Free Republic

Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Hillary Clinton would make a "spectacular candidate" for president in 2016. “I think she would be a spectacular candidate on the Democratic side. Bloomberg also praised former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Govs. Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Scott Walker (R-WI) pointing to their "executive experience"on the potential candidates on the Republican side of the ticket.

Obama camp angry, embarrassed over 2009 Nobel Prize: official The Associated Press Posted: May 15, 2014 5:24 PM ET Last Updated: May 15, 2014 5:24 PM ET A senior Norwegian diplomat says his country's former ambassador to the United States was given a verbal lashing by Barack Obama's chief of staff when the president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Morten Wetland said Thursday the ambassador, Wegger Stroemmen, was approached by Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago's mayor, who accused Norway of "fawning" to the newly elected U.S. leader. Wetland, the Norwegian ambassador to the United Nations at the time,...

The results of India's election, which are rapidly appearing today, seem to show a huge win for the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A victory had been expected, but this looks like a massive landslide. The next prime minister is almost certain to be Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, a state in western India. He is known for his economic agenda, which is seen to be relatively business-friendly (expect stocks to react very positively to the news), and his controversial brand of Hinduism. Modi's ideology is certainly going to be important over the next several years, but his...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — David Letterman regrets the way he treated Monica Lewinsky throughout the years over her affair with then President Bill Clinton while she was a White House intern. With retiring ABC News’ Barbara Walters as his guest on his CBS show Wednesday night, “The Late Show” host said he started to feel bad about the role he played taking shots at Lewinsky after she penned a story for Vanity Fair opening up about the affair and the troubles she had finding a job. “Now I started to feel bad because myself and other people with shows like this...

For most American women beyond the age of high school gym class, “I’ve got my period” isn’t considered much of an excuse for anything. We’re meant to pop an Advil and get on with things, Red Devil be damned. But in several, mostly East Asian, countries, so-called “menstrual leave” is a legally enshrined right for female workers. However, as these countries attempt to move toward greater gender equality in the workplace, menstrual leave has come under debate. Do these policies simply further the notion that women are weak, hormonally-addled creatures controlled by their uteri? Or do they encourage more equality...

Hillary Clinton touted the economic growth seen during the last two Democratic presidencies during a speech before the New America Foundation on Friday, and she warned that the U.S. risks falling behind global competitors if policymakers do not do more to revive the middle class by generating broad-based economic growth. Clinton, a former secretary of state who's eyeing a presidential bid in 2016, praised both President Obama and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for their economic stewardship. And she contrasted their years in the White House with the tenure of former President George W. Bush, saying eight years of...

Americans have something of a science problem. They swallow, for example, about $28 billion worth of vitamins each year, even though the Annals of Internal Medicine recently concluded that “[m]ost supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is not justified, and they should be avoided.” Americans often fear swallowing genetically modified plants (and Vermont recently required labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs), though GMOs have “been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than 15 years, with no reported ill effects,” according to the Journal of the Royal Society...

On Tuesday’s All In, host Chris Hayes and his guests tackled a chilling and politically loaded subject: which beliefs should disqualify someone from holding public office. Among other things, the group decided that global warming “denialism,” opposition to same-sex marriage, and opposition to a “robust” Voting Rights Act should put a politician outside the mainstream and ruin their chances of holding public office. Hayes seemed excited that politicians might be branded with a figurative scarlet letter for holding beliefs that run counter to his own far-left vision. In fact, he claimed the act of disqualification based on certain beliefs is...

Sean Penn — a friend to the late Hugo Chavez and one of the most liberal stars in Hollywood — will be surrounded by top Republicans next Sunday at Cipriani 42nd Street.

Typically, April showers bring May flowers. This year, however, April also delivered a torrent of racially charged issues to the national stage. In Michigan, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban on university-admissions programs that use race as a criterion in college admissions. Clippers owner Donald Sterling ignited a firestorm when a recording surfaced in which he asked his mixed-race girlfriend not to post photos of herself with black people on Instagram or bring black people to NBA games. Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy garnered support from Senator Rand Paul and other prominent conservatives in the wake of his standoff with...

Klein is a leftist journalist who had the audacity to write about his issues with the Obamacare website while working for The Washington Post. His words were immediately savaged by the farther-left blogger, Joan Walsh, who was working for Salon magazine. She penned a harsh critique, headlined: “Liberal pundit fail: Rush to attack Obamacare site only aids unhinged right.” Here’s what Walsh wrote about Klein: “Ezra Klein then picked up the cudgel, telling the crew at MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ where every Obama misstep foretells the end of his presidency, that the Health and Human Services Department is covering up a ‘massive management failure,’...

The fast-food worker strikes are expanding to more U.S. cities and going global. Workers in up to 150 cities across the country are planning to strike on May 15, according to labor organizers. The movement is also headed overseas, with plans for workers to join protests in 33 countries. On Wednesday, the workers announced the protests outside a McDonald's in New York City, and delivered a letter that called on the fast food giant to raise wages and respect workers' rights worldwide. However, security guards didn't allow the workers to bring the letter inside the restaurant. So, they posted the...

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the tea party Republican tapped to lead the new committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks, made a telling slip Wednesday morning in describing his mission. Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.” A trial? And the Obama administration is the defense? So much for that “serious investigation” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised; his new chairman intends to play prosecutor, proving the administration’s guilt...

Scandal: On the day after Benghazi, the brother of the White House staffer who wrote the Susan Rice prep email said the government believed it was not just a mob reaction to a video. So who told him that? When you're Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and you've been tasked to prep U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on how to deflect blame from the Obama administration for the Benghazi massacre, it's good to have a brother who happens to run a TV network quite willing to push the White House spin....

House Speaker John Boehner would not say Thursday if the House GOP’s campaign arm should stop including the Benghazi attacks in fundraising appeals. Asked three times whether the National Republican Congressional Committee should be fundraising based on what they call Democratic obstruction of the Benghazi investigation, Boehner answered only: “Our focus is on getting the answers to those families who lost their loved ones. Period.” An NRCC email sent Wednesday morning included a link to “become a Benghazi watchdog” – which led to a page where supporters can donate cash. A separate website called “BenghaziWatchdogs.com” still contains a link encouraging...

Here’s an unsolicited tip for Rep. Trey Gowdy: A smoking gun explanation for the Obama Administration’s use of false talking points has already been found. And the culprit is not a White House adviser or State Department bureaucrat. It’s the intelligence community’s reliance on the media. It’s tucked inside the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Benghazi, which reveals a key source of the bad intelligence that made it into Ambassador Susan Rice’s famous talking points: the media incorrectly reported that before the attack on Sept. 11, 2012 there were protests outside the U.S. facilities in Benghazi when there...

Instead of demanding a bipartisan Benghazi committee, the Democrats must boycott this farce, whose sole aim is to humiliate Obama and Clinton.So House Republicans are zeroing in on the particulars of how the Select Committee to Mention the Words Clinton and Benghazi in the Same Sentence for as Long as Possible (I think that’s the official name) is going to work. On Tuesday morning, Nancy Pelosi issued a statement on the question: The panel has to be 50-50 bipartisan, she insisted, and all information must be shared on a bipartisan basis. Then, she seemed to imply, maybe the Democrats would...

Sen. Jay Rockefeller unloaded on lawmakers Tuesday, accusing some of blocking efforts to solve urgent problems during Barack Obama’s presidency “because he’s the wrong color.” Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who will retire at the end of the year, made his comments during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on transportation funding, saying he’s confounded by the “lack of will to keep ourselves from dropping into rivers and rolling over bridges that are no longer there.” “It’s an American characteristic that you don’t do anything which displeases the voters, because you always have to get reelected here,” he added. “I understand part of it....

In a whiny new tell-all, Bill Clinton's favorite ex-intern, Monica Lewinsky, gripes she was reduced to a shame-filled recluse, unable to score a decent job because of her "global humiliation". Make her go away! I’d actually feel sorry for Monica Lewinsky — if she weren’t so damn infuriating. She’s America’s favorite beret-wearing former intern, whose very name has become a synonym for a sex act she eagerly performed on her knees, a dame who rocketed to fame for failing to dry-clean a blue dress stained with the seed of the then-leader of the free world. Now, Lewinsky, 40, wants our...

Derrick Wilburn, founder of the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives, filed for 501(c)(3) status in October of 2012. On Wednesday, he finally received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Wilburn did not become politically engaged until he observed that "legislation [was] getting passed against the will of the people." He told the Examiner that he realized that he "needed to 'be the somebody'" and founded the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives. "Like so many other Americans," he said, "I felt the need to get involved & do more than just vote..." Before he opened the anticipated letter, Wilburn took a picture of it and...