Free Republic

Ben Carson alleged in an interview with Fox News Wednesday that Planned Parenthood puts most of its clinics in black neighborhoods to "control the population" and that its founder, Margaret Sanger, "was not particularly enamored with black people." Planned Parenthood has been a target on the campaign trail after a series of sting videos was released alleging the organization illegally profits from selling aborted fetal tissue. Carson, a famed neurosurgeon turned Republican presidential candidate, has been a vocal opponent of the group. He was also in the news this week after reports surfaced that he once used aborted fetal tissue...

Every time Republicans have threatened to end funding for the Public Broadcasting System and its radio cousin at National Public Radio, we all knew what to expect. Liberal supporters of the networks would trot out Big Bird, Elmo, Kermit, and the rest of the adorable “Sesame Street” gang of Muppets. Generations of Americans children have grown up with the PBS show. Rather than being forced to defend the indefensible notion of a taxpayer-funded government broadcasting system in the age of cable and the Internet, the argument instead turned into one about mean conservatives trying to pull the plug on a...

Nothing like one publicly funded organization “fact checking” another. Bush is right that Planned Parenthood receives $500 million a year in government funding — or, to be more exact, $528 million last year, according to Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report.That totals more than 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s total $1.3 billion in revenue for the year, which suggests that the organization would be in some heavy financial trouble without that public funding.What programs are funding that money?Those public funds come from two programs: Medicaid, the health care program targeted at lower-income Americans, and Title X, a federal family planning...

Wisconsin public broadcasters lost almost $1.6 million in state funding in the budget signed by Gov. Scott Walker July 12. The cuts affect two organizations, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, which support Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio and provide other services. The ECB was hit hardest by state cuts, losing $1.1 million, while university-based support was reduced by about $460,000. The cut to ECB funds specifically targeted Wisconsin Media Lab, which curates free K-12 multimedia educational content tailored to the state’s academic standards. Lawmakers eliminated state funding for the program, which has a...

Audio for this story from All Things Considered will be available at approximately 7:00 p.m. ET. The 7-state, months-long U.S. military exercise that conspiracy theorists believe is a cover for a military takeover began this week. NPR's Arun Rath speaks with correspondent Wade Goodwyn about the exercise.

As we all remember, the media completely freaked out after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in favor of free speech. Taking aim primarily at the right-leaning Koch Brothers, the media posed as defenders of democracy against the corrupting influence of outside money in politics. As usual, the facts prove that the media are big fat liars. Although legions of left-wing corporations like NBC News, Politico, MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, The Washington Post, LA Times, NPR, PBS, Univision, Comedy Central, MTV, HBO, and ESPN spend billions of dollars pushing a political agenda 24/7, the left-wing media want a...

In May, a fight between two rival motorcycle clubs turned into a bloodbath in Waco, Texas. Nine people were shot dead, and at least 20 were injured. In the end, 177 people were arrested and jailed on charges of engaging in organized crime. But many of them say they had nothing to do with these so-called outlaw motorcycle clubs — and nothing to do with the violence. Among them are Walt and Ester Weaver. Walt says he's stunned by the way authorities handled the situation. "Two months ago if you'd told me this could happen to this many people in...

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees this week approved $445 million in funding for CPB, but both proposals lacked earmarked funding of $40 million for PBS’s planned V6 Interconnection project. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill Thursday that includes $445 million in advance funding for CPB and $25.7 million for PBS’s Ready to Learn program. The House Appropriations Committee approved its spending bill Wednesday. “The committee’s vote today represents an extraordinary endorsement of public television's work by both the Republican majority and the Democratic minority,” Association of Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler said in a prepared statement. “This...

Thank you, jury! In case you had any lingering doubts about the wisdom of these 12 good men and women, consider the scurvy crew that’s frothing at the mouth over the fate of the tousle-haired All-American boy on the cover of Rolling Stone. Moonbats, NPR, The Boston Globe, terrorists — but I repeat myself. A crackpot nun was flown up here from New Orleans five times on the taxpayers’ dime to gaze into Tousle Hair’s dreamy brown eyes and attest to his EBT card-carrying Third World hunkiness. The Joker gives the courthouse camera the finger, and now the jury gives...

Everybody has a particular figure in the news who drives them a little bonkers. You may recall that for some reason, media hosannas for Chelsea Clinton stick in my craw. I’m perfectly happy to see Chelsea Clinton go off and live a happy life as a mom or doing whatever she likes away from the public spotlight. But I’m tired of the media telling us she’s remarkably accomplished in her own right, her keynote addresses to conferences like SXSW, treating her like she’s an A-list celebrity and fascinating figure, the “Woman of the Year” and “Mom of the Year” awards,...

Ben Affleck persuaded the producers of Finding Your Roots to edit out details of how his ancestors were slave owners even though it was a breach of PBS editorial rules. The new Batman star, who supports a number of liberal causes, objected to the ancestry TV show airing how his distant relations were racist, leaked Sony emails reveal. Instead viewers were shown heartwarming stories of how his third grandfather was a mystic in the Civil War and how his sixth grandfather was a patriot who fought in the American Revolution. Daily Mail Online has reviewed a transcript of the show...

President Obama has tried really hard to stay out of the 2016 race for his job, except when it comes to one person: Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker. First, Obama ripped Walker last month for signing into law a right-to-work bill. Then, in an interview with NPR published Tuesday, the president said Walker needed to "bone up on foreign policy" after suggesting he would undo any nuclear pact with Iran were he to win control of the White House. Yet, the White House insists that Obama isn't going out of his way to rip Walker. "It's nothing personal," White House...

The United States should absorb as many as 11 million immigrants each year into its economy, NPR “Planet Money” founder Adam Davidson writes in The New York Times Magazine. “Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders,” he writes.His proposal would double the current U.S. population in only 29 years to over 637 million people.

Americans for Prosperity, the most prominent arm of the Koch brothers' organization, put Republican lawmakers on notice Thursday, setting out a conservative agenda for Congress. AFP leaders say it will be pushed by the group's grassroots supporters in 34 states. Tim Phillips, president of AFP, said at a Washington press conference that congressional Republicans "failed miserably" a decade ago, especially on cutting the federal budget. "They've been given a second chance by the American people," he said, "and we're going to hold them accountable. We're determined about that." The agenda covers three areas: taxes, including repeal of the estate or...

All of the hallmarks of National Public Radio – the cosmopolitanism and the sexual progressivism – come together in the subject of abortions worldwide. On New Year’s Eve, NPR.org posted a photographer’s record celebrating an abortion clinic in a primitive part of eastern India, titled “A Haven In A Land Of Unsafe Abortions.” NPR sent documentary photographer Poulomi Basu to spend time at the clinic in Khunti for a window into the world of legal and safe abortion in this remote part of India. Palo Khoya agreed to be photographed during her visit. It may be hard for a Westerner...

After the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it didnt take long for environmentalists to cry gloom and doom and for the media to hype those claims. From caribou dying to earthquakes to all hell breaking loose, there was no shortage of catastrophic predictions though the Alaska pipeline now boasts great success roughly 30 years later.      Construction on the pipeline began in 1975, and oil first moved through it on June 20, 1977. Former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton summed up its success in 2003 that Today the pipeline produces 17 percent of our domestic petroleum. It...

June 7, 2011NPR defends Palin? Aaron Gee While coming home I often listen to our local NPR station. This afternoons "All Things Considered" asked the question "How Accurate Were Palin's Paul Revere Comments?" The story started out with; "Sarah Palin is defending her knowledge of American history."  Here we go again, I was prepared for the usual "Palin is a moron" storyline. Surprisingly that didn't happen. What I got was Robert Allison, a professor and historian at Suffolk University, tell the NPR host that Palin basically got it right. The interviewer, Melissa Block, tries to cajole a different narrative...

On page 261 of the paperback edition of Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama's (ghost written) book The Audacity of Hope, he wrote "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." In what must be an effort in his mind to keep the political winds from shifting, in an NPR interview Obama said: They [Iran] have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it. Because if they do, there's incredible talent and resources and sophistication inside of - inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power...

US President Barack Obama acknowledges that Iran would become a “very successful regional power” if a long-term nuclear agreement is reached. “They have got a chance to get right with the world,” Obama said in an interview with NPR News, which was taped at the White House on Dec. 18 and aired on Monday. More than a year ago, Iran agreed to an interim agreement to suspend 20-percent uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions pending on a long-term deal. Despite progress in the talks, Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council...

In the fall of 2007, President Bush offered an interview on race relations to National Public Radio correspondent Juan Williams, but NPR declined the invitation. Ellen Weiss, the news boss at the time (who was deposed in the controversy after she fired Williams three years later), demanded that an NPR anchor do the interview. The Williams interview with the president aired on Fox News, and not on NPR. That sense of feisty independence does not extend to President Obama. When he grants an interview to an NPR anchor, it has all the dramatic tension and hostility of a cappuccino klatch...