told supporters at the Teamsters Local 14 union hall that the designated GOP Assembly speaker, John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, had sent a letter to local governments soliciting ideas for changes in public employee collective bargaining — the workers’ right to negotiate pay and benefits.Thompson, a former assemblyman, said he’s been watching the Legislature for some 35 years and he had never seen...