Free Republic

Five years and 50 years. As President Barack Obama revisits Berlin, he can't escape those anniversaries and the inevitable comparisons to history and personal achievement. His 26-hour whirlwind visit to the German capital caps three days of international summitry for the president and marks his return to a place where he once summoned a throng of 200,000 to share his ambitious vision for American leadership. That was 2008, when Obama was running for president and those who supported him at home and abroad saw the young mixed-race American as a unifying and transformational figure who signified hope and change. Five...

It’s the question on everyone’s lips: "Why is Edward Snowden in China?” The implication is that spookiness is the only plausible explanation for why the NSA whistleblower would have absconded to Hong Kong. “Why flee the country?” is the accusation du jour. “I'm deeply suspicious obviously because he went to China,” said the man-most-likely-to-accuse-you-of-being-a-spy, Dick Cheney. CBS’s Bob Schieffer accused Snowed of cowardice, taunting: “I don’t remember Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks running off to China.” Let me suggest an alternative explanation: Bradley Manning. The trial of the man who handed over classified information to Wikileaks founder Julian...

The director of the National Security Agency was overheard offering a round of beer to the FBI's second-in-command following Tuesday's congressional hearing on the NSA's controversial surveillance programs. The three-hour hearing had just wrapped up around 1 p.m. when NSA Director Keith Alexander turned to FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and praised him for his testimony. 'Thank you, Sean,' Alexander said, according to a clip of the exchange that was first reported by Ben Doernberg. 'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer,' he added.

'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer:' Hot mic catches NSA boss praising FBI chiefs for supportive testimony on surveillance programs The director of the National Security Agency was overheard offering a round of beer to the FBI's second-in-command following Tuesday's congressional hearing on the NSA's controversial surveillance programs. The three-hour hearing had just wrapped up around 1 p.m. when NSA Director Keith Alexander turned to FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and praised him for his testimony. 'Thank you, Sean,' Alexander said, according to a clip of the exchange that was first reported by Ben Doernberg. 'Tell your...

Journalist says he was asked by unnamed intermediary to notify Icelandic government that Snowden may want to seek asylum Iceland has received an informal approach from an intermediary who claims Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed the US government's secret surveillance programs, wants to seek asylum there. Snowden, the former employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, who worked in an NSA facility in Hawaii, made world headlines after providing details of the program to the Guardian and Washington Post and then fleeing to Hong Kong. In a column in the Icelandic daily Frettabladid, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn...

USA Today has published an extraordinary interview with three former NSA employees who praise Edward Snowden's leaks, corroborate some of his claims, and warn about unlawful government acts. Thomas Drake, William Binney, and J. Kirk Wiebe each protested the NSA in their own rights. "For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens," the newspaper reports. "They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced...

Two top officials at the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service (DS) -- the federal law enforcement agency that protects American diplomats and investigates allegations of criminal misconduct by State Department employees -- gave sworn testimony earlier this year that appears to be evasive at best, and untrue at worst, according to evidence obtained by Fox News. The officials are Scott Bultrowicz, who until Feb. 1 served as director of DS, and Tracy H. Mahaffey, who remains the executive director of DS. In videotaped depositions conducted this past February, Bultrowicz claimed not to know about any claims by a federal agency...

Scandal: A D.C.-based supervisor in the IRS's tax-exempt status division has indicated during interviews with congressional investigators that the targeting was deliberate and not run by rogue agents in Cincinnati. Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she was personally involved in reviewing Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status as far back as 2010, reviewing as many as 30. The involvement of Paz thickens the plot considerably and shatters the theory that two rogue agents in Cincinnati got bored in their cubicles one day and...

A manager from a U.S. Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati where staff have been accused of unfairly subjecting conservative groups to extra scrutiny has said his agents were not influenced by any political agenda. John Shafer, who described himself as "a conservative Republican," told congressional investigators he sought advice from his boss on how to handle the first Tea Party application he and a lower-level agent came across in February 2010 because it was a new, high-profile issue. The furor since then has led to the ousting of the IRS chief by President Barack Obama, an FBI investigation and...

June 18, 2013 Benghazi Whistleblower Lawyer Says Joint Chief’s Chairman Lied to Congress Fred Lucas (CNSNews.com) – An attorney whose firm represents two Benghazi whistleblowers said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lied to the Senate when he said there was never a “stand down” order during the Benghazi attack on Sept. 11, 2012. “What was fascinating is that he explained his lie to them,” Joe DiGenova, an attorney representing one of the whistleblowers, told CNSNews.com. “He actually said they were sent to Tripoli. They were needed in Benghazi,” said DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney, now...

Vice President Joseph R. Biden said Tuesday the fight for Congressional action on gun legislation is far from over as he outlined a subset of executive actions the Obama administration has taken to reduce gun violence in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings in December. The address was simultaneously a summary of what President Obama has been able to do since the shootings in Newtown, Conn., and a rallying cry to remind voters and lawmakers that neither he nor Mr. Obama will let the issue fade from public memory. “We got a majority, but not the supermajority needed,” he...

Intelligence officials said Tuesday that the government’s sweeping surveillance efforts have helped thwart “potential terrorist events” more than 50 times since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the officials detailed two new examples to illustrate the utility of the programs. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, officials cited a nascent plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange and a case involving an individual providing financial support to an overseas terrorist group.

There are certainly different styles of leadership. But President Obama is suffering the results of poor choices (passing a huge new entitlement on a party-line vote) and of what can only be described as a lack of courage. Brit Hume says it as well as anyone: “When the issues are difficult and the options unappetizing he tends simply to go away.” Obama practically disappeared from the scene (no calls to Cabinet officials, no convening in the Situation Room) on the night of the Benghazi, Libya, attack. He seems more concerned on the NSA flap with distancing himself from conservatives whom...

To think it only took the world's most (in)famous whistleblower to get the NSA to disclose that it had heroically managed to prevent terrorist attacks involving the New York Stock Exchange (we supposed they refer to the Manhattan-based TV studio and not the actual exchange where the servers are now housed in Mahwah, NJ) and the NY Subway. Because whereas there was a time in the past when the various US secret services would scurry at the opportunity to disclose their expertise to the general public, now it is a false negative that is supposed to disprove a positive (pervasive...

Edward Snowden blames Obama By: Tal Kopan June 17, 2013 11:39 AM EDT NSA leaker Edward Snowden criticized President Barack Obama for empty promises in an online Q-and-A on Monday, saying the president’s alleged failings influenced his decision to release the secret information on surveillance. “Obama’s campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political...

LiveThe whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history will be live online at 11am ET/4pm BST to answer your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations

James O’Keefe is back – this time targeting cell phone stores participating in the government program to offer free phones to low income individuals – or ‘Obamaphones.’O’Keefe’s latest video features his investigators getting free phones from a store in Philadelphia, explicitly telling the employees that they planned to sell them for cash to buy designer hand bags or heroin.One employee responds, “Hey, I don’t judge.”Another responds, “Just keep it to yourself.”Another employee reminds an investigator that it’s illegal to sell the phone, but tells her to “plead the Fifth” if she is caught.

Why are decent people saying this NSA leaker is a traitor for telling the American people and the world that Bama and his crime family are using every asset in the government to do bad things.... Of course he doesn't want investigations because they would catch his criminal friends at the bottom of every scandal in the news.... Fast and furious was getting guns to the criminals in Mexico The IRS was targeting his political enemies=real, honest Americans The NSA is doing the same thing, and probably giving information to other criminals in the bama crime family so the can...

SEOUL: North Korea rushed to the defence of American civil liberties on Tuesday, saying revelations of mass surveillance operations showed the United States was the “kingpin” of rights abuse. Rights groups and defectors have long accused the North, one of the world’s most closed societies, of totalitarian practices. These include brutal suppression of dissent, the operation of a prison camp network holding some 200,000 inmates and a “military-first” policy that has led to periodic famines. A commentary in the state newspaper Minju Joson said allegations of monitoring of telephones and emails by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden meant Americans and...

On Tuesday, Barack Obama is coming to Germany. But who, really, will be visiting? He is the 44th president of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. He is an intelligent lawyer. And he is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But is he a friend? The revelations brought to us by IT expert Edward Snowden have made certain what paranoid computer geeks and left-wing conspiracy theorists have long claimed: that we are being watched. All the time and everywhere. And it is the Americans who are doing the watching. … We’re currently in the...

Well, I don’t know what more assurance I could need. From an interview with Charlie Rose that airs tonight on PBS: Charlie Rose: Should this be transparent in some way? Barack Obama: It is transparent.

On Monday, NSA leaker Edward Snowden suggested in an online interview with The Guardian (UK) that someone at the National Security Agency does indeed receive the content of your emails. “If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time – and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.” He added that he stands by his original accusation that he had the...

Applications of pro-Israel groups for tax-exempt status are routinely routed to an antiterrorism unit within the Internal Revenue Service for additional screening, according to the testimony of a Cincinnati-based IRS agent. Asked whether Jewish or pro-Israel applications are treated differently from other applications, Gary Muthert told House Oversight Committee investigators that they are considered “specialty cases” and that “probably” all are sent to an IRS unit that examines groups for potential terrorist ties. Muthert, who served as an application screener before transferring to the agency’s antiterrorism unit, was interviewed in connection with the committee’s investigation into the IRS’s discrimination against...

Imagine if everyone changed their first line of their answering machine to say; "Press One To Impeach Obama" ?

The blatant application of political pressure applied through powerful government bureaucracies such as the IRS, is arrogant abuse of power in the extreme. Obviously. These proven abuses now provide us very fresh perspectives on other fraudulent manifestations of National import perpetrated by an immoral political machine whose genealogy is rooted in Chicago. A major such event which the MSM has willfully refused to cover before, during and after its denouement, is the conviction of two Democratic political operatives convicted in a fraud which put Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the presidential primary ballot in Indiana in the 2008 election. Democratic...

An answer given by Miss Alabama during the Miss USA pageant on Sunday night fully expressed how pretzel-ish the thinking has to be around our personal safety and security. Asked by actress Wendie Malick whether NSA surveillance is an invasion of privacy or a necessity, Mary Margaret McCord offered a sure-minded reply. She said: "It's sad that if we go to the movies or the airport or the mall that we have to worry about our safety." Yes, it is. Sadness is something that occurs only too often in our difficult world. Especially when all we want is a little...

As NewsBusters has been reporting, it's been a hoot this week watching the same liberal media members that were apoplectic in 2005 when George W. Bush's domestic surveillance program was revealed contort themselves into almost impossible positions defending Barack Obama's far more intrusive scheme seven and a half years later. Glenn Greenwald, the liberal author who first broke the news of this program, spoke to Howard Kurtz on CNN's Reliable Sources about this blatant hypocrisy (video follows with CNN.com transcript and commentary): Greenwald Slams Media for Backing Obama's Domestic Surveillance When They Opposed Bush's HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: I want to...

Holly Paz, an IRS senior supervisor in Washington DC admitted to targeting Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. She was personally involved in scrutinizing up to 30 Tea Party applications. For twenty-seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status starting in March 2010. Paz was put on administrative leave as director of the rulings and agreements division, according to a memo distributed to staffers last week. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) (Again – Paz was not fired as first reported. She was put on administrative leave.) FOX News reported: An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says...

It turns out that the surveillance of Americans may be even more dangerous and unsupervised than had been heretofore acknowledged- but the powers that be aren’t willing to admit it. The National Security Agency (NSA) admitted in a secret briefing that its analysts can decide to listen to Americans’ phone calls without legal authorization.

The United Nations has long been a cesspool of hostility towards the United States, Israel, and freedom more generally. It is dominated by those who promote and protect our enemies’ interests, while undermining ours. Worse yet, we pay much of the UN’s budget. Past presidents have responded to this travesty by sending ambassadors to the UN who unapologetically challenged that agenda. In particular, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and John Bolton were proud of our country and tirelessly championed its values. It is, therefore, a particularly repugnant irony that President Obama wants to entrust Dr. Kirkpatrick’s former post to Samantha...

It's becoming increasingly difficult to give the government the benefit of the doubt in regards to dragnet domestic surveillance. Even before Glenn Greenwald published a top secret court order compelling Verizon to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems and interviewed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, there were credible reports that the NSA was intercepting U.S. communications. The most significant of those occurred in July, when the court that was established to "hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance," called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), found that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction...

With the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, MRCTV wanted to find out how people would feel if a complete stranger asked for specific details about their phone conversations. We quickly discovered that most people are not all that comfortable with sharing even the most basic information about their personal calls. Of course, the major difference is that the government is simply taking your data. We just asked politely.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says she was personally involved in scrutinizing some of the earliest applications from tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including some requests that languished for more than a year without action. Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Her assertion contradicts initial claims by the agency that a small group of agents working in an office in Cincinnati were solely responsible for mishandling the applications. Paz, however, provided no evidence...

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant said. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that." If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman...

When looking at Obama and the Administration he leads, it is best to look at the big picture. What we can infer from the Administration's hidden actions is evident most clearly their public actions. What we see can best be described as "Scandalpalooza", a seeming rock-concert of nonstop scandals. Witness: We have the IRS targeting the political opposition, namely the T.E.A. Party, to suppress their ability to fund candidates It has been revealed that the NSA tracks the communication habits of virtually all American citizens, creating a large encyclopedia of every citizen's communications There is the matter of Benghazi, with...

Sarah Palin energized a group of social conservatives at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference Saturday, blasting the Obama Administration’s apparent lawlessness, calling the current state of America “Orwellian,” and urging the United States to stay out of Syria’s chaotic and brutal civil war. In comments to the Daily Caller, the 2008 candidate for vice president also declined to join many of her fellow Republicans in condemning National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, saying the real problem was the government’s violation of Americans’ rights. In her speech, Palin called the current political atmosphere, rife with scandals, a...

Classified US government data shown to the South China Morning Post by whistle-blower Edward Snowden has provided a rare insight into the effectiveness of Washington's top-secret global cyberspying programme. New details about the data can be revealed by the Post after further analysis of information Snowden divulged during an exclusive interview on Wednesday in which the former CIA computer analyst exposed extensive hacking by the US in Hong Kong and the mainland. The FBI said yesterday it had launched a criminal investigation and was taking "all necessary steps" to prosecute Snowden for exposing secret US surveillance programmes. FBI Director Robert...

As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into his campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman. Salvi studied for the bar exam during meals at campaign dinners. He lost his campaign. Today, however, he should be invited to Congress to testify about what happened 10 years later, when he was a prosperous lawyer and won the Republican Senate nomination to run against a Democratic congressman named Dick...

Just in case you want more Obama in your life… AT&T is loading iPhones with emergency alerts from Barack Obama… That you can’t switch off. AT&T has begun rolling out Wireless Emergency Alerts updates for iPhone 4S and 5, so you won’t be the last folks to know if the entire northern hemisphere is about to be covered in ice à la Day After Tomorrow. You’ll receive a notification from the carrier when your update is ready, but only if you’re using iOS 6.1 or higher. Once installed, AMBER and Emergency alerts are automatically sent to your phone unless you...

The current controversy involving the Internal Revenue Service merely scratches the surface of the problems with that agency and exposes some of the effects that these problems have on the American people. I have personal experience to support this assertion. In 1996, I was the co-founder of a nonprofit organization – the American Civil Rights Institute – whose mission is to eliminate the consideration of race and ethnicity in public education, public employment and public contracting. Given the sensitivity of race in America, I am well aware that this objective places our organization and me personally at the center of...

Watch then-Senator Joe Biden from 2006 as he directly refutes each point made by his boss, President Obama, about the NSA surveillance program at his news conference last week.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama does not believe the recently disclosed top-secret National Security Agency surveillance of phone records and Internet data has violated Americans' privacy rights, his chief of staff said on Sunday. The administration has said the top-secret collection of massive amounts of "metadata" from phone calls - raw information that does not identify individual telephone subscribers, was legal and authorized by Congress in the interests of thwarting militant attacks. It has said the agencies did not monitor calls. Asked whether Obama feels he has violated the privacy of Americans, McDonough said, "He does not."

Arron Burr Kills Alexander Hamilton In A Duel Edward Snowden is on the run for his life. He was being asked to perform a job he considered illegal, immoral, and un-American. Supposedly, he lost faith in the leader for whom young people, Leftist Ideologues, and Useful Idiots have placed so much faith. Yet, he knew our Nobel Peace Prize winning president was spying on innocent Americans and people all over the world. Was the spying justified for America’s security or a political ploy for Democrats and possibly Obama to maintain power and control indefinitely? If the spying was strictly for...

I have always believed that regardless of the laws of a nation, the social fabric that binds it is woven of mutual trust between the people and their private and governmental institutions. Once that fabric is weakened, the dangers to an ordered society are extreme. This week, the holes in the U.S. social fabric are manifest, and they are caused by the administration's ever-expanding lawlessness.. The statements by the high-tech self-exile Snowden set off alarms even among those who are willing to repose their confidence in the general integrity of our intelligence services. In my case, not because I believe...

As if the past few weeks of scandals haven’t been enough, now we learn that the American government is spying on us to an astounding degree. And all it takes to be a target is an analyst’s “51 percent confidence” in an individual’s “foreignness.” The fact that I have an extensive media ministry in the Middle East and—surprise, surprise—have a “foreign” sounding name, places me smack-dab in the middle of the NSA’s target lists. No doubt, they have monitored my phone calls and emails. And yet, I’m not concerned about being spied upon. At least, I’m not concerned about myself....

Yet another glitch seems to be popping up in the immigration reform debate, and I’ll confess that I really didn’t see this one coming. One portion of the proposal regards expanding – and making mandatory in a variety of cases – the use of the E-Verify system. This would ensure that employers were making use of the system to screen out illegal immigrants when hiring. But if it applies to immigrants, in the opinion of some observers, it winds up applying to everyone. And that could lead to the equivalent of a national ID database. “Over time, this could become...

White House doesn't know where Snowden is By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 6/16/13 9:48 AM EDT White House chief of staff Denis McDonough doesn't know where NSA leaker Edward Snowden is, but is suspicious of some of the claims the former government contractor has made. Citing the ongoing investigation, McDonough wouldn't talk about his or President Barack Obama's views of Snowden, though he did tell host Bob Schieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that he's unsure of whether Snowden is still in Hong Kong. "I don’t know where he is," McDonough said. He also suggested he has some doubts...

With all the banter going around concerning this ‘rouge element’, we need to take an honest look at what information has been revealed and more important - what makes this leaked information so damaging, and why Snowden is so dangerous?

I wrote last week about how the Obama administration has specifically forbade federal law enforcement officials from spying on Mosques. That news came as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to how Obama has conducted himself during his first term in office. In one of the comments on that post, it was said that we all know there are evangelical conservatives who are issuing veiled threats against our democratic process when they do not like the majority's decisions. That must be why the IRS, under President Barack Obama, has been targeting churches for investigation. Hat tip to The...

America is truly doomed. At least the idea of America, that experiment in self-government and liberty. I say that not because of the spying revelations, which came hard on the heels of the ongoing Benghazi, IRS and AP/Fox News scandals. That government is spying on the people does not surprise me. I have long maintained — and have been called paranoid for it — that the government is monitoring every phone call and digital communication in this country. That is why I like to use encryption technology when emailing, though very few of my correspondents have the same security sense...