Free Republic

Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet. Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center , was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that...

Slow news day, so let’s catch up on details of our annual White House Seder dinner, held Tuesday, the second night of Passover.Woops! Big Guy forgot his beanie!For starters, we had to bring in extra help to cook everything: But this year, a secret culinary detail was called in – not celebrity chefs, but Washington caterer Vered Guttman, who writes the Modern Manna blog for Haaretz.com, and filmmaker Susan Barocas, a food aficionado who helped launch the Jewish Food Experience in 2012. As is our custom, each guest was provided with their own copy of the Maxwell House Haggadah to...

When someone shows you who they are, believe themSince 2009, NOW THE END BEGINS has brought you story after story in detailed accounts of exactly how Obama feels about Islam, and how he views Christianity and the Bible. So today, in light of recent events in Washington, we feel it important that you know exactly where your president stands in regards to his faith and his god. Below are 20 quotes he has made about Islam, and 20 quotes he has made about Christianity. Nothing edited or mashed up, just exactly in the context he originally spoke them in with...

Increasingly, Americans fear their government. They fear its power, its might and its ability to ruin their lives. The recent showdown in Nevada between federal agents and a cattle rancher and a group of his supporters is a symbol of the kind of abuse of power and executive sleight-of-hand that are becoming the hallmark of the Obama administration. (The federal agents in Nevada even wore brown shirts.) And this is just one of many unnerving examples of increasingly bold government intrusion. We all know the IRS targeted conservative groups. When we learn of IRS offices covered with pro-Obama campaign...

NSA leaker Edward Snowden is currently living under asylum in Russia, so it makes sense that he would want to know about the country's own surveillance practices. He managed to take his inquiry straight to the top and pose the question to none other than President Vladimir Putin during a live, state-run television broadcast. "I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance," he said. "So I'd like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?" The show's host claimed that Snowden "revolutionized the...

An Air Force captain discovered he was banned from Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California, due to pending charges against him from a previous encounter with a cop who had tried to arrest him for entering his own home. The charges — resisting arrest and obstructing an officer — have infuriated Captain Nicolas Aquino, a first-generation immigrant whose parents came to the United States from Paraguay as political exiles. Last December, an officer paid a visit to Aquino’s Monterey residence. Apparently, a neighbor had seen a man entering Aquino’s home, and reported a possible burglary to the authorities. The...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is working to to enlist 30 specific House Republicans on a mission to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. In a memorandum from the chief cosponsors of the Democratic House comprehensive immigration bill to “interested parties” published on Pelosi’s House website and pushed to press by her communications team, Pelosi specifically targets 30 Republicans she says aren’t working hard enough for amnesty. “It’s Time for [Insert name of GOP House member here] to Walk the Walk on Immigration Reform,” the memo, from Democrat Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO), Judy Chu (D-CA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Joe Garcia (D-FL)...

Note: a slightly altered version of this story appears at WND today as well. Following a weeklong confrontation between protestors and police from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), events at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada came to an abrupt end on Saturday, April 11, when the BLM suddenly threw in the towel and left. Speaking to a local TV news program Monday, Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “This isn’t over…” And he is certainly correct. The showdown between BLM and Cliven Bundy – the last rancher in Clark County, Nevada – was but the...

Anyone wondering why the U.S. economy can't seem to grow at its usual pace should examine one product category where production is booming: federal regulation. Washington set a new record in 2013 by issuing final rules consuming 26,417 pages in the Federal Register. While plenty of government employees deserve credit for this milestone, leadership matters. And by this measure President Obama has never been surpassed in the Oval Office. The latest rule-making tally comes from the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Wayne Crews, who on April 29 will publish his annual review of federal regulation in "Ten Thousand Commandments." This is important...

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emphasized on Thursday that the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament had authorized him to use military force if necessary in eastern Ukraine, and also stressed Russia's historical claim to the territory, repeatedly referring to it as "new Russia" and saying that only "God knows" why it became part of Ukraine. Speaking in a televised question-and-answer show, Mr. Putin also admitted for the first time that Russian armed forces had been deployed in Crimea, the disputed peninsula that Russia annexed last month immediately after a large majority of the population voted in...

A bombshell revelation has brought the IRS scandal to a new level. Judicial Watch has released internal IRS communications revealing that former Tax Exempt Organizations director Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding whether it was possible to criminally prosecute tax-exempt groups she believed had “lied” about their political activity. Judicial Watch obtained the documents by successfully filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS in October 2013, following the agency’s stonewall of four FOIA requests dating back to the previous May. Contained in those documents is an email exchange between Lerner...

For years, when asked about his position on same-sex marriage, President Obama would say that it was "evolving." How that evolution occurred, and the insiders and outsiders who helped to push it along, is addressed in an in-depth article from journalist Jo Becker in the current New York Times Magazine. The article is an excerpt from Becker's book, “Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality," which hits shelves Tuesday. The excerpt includes many details on why the president changed his mind. There was a public push, of course, with national opinion shifting in favor of same-sex marriage, but...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: From Katie Pavlich at Town Hall.com: "According to new IRS emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice in May 2013 about whether tax exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for 'lying' about political activity." So Eric Holder and Lois Lerner not only are liars, they're in cahoots. Lois Lerner was asking the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute people like Catherine Engelbrecht. This woman, this Lerner, this is a witch. This is a...

Mia Marie Pope knew Obama at their Punahou high school in Honolulu, Hawaii, during the late 1970s. She knew him then by the name of Barry Soetoro. In this interview on October 31, 2013, with Reverend and Dr. James David Manning, the pastor of Atlah World Missionary in Harlem, New York, Pope says Barry “always portrayed himself as a foreign student” and “very much was within the gay community.” It was “common knowledge” that Barry “wasn’t interested in girls” but “was strictly into men.” “One of his attributes even then,” as he is now, was that Barry “was a pathological...

Hopefully, America has learned its lesson — do not elect another “community organizer.” This is especially true when the community organizer has a murky history filled with pathological lies, a hatred of America and a long list of associations with those who wish to destroy our nation. You would think a community organizer would know that showing weakness is a provocation for your enemies. Maybe President Barack Obama does know this and doesn’t care. Or maybe he does not have a clue what is going on in Europe, the Middle East, South America, Asia and everywhere else where America’s enemies...

At The Hobby Center in Danbury, Karl LaLonde, the store's owner, holds the Proto X in the palm of his hand. It's the size of a fairly healthy tarantula. LaLonde has decorated it with an orange piece of plastic shaped like a bird's beak. Switched on, its four tiny propellers spin. Under LaLonde's control via a joystick, it lifts off the counter and scoots around the store's airspace. The Proto X costs $50. "You can get a camera to fit it," LaLonde said. It's the smallest of the many UAVs -- unmanned aerial vehicles -- LaLonde sells. Business is good....

Federal Fire Power: Instead of putting a lien on the property of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, the Bureau of Land Management surrounded his ranch with 200 armed agents. It's not the only agency with a private army. Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama slipped a little-noticed line in a speech, proposing a national police force reporting straight to him. "We cannot continue to rely only on our military," he said. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." As our military is slowly decimated by his policies and budget...

A New York woman suffering from a neurological disease that has required four brain surgeries has been dropped by all of her doctors and denied medications due to her Obamacare plan. "I've been vomiting. I lost 22 pounds. The pain is unbearable," said Margaret Figueroa, 49, on Wednesday. "My medication helps me function during the day." Figueroa suffers from a disease known as Arnold Chiari Malformation and Syringomyelia. Even though the Obamacare plan she purchased assured her that she was covered, her insurance card was denied when she went to fill her prescriptions. Then she learned that none of her...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter joined nine other Nobel Peace Laureates in sending a strongly worded letter to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, urging them not to approve construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The letter opened as follows: "You stand on the brink of making a choice that will define your legacy on one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced – climate change. As you deliberate the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, you are poised to make a decision that will signal either a dangerous commitment to the status quo, or bold leadership that...

About six in ten American voters think Barack Obama lies to the country on important matters some or most of the time, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday. Thirty-seven percent think Obama lies “most of the time,” while another 24 percent say he lies “some of the time.” Twenty percent of voters say “only now and then” and 15 percent “never.” Click here for the poll results. President Obama has been accused by political opponents and media fact-checkers alike of telling falsehoods. Frequently cited: His repeated claim that under Obamacare “If you like your plan, you can keep...