Free Republic

Benghazi-gate: Democrats couldn't share the grief of a mom who was lied to in front of her son's casket or a grieving father who wonders why the general who could have mounted a rescue was relieved of his post. It was a shameful spectacle all around, starting with bizarre testimony by the authors of the State Department's Accountability Review Board (ARB) report and including real tears in a scandal branded as "phony" by the Obama administration and the repetition of lies agreed upon. The scene was Thursday's hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attack before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee....

Gun Crime: FBI statistics show Chicago, with one-third the population, passing New York City in the number of murders in 2012. Is it time for a national conversation about gang control vs. gun control? President Obama doesn't often mention his hometown when he talks about gun control. Then he'd have to explain, in arguably the most gun-restricted big city in America in the last state to allow concealed carry of firearms, why Chicago is now officially the murder capital of the United States. In new statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012,...

Energy: A new study shows that little methane, a strong greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in ground water, is released into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing. So it must be OK to frack now. In the first "Gasland" movie, environmental activist Josh Fox trumpeted flaming water taps in a Colorado town as evidence of fracking-induced water contamination. In fact, the areas in question had reported naturally occurring methane in their water for decades. Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value...

Carbon emissions in the U.S. have hit a 20-year low due to a supposedly environmentally unfriendly drilling technique that has created an abundance of cheap natural gas. The free market, it seems, does it better than the EPA. Environmentalists find themselves between shale rock and a hard place after a little noticed technical report documented how the natural gas boom caused by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has actually helped the environment in a major way while also creating jobs and economic growth. In the report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said...

Security: As the usual suspects call for stricter gun control, the fact remains that a gunman with two prior gun-crime arrests entered a secure military facility with a stolen ID and found no one able to shoot back. It was Fort Hood all over again. Aaron Alexis, a gunman whose prior behavioral warning signs were ignored, opens fire in an installation belonging to the most powerful military on Earth and those who protect our nation and design our weapons are not allowed to have a weapon to defend themselves. He was more equipped than the 12 people he killed on...

Politics: New emails show that the woman at the center of the IRS scandal over special scrutiny of conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status targeted tea party applications specifically and directed they be held up. While a possible "wag the dog" attack on Syria and other "phony" scandals like Benghazi have grabbed the headlines, Congress has continued its investigation into the Obama administration's targeting of tea party groups that sprang up in opposition to ObamaCare by the agency charged with enforcing it, the Internal Revenue Service. In case anyone forgot, Lois Lerner, former head of the Exempt Organizations office of...

Energy: After more than five years of a fracking moratorium, a leading energy company walks away from its leases, leaving New York, its natural gas riches — and the jobs and wealth they could generate — unrealized. In 2000, people from Chesapeake Energy began arriving in Broome County, New York, a few miles north of the Pennsylvania border. Broome had seen better economic days but was lucky to be sitting right atop the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation, which stretches through much of the Northeast. Over the next few years, Chesapeake was able to snap up drilling rights to some...

Rights: Colorado voters on Tuesday ousted two leading supporters of stricter gun control laws, saying "ready, aim, fired" to those who would deny movie patrons and college women the right to armed self-defense. One would think that Colorado, the site of the tragedies at Columbine and the Aurora movie theater, the purple state where President Obama accepted his first nomination amidst faux Greek columns, would be the least receptive of states for the arguments of Second Amendment defenders. Colorado state Senate President John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron found out differently on Tuesday as they were ousted by gun rights...

Scandal: As cruise missiles are readied to aid Syria's al-Qaida-linked rebels, the president has yet to keep a promise to avenge the Benghazi dead and bring the killers to justice. A year has passed since Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Ty Woods were murdered in a Sept. 11 terrorist attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. A month later, Obama said of the attack that "my biggest priority now is bringing those folks to justice, and I think the American people have seen that's a commitment I'll always keep." That depends on what he means by...

Syria: As a Chinese warship joins Russian ships in the Mediterranean, we should remember a cruise missile attack on an Israeli warship. President Obama should understand that Syria and Hezbollah have missiles, too. As the Obama administration continues to deploy its comical weapons, with Secretary of State John Kerry promising America any attack on Syria will be "unbelievably small," a Chinese warship deploys off the Syrian coast, joining its Russian counterparts in what used to be an "American lake," the Mediterranean Sea. The People's Liberation Army has dispatched the amphibious dock landing ship Jinggangshan, a move that follows the announcement...

Mideast: The administration's planned strike on Syria is increasingly opposed by many in a U.S. military coping with the scars of two long wars, a rapidly shrinking budget and soldiers saying we're "tired, stretched thin and broke." That sentiment was expressed by an active-duty soldier with a rank of Sergeant First Class in an email to Rep. Justin Amash. The Michigan Republican has been receiving, compiling and tweeting emails from current and former service members now being asked to commit to an ill-defined mission with an unclear goal in support of rebels mostly linked to al-Qaida and other unfriendly interests....

Voting Rights: While the Department of Justice sues Texas over its Voter ID law, analysis of Georgia's 2008 statute shows turnout increased among all groups, including blacks and Hispanics. Jim Crow, call your office. When on June 25 the U.S. Supreme Court freed southern states from the most onerous part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ruling that continuing certain requirements could not be justifiably based on past voter suppression but could be justified only if current discrimination against minorities could be proved, the decision did not sit well with Eric Holder's Department of Justice. In August, DOJ's civil rights...

Syria: A commander in chief who ignored the first 100,000 deaths in Syria sends his secretary of state to defend the urgency of a delayed attack with unneeded congressional approval against a "Hitler" Kerry dined with. Then-Sen. Kerry must have been one of the people then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had in mind when, on CBS' "Face The Nation" in 2011, she said, without disputing the assessment: "Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he (dictator Bashar Assad) is a reformer." Certainly Kerry shared that assessment,...

Mideast: The same al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sharia that killed four Americans in Benghazi is now training foreign jihadists to fight with Syria's Islamist rebels. Are we about to provide them air support? On Sept. 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was crouched in a safe room waiting for help as the al-Qaida terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia was taking credit for the attack, according to emails reaching the White House and the State Department. Ambassador Stevens did not survive, nor did Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Ty Woods, all killed by the terrorists of Ansar al-Sharia and other groups whose...

Basic Rights: Once more, military training has become an Orwellian re-education camp where a radical transformation of the truth depicts the Founding Fathers as extremists and conservative groups as "hate groups." Saying "Give me liberty or give me death" qualifies Patrick Henry as an extremist, according to the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide which has been obtained by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act Request. And so the rest of those who took up arms against the British Crown and pledged their lives, their fortune and their sacred honor for a shot at liberty and democracy....

Foreign Policy: Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's bravado is based on the myth of a U.S. defeat that never happened and a timid White House that let four Americans die in Libya. It might be time to set him and others straight. The fruits of President Obama's ever-shifting red line regarding Syria's use of chemical weapons might be ripening as U.S. warships and aircraft prepare for possible cruise-missile strikes on Syrian targets. Weakness, both real and perceived, invites conflict and emboldens enemies, and our impotence in Benghazi didn't support our warnings to Damascus. One of the reasons Syrian dictator al-Assad might...

Desecration: A U.S. flag with the president's face replacing the field of stars resurfaces at the March on Washington's 50th anniversary, turning the symbol of freedom many have fought and died for into a campaign prop. It has been a while since President Obama accepted his first nomination among faux Greek columns in Denver in 2008. But judging from the reappearance of the "Obama flag" at a march celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, the cult of personality that has risen around him has not been diminished or discouraged. That flag first appeared in March 2012...

Scandals: One of the nation's largest veterans groups is being required to provide proof of membership eligibility. Posts that can't or won't comply face heavy fines. Your government thanks you for your service. The IRS scandal, which President Obama says is "phony," along with the body-bag scandals of Benghazi and Fast and Furious, was once the object of faux presidential scorn. When the president announced acting Commissioner Steven Miller had resigned over his agency's "inexcusable" targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups who had applied for tax-exempt status, he feigned concern. "I reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog's report and...

Police State: The administration is building a detective squad that will target consumers and companies that don't follow ObamaCare's rules. The game of "good cop, bad cop" has arrived in American health care. It was bad enough to know that an Internal Revenue Service that targets the political opponents of the Obama administration between partying on the taxpayer dime would be in charge of monitoring compliance with ObamaCare's individual mandate via our tax returns. Now, the Daily Mail, which lodged a Freedom of Information Act with Health and Human Services, reports that the agency has hired a bevy of criminal...

Incentives: A new study shows that in most states welfare programs pay more than a minimum-wage job, and in some states government aid can be more than the earnings from a regular, entry-level job. Back in 1996, a Republican House led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, working with Democratic President Clinton, helped enact genuine welfare reform that included three main elements, the most important of which was the work requirement. Within five years of the law's implementation, stagnant welfare rolls were halved, employment among low-income Americans soared and child poverty rates plummeted. This was after a 1995 study by the Cato...