Free Republic

full title.....Chelsea Clinton puts her religious roots to academic use as she lands new job as 'multifaith' leader at New York University Chelsea Clinton, who is a member of the United Methodist Church, has landed a new job at New York University as co-founder and co-chair of its brand-new 'multifaith initiative,' Of Many Institute. The 33-year-old's role, which is yet to be formerly announced, will aim to develop multifaith dialogue and 'support a new generation of religious and civic leaders who. . . [will] reach across faith boundaries to solve social problems together,' explains the NYU website.

WASHINGTON — Senior Treasury officials were made aware in June 2012 that investigators were looking into complaints from tea party groups that they were being harassed by the Internal Revenue Service, a Treasury inspector general said, disclosing that Obama administration officials knew there was a probe during the heat of the presidential campaign. J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testifying alongside ousted IRS head Steven Miller on Friday, said he had told the department's general counsel about his investigation on June 4, 2012, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin "shortly thereafter." But, George cautioned, those discussions...

NBC's Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election:

... putting Benghazi, the IRS's Tea Party targeting and the Justice Department's leak-hunting seizure of Associated Press phone records in the same basket is like comparing a mirage to a dishwasher to a diamond. There is no common thread. Benghazi is a scam, not a scandal. It began as a political ploy during the 2012 presidential campaign. Republicans tried to pin a cover-up on the President.... The Justice Department's secret seizure of AP phone records is more a policy dispute than a scandal..... The irs's targeting of Tea Party groups is, however, an actual full-blown scandal. In fact, it is...

When it comes to investigative reporters, how do you change a bulldog into a lapdog? Easy: change the occupant of the Oval Office from a Republican into a Democrat. Witness Carl Bernstein's pitiful performance on today's Morning Joe. The man who teamed with Bob Woodward to bring down Richard Nixon now credulously claims that he "can't imagine" that President Obama is possibly involved in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Bernstein instead blames the "hyper-partisanship" in Washington. Yeah, cause politics were so kumbaya in 1972, Carl. View the video here.

An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas. The additional guidelines created by the agency were part of a timeline, obtained by Fox News, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is looking into the controversial IRS practice. IRS officials apologized Friday for the scrutiny, but new information suggests senior leaders were apprised of the effort as early as 2011 despite public denials from the top.

Lois Lerner’s Response to Tea Party Question In response to a question about the IRS’s handling of Tea Party exemption applications, asked at the May 10 meeting of the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, Lois Lerner, Director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations office, made the following response: “We get about 60,000 applications for tax exemption every year, most of them are 501(c)(3) organizations. But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these organizations applying more than doubled,...

For the last 8 months, many news organizations have looked very casually (to put it lightly) on the Benghazi story…some journalists and news organizations have even been highly critical of those journalists or news organizations who dared to think the American people were not getting the whole story (yes, Fox News has been the subject of some sneering but we can take it …. we are big boys and big girls…and more importantly, we are also not afraid of what the media clique says about us. We do our job.) I don’t know what will shake out when we finally...

Eight months after four Americans died in a terrorist attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, a House committee held another hearing on Wednesday to examine whether the Obama administration mishandled the tragic events. What follows is an update on what is known about the Benghazi episode and why it has become such a political flash point: Q. Why is the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holding a new hearing on Benghazi? A. Committee investigators found two State Department officials who previously had not spoken publicly and who are scathingly critical of the administration’s response to...

Officials found guilty in Obama, Clinton ballot petition fraud: A jury in South Bend, Indiana has found that fraud put President Obama and Hillary Clinton on the presidential primary ballot in Indiana in the 2008 election. Two Democratic political operatives were convicted Thursday night in the illegal scheme after only three hours of deliberations. They were found guilty on all counts.

Progress Kentucky, the liberal super PAC that came under fire for making racial slurs about the wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is also responsible for a recently-leaked recording of the senator in a strategy meeting, according to Louisville radio station WFPL and Fox News. Both outlets are quoting Jacob Conway, a committee member of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, as naming Sean Reilly and Curtis Morrison, respectively the founder and a former employee of Progress Kentucky, as the culprits. "They happen to be friends of mine. Or were friends of mine," Conway told Fox News in a phone interview...

A California billionaire is pledging to spend as much of his fortune as necessary to make climate change “the defining issue of our generation.” Tom Steyer, who made his riches as a hedge fund manager, told The Hill on Tuesday that he wants to make climate change a campaign issue for years to come and Democratic support for environmental protections as widespread as support for gay marriage and immigration reform. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory,” Steyer said of candidates he judges to be on the...

The Associated Press announced Tuesday that it will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant.” On NBC’s Tonight Show, host Jay Leno said, “They will now use the phrase ‘undocumented Democrat’” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary)...

State Sen. Malcolm Smith and city Councilman Dan Halloran were arrested this morning on charges they were plotting to rig this year’s mayoral election through fraud and bribes. The pols allegedly formed an alliance built on cash payments and fraud to get Smith — one of the state’s top Democrats — placed on the GOP mayoral ballot, sources said. FBI agents arrested them both at their Queens homes shortly after 6 a.m. [snip] Prosecutors are planning to lay out the whole sordid scheme during a news conference later today.

The executive order will direct the commission to produce a report for Obama within six months of its first public meeting, principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said. The panel will be tasked with considering "a variety of ways to shorten lines and promote the efficient conduct of elections" and its findings will be "intended to serve as a best practices guide for state and local election officials to improve voters' experience at the polls under their existing election laws."

When conservatives complain about the harm that the endless debate schedule had on the 2012 Republican primary candidates, the conversation often turns to the hosts and the moderators. Why are Republican candidates letting someone like ABC’s George Stephanopoulos — a former aide to Democrat Bill Clinton — ask them “gotcha questions” during a GOP primary? Why are GOP presidential hopefuls agreeing to meet for a debate hosted by an outlet like MSNBC, a cable network that has increasingly grown hostile to Republicans as it self-identifies as a liberal news network? As the Republican Party released a 100-page report on Monday...

Four Democrats involved in an upstate New York voter fraud scandal were sentenced yesterday for their respective roles, receiving punishments ranging from hundreds of hours of community service, to jail time. The group consisted of a former city clerk, an ex-City Councilman, a Democrat operative, and a Committeeman who a year ago had declared ballot forgery in upstate New York to be “a normal political tactic“. Those sentenced yesterday were cooperating witnesses in a scheme which saw dozens of voters testify that absentee ballots had been submitted in their names during the 2009 Working Families Party (WFP) primary. Securing the...

The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters...

The Democratic National Committee has no plans to repay Duke Energy for an unprecedented $10 million line of credit it guaranteed to help the Democratic convention’s local host committee put on President Obama’s three-day nominating convention in Charlotte, N.C., last September. A Duke company official said the company was claiming the money as a business expense for tax purposes, meaning shareholders will foot $6 million of the cost, according to a report in the Charlotte Observer. The company didn’t limit its convention financial support to the loan guarantee. It also donated $4.1 million to a separate fund formed to accept...

The case of the phantom ballots: an electoral whodunit By Patricia Mazzei pmazzei@MiamiHerald.com TIM CHAPMAN / MIAMI HERALD STAFF About 2,000 rejected absentee ballots at Miami-Dade Elections Department, mostly for lack of signatures or review of signatures from the last election. The first phantom absentee ballot request hit the Miami-Dade elections website at 9:11 p.m. Saturday, July 7. The next one came at 9:14. Then 9:17. 9:22. 9:24. 9:25. Within 2½ weeks, 2,552 online requests arrived from voters who had not applied for absentee ballots. They streamed in much too quickly for real people to be filling them out. They...

This rabble-rousing spew comes via Moonbattery: "The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat. … Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition’s most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will...

As NewsBusters has been reporting for years, there is no objective press anymore - only sycophants gushing and fawning over the political leaders they agree with and admire. More evidence of this came Friday from the Washington Examiner's Charlie Spiering who shared with readers some startling observations in Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings' new book including journalists swooning over Barack Obama at an off-the-record event held at a bar in Orlando, Florida, last year: “The behavior of the assembled press corps was telling. Everyone, myself included, swooned. Swooned! Head over heels. One or two might have even lost their minds,” Hastings...

Angelo Mozilo In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi used an old Jedi mind trick on Stormtroopers to deflect them from their real quarry: “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.� It worked.It looks as if another mind trick, well known in the Congress — delay and deflection — will now work to make Americans forget one of the biggest scandals of our time: the housing collapse that triggered the 2008 financial meltdown we are still suffering from. We shouldn’t just gaze over the fiscal cliff everyone else is scrutinizing; we should also examine the droids who helped set in motion our...

In the run-up to the 2012 election, a story surfaced about an Iraqi billionaire who managed to buy access to Washington policy makers while funding a Chicago Pay-to-Play scheme that helped produce a Governor, a U.S. Senator, and, ultimately, a President of the United States. The story was eight years in the making, yet despite the extent of his political influence, this Iraqi’s name remains widely unknown. He wants it that way. In fact, he has spent millions of dollars to hinder the reporting of his activities by the news media. The lack of attention paid to him, however, is...

Democrat and local school board member, Ed McDonough is on trial in upstate New York for his alleged role in a voter fraud scheme that has already seen numerous colleagues implicated, of which four have already pled guilty. One of those colleagues, Dan Brown, brother and former campaign manager for Democrat City Councilman John Brown, received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Monday's testimony may have revealed new depths to which the Democrats were willing to stoop in order to win elections. Mind you, we've already heard prior testimony that gives insight into just who the Democrats felt...

— Columbia University has a “director of the center for gender and sexuality law” by the name of Katherine Franke who is considered an authority on sexual matters by The New York Times. Her position seems to be that recent scandals in the news are not really scandalous, except in terms of being sensationalized and overblown by the media. She told the paper that Kevin Clash and David Petraeus were victims of a “sex panic” when they resigned from their respective positions. The Times story written by Elizabeth Jensen and Brian Stelter is noteworthy for the claim that Clash, the...

I agree that Obama inherited a crappy economy, and I think it is silly to assert that he bears any responsibility for the severity of the 2007-2009 recession. But it is very fair to hold him responsible for what’s happened since the recession ended. I’ve cited data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve on both employment and gross domestic product to show that Obama has presided over the weakest recovery in the post-World War II period.And I think it is fair to blame Obama for the economy’s anemic performance during that time, largely because his agenda of faux stimulus and Obamacare...

November 18, 2012 Recount resumes as noon deadline looms By Christine Stapleton Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Fort Pierce — The St. Lucie County Canvassing Board resumed ballot counting this morning in the tight congressional race between Republican Rep. Allen West and Democrat Patrick Murphy under the watchful eyes of dozens of attorneys and supporter of both candidates. Canvassing board member Tod Lowery, who regularly updates the audience on the process, explained that the board still had write-in ballots and other questionable ballots from 8 days of early voting to review before the noon deadline for the state’s 67 supervisors...

In a blockbuster report, John Solomon, the former Associated Press and Post reporter, has ferreted out the president's daily brief that informed him within 72 hours of the Sept. 11 attack that the Benghazi attack was a jihadist operation.Citing officials directly familiar with the information, Solomon writes in the Washington Guardian that Obama and other administration officials were told that "that the attack was likely carried out by local militia and other armed extremists sympathetic to al-Qaida in the region."He adds: The details from the CIA and Pentagon assessments of the killing of Ambassador Chris [Stevens] were far more...

White House says did not heavily edit talking points on Benghazi ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 11:25am EST (Reuters) - The White House did not heavily alter talking points about the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, an official said on Saturday. "If there were adjustments made to them within the intelligence community, that's common, and that's something they would have done themselves," Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told reporters. "The only edit ... made by the White House was the factual edit as to how to refer to the facility." After a...

In an emergency evacuation, there will always be people who stay behind to protect their personal belongings. People who ignored evacuation warnings had to be rescued and some lost their lives in one of the worst storms in the history of natural disasters in the United States.The biggest challenges were hunger and cold because of electrical outages. More than 8.1 million homes and businesses lost power.In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, city leaders across the country are asking how their city would respond to a similar disaster and examining their preparedness and self-reliance needs. Sandy would have resulted in much...

A review of voter registration data for ten counties in Colorado details a pattern of voter bloat inflating registration rolls to numbers larger than the total voting age population. Using publicly available voter data and comparing it to U.S. Census records reveals the ten counties having a total registration ranging between 104 to 140 percent of the respective populations. Counties such as Gilpin and Hinsdale have 110 percent of their populations registered to vote. Gilpin County has a total population of 5,441 with 17.4% of the population below the voting age, making the highest possible number of registered voters 4,494....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Voters in key states such as Florida and Virginia waited in long lines hours after polls closed Tuesday night to cast ballots, even as politicians and their supporters urged them not to give up despite the long delays. Candidates turned to social media to encourage voters through the long wait.

Flyers claiming to be from a non-existent Tea Party in Medina, Ohio were placed in mailboxes on Monday urging Ohio voters to defeat "the n***er" in the White House to "help keep our country strong and white." The flyers, obtained by Breitbart News, were found in mailboxes along Rt. 252 in Medina County, Ohio. It is against federal law to place such flyers into mailboxes. Amy Brighton, Co-founder and Co-coordinator of Medina Tea Party Patriots, told Breitbart News that these "disgusting" flyers were a "desperate attempt to smear the millions of Americans involved in and supportive of the tea party...

Court-appointed Republican poll inspectors are being forcibly removed from voting stations in some Philadelphia wards and replaced in some cases by Democratic inspectors and even members of the Black Panthers, according to GOP officials. Secrets just received this memo from GOP officials: The Philadelphia GOP is reporting that court appointed Minority (read GOP) Inspectors are being thrown out of polling locations in several Wards. These Inspectors are election officials - again, court appointed -- and are reportedly being thrown out by the Head Judges of Elections (these Judges are elected Democrats) and being replaced by Democrats. This has happened at...

The Community Voters Project is a "non-partisan" lefty organization whose mission is to register people to vote, with a particular emphasis on minorities. In the 2008 election, they had offices in 10 states and registered around 300,000 minority voters. So far, so good. This year, however, it seems they aren't registering everyone who wants to vote. Outside a CVP office in Philadelphia, for example, they shredded and threw away numerous registration forms. A number of these were for people trying to register as a Republican. A citizen-journalist came across a large bag of trash outside the CVP office in Philadelphia....

Patrick Moran, son of Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), resigned from his father's campaign on Wednesday after conservative activist James O'Keefe released a video that appears to show him offering advice to an undercover videographer who claimed to want to commit voter fraud. "Effective immediately, I have resigned from the Moran for Congress campaign," Patrick Moran said in a statement to TPM sent from his campaign email address.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: My question, who from the Obama team is meeting with Bob Schieffer today? Why would I ask? Because I think somebody from the Obama team met with Candy Crowley and reminded her -- see, if you go back, if you look, two weeks before the debate, Candy Crowley herself knew that Obama did not call Benghazi a terror attack, and then somebody, two weeks before the debate, called her attention to the fact that he had and gave her that transcript. I watched the debate, and Romney hears Obama say that he called it a terror attack,...

Disgraced ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather delved into conspiracy theories on Monday, speculating that the Ohio Republican Party could steal the election for Mitt Romney. In a Facebook posting for Dan Rather Reports, the journalist hyped, "The whole upper tier of Ohio state government is in the hands of the GOP now; in very close voting they have the power to influence what votes are counted and how." Linking back to other conspiracy theories, Rather reminded, "Remember Ohio, Bush v. Kerry in 2004 and Florida, Bush v. Gore in 2000)." The former CBS Evening News host seemed to be echoing the...

There are obviously verifiable vote fraud problems in North Carolina. -snip At latest count, Susan has garnered a total Absentee Ballot vote of over 2,660 people over the age of 110. -snip In visiting the political tracking site, we later found the same story in evidence, except the number of centenarian voters had increased measurably to 832 voters over the age of 112. Of these voters, over 70% were slated as Democrats, with a diminutive 25% counted as Republicans. The rest were unaffiliated. -snip Obviously there is a problem, one in which voter ID might clearly provide a solution. A...

The Hill is reporting that The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE), a United Nations partner on and Cooperation (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democracy and human rights projects, will be democracy and human rights projects, will be deploying several dozen observers across the United deploying several dozen observers across the United States amid concerns of voter suppression. Alerted States amid concerns of voter suppression. Alerted by left-leaning civil rights groups, they are apparently by left-leaning civil rights groups, they are apparently on the lookout for “systematic” efforts to prevent on the lookout for “systematic” efforts to prevent minorities...

Videographer James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas caught an official for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign helping who she thought was an Obama supporter set herself up to vote more than once in November. Stephanie Caballero is the regional field director for Obama’s Organizing For America in Houston, Texas. Federal Election Commission documents show, according to Project Veritas, that Caballero is a “salaried employee of the DNC [Democratic National Committee].” Caballero is caught on camera helping the young woman try to vote in Florida and Texas in the upcoming election.

I am so appalled by this late shift in method that I will not cite another Gallup poll in a column between now & Election Day.— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) October 10, 2012

However, this time it's getting interesting. John E. has this about the weak security that Obama uses to match donor information from redirects which are mostly foreign, and Doug Ross now sees evidence in the websites html that Obama's people are intentionally allowing proxy IP's to be used by their donors. That last bit? That's more than a little fishy.

Florida Republicans are outraged after a school district allowed a pro-Obama organization to conduct student voter registration drives and deliver speeches to classes – but denied the Romney campaign similar opportunities.

Minutes after Newsweek published a story on the threat of illegal foreign and fraudulent online campaign donations late Monday afternoon, the Obama campaign struck back hard with a response smearing one of the article’s authors and offered an anemic defense of its online fundraising operations.

In making his case for re-election in the face of historically high unemployment and sluggish growth, President Obama has a simple and straightforward argument. Things were terrible when I arrived, he says, thanks to Bush-era policies of tax cuts and deregulation. We stopped the decline, but the ditch was so deep that it will take time to get out. Still, we are making progress, even if it isn't as fast as everyone would like. So the last thing we want to do is return to the failed Bush policies that, he says, drove us into the ditch. That argument appears...

Over the last few days, the internet has been abuzz with the possibility that the Obama campaign was about to be nailed with a major foreign donor scandal, with some even speculating that the President was so distracted by the pending story, that it contributed to his horrible debate performance. Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner wrote: President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story. The campaign tried desperately to block...

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year’s election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning.

"The Federal Voting Assistance Program website published an incorrect deadline for the return of returning military ballots in Wisconsin." "The FVAB website incorrectly stated ballots must be returned by November 16. The actual deadline is 4 p.m. November 9. Any military ballots received in that intervening week would not have been counted by local and state election officials. MacIver News Service contacted the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board about the error on Tuesday and requested comment. "All Wisconsin absentee ballots are due by 4 p.m. the Friday after the election. The FVAP site was incorrect.." See rest of article at source.