Free Republic

eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar is starting a news outlet called First Look Media. In the site's animated video, he describes it as "a new kind of marriage between a technology company and a new kind of newsroom," and that one of its goals will be to "make it easier for journalists to deliver the transformative stories we all need." Omidyar is known as a philanthropist, and has put his money where his mouth is (in this case, he is reportedly investing $250 million in the First Look venture). His Omidyar Network - with its funding of many altruistic initiatives such...

WASHINGTON – It’s a mysterious court that hides behind a hulking vaulted door and impenetrable concrete walls – and it’s where the federal government makes some of its most secretive decisions concerning Americans’ basic liberties. If you dare ask where the secret court is located, employees at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, D.C. – where the court reportedly relocated in 2009 – won’t tell you. That’s because the super-secret court is far beyond the reach of any journalist or curious American citizen. biometric-hand-scannerFortified with biometric hand scanners, wooden and metal doors and walls reinforced by concrete, it’s...

Aaron Rich, who had reportedly been blocking his family’s private investigator from looking into whether or not his brother Seth was a WikiLeaks source, works for an influential defense contractor that provides cyber security. According to a source close to the Rich family, Aaron works for Northrup Grumman, which was named as the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015. The source did not provide what his specific role is at the company. “It’s not just hacking and defending, there’s a lot more to it,” a cyber software engineer at Northrup Grumman says in a video on the company’s...

As new reports break that a George Soros-linked group is taking credit for efforts to violently disrupt GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, the Center for Responsive Politics reveals that another George Soros-linked group is coordinating another furtive operation to stop Trump by financing the campaign of John Kasich. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Soros Fund Management is one of John Kasich’s top financial contributors $202,700

Elon Musk our billionaire, whose Stimulus funded Tesla Motors, Solarandra City and (only option to Russia, NASA is out) Space X has received $4.9 billion in FedSlush. Is Elon Musk a billionaire welfare queen of Federal grants, discounted loans, tax breaks, government RICO & Carbon credits? Tesla is set to receive an incentive worth $1.3 billion from the state of Nevada. Anyone who buys a Tesla gets a $7,500 federal income tax credit, Californians receive an additional rebate of $2,500 from the state. In all, Tesla Motors Inc. has received close to $2.391 billion in form of government subsidies. SolarCity,...

Hillary began helping Bill's fat cats in the US Senate. Earmarks and legislative action benefited Clinton Foundation benefactors. Then Sen-Clinton’s efforts to provide favors to major donors......and to advance her own political ambitions.....stretch back far earlier than the avalanche of news reports about her tenure as America’s top diplomat at the US State Dept. Records show her efforts date back to the time she served as a US senator. She used US govt power to earmark federal funds and influence legislation for donors. <><> Mrs. Clinton introduced a bill when she was New York’s junior senator that allowed a donor...

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that President Obama is “frustrated” by snags in the Obamacare rollout. But how about American citizens who either are having trouble enrolling in Obamacare or are suffering from the shock of rising healthcare insurance premiums AND the size of their deductibles? The anecdotal stories of “sticker shock” are legion (for example, here is a story from New Jersey). And physicians in New York are howling as well. Of course, there are many winners in the Obamacare rollout. Some households will receive added benefits and healthcare benefits that they previously didn’t have. But the biggest winners...

Congress this week approved a bill to free thousands of federal government employees from having to disclose their financial dealings online, rushing the bill through the Senate late Thursday and through the House on Friday. But the push to undo the online reporting requirement is proving to be controversial. The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) said that posting all of that information online posed a national security risk. But the Sunlight Foundation, an open government group, said releasing staffers from online disclosure eviscerates part of last year’s Stock Act, designed to stop insider trading by federal officials.

This # site parses the emails sent and received by Elena Kagan during her time in the Clinton administration and presents them in a more familiar interface. # You may find that some records are garbled or incomplete, or that conversations are fractured. Please bear with us: the source documents are extremely messy. We're working to improve the quality of the documents hosted here. # Due to the programmatic nature of the tools used to build this site, we recommend checking any research effort against the source files released by the Clinton Library. ELENA'S INBOX

<p>The site allows anyone to search for grant and contract spending by company, city, agency or industry. "We were frustrated by how hard it was to find out about government spending," said Gary Bass, the group's executive director. "We were being told we couldn't do this - it would cost millions of dollars." After Hurricane Katrina highlighted the need to hold government contractors accountable, OMB Watch received a three-year grant from the Sunlight Foundation http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/ and launched the site six months later.</p>

Feinstein's FuryUp against the big media spin machine By Peter Byrne 29 weeks later: Following the fallout from Metro's investigation of Sen. Feinstein. I AM PLEASED to announce that my national exposé of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's conflict of interest has been selected as one of the 25 most underreported stories of 2007 by Project Censored, headquartered at Sonoma State University. I cherish this award because it means I am doing my job as an investigative reporter. Stories that the mainstream media ignore often reveal truths about our system of governance that editors at corporate daily newspapers work overtime to cover...