Free Republic

I enjoy political hardball as much as the next reporter. It’s barely concealed truth that campaign journalists, like the operatives we cover, love negative campaigning and revel in OTT insults and martial rhetoric. Even candidates often lapse into the language of “rip his throat out”, “tear his eyes out” or “drive a stake through her heart”. It’s no secret either that many Republicans despise Democrats with a passion and vice versa. Just as British MPs hide their contempt of their opponents by referring to them as “the honourable member’, American politicians have their own, albeit less formal, ways of masking...

An Alabama builder has accused the state Emergency Management Agency of favoring out-of-state manufacturers in the application form tied to a safe room grant program. Under the program, put in place after tornadoes devastated the state this spring, the federal government will reimburse Alabama property owners for up to 75 percent of the cost of building a safe room to withstand tornadoes, hurricanes or other disasters.

Back in April we told you about the shuttering of the Allen Array and the difficulties that E.T. would have phoning home. Well, if you happen to be in touch with the lovable alien, let him know to load up a few more minutes on his long distance card because SETI is back, on the strength of private donations. Forty-two radio telescope dishes near Mount Shasta will again start listening for sounds of intelligent life in the universe this fall after donors — including actress Jodie Foster — came up with more than $200,000 to save the Mountain View-based SETI...

Just when you thought you might sleep better at night, with only worries about feeding your family, keeping your job and home in a terrible economy, the debt ceiling just raised to $2.8 trillion, the United Nation’s “Sustainability” Agenda 21 marches on with the help of a myriad of private and governmental organizations nationwide dedicated to the “fundamental change” of America as we know it. The HUD Secretary just announced on July 28, 2011 the availability of $95 million to support “sustainable local initiatives” through the fiscal year 2011 Regional Planning and Community Challenge Planning Grant Programs. It seems like...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is urging a group of House Republicans to give up their push for a bill that would slash payments to the United Nations and limit aid to Egypt, Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority, among other groups. Clinton said in a letter Tuesday that she would urge President Barack Obama to veto the bill if it passes in both houses of Congress because the measure “would be debilitating to my efforts to carry out a considered foreign policy and diplomacy, and to use foreign assistance strategically to that end,” The Washington Post reported. The bill cleared...

Announcement Made on Second Anniversary of ‘Sustainable Communities’ PartnershipU.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced the availability of up to $175 million in livability grants to help urban, suburban and rural communities develop transit options to better connect people to where they live, work and play. Local transit agencies will be able to compete for livability dollars from the pool of up to $175 million. The competitive grant program will begin accepting applications when announced in the Federal Register during the week of June 20.

As the White House and Congress debate cuts in federal spending, millions of dollars are being funneled overseas to help build many Islamic mosques and structures. An Atlanta television news station, WSB, reported that "the State Department is sending millions of dollars to save mosques overseas. This investment has received criticism as the United States makes an effort to slash nearly $4 trillion in government spending." The anchor noted that the U.S. Agency for International Development has granted copious funds for mosques in Cairo, Cyprus, Tajikistan and Mali. A USAID official spoke with FactCheck.org and confirmed that about $2.3 million...

As the White House and Congress debate cuts in federal spending, millions of dollars are being funneled overseas to help build many Islamic mosques and structures. An Atlanta television news station, WSB-TV, reported that "the State Department is sending hundreds of millions of dollars to save mosques overseas." The anchor noted that the State Department's Agency for International Development granted enormous funds for mosques in Cairo, Cyprus, Tajikistan and Mali....The U.S. State Department confessed that, "Since its creation by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation has also provided financial support to more than 640 cultural preservation...

White House operative heading 'birther' smear campaign? Former Fannie Mae chief allegedly manages 100-strong attack team from Pennsylvania Ave NEW YORK – A top Democrat, apparently operating with the full approval and cooperation of the president, has been directing a team of up to 100 who are paid to publish disinformation on a wide variety of websites to discredit "birthers," according to anti-Obama researchers. The radical supporters of the president, known as Obama robots, or "OBOTs" for short, have confirmed their White House-appointed ring leader is Democratic Party operative James A. Johnson, the former chairman of Fannie Mae. Initially, the...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launch of TechGirls, an educational initiative for girls from Muslim countries interested in technology. "It will bring teenage girls from the Middle East and North Africa for an intensive month of educational activities here in the United States," Clinton said Wednesday. Clinton made the announcement at the closing luncheon honoring the first class of participants from TechWomen, a public-private partnership that brought emerging female leaders in technical fields from predominately Muslim countries to the United States for one month. The women were paired with 24 leading, U.S. technology companies in Silicon Valley...

House Republicans launched a fresh attack on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week, blasting Administrator Lisa Jackson for setting aside millions of dollars in grants to foreign countries aimed at reducing global pollution. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report Monday night detailing what they say is nearly $100 million in “foreign handouts” to countries like China, Thailand and Indonesia to support various environmental programs over the last decade.....But EPA defended its grant program Monday, arguing that the agency must work to reduce pollution around the world. “Pollution doesn't stop at international borders, and neither...

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- Pakistani Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, on Monday announced that the United States granted $190 million in aid for the victims of last year's devastating floods, state-run media reported. The announcement was made following a meeting between Pakistani officials and a U.S. delegation led by Thomas Nides, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and Cameron Munter, the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan. "When terrible floods hit your nation last summer, the United States was the first country to provide aid," said Nides, as cited by APP. "Today, I am...

The Environmental Protection Agency has given at least $1,285,535 in grants to China to promote environmental research in the country. In all, the EPA issued six grants that went to China, most of which pertained to researching methane in Chinese coal mines and reducing carbon emissions in China, a communist dictatorship long criticized by human rights groups. Two of those grants were awarded during the Bush administration; four were awarded during the Obama administration. The issue, at a time of mounting debt and deficits, is about fiscal responsibility, said Robert Gordon, senior advisor for strategic outreach for the Heritage Foundation,...

How hopelessly at odds with America’s best interests is Barack Obama? Less than two weeks ago he declared his support for “political and economic reform in the Middle East,” warmly endorsing the “Arab Spring” uprisings there. Then Sunday, Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail announced his candidacy for the presidency of Egypt, promising to transform Egypt into an Islamic state and go to war with Israel. Reform that would indeed be, but not the kind any American president should be applauding. Maybe Obama is still listening to his ruinously incompetent Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who at the height...

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote next week on a resolution that would require U.S. President Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. armed forces from military operations in Libya, the biggest test yet of congressional support for the two-month-old intervention. An aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said that the resolution would come up for a vote next week. The resolution is written by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio), who has been opposed to the intervention since it began in March.

The White House has named Jesse Lee to a new position within its communications department titled Director of Progressive Media & Online Response. According to The Huffington Post, Lee will essentially be responsible for building up Obama’s online presence as he prepares for his reelection bid, and squashing any negative stories: The post is a new one for this White House. Rapid response has usually been outsourced to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), if not done on an ad-hoc basis by administration officials. And it signals that the White House will be adopting a more aggressive defense of the president and...

As Republicans try to defund NPR, the Obama administration laughs in the face of critics and sends US taxpayer moneys to fund Britain's left wing BBC. Ben Dowell of the UK Guardian writes: The BBC World Service is to receive a "significant" sum of money from the US government to help combat the blocking of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China. ...The BBC has a problem with political bias at least as bad as that of NPR. But that is no obstacle to shipping money, borrowed from China, to yet another left wing network. Don't worry:...

GOTCHA government is profoundly unAmerican, but it’s what we get from the Obama Administration and the previous Congress that, it turns out, rigged the health reform law to deny the will of the people. The current Congress must act to un-do this heinous feature of the massive health reform bill that has come to light only recently.This past week, the conservative Heritage Foundation highlighted this scam recently uncovered by the Congressional Research Service. Here’s the dirty doing: Hidden quietly inside the 2,700-page bulk of the health reform bill, unspoken and unknown to virtually all of Congress was a stash of...

The United States government is funding the National Council of La Raza with our tax dolla La Raza, which literally means in Spanish “The Race,” is a radical organization that advocate open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. I pulled and analyzed the tax return Form 990 the form filed by 501(c) 3 organizations to the IRS, and here is what was reported: Government Grants (contributions) to the National Council of La Raza 2008 Tax Returns, (October 1 2008 to September 30, 2009) $5,136,535

US is broke and Obama/Clinton are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to refurbish radical mosques in Middle East! Incredible news story from in Atlanta. Watch it at link, or here http://www.wsbtv.com/video/25764282/index..html