Free Republic

The White House official whom Bob Woodward charged had crosssed a line by saying he would "regret" printing his version of a set of Washington negotiations was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, a source familiar with the exchange told BuzzFeed Wednesday. The email from Sperling to Woodward, which Woodward read to Politico Wednesday, has transfixed Washington, with Republicans and some in the press charging that it embodies a White House lording it over a cowed press corps. Woodward, Politico reported, called the top official — identified to BuzzFeed as Sperling — to tell him that...

Politico scored a journalistic coup with its exclusive 2014 profile on Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. But a former Illinois lawmaker who said Politico contacted him repeatedly that year with questions regarding claims he was targeted by Lerner in the mid-1990s has been left wondering why the news group chose to ignore his documented dealings with the former federal official. "I was shocked," Al Salvi told the Washington Examiner's media desk, describing what he characterizes as several "lengthy" interviews with Politico reporter Rachael Bade. Lerner went after his 1996...

Now that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has forcefully terminated the John Doe investigations in Wisconsin, the targets of those probes can now speak openly of their experiences at the hands of politically motivated prosecutors. Some of those experiences began leaking out a few months ago, courtesy of David French and his mainly unnamed victims of the Government Accountability Board’s jeremiad against Scott Walker supporters. The court decision offers a few more description of the nighttime and dawn raids on homes and the prosecutors’ abuse of the rights of those targets, but now with the case at an end, the victims...

President Barack Obama heralded a historic nuclear agreement with Iran Tuesday as an opportunity for the longtime foes to move in a "new direction," while sharply warning Congress that it would be irresponsible to block the accord. "No deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East," Obama said in early morning remarks from the White House.

Is the idea implausible that this same Obama administration that orders IRS attacks, then orders destruction of key evidence, would stop at nothing to save Obama’s signature achievement? Is it impossible to believe that Obama and his socialist cabal that learned from Saul Alinsky that “the ends justify the means” would hold something over a Supreme Court justice’s head? It’s time to ask the question loudly and boldly because something is clearly wrong in Washington, D.C. Is that the purpose of government agencies like the IRS and the NSA that are abusing our rights – to listen to us, to...

Police arrested a white man who shouted racial slurs and threatened to kill black congregants gathered inside a church in Richmond, Virginia, on Thursday night, local broadcaster WRIC reported. No one was injured in the incident at the United Nations Church International, about 4 miles from downtown in the predominantly black capital city of Virginia, and police quickly took the person into custody, WRIC reported. The confrontation came a night after a white man opened fire inside an historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, during a Bible study, killing nine people in an attack that is being investigated as...

On Tuesday, Dennis L.A. White, an actor known for portraying Damion 'D-Roc' Butler in the biopic "Notorious," issued a tweet suggesting violence against the daughters of Eric Casebolt, the former McKinney, Texas, police officer whose actions at a pool party incident sparked protests. The tweet has since been taken down, but not before being captured for posterity. Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit was one of those who captured White's message before it was removed. "What if we found eric casebolt's (sic) family & beat up the young girls in it," he tweeted. "Would that b fair? If u live...

‘They came with a battering ram.” Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking. She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram. She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full...

WMATA has submitted to the assassin’s veto.Following the cowardly policy change for the New York MTA, the Washington MTA has suspended all issue-oriented ads through the end of year after we submitted our free speech ad.Oh, the irony.This is an end run around the first amendment.These cowards may claim that they are making people safer, but I submit to you the opposite. They are making it far more dangerous for Americans everywhere. Rewarding terror with submission is defeat. Absolute and complete defeat.More demands, more violence will certainly follow. The message is that terror works.This is sharia in America.The only upside...

All of NBC’s bleeding-heart coverage of tattered American race relations – including the racial struggles of Michelle Obama – might sound awfully tinny if they don’t keep black anchorman Lester Holt in the Nightly News anchor chair. In a new Brian Williams story at the Daily Beast, “a prominent black broadcast journalist who knows Holt” told them: “If Brian does not come back and Lester does not get the job, it’s going to get ugly. You can only imagine.” It would seem odd for them to exile Williams and then turn to Savannah Guthrie or someone else other than Holt,...

The young couple wanted really special invitations made up for their wedding, something that looked like a train ticket to fit with the railroad theme of their big day. So bride-to-be Paige Beckwith turned to a Suwanee printer who’d been recommended to her. But the printer rejected the job because of his religious beliefs, the parent company of the printing business said Monday. Beckwith is gay. *** However, a company spokesman at AlphaGraphics confirmed Beckwith’s story. The company also released a statement: “We do not condone discrimination of any kind, and wish to make clear that customers of any race,...

Left-leaning student activists at Oberlin College hung posters at the Christina Hoff Sommers event earlier this week that identified the students involved in bringing the individualist-feminist and AEI scholar to campus.Each poster gave the name of a specific student-member of the Oberlin College Republicans and Libertarians and accused that person of perpetuating rape culture.Images of the posters were sent to Reason via a source who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. The last names of the students identified by the posters were blurred before Reason received them.According to the source, a group of approximately 10 student-activists...

An undergraduate student at Duke University admitted to hanging a noose in a tree and has left campus while disciplinary actions are considered, university officials said Thursday. School spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said at a news conference that the school would not release the name of the student who admitted to hanging the noose, found early Wednesday in a plaza at the heart of the campus. The person is still enrolled at Duke, but faces student conduct and law enforcement investigations.

The explosion of hatred and threats against a family owned Indiana pizza restaurant who said they wouldn't cater a gay wedding have forced them to go into hiding and they may leave town permanently. A northern Indiana pizza shop that came under fire after its owners said their religious beliefs wouldn't allow them to cater a gay wedding is closed indefinitely, and its operators say they've gone into hiding. Memories Pizza in Walkerton faced criticism this week after co-owner Crystal O'Connor expressed support for a new Indiana religious objections law. The Facebook and Yelp pages for the restaurant about 20...

A divorce lawyer for U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson’s wife says the congressman is trying to intimidate him. Attorney Mark Longwell said in a court filing Friday that Grayson had written him an email threatening litigation for comments Longwell made about the divorce proceedings earlier in the week. The email was an attempt to intimidate him and influence his counsel of Grayson’s wife, Lolita, Longwell said in the filing, which asks for a protective order prohibiting Grayson from “engaging in abusive behavior.” …

The letter below from Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona speaks to the worst sort of witch hunt tactics that we’ve seen yet. I suspect that pulling on these threads will backfire on Grijalva, as this will motivate a lot of people to join the fight against this sort of “climate McCarthyism” The letter is reproduced in full below, with the original PDF also available. It’s like he’s got Mann’s #kochmachine delusions ideas.

Conservative journalist filmmaker James O’Keefe on Saturday tweeted an ominous message to those who follow him and influential work. “We have a story we’re going to release this coming week and I've never thought about this before but I am afraid for my life on this one,” O'Keefe announced Saturday afternoon.

They have the heft of an ax, a blade nearly as long as a sword, and the intimidation power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Cheap and easily bought, machetes in America have commonly been reserved for underbrush and sugar-cane cutting. But now, in a spreading trend that so far has drawn little national attention, criminals are using machetes as weapons, striking fear in cities and towns across the country. Witness these recent incidents: In the heartland Indiana city of Evansville in February, a robber pulled a machete on a convenience-store cashier, who put...

Thursday on Fox News Radio’s “John Gibson Show,” investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explained she is suing the Department of Justice to get discovery, which she said hopefully will start with the names of the agents or third-party contractors sometimes hired for “certain dark projects,” who hacked her computer and planted a fiber optics cable at her house.

Texas Republican Louie Gohmert said there is “real intimidation” happening in the fight to determine who will be the next speaker of the House of Representatives. Gohmert announced Sunday that he is running for speaker to unseat John Boehner (R-Ohio). Glenn Beck warned him Monday that if he doesn’t win, his political future is over. “If you don’t win, you’re toast,” Beck said. “And that’s exactly what they’re going to be saying [to those who don't vote for Boehner]. That’s what Boehner is saying to everybody right now. ‘Listen, you don’t vote for me, you don’t play ball with me...