Free Republic

In the immediate aftermath of the multiple explosions that rocked the Copley Square area of Boston during this afternoon’s marathon, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof took to Twitter to say that the tragic events are a “reminder” of how Senate Republicans blocked the appointment of a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). “[E]xplosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment,” he tweeted with a link to a Washington Post article on the Senate GOP’s threats to put a hold on President Obama‘s nomination for a...

Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution? At least for a substantial portion of the public, it seems like the answer is no. The Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 33 percent of the public believes “Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” and 26 percent think there is not “solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades.” Unsurprisingly, beliefs on both topics are divided along religious and partisan lines. For instance, 46 percent of...

Every Fourth of July, some Americans sit down to read the Declaration of Independence, reacquainting themselves with the nation’s founding charter exactly as it was signed by the Second Continental Congress in 1776. Or almost exactly? A scholar is now saying that the official transcript of the document produced by the National Archives contains a significant error – smack in the middle of the sentence beginning “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” no less. The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, concerns a period that appears right after...

July 4, 2014 Revenge: Republicans to Strip $341 Million From IRS in Response to Scandals Pete Kasperowicz After months of frustration with the IRS over the targeting scandal and lost emails, House Republicans will exact some revenge next week by passing legislation that cuts the IRS operating budget by $341 million compared to current levels. GOP leaders plan to call up a spending bill for fiscal year 2015 that funds the IRS and other agencies, but singles out the IRS for the targeting scandal and other problems that have surfaced over the last few years. “The committee remains troubled by...

On the day before the Fourth of July, the New York Times went out of its way to show its disgust for Americans against illegal immigration in Murrieta, California who turned away buses of illegal immigrants for, of all things, waving American flags and chanting "USA!" "Nobody was even being released in Murrieta," the Times' editorial board wrote on Thursday. "But the mayor urged residents to complain, and in a pageant of ugliness, dozens took action: They waved flags, screamed 'U.S.A.!' and turned three buses back." The Times' editorial urged Obama to "go big" on executive actions by granting amnesty...

Bill Maher took on Hillary Clinton‘s big book tour/2016 pre-campaign and amid the mockery of Clinton downplaying how well-off her family is (he sarcastically sympathized with someone emerging “from the financial rut that is the U.S. presidency”), Maher had some advice for the soon-to-be-official presidential candidate: go away. Contrary to people saying that doing the book tour now will inoculate her from criticism in 2016, Maher said Clinton being constantly on TV and in the news will give way to a different result; namely, “we’re sick of you.” And people will grow tired of her by 2016 anyway.

At the end of the Civil War, but before the pernicious reach of Jim Crow undermined the Union Army’s battlefield victory, former slaves and free blacks found themselves in possession of a most precious right -- the right to vote. It didn’t matter if a man had been a war hero in the famed, all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment or a house servant on a Southern plantation. All that mattered was that he was a man. To say that this development didn’t sit well with the progressive-minded women of this country is an understatement. Before the war, the abolitionist...

“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.” This adviser continued: “Hillary told Obama, ‘Mr. President, that story isn’t credible. Among other things, it ignores the fact that the attack occurred on 9/11.’ But the president was adamant. He said, ‘Hillary, I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.’”

In the face of the relentless dillydallying on the part of the Obama administration on the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada went ahead and starting exploring the potential of cutting deals with other markets in Asia — and yesterday, the Canadian government approved their own Northern Gateway pipeline to carry crude from the Alberta oil sands out to the Pacific Ocean for shipment via tankers. There has been some speculation about the possibility of the Obama administration approving the Keystone XL pipeline now that Iraq’s oil output is on seriously unstable footing (although, reality check: The Keystone XL pipeline by...

Barack Obama could use a little relief. The world is crumbling around him, much of it the result of his presidential misfeasance at home and abroad. The chickens coming to roost on Pennsylvania Avenue are neither ideological nor partisan. Evil men are bold and quick to take advantage of timidity and weakness. There’s a growing consensus, and it includes Democrats — the president is in over his head. He probably scares himself. Obama clearly needs a public-relations triumph. Fortunately for him, there’s a candidate at hand. A 27-year-old woman is languishing in a filthy prison in Sudan, together with her...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced during a New York Times interview that the Holy Bible is the book that made her who she is today. “If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?” asked The New York Times, in a book review questionnaire. “At the risk of appearing predictable, the Bible was and remains the biggest influence on my thinking,” Clinton said. “I was raised reading it, memorizing passages from it and being guided by it.”

Apparently CBS News believes in the Easter Bunny. Newsbusters' Brad Wilmouth reported this morning that CNN's John King made this comment about the Lois Lerner emails that the IRS now claims are supposedly lost: ""Do you believe in the Easter Bunny? Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe that Lois Lerner's emails just suddenly went poof?" Well, CBS News seems to be in Easter Bunny belief mode based on their narrow report Friday, IRS lost Lois Lerner's emails in tea party probe, which carefully avoids any curiosity as how such emails are now supposedly irretrievable. As we shall...

Was St. Joan of Arc a medieval French heroine who followed God’s instructions and united her country against the marauding English? Or was she a dude Jay Michaelson sat next to in his Queer Theory survey class?

John Avlon’s dishonest column on the cop-killers in Las Vegas should be studied by journalism students as an example of how to exploit a tragedy for political purposes. It is a shame he gets on CNN as an “analyst,” which gives him undeserved authority and prestige, when he deliberately confuses and misleads people. jerad miller In this case, he tried to blame conservatives for the murders of two policemen. His Daily Beast column carried two titles, one of them being, “The Bonnie and Clyde of Ultra-Right Hate.” He said Jerad and Amanda Miller killed two metro cops while shouting, “This...

On Monday, only CBS This Morning reported Friday's stunning revelation that the IRS somehow lost two years worth of emails from Lois Lerner, the official at the center of the agency scandal in which conservative groups were unfairly targeted. Neither NBC's Today nor ABC's Good Morning America bothered to cover the shocking development. However, both broadcasts did manage to find time for full reports on Britain's baby Prince George learning to walk. Cordes then concluded her report with more IRS spin suggesting the congressional investigation of the scandal was just a waste of time and money:

National Baraq Channel On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams strongly hinted that the recent Islamist blitzkrieg in Iraq was completely former President Bush's fault: "Make no mistake: what's happening in Iraq right now is a direct outgrowth of the U.S. decision to invade the country over a decade ago." However, he glossed over the Obama administration's failure to negotiate a continued U.S. presence and pulling out all American forces in late 2011 as a factor in the crisis. Williams repeated his point to David Gregory: "How does the President sell any action at all to the component of the...

It’s now clear why the primary defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, came so completely out of the blue last week: Beltway blindness that put a focus on fund-raising, power-brokering and partisan back-and-forth created a reality distortion field that obscured the will of the people. But that affliction was not Mr. Cantor’s alone; it is shared by the political press. Reporters and commentators might want to pause and wipe the egg off their faces before they go on camera to cluck-cluck about how Mr. Cantor, Republican of Virginia, missed signs of the insurgency that took him out. There...

Former first child (now with child) Chelsea Clinton had a $600,000 annual contract at NBC News, Politico reports, where she served as a "special correspondent" and was deemed to be mostly useless, if not "one of the most boring people of her era." That deal is over now, but Clinton is still being paid by the network (which has also hired Luke Russert, Meghan McCain, and Jenna Bush ... ) on a month-to-month basis, with complicating factors including her pregnancy and the good odds her mother is running for president. -snip- That work included little of note, either journalistically or...

Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama renewed his campaign to curb carbon emissions Saturday, saying the debate over climate change is over. Obama, who made the battle against climate change a core promise of his 2008 election campaign, has been stymied at the federal level by opposition from lawmakers. Congress "is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence," Obama told a crowd of more than 30,641 people, including thousands of graduates at the University of California, Irvine. "They'll tell you climate change is a hoax, or a fad. One says the world might actually be cooling."...

President Obama, appearing emboldened after his recent move to cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, on Saturday ridiculed members of Congress who deny climate change or plead scientific ignorance as an alibi for avoiding an inconvenient truth. Speaking in gleefully sarcastic terms to a commencement ceremony at the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Obama likened those who deny climate change to people who would have told John F. Kennedy, at the dawn of the space program, that the moon “was made of cheese.” He saved his most scathing words for lawmakers who say they are not qualified to judge...