Free Republic

.... Obama hosted NBC’s Savannah Guhtrie in the White House kitchen to taste his home brews and answer some softball questions about his tone toward Republicans in the recent State of the Union address. Obama assured Guthrie that he did not do “an endzone dance” after the Democrats’ severe losses in the primaries, but rather celebrated a recovering economy, though he stressed that his last two years would be focused on a more even distribution of the economic benefits.

I’ve been a reporter for 30 years at CBS News, PBS, CNN and in local news. My producers and I have probed countless political, corporate, charitable and financial stories ranging from Iraq contract waste and fraud under Bush to green energy waste under Obama to consumer stories relating to the drug industry. Some of these reports have been recognized for excellence in journalism—most recently, investigative Emmy nominations and awards for reporting on TARP, Benghazi, green energy spending, Fast and Furious and a group of stories including an undercover investigation into Republican fundraising. But the job of getting at the truth...

Three consecutive events, initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, make it clear that hidden within the campaign propaganda are genuine threats to Israel’s security and standing. The assumption that the killing on the Golan Heights of the senior Hezbollah figures and the Iranian general, which has been attributed to Israel, was necessary is not convincing. Israel has already suffered lethal retaliation, in which two soldiers were killed. It would have been possible to accept the claim, by senior officers and by cabinet ministers, according to which no political considerations were behind the operation, had it had coincided with the growing...

Bill Maher is throwing some shade on President Obama's credentials as a supposed champion of freedom of the press. The host of HBO's "Real Time" sat down Friday to discuss media coverage of secret government work with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, one of the journalists centrally involved in bringing revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to light. "I don't understand why he is perhaps the worst president we've had on clamping down on the press," Maher said. "He's used the Espionage Act more than any other president, right?" Maher added. Other members of the media have blasted...

Cameras rolled as armed police stormed the studio to arrest the suspect Footage of the dramatic stand-off and arrest are then broadcast on TV Gunman had earlier entered the building claiming to be a secret agent Suspect believed to be 19-year-old chemistry student from Netherlands He is not believed to be linked to Islamic extremism

Bill Maher called Chris Kyle of "American Sniper" a "psychopath patriot." Michael Moore called military snipers "cowards" who shoot people in the back. Howard Dean said "American Sniper" appeals mostly to angry Tea Party types. So what? Why do we conservatives give two cents about what these lefties and liberals say about "American Sniper" - or anything else? Nothing they ever say is surprising. Nothing they say ever adds to the debate, has any effect on anything or helps us find a solution to a serious problem. The predictable - and wrong -- things these liberals and others on the...

Yesterday on the network radio news they were reporting how many dollars cash on hand Apple Corporation had earned. They reported Apple could give every American $550 in cash were the cash to be distributed. In contrast, if the cash of Microsoft corporation was distributed, there would be only $150 per American (not sure of this number).

Miami Gardens police said they have few leads in the brazen murder of James Hall, shot in the head late Sunday night in his driveway as his girlfriend's two children looked on. Hall, 42, had returned home just before midnight when the children said four men surrounded the car and fired through the front windshield. "They killed him in front of my kids," Hall’s girlfriend, Ashley Walden, told Herald news partner CBS4.

There was a time, not so long ago, when interviewing the President of the United States was considered the pinnacle of a professional journalist’s career. Such an opportunity to probe the mind of the man responsible for directly or indirectly impacting the lives of virtually every person on the planet, was entrusted only to those with the qualifications and pedigree to handle such an important assignment; not to mention making the most of the president’s valuable and limited time. Not so today. Rather than a Pulitzer Prize or Peabody Award as the prerequisite for the honor of personally interviewing the...

....In a country that demands women adhere to a strict dress code in public (face and hair covered, and long, flowing robes), Obama went with a flowing blue top, black pants and no head covering..... .....Obama does not make fashion choices lightly, particularly on the world stage. Her fashion choice comes as the late Saudi King Abdullah's legacy on women is considered in light of the ascension of Crown Prince Salman to the throne. It's also a more social-media-friendly version of political messages delivered overtly by other first ladies.

...."when I came into office, the world was divided and Iran was in the driver's seat. Now the world's united because of the actions we've taken, and Iran's the one that's isolated,” he said. Before his Presidency, Iran was well on its way to achieving the tools necessary to make a nuclear weapon. Now, he says to CNN's Candy Crowley, “you look at an example like Iran, over the last year and a half, since we began negotiations with them, that's probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last...

As occasional sparring partners over issues like white privilege and income inequality, Fox News anchors Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly are accustomed to not always seeing matters the same way. So it was that the two stars of Roger Ailes’ network parted ways over a recent New York Times Magazine profile of Kelly. The largely glowing piece, by the magazine’s Jim Rutenberg, depicts Kelly as a serious, hard-charging journalist, unlike some people featured on the nation’s premiere conservative network. During Monday night’s “O’Reilly Factor,” the host dinged Rutenberg’s profile as a “puff piece,” bemoaning that other Fox personalities don’t receive...

A few years ago the NFL discovered female fans. Now, apparently, the league has discovered that gays also enjoy watching men in tight pants jump on top of one another. Because in what is believed to be a first, an LGBT publication has received a credential to cover the Super Bowl. Outsports writer Cyd Zeigler is headed to Arizona today to cover the big game — and he gets a seat in the press box. Unfortunately, Cyd missed yesterday’s Media Day circus and the chance to ask Tom Brady questions like, “Where is Gisele?” (Answer: “Home with the kids.”)

LINK ONLY:  Two undocumented citizens arrested at Freedom Summit

Barbara Walters: We Thought Obama Was Going To Be The Next Messiah By Brian Carey December 18, 2013. Last night, in a particularly refreshing moment of candor, Barbara Walters shared her disillusion over the ObamaCare failure. During an interview with Piers Morgan, she was asked why President Obama didn’t live up to his hype. This is a question that would not need to be directed at any conservative, because every conservative knew from the beginning that he wouldn’t live up to his hype. “He made so many promises,” Walters said. “We thought that he was going to be I shouldn’t...

Obama’s pouting again. The jerk’s in a snit because the media is finally being critical of Obama in a way nobody on the Left side of the aisle has ever been. It would be funny, if it weren’t so serious. “There was a general tone of suspended disbelief when he started talking about foreign policy,” said NBC’s Richard Engel in regard to Obama’s State of the Union Speech. “There are not a lot of success stories to be talking about in foreign policy right now. And the general tone, which was, moving on, starting again, starting a new chapter, moving...

....On Friday’s episode of his HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher, the outspoken satirist pondered whether Kyle was a “hero or not,” and revealed he’s decidedly anti-American Sniper. “Hurt Locker made $17 million because it was a little ambiguous, and thoughtful,” Maher said. “And this one was just, ‘American hero! He’s a psychopath patriot, and we love him.’”

After a long legal effort, transparency group and blog win document. In a nearly forgotten controversy David Gregory, then host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” appeared on TV waving a 30-round ammunition magazine from the network’s District of Columbia studio. Gregory was aggressively interviewing the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre in December 2012, asking if it might be a good idea to ban the high-capacity magazines. His prop, ironically, violated a District of Columbia law making it illegal to possess an ammunition magazine - even an empty one - that holds more than 10 bullets.

Talk about your what-ifs. New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reports this morning that Michael Bloomberg attempted to engage Arthur Sulzberger in talks to buy the New York Times as his final term as mayor in the Big Apple came to an end. Sulzberger shrugged him off, but Sherman says Bloomberg still wants the newspaper in his empire: Near the end of Bloomberg’s time as mayor, he told Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. that he was interested in buying the Times, according to a source with direct knowledge of the conversation. Sulzberger replied that the paper was not...

Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene, who made his fortune by betting against homeowners in the mortgage and credit crisis, has been mouthing off about the lifestyle that the rest of us enjoy. He thinks it’s too much — even though he owns America’s most expensive single-family house! The former U.S. Senate wannabe took advantage of his presence at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland to tell a worldwide audience via Bloomberg News that we, the common people, need to have fewer things. ... Greene is also known in these parts for making contractors who work on his $36 million-,...