Free Republic

Solo is the starting goalie for the U.S. national soccer team and has amazingly held this position since Bill Clinton was president (2000). Along the way, she’s won two gold medals and has recorded the most shutouts in U.S. women’s soccer history. She can add some distance to that record when the U.S. hosts Mexico in Rochester tonight. Solo is also a 33-year-old woman charged with two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence in the assault of her sister and teenage nephew. The Washington native has pleaded not guilty. Her trial is set to begin in two months. But unlike Rice...

With soft piano music in the background, an anonymous Republican in Gov. Rick Scott's latest attack ad levels an explosive claim about Democrat Charlie Crist and Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein. "I got swindled by both Rothstein and Charlie," the man says. But not only is there no evidence to support this accusation about Crist, the Miami Herald has identified the man as Fort Lauderdale investor Dean Kretschmar

.....“While a crowd of several thousand Democrats waited on a sloping, grassy field below, Mrs Clinton, her husband and Senator Harkin staged a mini-grilling of steaks for the press at a single barbecue grill in a fenced-off enclosure, framed by a handsome tree and a picnic table filled with some patient Iowans. Mrs Clinton gamely posed, pretending to grill a steak that had been pre-cooked for her.”

I had to read the penultimate paragraph of Ross Douthat’s New York Times piece on “friendless Middle East Christians” before the enormity of it sunk in. Douthat wrote: If Cruz felt that he couldn’t address an audience of persecuted Arab Christians without including a florid, “no greater ally” preamble about Israel, he could have withdrawn from the event. The fact that he preferred to do it this way says a lot–none of it good–about his priorities and instincts. In so many words: Jew-hatred among Middle Eastern Christians is so rampant that it should be ignored in the interests of saving...

President Barack Obama met with over a dozen prominent columnists and magazine writers Wednesday afternoon before calling for an escalation of the war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in a primetime address that same night. The group, which met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in an off-the-record session, included New York Times columnists David Brooks, Tom Friedman and Frank Bruni and editorial writer Carol Giacomo; The Washington Post's David Ignatius, Eugene Robinson and Ruth Marcus; The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins and George Packer; The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Beinart; The New Republic's Julia Ioffe; Columbia...

Former “Sons of Guns” star Stephanie Hayden Ford made some horrific accusations against her father Will Hayden on a pre-taped episode of “Dr. Phil” that aired on Thursday. Ford sat down with Dr. Phil McGraw and stated that her father acted inappropriately with her when she was 12 years old. Hayden is currently in jail in East Baton Rouge, La., after being charged with forcible rape and aggravated rape of a juvenile. ADVERTISEMENT It has been widely reported that the charges stem from accusations made by Hayden’s younger daughter. As Ford shared her story with Dr. Phil she spoke openly...

Rory Kennedy, film-maker and daughter of the late Robert Kennedy, produced a film which debuted in theaters this week about the fall of Vietnam. I haven’t seen it yet and am debating whether I will. I'm half Vietnamese and have mixed feelings and for many years refused to watch coverage of the war and the pervasive inaccuracy in the media. It's too close to home. In 1995, 20 years after the withdrawal and debacle, reporters interviewed my father who was Vietnam's last cultural attaché. Perhaps they were trying to get the record straight. My father left Vietnam with Ambassador Martin...

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The smug self-confidence of financial analysts and writers who predicted that Japan's monstrous sales tax increase would have no long-term effect on its economy should be severely shaken. An Associated Press report tonight by business writer Elaine Kurtenbach tells readers that the Land of the Rising Sun's economy "contracted at a larger than earlier estimated annual rate of 7.1 percent in April-June, as companies and households slashed spending following a tax hike." This means that the "experts" who assured everyone that the second-quarter contraction would be smaller than or merely offset the brisk first-quarter expansion of 6 percent were horribly wrong. The...

Serious violent crimes are ignored out of a fear of offending Muslims or of being seen as racist Last week, 82-year-old Palmira Silva was found dead in her backyard garden in the UK. She had been beheaded. Silva, a great grandmother, had come to Britain in the 1950s where she met her late husband, Domenic. The two ran successful restaurants and cafes and at the time of her death, Silva was the owner of Silva’s Café, a popular café in Edmonton. Until fairly recently, the 82-year-old had worked at the café full time. Shortly after the horrific murder, police took...

On August 31, The New York Times ran a op-ed in which columnist Charles M. Blow contended that Republicans are trying to use the 9/11 attacks to make Americans fear ISIS and "yoke Obama with the ill effects of a war started by [George W. Bush]." One immediate problem with this theory is that ISIS--now IS--is not an ill effect of the Iraqi War but of the power vacuum created by President Obama's precipitous withdrawal of all U.S. Troops in 2011. But Obama knows this, which is why he blamed the troop pull-out on George W. Bush early last month....

In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, President Barack Obama defended his decision to delay executive action on immigration, saying the summer’s surge of unaccompanied children at the Mexican border changed the politics of the issue.

Shockingly enough the numbers are bad and performing below the usual optimistic expectations. Just like every other time.I’ll just give you the headlines for a taste of how frantically the media is spinning the bad news. A Disappointing Jobs Report May Mask Economy’s Strength – NPRJobs Report: Not Good, but Not Terrible Either – New York TimesDon’t freak out about bad jobs report – Washington PostWhy weak August jobs report probably a fluke – MarketWatchThe Awful New Jobs Report Has One Silver Lining – New Republic It’s a fluke! There’s a silver lining! The bad news is really good news!...

 US Senate to Protect the Media Monopoly's Exclusive License to Corrupt Presidential Elections    Amateurs Not Allowed to Speak  An apocryphal story from the good old 1960s tells of $3 million found under the bed of a deceased congressman, with the question automatically asked, at that time, “how does an honest, $50,000 per year congressman accumulate that kind of money?” These days, newspapers don’t blink at the President’s $10 net worth—chump change compared with the $100s millions accumulated by the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, remuneration for—speaker’s fees.   Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, slumming at only $3 million to $10...

PBS, who operates partly on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer, just ran a one-hour special on the terror-sponsoring dictator who shrieked that “war with the U.S. is my true destiny!” and who came within a hair of nuking millions of PBS’ involuntary donors during the gravest military threat against the United States in modern history.PBS, who bills itself as America’s “most-trusted source for news and public affairs programs,” aimed their documentary on the “turbulent life” of the “controversial Cuban leader” at a U.S. audience and titled it, The Fidel Castro Tapes. But PBS pulled off its documentary without mentioningthe...

NBC News says “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough will be a senior political analyst for the network with regular roles on “Meet the Press” and the “Today” show. Generally, over the past year, NBC News has sought to distance itself from MSNBC, where a politically liberal viewpoint dominates. NBC said Friday that Scarborough will be a regular contributor to round-table discussions on “Meet the Press." Scarborough will offer analysis on other NBC News broadcasts and work as part of the network’s election team.

Senate Joint Resolution 19 'intended to limit free speech'  US Senate to Protect the Media Monopoly's Right to Corrupt Presidential Elections    An apocryphal story from the good old 1960s tells of $3 million found under the bed of a deceased congressman, with the question automatically asked, at that time, “how does an honest, $50,000 per year congressman accumulate that kind of money?” These days, newspapers don’t blink at the President’s $10 net worth—chump change compared with the $100s millions accumulated by the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, remuneration for—speaker’s fees.   Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, slumming at only $3...

New emails released Thursday appear to show that a former Los Angeles Times reporter had a “closely collaborative” relationship with the CIA, submitting drafts of stories to intelligence officials before submitting them for publication. Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter, explicitly promised “positive news coverage” with one news story, according to The Intercept, which obtained emails he exchanged with intelligence officials. He added that he thought the particular report would be “reassuring to the public” about drone strikes.

.....Obama will be Chuck Todd's first guest on his inaugural broadcast of NBC's "Meet The Press," a source with knowledge of the interview told POLITICO on Thursday. The exclusive interview, which will be announced during NBC's broadcast of the National Football League season-opener, will take place this Saturday at the White House. It will air on Sunday and will cover both foreign and domestic policy, likely including U.S. efforts to combat the Islamic State terrorist organization, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the recent protests in Ferguson, Mo.

The establishment press is working mightily to shield President Barack Obama from blame for, or even association with, decisions he has made and actions he has taken — unilaterally and with dubious constitutional authority in many instances. One particularly egregious example is Libya. When Obama decided on his own to engage in "kinetic miliitary action" to topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the press was thrilled. Now, as will be seen after the jump, three stories from major establishment press outlets don't even contain Obama's name, or any direct reference to him. The press, in completely polar opposite treatment from that...