Free Republic

I’d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you’ve lost your mind. — John Edwards When does the legitimate “I oppose Obama” descend into the illegitimate “I hate Obama”? It is popular now to suggest that conservatives in general and congressional Republicans in particular suffer from an obsession characterized by an uncontrolled antipathy for Barack Obama — personal and visceral — that warps their entire political outlook. No doubt some do experience the same obsessions that infected the Left in their furor at George W. Bush. One can find unhinged posters...

If you needed any more evidence that Occupy Wall Street was a bunch of scumbags, here it is. Yesterday, OWS held a "September 11th Truth March," dedicated to forcing the government to investigate the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I will not dignify these conspiracy theorists with a long response. Thousands of witnesses, thousands of experts, and hundreds of scientific articles all speak for themselves. The fact of the matter is that this impossibly stupid march once again shows OWS to be a group of delusional weirdos... You can watch the video and both see and listen a fair-sized group of...

Its dramatic collapse several hours after the Twin Towers fell triggered a decade of conspiracy theories. Those who believed that the September 11 attacks on America were not carried out by Al Qaeda terrorists pointed to the fall of World Trade Center Building 7 as proof of their wild claims. But a newly released video appears to finally prove once and for all that Building 7 was brought down by the intense heat of the blazing World Trade Center - and not explosives, as conspiracy theorists claim.

Of all the conspiracy theories of modern times, trutherism must be the silliest. The idea that the U.S. government was behind the September 11 attacks, or acquiesced in them, is absurd on its face; and yet, a great many Democrats believe just that–or tell pollsters they do, anyway. Apart from Democrats, most truthers are bitterly anti-American, certifiably insane, or both. One prominent truther is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Last week at the United Nations, he repeated the claim that the Bush administration was responsible for the terror attacks, to the outrage of al Qaeda. It is very weird for al Qaeda to...

The state of Hawaii claims that the "birth certificate" for Barack Obama in its files – presumably the document that was copied and distributed by the White House – remains confidential. The image released April 27 by the White House was described by administration officials as "proof positive" of Obama's Hawaiian birth. At that time, officials in Hawaii's health department and governor's office refused to provide confirmation to WND that the image released by the White House accurately represented the birth documentation in the state's custody. Now, officials have refused to respond to a subpoena requesting the birth record, citing...

The decision to drop terror chieftain Osama bin Laden’s corpse into the Arabian Sea was the final meticulous step in a raid whose details were calculated to exert deadly force but also to achieve maximum effect in the propaganda war: the White House was careful to say bin Laden’s body had been treated according to Islamic tradition, but also to deny his followers a shrine. But while the watery grave may help diminish bin Laden’s status as a martyr to his followers, it was already fueling conspiracy theories; as the administration resisted releasing even photographs of the slain terrorist leader...

A federal appellate court has ordered an army specialist and her attorney to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for bringing a frivolous suit accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. In Gallop v. Cheney, 10-1241, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit yesterday affirmed the dismissal of the case by Southern District Judge Denny Chin, and gave April Gallop and her attorney, William W. Veale, 30 days to...

Politico's Ben Smith notes something I've brought up several times in this space and had the opportunity to discuss once on MSNBC. People have made much of the surprising share of Republicans who will tell pollsters they buy into the fantasy that President Obama is really a foreigner in the Oval Office (a logical consequence of birther-ism). But just a few years ago, you could get an equally, surprisingly large number of Democrats to tell pollsters they believed that George W. Bush either allowed 9-11 to happen, despite having foreknowledge, or else actually conspired to make it happen. Smith has...

I've been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that "Bush knew." There aren't a lot of great public numbers on the partisan breakdown of adherents to that conspiracy theory, but the University of Ohio yesterday shared with us the crosstabs of a 2006 poll they did with Scripps Howard that's useful in that regard. "How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks...

Michele Bachmann moved Wednesday toward saying the book on questions some voters have about President Barack Obama's birth certificate is closed, and that a copy of his certification of live birth should "settle" the issue. Bachmann made the comments on ABC News' "Good Morning America," when host George Stephanopoulos noted she had said on Fox News a night earlier that the president ought to come forward with his birth certificate to settle the "birther" issue, which had largely died down in the mainstream media but picked up steam again when Donald Trump began pushing it. SNIP Stephanopoulos then showed her...

Chris Barron, chairman of GOProud, writes at length about Donald Trump's newfound obsession with Barack Obama's citizenship. You'll recall that GOProud was at least partly responsible for Trump's buzzy appearance at CPAC; the tycoon/pundit/punchline's slow descent into birtherism had been raising questions about the gay group. "Let me be 100% clear – I am not a birther. I have never said I don’t believe Barack Obama was born in this country. Quite honestly, I haven’t spent much time worrying about or thinking about this issue, because I just don’t care about it. But there are a lot of issues that...

A couple of weeks ago I did a story about the new provost-elect at Kennesaw State University in Marietta, Georgia. Timothy Chandler was slotted to take over the job this July but it had been discovered that he had done a paper the slanted towards Marxism and once exposed…..there was a rather large backlash from the public. Well…the people have spoken and Dr. Chandler has decided “not to take the job”. (AJC) Accusations of Marxism and being un-American proved too much for Kennesaw State University’s newly selected provost, who withdrew his acceptance of the position on Thursday. Timothy Chandler, tapped...

There's a new poll showing that a majority of Republicans doubt that President Obama was born in the United States. Are they paranoid-type thinkers, like the 9/11 Truthers, looking for things to connect up and suspecting that conspiracies lie underneath things that other people think are as they've been presented in the media? I think we need to see that they are not. They have one issue. One question. They have suspicion about one thing, and that suspicion notably hasn't led them into other theories. There's one factual issue — the immensely important matter of the President's qualification — that...

I do not believe the federal government is responsible for the horror and tragedy of 9/11. I believe the 3000+ that died that horrible day were murdered by Islamic extremists. I am certain that Barack Hussein Obama, our Dear Leader, was born in the United States. I think most of the people who subscribe to either conspiracy theory has a touch of mental illness. Yet.... I just LOVE me some Birthers and Truthers! Now, I'm sure there will be some who think I have drinking problem, like PMSNBC's Chris Mattews. There will be some that think I took bong hit...

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) was booted off the Advisory Board of the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) over what the group calls his "delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement." According to a post at the organization's web site: “It is a sad day in American history when a one-time conservative-libertarian stalwart has fallen more out of touch with America’s needs for national security than the current feeble and appeasing administration,” said YAF’s Senior National Director Jordan Marks. Paul has served on the Advisory Board for the conservative organization for more than two decades, and was...

As a Ph.D. Islamologist and Arabist I really hate to say this, but I'll say it anyway: 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam. The war on terror is as phony as the latest Osama bin Laden tape. It's a tough thing to admit because I know on which side my bread is buttered and dropping Islam from the 9/11 equation is dropping my slice of bread butter-side-down. The myth that 9/11 had something to do with Muslims has poured millions, if not billions, into Arabic and Islamic studies. I finished my Ph.D. last year, so all I have to...

​Political Vel Craft ("Veil of Politics") is an amazing site with ads against the climate change "con," a link to the U.S. Debt Clock and blanket coverage of the WikiLeaks-exposed marriage between the United Kingdom and The Illuminati. There's also a call for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to intervene on behalf of Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, who is being court-martialed for refusing to serve under Barack Obama. The military man seems destined to lose his "courageous" legal quest to have Obama declared ineligible to be Commander in Chief, laments the site. But Political Vel Craft notes in...

On tonight's Geraldo Rivera show, he had on a couple of people purporting that 9/11 was an inside job because 'Fire Can't Melt Steel'. At least one was from 9/11 families (I do not know if it was one of the handful of anti-war 9/11 famil;ies or not). Has Roger Ailes gone crazy!

President Obama was urged by the few White House insiders from whom he still takes advice to leave the country on his ten-day Asian trip, his longest trip abroad since becoming president, in order to not inflict any more damage to the Democratic Party in the wake of one of the worst electoral defeats for the party of an incumbent president in recent history. According to sources close to the White House, who put themselves in great danger by even talking to members of the media, the plans to have Obama leave for a visit to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South...

If elected, Radnor Township resident Jim Schneller, the Independent conservative candidate in the 7th Congressional District race, said he would fight government corruption....Schneller has also described the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks of the World Trade as an “inside job.”“Once the (Obama) birth-certificate theory started bouncing around, people started rethinking the World Trade Center issue,” he said.....