Free Republic

In February 2013, Move America Forward announced an ambitious fundraising goal. The charity, launched in part by one of the most prominent figures in the Tea Party movement, had adopted the 800 Marines in a battalion fighting in Afghanistan and wanted to send them all care packages. ......................................................... Yet an examination of its fundraising appeals, tax records and other documents shows that Move America Forward has repeatedly misled donors and inflated its charitable accomplishments, while funneling millions of dollars in revenue to the men behind the group and their political consulting firms.

For white America, confronting its own racism is a lot like attitudes surrounding the virus that can lead to AIDS.Witnessing the death of Eric Garner, at the hands of uniformed police in New York City, got me to thinking about racism in America. This African-American man was confronted by police for selling single, probably-untaxed, cigarettes on the street. When the man resisted, he was held in a chokehold – a practice deemed unlawful for over 20 years – which was horrifyingly caught on tape. The man was obese and carried no firearm, yet he was wrestled to the ground and...

Michael Vickers’s ranch 113 kilometres north of the US–Mexico border in Brooks County, Texas, is near a Border Patrol checkpoint. Undocumented migrants trek through the harsh brushland onto his property to avoid capture. An electric fence encloses the nearly 1,000 acres: at 220 volts, says Vickers, a local veterinarian and avid hunter, “it won’t kill them but it will make them wet their pants”. In 2006, Vickers and his wife Linda founded the Texas Border Volunteers, which now has some 300 recruits, who dress in fatigues and patrol private ranches in South Texas, using night-vision goggles and thermal imaging to...

Yahoo MUST be exposed for their vicious bias.

World War II veteran Nick Gozik says that the bravest soldier he encountered during two years of combat was the one he saw executed for desertion. That soldier proved to be the only one of more than 20,000 convicted deserters during that war to suffer the death penalty. The last deserter to be executed had been during the Civil War. There have been no others.

Same-sex marriage is becoming a national inevitability. A cascade of court opinions, significant public support, not to mention increasingly sympathetic gay couples and increasingly implausible opposition—all these and more point to an emerging national consensus that “gay marriage” is actually a form of “marriage.” It’s not exactly clear when the hump took place—but we definitely seem to be over it. ............................................................ And what about those post-racial and post-gender millennials? What happens when a queer-identified, mostly-heterosexual woman with plenty of LGBT friends gets married? Do we really think that because she is “from Venus,” she will be interested in a heteronormative,...

Last Wednesday, as the House was preparing for its new investigation into the Benghazi attacks, House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers gathered Republican members of his committee for a meeting. While the main purpose of the meeting was to discuss surveillance reforms the committee was about to pass, Rogers also warned his colleagues about the upcoming select committee to investigate Benghazi. “He was saying this could be a rabbit hole,” one House member told The Daily Beast. “He was warning us that we should not let this investigation get into conspiracy theories.” Contrary to the caricature of Republicans, as singularly...

The return of Benghazi is the latest evidence that the GOP is putting its unhinged obsessions before the good of the country. Back in March 2013, I wrote a column titled, "Why I am no longer a Republican." A more accurate (though admittedly more ponderous) title would have been, "One important reason among many that I am no longer a Republican." That important reason was the Iraq War, which I never supported and which the Bush administration and its legion of defenders in Washington and around the country justified in terms that struck me at the time as highly ideological,...

Ignore the talk about purity tests, progressive cred, and skipping to a post-presidency status. Clinton won’t be denied this time—and she’s going to make history.The non-race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, all but unprecedented in non-incumbent contests, is confounding to journalists and pundits, to the quoteratti whose words sustain their output, and to the partisan spinners whose mission is to bend the arc of the story. But the political cycle—-and the 24-hour news cycle—has its own relentless rhythms. If you’re one of the boys, and now girls, on the bus, even if it hasn’t rolled into Iowa yet, it’s...

FENWAY STRATEGIES--Vietor/Favreau political communications firm No office location--- email address only ======================================================= Who We Are Jon Favreau From 2009 through early 2013, Jon Favreau served as the director of Speechwriting for President Barack Obama, a role he also played for the President during the 2008 presidential campaign. Favreau began writing with President Obama in 2005, when he started his first term as a U.S. Senator, and has had a hand in crafting nearly every major speech that the President has delivered over the last eight years. Featured in TIME magazine as one of the “ 100 Most Influential People in...

From abortion bans to Obamacare cuts to, maybe, an empty Supreme Court chair, the Republicans already know exactly what they’ll do if they get control of both houses of Congress. Passing a federal law banning almost all abortions after 20 weeks. Defunding parts of Obamacare. Weakening the Environmental Protection Agency. Kneecapping the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren’s baby, the new agency within the Fed to police consumer fraud. And—maybe, just maybe—letting a Supreme Court seat sit vacant until after the next presidential election. That’s just the start of what happens if the Republicans win back the Senate this November....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against moving "overtly or covertly" into eastern Ukraine and said there was strong evidence that pro-Russian demonstrators in the region were being paid.

Now that Obamacare has removed healthcare from employment, people can leave their cubicles and pursue part-time labor. With apps like Uber, that labor might happen on a micro-level. Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 anthem may need a 21st century reboot. In 2013, 75% of the almost 1 million new jobs added to the US economy were part time according to CNBC. Obamacare, a weak recovery, and global unrest are just some of the reasons cited for this phenomenon that contributes to the hot button issues of inequality and poverty. However, one nascent winner has been the rise of crowdsourced fractional...

But the U.S. government won’t let scientists try out this promising treatment on humans. On a warm summer day in Chicago at the International Cannabinoid Research Conference, hundreds of marijuana researchers were giggling. It wasn’t the groundbreaking research they’d just heard—proving the ability of THC, one of the active ingredients in marijuana, to stave off HIV (or RIV in monkeys)—that did it. Nor was it the author of the study, Dr. Patricia E. Molina, who had them laughing. It was the rogue researcher daring enough to taint the victory with a harsh dose of reality: “What’s next, testing this on...

Do you know the old joke about the politician who sees a mob of people marching down and street and cries: “There go my people! I must find out where they are going so I can lead them!” I’m put in mind of it by the news that the Republican Party is super-keen now to figure out ways to help the middle class. The Democrats have begun embracing economic populism. Polls show strong public support for many of the ideas that make up this populism. The people are marching. And now the party that’s been the enemy of the middle...

As a Republican hoping that my party will retake the White House in 2016, I watched with intense interest as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie talked and talked and talked his way out of ”Bridgegate.” ....................................................... But what I am referring to is the Herculean task set before Christie of winning the 2016 Republican nomination given that the conservative wing and primary-controlling base voters are ferociously anti-Christie for numerous political and policy reasons, among them Medicaid expansion and gun control just for starters.

There isn't a majority that opposes the Affordable Care Act because it's too liberal, in fact, a good number of Americans don't think it's liberal enough. Today’s CNN poll (PDF) on the Affordable Care Act seems like a blow to supporters of the law. When asked if they “generally favor or generally oppose” the president’s health care overhaul, only 35 percent say they “favor.” The large majority—65 percent—say they “oppose.” For Republicans who have staked their entire message on opposition to Obamacare, this looks like vindication. Not only was the rollout a disaster, but now, the public has turned decisively...

No wonder Mary Poppins needed a spoonful of sugar. The forthcoming Saving Mr. Banks is a dark film that tells the heart-breaking true story behind one of the great characters in children’s movie history. P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), the nanny’s formidable creator, is pitted against Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), who promised his daughters that he’d bring Poppins to the big screen. The thing is, that pledge goes against the author’s wishes. Saving Mr. Banks goes behind the scenes of the ferocious battle to make what was to become the famous 1964 musical adaptation. For 20 years, Travers refused to grant...

For the guy who finished third in the Virginia governor’s race, Robert Sarvis had a pretty good night on Tuesday. Sarvis was the Libertarian candidate in the election who pulled in just over 6.5% of the vote. This wasn’t just a landmark achievement for a third party candidate in Virginia but in the entire American South. --------------------------------------------------------------------snip------------------------------------------- Based on the exit polls, the average Sarvis voter was a younger, well-educated, pro-choice white who did not identify with either political party. In particular, Sarvis did well in suburban Richmond and in the Shenandoah Valley. Sarvis’s weakest areas were in coal country...

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) president Grover Norquist has now turned to left-wing media to continue his smear campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a first-year senator already emerging as a leader of the Republican Party.“I have never had a criticism of Ted Cruz’s strategy because I’ve never been able to find it,” Norquist said Monday night on Sirius XM’s Standup with Pete Dominick, according to a report in The Daily Beast. Dominick is a reliably progressive radio host who hosts his show on the liberal POTUS network on Sirius XM. The Daily Beast is similarly liberal, having dropped notions...