Free Republic

A careful audit of combat support and reconstruction contracts reveals that at least $360 million in US tax dollars has gone to fund the Taliban and terrorist operations in Afghanistan. Corrupt contractors and subcontractors are responsible for the diversion of funds which have surely resulted in harm to soldiers and civilians throughout the region. LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - The losses demonstrate one of the challenges the US faces in Afghanistan, specifically, rampant corruption. Private Afghan corporations are providing many support services to the US and NATO forces and are collecting payments from the military for their services. However, the...

PBS Hosts Blast Obama on Poverty TourBy Stephanie Samuel | Christian Post Reporter Fri, Aug. 12 2011 10:23 AM EDT PBS hosts Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, once strong supporters of Barack Obama, are traveling the country criticizing the president for failing to protect the poor during the debt talks. Noted African-American evangelical Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. agrees that the president has done little to help the poor, but says systemic changes, not more wasteful spending, are necessary to lift Americans out of poverty. Radio and television hosts Smiley and his PBS Princeton University co-host West, have taken to the...

Immediately after President Obama took office, his Hollywood benefactors clamored for the creation of a "Secretary of Culture." Tinseltown was disappointed with the administration's crony arts czar choice (Chicago lawyer Kareem Dale), but left-wing artists and entertainers have now been mollified. Instead of one government-supported arts czar, the White House has designated an entire herd of them. On Tuesday, as part of Obama's "Winning the Future" initiative, the president designated members of the liberal activist group Creative Coalition as official "America's Champions of Change for the Arts." This is the latest in a series of "public engagement" efforts overseen by...

'Doomsday Plane' Would Save President and Joint Chiefs in Apocalypse Scenario By MICHAEL MURRAY June 7, 2011 In the event of nuclear war, a powerful meteor strike or even a zombie apocalypse, the thoroughly protected doomsday plane is ready to keep the president, secretary of defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and other key personnel in the air and out of danger. It may not deflect a Twitter photo scandal, but it can outrun a nuclear explosion and stay in the air for days without refueling. The flight team for the E-4B, its military codename, sleeps nearby and is ready to...

decora writes "Crypto-mathematician Bill Binney worked in the Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center at the NSA. There, he worked on NSA's ThinThread program; a way to monitor the flood of internet data from outside the US while protecting the privacy of US citizens. In a new interview with Jane Mayer, he says his program 'got twisted. ... I should apologize to the American people. It's violated everyone's rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world. ... my people were brought in, and they told me, "Can you believe they're doing this? They're getting billing records on US...

At nearly 90 years old, Betty White has a message for senior citizens: get over it. The Golden Girls star can be seen stressing that age really isn’t a big deal in her promotional videos for AARP. Age shouldn’t be a deciding factor when voting for politicians either, the starlet told Politico in an interview Monday. “I think it’s mental activity and physical health that should have a lot to do with it, not just the number of years,” White said. For White, the age of the politician doesn’t necessarily make them an incapable public servant. “I think someone’s health...

Cast your minds back to November. Barack Obama had received his "shellacking" in the midterm elections, as the Republicans regained a majority in the House of Representatives and seized control of 29 of the 50 state governorships. It was the worst midterm defeat for the Democrats since 1938. Just a week earlier the president's approval ratings had fallen to a record low of 37%. Fast forward six months, and the president is enjoying the "Bin Laden bounce". His approval ratings stand at 52%, according to Gallup – up six points on April. Historians may look back on 1 May 2011,...

Osama bin Laden He changed our world for the worse, but remains with us in everyday life and will be here for years to come. The assassination of Osama bin Laden may change some of the future — perhaps the computer data retrieved with his corpse will help prevent subsequent planned acts of terror. Nevertheless, the terror he wrought to date is far from over, even in the unlikely case we never experience another al- Qaida assault. It is with us on the most annoying human level when we suffer the multiple indignities of using airports everywhere on the globe:...

Holding a tattered POW/MIA flag in his hands, Korean War veteran Bob Dumas can not hide the disgust at the vandals who damaged it. "Desecrating a flag that represents so much to the families is unbelievable," said Dumas, 81, of Canterbury. For years, the POW/MIA flag flew on the flag pole outside the Plainfield Post Office, until vandals got a hold of it. "This happened sometime during the night Tuesday night into Wednesday," said Plainfield Deputy Police Chief Michael Surprenant. Vandals removed the flag, cut deliberate holes in it with a knife and then ran it back up the flag...

For some time now, the left has been whipping up a boycott campaign against its favorite bogeymen, David and Charles Koch, billionaire owners of Georgia Pacific. As the lefties see it, the Koch brothers fund conservative organizations and politicians, like the Tea Party — which means, according to Common Cause, that they are “moving democracy into the control of more wealthy corporate hands.” (Common Cause, it should be noted, is itself heavily funded by corporate types, including the Kochs’ left-wing counterpart, George Soros.) But now, a top official of the United Steelworkers union, International Vice President Jon Geenen, has discovered...

“Gaman-subeki.” Translated from the Japanese, the words mean “we must endure.” It’s these words the Japanese are using to describe the way they are dealing with the nightmare engulfing their country, according to an edited report by Winnetka native Dan Simon, 30, who has lived in Tokyo for the past three years. “The Japanese people have responded to the situation with resilience and determination,” said Simon, a journalist who is now working for a public relations company. “They are hanging tough and proud of the way they have responded to the crisis. This is the Japanese way: continue on, do...

At Clinton Speech: Veteran Bloodied, Bruised & Arrested for Standing Silently As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday, condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for...

TUCSON — A victim of the shooting spree here that severely injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was taken into custody on Saturday after the police and witnesses said the man spoke threateningly at a televised forum intended to help this stricken city heal. Eric Fuller, 63, a military veteran who was passionate about liberal causes and who had supported Ms. Giffords, was “involuntarily committed for mental health evaluation,” according to Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the Pima County Sheriff’s office. Mr. Fuller, who was shot in the left knee and the back on Jan. 8, was among several victims, medical personnel...

Breaking: Tucson Tea Party Leader Threatened At ABC Taping, Audience Member Screams: “Trent Humphries You’re Dead!” While Trent was speaking at the event, an audience member screamed, “Trent Humphries, you’re dead!” ABC News held a town hall event today in Tucson, Arizona. Local officials, friends and heroes were at the event. News anchor Christiane Amanpour was the host. The segment will air tomorrow. ABC gathered members from the Tucson community to discuss the tragic shooting last Saturday that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and left 6 people dead. State Representative Terri Proud was at the event sitting between Trent and the...

TUSCON, Ariz ( KTLA) -- Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged Tucson gunman, was described Saturday as a politically radical loner. Now an internet trail emerged in which he apparently railed against the US government and told friends: "Please don't be mad at me". There are unconfirmed reports that 22 year old Jared Lee Loughner once met with Rep. Giffords in 2007. A former high school friend said that he had often talked about meeting and talking with the congresswoman. Arizona court records show Loughner has twice been charged with previous offenses. The first, in October 2007, related to the possession...

"The Communist Manifesto" and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" were among the favorite reading materials of Jared Lee Loughner, the suspected gunmen in today's fatal shooting that reportedly left six dead and gravely injured a U.S. congresswoman. Lougher, 22, listed those tomes among his favorites on his YouTube channel, in which he wrote that "conscience dreams" were a "great study" at his college, Pima Community College. One user on Twitter, Caitie Parker, wrote she went to high school, college and was in a band with the gunman. She said she hadn't seen him since 2007. Parker wrote of Lougher, "As I knew...

Someone cut off my link, here's the video of the live show

If you would like to believe that some people in Hollywood are sane then don’t look to the cast of Mad Men. The popular cable show has at least one guy who basically thinks having children is irresponsible and hurts the environment. He hopes the rest of us will learn to live as responsibly as him. Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser did an interview this week with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall to talk about how to go green. The progressive network thought the actor was qualified to interview, because he’s insanely green in his personal life. The guy has no car, thinks...

A recently released propaganda video by the Islamic extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir is quite revealing. Not only does the video demonstrate the group’s growing effort to package arguments in a manner designed to appeal to Westerners on the political left, but it also serves as a barometer of radical Muslim groups’ broader shift in rhetorical strategy. The video, “Iraq: Past and Present Colonialism,” appears for the first twenty-seven minutes to be a standard leftist critique of the Iraq war, indistinguishable from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. The slickly-produced video begins with the history of past colonialism in Iraq—including the Mongol conquest...