Free Republic

The Obama administration's handling of its multiple scandals paints a picture of those who believe they are above the law. There's a pattern of arrogance, dismissiveness, denial, scapegoating, stonewalling, lying, false professions of ignorance, assurances of accountability and punishing whistle-blowers. The numerous parallels in the administration's handling of the Fast and Furious and Internal Revenue Service scandals alone are too striking to be coincidental. The recurring theme is that the buck never stops at the Obama White House. With Fast and Furious, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives adopted an ill-conceived, indefensible plan to deliberately walk guns into...

State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki, the paid liar from the Obama campaign, refused to answer the question of whether the higher-ups in the State Dept. stopped the investigation into one of their ambassadors regarding prostitution:

Summary: A bombshell story published in the Washington Post this week alleged that the NSA had enlisted nine tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple, in a massive program of online spying. Now the story is unraveling, and the Post has quietly changed key details. What went wrong?

The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, is suspected of soliciting prostitutes and possibly minors, according to a State Department memo. The details are published in today's New York Post. "A [Diplomatic Security] agent was called off a case against US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman over claims that he solicited prostitutes, including minors," reports the Post.

I agree with Jonathan’s post both in terms of substance and the media response to the NSA/surveillance stories. On the former: the PRISM program, in the right hands and used with discretion, can be justified based on the threats to America. But in the wrong hands–in executive branch hands that have abused power and punished political enemies–it has the potential to be misused. Which brings me to the current chief executive. My views on President Obama are such that very little would surprise me in terms of the ethical lines he would cross in order to gain and maintain political...

Bret Baier ‏@BretBaier 2m Decision: Fox News’ Executive Vice President Michael Clemente has said that Fox News will NOT attend the DOJ meeting if it is OFF the record

President Obama has done a lot of foolish, ill-advised, impeachable, disrespectful, arrogant, anti-American, unconstitutional, illegal and inexplicable things during the nearly four and one half years in which he has held the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue captive to Marxism and Islamic extremism. Obama’s missteps have harmed the American economy and the prospects of prosperity for untold future generations; he has jeopardized national security with foreign policies that punish American allies, while rewarding terrorists and would be terrorists; he has refused to protect the US borders and has encouraged the invasion of American soil by millions of non-English speaking,...

The Associated Press says it will not attend this week's off-the-record meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department decides to change its mind and conduct the meeting on the record. "We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter," AP spokesperson Erin Madigan said in a...

The “tonight’s news” referred to by The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza comes via the New York Times: Wow, tonight's news dramatically escalates the war between DOJ and Fox. Somebody is not telling the whole truth.— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 27, 2013 News Corporation said on Sunday that it had no record of being notified by the Justice Department nearly three years ago of a subpoena for the telephone records of a reporter at its Fox News cable channel [James Rosen]. The company’s chief legal counsel at the time also said that he had never seen material from the government related...

This is just outrageous - like the rest of Stephen Miller's testimony yesterday. Reuters: "Republicans have vowed to find out who was involved, but Miller did not provide much of a road map." "Who is responsible for targeting these individuals?" asked Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican. "I don't have names for you," Miller responded. "Republicans accused him of dodging their questions." "I'm hearing, 'I don't know, I don't remember, I don't recall, I don't believe,'" said Representative Dave Reichert of Washington. "You don't even know who investigated the case, but yet you say it was investigated." "Democrats seemed more...

GOP Rep.: White House ‘Hand-Selected’ Benghazi E-Mails By Andrew Johnson May 16, 2013 10:03 AM Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) said the White House e-mails about Benghazi that were released last night were “hand-selected” to leave out other important documents. “I know absolutely, for total certainty, this is just but a small smidgeon of what they have,” Chaffetz said. There are 25,000-pages worth of documents, he said, but the White House released only100 total pages. “The White House has hand-selected these,” he added.

WH Live Stream Scheduled to begin at 12:30 pm EDT

Thomas Pickering - the former UN ambassador who along with former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen prepared the Accountability Review Board report on the State Department's handling of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya - says he didn't think it was necessary to interview former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "because in fact we knew where the responsibility rested." BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. Ambassador Thomas Pickering is the one who led the State Department's investigation into how those Benghazi attacks where handled. Mr. Ambassador, you and I have known one another as you had...

Some of you are already shaking your head and arguing with my headline. I can hear the conservative craniums rattling all across America’s fruited plains, her mountain’s majesty, and from sea to shining sea. Let me clarify my title. Let’s start with the first half: Obama Has Won! But you scream back angrily at me, “NO he hasn’t! He didn’t win! We’ll never admit defeat!” Good for you. I appreciate and respect your patriotism and tenacity. Unfortunately, you’re wrong. There’s no denying that one. He was re-elected, and he’s achieved every goal he set out to win short of disarming...

<p>George Zimmerman's attorneys on Monday formally accused prosecutors of being unethical, saying that for seven months, they hid a pair of lies by their most important witness, and that they should be punished for it.</p> <p>The allegations, spelled out in a new court pleading, mark a new low in the case.</p>

Posters comment....There is no more law if this isn't correctedMore than three months after the Justice Department administered a virtual slap on the wrist to global banking giant HSBC after a whistleblower’s report to WND of massive fraud was confirmed, Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to a Senate panel he believes some banks are too big to prosecute. Under questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Wednesday, Holder said he was not referring specifically to HSBC, because it would not be “appropriate,” but the message was clear. Banks the size of HSBC are “too big to jail,” as a member...

nye asteroid cnn global warming | "We want to bring in our science guy, Bill Nye, and talk about something else that's falling from the sky, and that is an asteroid," said Feyerick. "What's coming our way? Is this the effect of, perhaps, global warming? Or is this just some meteoric occasion?"

Democrat Melowese Richardson has been an official poll worker for the last quarter century and registered thousands of people to vote last year. She candidly admitted to Cincinnati’s Channel 9 this week that she voted twice in the last election. Richardson insists she has done nothing wrong and promises to contest the charges: “I’ll fight it for Mr. Obama and for Mr. Obama’s right to sit as president of the United States.”

As is the case every Thursday, the BLS reported its weekly initial claims which unlike two weeks ago did not estimate the initial unemployment claims for America's most populous state when the number plunged, and has now missed expectations for two weeks in a row, printing at 366K, on expectations of a 360K number, while last week's 368K was as usual revised upward to 371K. As a result, the Mainspin Media already has its headline: Initial Claims decline by 5,000. Such is life under the US Department of Truth, even as unadjusted initial claims spiked by 16.7K to 386K in...

Put on your shocked faces: Since my bipartisan call last week for Democratic women to join the Ladies Against Senator Sleaze-Bob movement, not a single Democratic woman in Washington has signed up. Here's the thing. The brewing scandal involving N.J. Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is not just a "sex scandal." It's a crony corruption scandal of sordid, soap operatic proportions. Maybe if Menendez were a contestant on "The Bachelor," he'd finally command more widespread female attention. For their part, the Democratic women on Capitol Hill seem as uninterested in the alleged...