Free Republic

The strongman of the Soviet, er, Russia is getting kind of wimpy. Caught in the act blowing up a civilian airliner, he’s pointing the finger at someone else, and condemning the world’s political calculations, all the while calculating politically. He must watch a lot of MSNBC because this is the type of thing we’ve come to expect from our own weak-willed presidents. Russia, says Putin, did not shoot down that jetliner. Listen to him very carefully. There is no inappropriate Russian relationship with that missile. It was caused by a bunch of bitter Ukrainians who cling to their guns and...

Yahoo News is becoming a daily pimp bulletin board for Democrats and all left wing causes. It actively promotes pro-abortion and pro-gay news items and demeans conservatives and religious causes. Of course this is being directed from the top- the Yahoo CEOs and directors who are large campaign donors to the Obamas and GLTB causes. The nerds at Yahoo pick up "news items" from Huffington Post, Slate etc and highlight the positive spin on left wing issues or amplify the negative accounts on conservative policies and religious beliefs. The same goes for AOL etc. What is the conservative response to...

"As Senior White House Advisor Defies Congressional Subpoena, Committee Releases Audio Recording of Cabinet Secretary Making Illegal Campaign Solicitation" Then Labor Secretary: “Off-the-record here—Wanted to ask you if you could help us get folks organized to come to a fundraiser that we’re doing for Organizing for America for Obama campaign” As Director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, David Simas, in defiance of a congressional subpoena, failed to appear today to testify before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on taxpayer-funded political campaign activity by government officials, the Committee released an audio recording of...

Wow. Here’s a link to the Gates-subsidized NBCNews.com article. There is no indication that it’s an advertisement or advertorial. It appears to be a bona fide news story written by a bona fide reporter (Nona Willis Aronowitz). Here it is featured along with NBC News’ other articles on its education page:

Black American from Gang-Besieged Baltimore: 'Where Can I Get Asylum?' by Tony Lee 11 Jul 2014 1612 post a comment As the White House plans to spend billions of taxpayer funds to take care of illegal immigrant children who are unlawfully entering the country, some black Americans who live in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods are wondering where they and their children can get refugee status and aid. On Friday's Laura Ingraham Show, Elaine, a black woman from Baltimore, expressed her outrage that President Barack Obama is putting the interests of illegal immigrant children above those of American citizens....

In what appears to be an act of leftist self-defense, an unbylined story at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, describes certain Colorado Democratic politicians' crticisms of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg over recent "off-base remarks about two of its cities," but noted no reactions from Republicans — who are genuinely outraged, as opposed to arguably trying to cover their political tracks. ... Bloomberg told Simon Vozick-Levinson that in recent recall elections in the Centennial State, "The NRA went after two or three state Senators in a part of Colorado where I don't think there's roads. It's...

Border Crisis: What Glenn Beck Did Wrong by John Nolte 10 Jul 2014, 8:15 AM PDT Wednesday morning The Blaze's Glenn Beck announced it was "deadly to my career" for him to provide truckloads of meals and soccer balls as a way to "help care for some of the roughly 60,000 underage refugees who have crossed into America illegally in 2014." Early Thursday morning on "Morning Joe," the left-wing Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski did exactly what I feared the media would do after Beck's announcement: they trashed conservatives who disagreed with Beck as lacking in compassion. Scarborough even mocked...

Writing from her insulated bunker on 42nd Street, Gail Collins did Joseph Goebbels proud this July 4th. As late as April 21, 1945 Joseph Goebbels, the model for the mainstream media, made a speech hoping to rally Germans to the defense of Berlin. It was a futile exercise and he knew it. He also knew that at that point very few people were listening to him and fewer still believed what he said. Within weeks the whole Nazi empire was finally wiped away – it was over. Today’s Joseph Goebbels’ are found in the newsroom of the New York Times...

Liberal Democrats and their media allies are waging a War on America and it is well past time that we recognize this fact. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks a commission examined our relationship to the Islamists who had slaughtered our people and concluded that Islam has been at war with us for quite a while but that we have failed to recognize it. Recent polls on the subject confirm years of previous polling showing that liberals are not patriotic, they don’t love America and they wish they could change our country into something else-probably France. The bottom feeders...

Last week, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Zach Carter...The Huffington Post‘s senior political economy reporter. The interview’s purpose was to discuss Carter’s negative response to Hewitt’s previous interview of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The interview was lively and interesting but it did not go well for Carter, who was forced to admit his ignorance of the historical context of the situation in Iraq....Carter said he hadn’t read...Bernard Lewis’ Crisis of Islam, Robin Wright’s Dreams and Shadows, or Thomas P. M. Barnett’s The Pentagon’s New Map. He said he hadn’t read Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War but that he’d...

NEW ORLEANS — C. Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New Orleans who was convicted in February on corruption charges, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday in federal court in New Orleans. Mr. Nagin was found guilty in February on 20 counts, most relating to kickbacks from contractors looking for city work. The sentence was imposed by Judge Ginger Berrigan of United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Mr. Nagin, a Democrat, was arrested in January 2013, nearly three years after he left office. He was charged with taking kickbacks in the form of...

First Costco removed Dinesh D’Souza’s book “America” from all of their stores, and now Google is piling on. Liberal hacks are doing whatever they can to make sure people don’t see this movie and hear it’s message. Liberals are all about trying to squash free speech. Makes me sick. From the Hollywood Reporter: Lawyers representing Dinesh D’Souza’s newest film, America, have fired off a letter to Google demanding that the search engine correct problems that they say are hampering the ability of consumers to figure out where the movie is playing. The letter claims that Google has been confusing America...

The economy took a bad hit during the first quarter this year. It shrunk at an annual rate of 2.96 percent. Since the beginning of 1947, there are only 16 of the 268 quarters experienced worse growth. The Obama administration blames the slow growth on the “historically severe winter weather, which temporarily lowered growth.” Jason Furman, the chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, made this assertion again on July 3rd and President Obama has made this claim several times. But that doesn’t square with the historic data. The five worst winter storms or winters with the coldest temperatures do...

Pro-amnesty activists beat drums and danced in full Aztec regalia, chanting, "White supremacists out, white supremacists out!" at a counter-demonstration at the Murrieta Border Patrol station Friday. Anti-illegal immigration protestors shouted "stop illegal immigration" right next to the dancing demonstrators one the north end of the roadblocks. At the south end, the crowd was largely made up of the anti-illegal immigration protestors, who assembled peacefully.

Bias: You'd think that a government audit showing how ObamaCare couldn't tell whether millions of enrollees were eligible for the subsidies they're getting would be front-page news. Instead, the press hid it from view. If you wanted to read in the New York Times about these findings — which detailed rampant problems verifying eligibility and income information from millions of ObamaCare applicants — you had to dig 17 pages into the news section. In the Washington Post, the story was on page 11, after stop-the-press-stories like a change in House travel reporting rules and a puff piece on the new...

What is visible to all men is that a young man of enormous energy and great journalistic instinct has dedicated a fortune as great as that of Monte Christo to the creation of a newspaper which, instead of confining itself to the function of chronicling other men’s deeds, boldly asserts its determination to supersede the journalism that chronicles by the journalism that acts. Other newspapers may write about things. The Journal is determined to do them. William Thomas Stead from "A Romance of the Pearl of the Antilles" Stead wrote this in reference to William Randolph Hearst's and Karl Decker's...

The number of Americans 16 and older who did not participate in the labor force climbed to a record high of 92,120,000 in June, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This means that there were 92,120,000 Americans 16 and older who not only did not have a job, but did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. That is up 111,000 from the 92,009,000 Americans who were not participating in the labor force in April. …

A devastating new Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General report released on Tuesday reveals that the Obama administration has yet to determine whether 1,295,571 of the over 8 million Obamacare enrollees are U.S. citizens lawfully in the country. The finding, located on page 11 of the report, states that 44% of the remaining 2,611,780 application "inconsistencies" are related to verifying "Citizenship/national status/lawful presence." Another 960,492 application inconsistencies were related to verifying whether subsidy applicants provided accurate income information.

Judge Debra Nelson has ruled in favor of NBC in a defamation lawsuit filed by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman filed the lawsuit in December 2012, saying NBC aired an edited version of the call he made to 911 right before his confrontation with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin...

CBS news contributor Nancy Giles wants to sue Congress. Why? For going to bed instead of taking president Obama’s “touchdown dance” call on the night of his 2012 reelection victory. But it also sheds light on the media strategy that will be used in 2014 to bolster the president. In a nutshell that strategy is known as the “I’m-Rubber-You’re-Glue-Whatever-You-Say-Bounces-Off-of-Me-and-Sticks-to-You,” campaign narrative first used in 1973 by 3rd grader Amelia Snodgrass of Temple Mount, NJ as she swept into her second class presidency in three years. Accordingly in her Sunday column CNN’s Giles gets childlike in her complains that Speaker John...

On Friday's broadcast of MSNBC's "Political Nation," host Al Sharpton and fellow MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry discussed the Republicans opposition to President Barack Obama, in particular rhetoric from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the “ugly” lawsuit Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has brought against President Barack Obama for his "abuse" of executive orders.

That National Public Radio has nice things to say about socialism shouldn’t be surprising. After all, “Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public,” explains NPR’s own website. “Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism…and eventually the loss of public radio stations.” NPR’s brand of journalism came under fire most recently when Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn sponsored a bill in 2011 to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. “Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds programming for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, has received...

Since its birth in the 1920s with the first national radio networks, the modern MSM has always had a cozy relationship with power, and until the creation of Fox News, one channel on your TV dial or satellite guide, that power has almost exclusively meant their fellow Democrats. The media have long voted overwhelmingly Democrat in presidential elections; as Walter Cronkite once said at a Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner in the mid-1990s, in-between feting the Clintons on his yacht in Martha’s Vineyard, “Everybody knows that there’s a liberal, that there’s a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.” But in the...

YIKES! We just got the third revision to Q1 GDP, and it was horrible. After an initial estimate showing a mere 0.1% gain in growth in the first quarter, the government now says the economy shrunk at a staggering 2.9% pace, making it the worst quarter Q1 2009, at the pit of the financial crisis. So should you worry? Absolutely not.

Two years after activists for same-sex marriage obtained the confidential tax return and donor list of a national group opposed to redefining marriage, the Internal Revenue Service has admitted wrongdoing and agreed to settle the resulting lawsuit. The Daily Signal has learned that, under a consent judgment today, the IRS agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage as a result of the unlawful release of the confidential information to a gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, that is NOM’s chief political rival. “Congress made the disclosure of confidential tax return information a serious matter...

""Press Briefing Room Revolts Against Jay Carney’s Replacement in Testy Exchange Over Ducking Questions"" New White House press secretary Josh Earnest speaks to the media during his first briefing as press secretary, Monday, June 23, 2014, in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin Earlier in the briefing, Earnest took a question from Jon-Christopher Bua, a Huffington Post columnist, about whether President Barack Obama had spoken to European leaders, in a question that dealt with Iraq. In what was the last formal question of the briefing, Bloomberg reporter Roger Runningen...

Forty-one years ago, during a small and largely ignored government scandal, a great mystery occurred. A group of determined congressional investigators, who had learned the president of the United States was running a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office, pressed to get their hands on the tapes. The courts ruled in their favor. The White House had to hand over a number of tapes. But it turned out one of them, which was understood by the timeline to potentially be the key one, the one that might reveal exactly how the scandal began, turned out to have an 18½-minute...

According to most of the Morning Joe panel on Monday, the media is not doing its job covering the IRS scandal. As Mark Halperin opined, "I think with a different administration, one that was a Republican administration, this story would be a national obsession, and, instead, it's getting coverage here and a few other places. But it deserves a lot more questions."

Various statements and events defy the claim of a ‘universal consensus’ on ‘harmful’ climate change. “Have you noticed that the nature of the crisis du jour may change, but the solutions always involve higher taxes and more power for the political class?” ... There’s a reason some global warming enthusiasts demand that the media refuse to print or broadcast skeptical views. Polls show Americans continually rank “climate change” near the bottom of lists of important issues. Apparently, “global warming is harmful because shut up” is the only argument many activists have left. And there’s a reason the Environmental Protection Agency...

When CNN rolled out the red carpet for Hillary Clinton’s town-hall interview with Christiane Amanpour, they did more than just build a set and invite an audience to participate. According to the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, who attended the event, CNN warmed up the crowd for Hillary and even coached them on how to cheer and make noise to demonstrate enthusiasm for the former Secretary of State. Note the whoops at the beginning of the broadcast, and near the end of this clip when Amanpour asks about her decision on running for President — cheers that were part of the...

On Friday, Mac Slavo reported on Congressman Darrell Issa's (R-CA) statement in which he called the Internal Revenue Service's claim that Lois Lerner's hard drive crash resulted in a loss of emails "ridiculous." Most of us know that information from crashed hard drives can be recovered, though it costs a lot of money. However, as Mac pointed out, we could simply obtain a copy from the National Security Agency since they are collecting this kind of information. But something more telling has come to light: The IRS uses as an email archiving company to back up its emails. That's right,...

"Rand Paul: No more aid to Christian-killers Exclusive: William Murray reports on senator's demand to Islamic-supporting Obama" Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., surprised several thousand people with the truth about Syria in a speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference at the Omni Hotel in Washington, D.C., today. Most in the room were social conservatives and already knew that the administration of Barack Obama was arming Islamists in Syria who are killing Christians. The real surprise was a senator standing up in front of national TV news cameras and telling America that yes, your tax dollars are being used to...

Thursday afternoon’s The Cycle plugged the recently released “abortion rom-com” Obvious Child by interviewing the film’s screenwriter and director Gillian Robespierre and lead actress Jenny Slate.After the hosts spent a couple minutes praising the way in which the film portrayed a “positive, safe, shame-free abortion,� co-host Krystal Ball took the liberty of asking the director if there was ever a point where she felt nervous for her “physical safety” citing the sometimes “violent” nature of anti-abortion activists. Robespierre seemed rather uninterested in the idea that she was ever in danger of a “violent” reaction that may come from the Right....

mainstream media reporter Glenn Thrush revealed that a former editor of his at Newsday in 2008 delayed and buried his story on Hillary Clinton's defense of a child rapist because "it might have an impact." When Thrush wrote the story on February 24, 2008, Clinton was battling Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. The more things change, the more they stay the same. ... Newsweek had killed the story to protect its ally Clinton in the White House. ... Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has pioneered the use of social media to further level the playing field, said,...

Ex-Rep. Joe Walsh ‘kicked off the air’ over racist terms on radio Fri, 06/20/2014 - 3:37am Mitch Dudek According to posts on former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh’s Twitter account Thursday night, the conservative radio talk-show host was kicked off the air on WIND-AM (560) for using racial slurs while trying to have a discussion about racial slurs. In a series of tweets posted about 7 p.m., Walsh says: “Just got kicked off the air until further notice. Tried to have honest discussion about racist terms and management censored my language.” And: “I’m trying to have an honest, adult conversations about...

Trey Gowdy had a defining moment when he had to explain to Congress and Barack Obama exactly what their job titles are supposed to be. Trey Gowdy lead the charge in passing a bill that directs Obama to follow the laws – ....

Public confidence in television news is at an all-time low, according to a survey released today by Gallup. ... only 10 percent said they had “a great deal” of confidence in T.V. news, and 8 percent said they had “quite a lot” of confidence.

Jamie Estrada, 41, of Los Lunas, N.M., pleaded guilty Monday to the unlawful interception of electronic communications and false statement charges arising out of the unlawful interception of wire communications intended for others, including New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and members of her staff. Estrada briefly served as campaign manager in 2009, as Martinez was beginning her bid for governor. The Republican won election in 2010 and took office in January 2011. “Each and every one of us has a right and an expectation of privacy in our electronic communications, including our emails, and those who violate the law by...

In a SHOCKING discovery, CGI Federal – the Canadian Company that built the Obamacare website – appears to have a connection to the “Innocence of Muslims” video the Obama administration blamed for the Benghazi attacks.And here’s how it was done:The evidence is well established that in 2010, CGI acquired Stanley Associates, which “provides services to the U.S. federal civilian, defense and intelligence agencies”. [1]When the crudely produced video “Innocence of Muslims” was posted to a YouTube it needed a boost, especially since it was posted by someone no one had ever heard of and who had only uploaded two videos...

Just when Tea Party obituaries were being sounded around the country, Washington fixture of 42 years, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, loses to upstart Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel. And one week later, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, in the blockbuster of this year's political season, is booted out of office in the Virginia Republican primary by an economics professor from Randolph-Macon College, total undergraduate enrollment - 1,312 students. Turns out that reports of the death of the Tea Party are greatly exaggerated. According to the New York Times editorial page, writing about Cantor's defeat, the Tea Party is "producing candidates...

As the Al Qaeda aligned ISIS jihadists roll on towards Baghdad, there are reports that at least 200 Americans were trapped and surrounded at the Balad Force Air Base. An anonymous contractor claiming to be among the besieged U.S. citizens posted this call for help on CNN’s “IReport” website yesterday: I am writing from ballad Iraq as a employee of sallyport, ksillc..there are approx 500 US citizens on balad air base north of Baghdad trapped..we are part of a little known F16 iraq support mission here…The company has reportedly for the last 3 days to fly us out, we are...

Maybe because it is? Nah, that can't be it. Nothing's his fault. In the last few days, city after city has fallen to a massive army of Al Qaeda offshoot terrorists called ISIS. As the Daily Beast puts it, ISIS is the terrorist organization so extreme that it was "booted" from Al Qaeda proper. They organized, trained, took Mosul and, as a result, have now confiscated gobs of formerly-U.S. military hardware. With the fall of Mosul on Tuesday, Iraq’s al Qaeda offshoot has not only seized the country’s second-largest city, it appears it also has come into possession of the...

Well, gee, $1 trillion or so just doesn’t buy what it used to. Take Iraq, for example. Or, should I say: Take Iraq, please, someone — and fix it. Fend off the nasty Islamic fighters of ISIS and keep that miserable sinkhole for American lives and money from coming back to bite us — again. Do you understand now, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Bolton and all you neocon nutjobs, why the invasion of Iraq in 2003 wasn’t a very good idea? President Obama sure does. Because now he’s neck deep in another crisis in this place, a country...

Former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson is joining Harvard University as a visiting lecturer this coming school year, the university announced Thursday. Abramson will teach undergraduate courses on narrative nonfiction in the fall and spring semesters, the school said. Abramson, a 1976 Harvard graduate, said in a statement that she is excited to be returning to her alma mater. "Narrative non-fiction journalism is more important than ever," she said. "Its traditions and how it is changing in the digital transition are fascinating areas of study."

Editors at MSNBC.com trimmed down Republican congressional nominee Dave Brat's June 11 phone interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd in order to paint him as dodging questions from the Daily Rundown host. But a review of the full interview [listen to the mp3 audio here] shows that Brat had already and seemingly quite gladly answered a few policy questions on such hot issues as the minimum wage, immigration reform, and his stance on Wall Street's influence on the business wing of the GOP. "Brat dodges Chuck Todd's questions," blared a teaser headline. "Brat: I just wanted to talk about the victory,"...

Last week, George Will wrote a column about how progressive politics have fomented "rape culture" on college campuses. The column was not well received by some, or even, as a great many of the histrionic responses would indicate, well understood. I received the following press release yesterday, headlined: "87,000 Call on The Washington Post to Address Sexism, Fire George Will." A group called UltraViolet was touting the success of an online petition they'd whipped up over the controversy. From the release:

On Monday, the House Oversight Committee investigating the IRS targeting scandal released new e-mails that showed Lois Lerner sent a database of tax exempt organizations to the FBI right before the 2010 midterm elections. So what was the reaction of anchors and reporters at the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC ) networks to the release of federally protected confidential taxpayer information? A big fat yawn. So far no one at the Big Three evening or morning shows have reported on this most recent development in the IRS-Tea Party targeting scandal. -SNIP- According to a release from House Oversight Committee Chairman...

... what will the new narrative from the MSM be? Before the first GOP primaries this year, we heard from the MSM the long-held narrative: A.) "There is a huge war within the GOP. The GOP needs to do something with these "extremists" (Tea Party)!" Then when Boehner and some others won their primaries, the MSM narrative quickly shifted (as in goal-posts): B.) "The GOP has absorbed the Tea Party!" Now with Eric Cantor losing to David Brat (and that was a huge loss), the MSM won't go back on their narrative, even though they logically would have to admit...

Trailer Talk: Eco-Terrorism 'Night Moves' Downplays Own Subject Matter by Christian Toto 31 Mar 2014 Both The Company You Keep and The East, films which portrayed eco-terrorists in a favorable light, tanked at the box office. So is it any wonder the trailer for the new film Night Moves downplays the eco-nature of its protagonists? The thriller casts Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg and Peter Scarsgaard as three environmental radicals who decide to take action against their corporate targets. Trailers are famous for giving away too much of their stories. In the case of Night Moves, the trailer only touches on...

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, “this is a revolution.” Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag. According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions. What I’m about to say will raise some hackles, but...