Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Even though their key charges have been refuted - some by their own members - House Republicans announced Friday they’ll seek to form a select committee to investigate the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, trying anew to reap political gains in advance of this year’s congressional elections and the 2016 presidential contest.

rom the living room of Barry Diller’s Manhattan apartment in the Carlyle Hotel, it is possible, on a clear day, to see the Midtown skyline, where the Condé Nast building rises like a ziggurat from the Gilded Age of magazine journalism. The view was an appropriate one for a man who in the autumn of 2010 was about to pour millions of dollars into the dead tree business. Diller runs IAC, a portfolio of Internet companies that includes Match.com, OkCupid and Vimeo. His tolerance for risk is such that his friend David Geffen once described the fireplug of a billionaire...

The U.S. economy nearly stalled in the first quarter as weakness overseas hurt exports and frigid weather curtailed business investment. While the latest figures are "certainly eye catching, we do not find it to be representative of the underlying health of the U.S. economy," said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp. "Anyone tempted to panic ... should just take a breath." The latest numbers continue a familiar pattern. The nation's economic recovery, which started in mid-2009, has been marked as much for its choppiness as its slow pace.

While the dynamic in the White House press briefing room has changed drastically from the days when minority reporters were barred, the level of diversity among reporters who cover the presidency still doesn’t reflect the makeup of the country as a whole, a panel of current and former Washington journalists said Monday. Print and television news outlets can do more to attract journalists of color to the field of political reporting and ensure that a range of perspectives is represented in the White House press corps. The importance of diversity as a means of fostering more comprehensive political reporting, rather...

The politics of Obamacare are clearly starting to shift. It’s not that the public is coming to love it — not yet, anyway. But it’s less and less of a bogeyman, with polls suggesting a majority of the public against flat-out repeal. So there’s increasing pressure on Republicans to lay out an alternative — and continuing surprise about their inability to articulate one. But this is an example of why it sometimes helps, even in straight political reporting, to understand how policy works. Here’s the essential fact about health care policy, which in turn fundamentally shapes health care politics: Obamacare...

The U.S. Justice Department on Monday said it will begin collecting data on stops, searches and arrests made in five U.S. cities to weed out possible racial biases within the criminal justice system. Attorney General Eric Holder said the data collection effort is in response to President Barack Obama's call for better relations between law enforcement and young men of color following the "not guilty" verdict in the shooting death of black Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

Opinions about Obamacare are improving even in congressional districts held by Republicans, according to a new poll. But opponents of the Affordable Care Act in those districts still outnumber those in favor of the law. The poll may draw fire from Republicans since it was conducted by a Democratic firm, Democracy Corps. The firm did not comment about how Republicans might view the results, and a representative said there would be a call to discuss the poll Monday afternoon. But attitudes about President Barack Obama’s signature health law are changing, according to the poll, which was shared in advance with...

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People announced Sunday that Donald Sterling will not receive an honor amid controversy over a recording said to be of the Clippers team owner making racist remarks. The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP had been scheduled to give Sterling the group's lifetime achievement award at its May 15 banquet. At the banquet, the NAACP also planned to give its first "person of the year" awards to L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Per the pool report: Pool was ushered to a hold area at the end of a hallway in the hotel, where Obama, after a false start, walked down the hall. Asked by Julie Pace of the AP if he slept well, he said, “I’m still on 4 am time.” Another reporter asked Obama if he like the ice cream dessert in the shape of Mt. Fuji served at the state dinner. Obama nodded, saying, “They have the green tea at the bottom that I’ve spoken of having when I was six, and I was very pleased,” Obama said. “It was...

Robert Kagan recently wrote on this page that, foreign policy decision by foreign policy decision, President Obama has given Americans what they say they want. But the result hasn’t made them proud of America or of their president. The same phenomenon may explain the disappointment in Obama’s domestic record. Case by case overseas, Kagan suggested, Americans agree with Obama’s calls: pull out of Iraq, wind down in Afghanistan, steer clear of Syria. But the emerging picture of an America in retreat, and a leader half-heartedly committed to promoting liberty, is not what they were looking for. At home, the fateful...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has served in the U.S. Senate for less than two years, but her message of economic populism and boosting the middle class has catapulted her to stardom with Democrats nationwide. In her new book, "A Fighting Chance," Warren reflects on growing up in a middle-class family in Oklahoma and shares how that upbringing shaped her mission to help struggling middle-class families. “I wrote this book out of gratitude. I am the daughter of someone who ended up as a maintenance man, a woman who worked a minimum-wage job at Sears. And I ended up in the...

JAY CARNEY: I remember we had some discussion during 2012 about well, is it appropriate for the president, the sitting president and candidate, to give interviews with Jon Stewart and others. And the answer was yes, again because the young voters we were trying to reach are more likely to watch The Daily Show than some other news shows. But also, I think if you look back at 2012 and the series of interviews the sitting president of the United States gave, probably the toughest interview he had was with Jon Stewart. Probably the most substantive, challenging interview Barack Obama...

Journalism, which was ranked as the worst job in America last year, inched up a notch to finish at number 199, just ahead of lumberjack on CareerCast’s latest list of the top 200 best and worst jobs in the U.S. for 2014. By “worst jobs,” they are referring to employment opportunities. This is a reversal of last year when lumberjack came in at 199, after finishing at number 200 in 2012. Neither job has a very bright future, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimating that logging positions will drop by 9% by 2022, and reporters by 13%. Logging has...

THE WORLD now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Expect a certain part of our political class to insist that man-made climate change is not consensus science, and that until it is, nothing should be done. The problem there is obvious: By the time all the skeptics are persuaded, it will be too late for an effective response. In that regard, climate change poses a...

By midnight on April 15, roughly 140 million Americans will have filed their federal income tax returns and breathed a sigh of relief. Politicians from both parties, however, will spend most of the day criticizing our current tax system. --snip-- Creating a new tax regime based on the ability to pay had significant consequences. Not only did it provide sorely needed revenue while addressing growing inequality, it also fostered greater social solidarity and bolstered faith in government — a lesson lost on many lawmakers today. Reformers believed progressive taxes could be used to reconfigure the relationship between citizens and the...

In strategy meetings through the years, I’ve often heard conservative and Republican operatives complain, “If the mainstream media would only cover the issue fairly . . .” My advice? Don’t hold your breath. In lively discussions with friends from across the political spectrum, including a journalist or two, I’ve debated the proposition of whether a “liberal media bias” even exists. Without resolution. Consensus aside, though, I’ve determined it über-exists — resting my judgment on two things: (1) surveys of the Washington press corps over the past decades, showing its members to be consistently and overwhelmingly liberal, and in turn voting...

The president nominated Sylvia Burwell, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, to succeed Sebelius. Burwell has long career in government, but she’s actually much more interesting than your typical bureaucrat. Here’s nine things you might not know about the woman who is likely to be the next HHS Secretary: She’s really smart. Obama is not the first president she’s worked for. She accidentally ran a half marathon. She was forced to get involved in last year’s government shutdown. She knows how to handle money — and crises. Her fifth date was a bit unusual. She engages...

The Senate Intelligence Committee has opened an investigation into how McClatchy obtained the classified conclusions of a report into the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, the panel’s chairwoman said Friday. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she was also referring the case to the Justice Department for investigation. “If someone distributed any part of this classified report, they broke the law and should be prosecuted,” Feinstein said in a prepared statement. “The committee is investigating this unauthorized disclosure and I intend to refer the matter to the Department of Justice.”

Boston Marathon bombing survivor Adrianne Haslet-Davis allegedly walked out of the set of Meet the Press with David Gregory. A survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing stormed off the set of NBC’s Meet the Press in tears on Friday after being asked to comment on Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev — after she was allegedly promised their names would not be mentioned. Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a dancer who lost part of one leg during the attack, tweeted after the taping: I feel so disrespected @meetthepress I asked politely yesterday and you said yes. Now you choose to use the name instead.

Say what you will about Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), but they know a train wreck when they see it. They also know when to separate themselves from the cranks and the losers on the right. Although both supported the shutdown and were heartily supported by tea party groups in their own Senate races, neither one has endorsed Matt Bevin in Kentucky, Milton Wolf in Kansas or Chris McDaniel in Mississippi. In fact, Cruz’s office confirms he hasn’t endorsed anyone in the primaries. There are a few important lessons here. First, neither one of these guys wants...