Free Republic

A group of wealthy liberal donors who helped bankroll the Center for American Progress and other major advocacy groups on the left is developing a new big-money strategy that could boost state-level Democratic candidates and mobilize core party voters. The plan, being crafted in private by a group of about 100 donors that includes billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros and San Francisco venture capitalist Rob McKay, seeks to give Democrats a stronger hand in the redrawing of district lines for state legislatures and the U.S. House.

Trevor Loudon Obama File #109 JournoList was an email group of up to 400 prominent U.S. journalists, academics and “new media” activists, who reportedly colluded in the run up to the 2008, to influence public opinion in favor of the Barack Obama and the Democrats and against their Republican opponents. Many “JournoListas” were involved with Marxist based based organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America, or the far left Institute for Policy Studies. Some, like Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect, had close ties to the Obama campaign and Administration. An overlapping group of “JournoListas” , at least eight strong...

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday about a big setback for the Wendy Davis campaign for Texas governor.  The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) did not include her campaign as a top target which means it won't be prioritized for heavy spending. The reaction from the Davis campaign could best be described as an angry hissy fit which bitterly attacked the DGA. Pretty big political news from Texas to the extent it was covered by the Wall Street Journal. Therefore you would expect the Texas Tribune which is supposed to cover the nuts and bolts details of Texas politics to...

Media Matters employees are furious that their bosses are trying to keep them from unionizing. A union-organizing committee at the liberal group released a statement Monday slamming their employers for “the unexpected and unexplained path our leadership has taken in response to our efforts to unionize,” adding that “the actions of Media Matters executives have placed employees in the impossible position of continuing to produce content espousing pro-labor values for an employer who is challenging our right to unionize.”

Media Matters founder David Brock said Sunday that he’s grateful for progressive billionaire George Soros’ “generosity” and confirmed that he chooses to “pursue” journalists if he “starts to see patterns” in their work. Brock, his silver mane and bizarre vocal intonations lending him the likeness of a socially awkward Bond villain, sat in San Francisco for a softball interview with CNN’s Reliable Sources to respond to the controversy surrounding former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson. The liberal smear machine Media Matters has been hammering the brilliant female investigative reporter with the term “shoddy reporting” to describe her exposes on Obama...

To the casual observer it appears that Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling will be destroyed by the media because he is a bigot a racist and a despicable person. He is of course all of these things, but that’s not why he will be destroyed by the media. Consider the contrast between him and George Soros. Soros has been convicted of a serious crime he committed in France and cannot set foot in Europe without facing extradition to Paris for immediate imprisonment. Up to now the media has covered for both of these men primarily because they are Democrat...

The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday accused Israel of “shooting at Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip,” ignoring the deliberate provocations of Palestinian Arabs along the border fence. A report by the group cited by AFP said that four Palestinian Arabs have been killed near the border fence since the beginning of 2014. The organization cited UN data which also said more than 60 civilians were wounded by Israeli gunfire near the perimeter fence of the territory that is ruled by the Hamas terrorist group. …

It’s time for a little Koch Brothers jiu-jitsu on the left, in particular former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Over at MoveOn.org, Reich has launched a petition for people to sign to publicly “denounce’ and “condemn” the Koch Brothers for making their legal political donations.  As Bookworm put it, So far, 202,240 people have signed a document that could easily have come from the revolutionaries in China during Mao’s deadly Cultural Revolution (Nien Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai vividly illustrates that terrible time); or from the Kremlin during the height of Soviet Kangaroo trials; or from East Germany’s Stasi state (see, e.g, the...

The former hedge fund of one of the Democratic Party’s most important donors was involved in a scheme to defraud foreign investors out of tens of millions of dollars, according to documents filed in a Texas court. Farallon Capital Partners L.P., a fund run by Farallon Capital Management, the multibillion-dollar hedge fund founded by Democratic donor Tom Steyer, became a limited partner in a project to build a large shopping mall near Seattle, Wash., in the mid-1990s after it guaranteed a line of credit for the project.

Gun control advocates have recently put hundreds of millions of dollars toward "public health" studies, with predetermined outcomes. These studies are beginning to find their way to the main stream media. Soon there will be an avalanche of studies, and their advice puts lives at risk. John Lott is the founder of this organization and is seeking to counter the bogus studies by providing rapid response to the new studies as well as conducting high-quality peer-reviewed academic studies. Lott, the author of More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, has conducted decades of research showing that armed citizens...

Now that she has left CBS News, Sharyl Attkisson is revealing all sorts of interesting facts about the way news is shaped by ideologues. Appearing on CNN’s Reliable Sources (transcript) Attkisson: “Media Matters, as my understanding, is a far left blog group that I think holds itself out to be sort of an independent watchdog group. And yes, they clearly targeted me at some point. They used to work with me on stories and tried to help me produce my stories, and at some point” (emphasis added) Well, well, well. So the Soros-funded group works with mainstream media journalists on stories, according to...

Let’s do a thought experiment. If Charles or David Koch got invited onto NBC’s Today show to talk about their efforts to advance their political agenda, would either or both get partnered with Savannah Guthrie for a softball interview? Would their interview include suggestions that one of them should run for President? Kyle Drennen at Newsbusters notes that two weeks prior to Michael Bloomberg’s appearance on Today, the network took a much different approach to money in politics: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The clip just provides the highlights. Newsbusters has the whole transcript up, but let me just note the tough questions asked by...

Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet. Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center , was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that...

(Reuters) - Armored personal carriers driven into the eastern Ukrainian city of Slaviansk had been under the control of Ukrainian armed forces earlier on Wednesday, pictures taken by Reuters photographers showed. A soldier guarding one of six troop carriers now under the control of pro-Russian separatists told Reuters he was a member of Ukraine's 25th paratrooper division from Dnipropetrovsk. "All the soldiers and the officers are here. We are all boys who won't shoot our own people," said the soldier, whose uniform did not have any identifying markings on it. "They haven't fed us for three days on our base....

The International Renaissance Foundation's mission is to foster an open, participatory, plaurlist society based on democratic values in Ukraine...

A plan, now stealthily making its way through state legislatures with astonishing speed, would junk the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. The plan involves an Interstate Compact where states would commit to select electors pledged to vote for the national popular vote winner regardless of how their own state voted. When enough states pass this law, sufficient to cast 270 votes which is the majority of the Electoral College, it will take effect. So far, nine states and the District of Columbia, casting 136 electoral votes, have joined. This is halfway to...

In an interesting interview [link at URL] to the New York Review of Books, George Soros shared his ideas on many topics including Europe, Russia and the Ukranian crisis. He also presented his new book [link at URL] The tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival? Whether one agrees or disagrees with Soro's interpretations and arguments, it is hard to deny that the interview is extremely insightful and gives a lot of food for thought. I offer a discussion of the part of the interview devoted to Ukraine. George Soros emphasized the necessity of a large-scale technical and financial...

Rick Santorum told [1] Ron Paul in Saturday’s debate: “You should know better than to cite George Soros-like organizations.” The comment came in response to attacks on Santorum’s record from the Texas Congressman and libertarian running in the Republican presidential primaries. Exposed for using Soros-funded research in an attack ad [2] charging that Santorum had been “one of the most corrupt” members of Congress, Paul had no explanation or response, except to say that “somebody” had done a survey attacking Santorum and he used it in the ad. The Ron Paul ad includes the line, “I’m Ron Paul and I...

We left off our last article about Obama's Puppet Master, George Soros showing how he may well be connected to what many had once believed to be just a fictional idea of what is called the "Shadow Party." Just the name of such an idea alone gives just cause for concern since it implies that our nation has a party running this nation behind the shadows! However, it is not such a "Shadow Party," since many people associated with it have direct, or indirect, links back to none other than George Soros. Let us begin by showing just where the...