Free Republic

I have had my posting privileges cut off at the WSJ. The help desk admits that it is a case of partisan censorship and have asked me to plead my case to the WSJ Community Board. First, the moderator accused me of not being who I said I was, then he said that I used offensive language. I saved a copy of that post to prove that the most offensive word in the post was, pregnant. Then he demanded that I complete a personal profile, giving out my place of employment and email address. I told them that I was...

Every day brings new revelations about who knew what about the IRS targeting conservative groups during President Obama's re-election campaign, but the overall impression is of a vast federal bureaucracy run amok. While the White House continues to peddle the story of a driverless train wreck, taxpayers are being treated to a demonstration of the dangers of an unwieldy and unaccountable administrative state. Look, Ma, no hands! In his press events, Mr. Obama has said that while he learned about the Cincinnati rogues on the news, he plans to "hold accountable those who have taken these outrageous actions." But the...

"The Democrats have lost on sequestration," Journolist founder Ezra Klein declares ..... (snip) Reader Harriet Hart is on to something with this observation: So far I haven't seen any commentary on the correlation between Mr. Obama's training as a community organizer and the sequester fiasco. Community organizers' main efforts are to stir up public sentiment to achieve special goals without implementing any solutions. Solutions are the province of someone else. The present administration has used this tactic endlessly, most noticeably with the White House tour shutdown during spring break and now flight-controller furloughs. This is definitely not an effort to...

The Justice Department last year opened an investigation into allegations that employees at The Wall Street Journal's China news bureau bribed Chinese officials for information for news articles. A search by the Journal's parent company found no evidence to support the claim, according to government and corporate officials familiar with the case. The U.S. government, meanwhile, is nearing the end of a broader investigation of the Journal's owner News Corp NWSA -0.95% . stemming from allegations of phone hacking and bribery at U.K. tabloids, among other issues, according to people familiar with the case. During the course of that broader...

Give Rand Paul credit for theatrical timing. As a snow storm descended on Washington, the Kentucky Republican's old-fashioned filibuster Wednesday filled the attention void on Twitter and cable TV. If only his reasoning matched the showmanship. Shortly before noon, Senator Paul began a talking filibuster against John Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA. The tactic is rarely used in the Senate and was last seen in 2010. But Senator Paul said an "alarm" had to be sounded about the threat to Americans from their own government. He promised to speak "until the President says, no, he will not kill you...

<p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of a Swiss trading account that allegedly made a series of "highly suspicious" trades reaping about $1.7 million ahead of the blockbuster sale of H.J. Heinz Co.</p> <p>The regulator's move came one day after Heinz said it was selling itself for $23 billion to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital in one of the biggest food-industry acquisitions ever.</p>

On Thursday afternoon, less than a day after the Times' story was posted online, its ideological rival the Wall Street Journal revealed that it, too, had been attacked by Chinese hackers. On Friday, the Washington Post, following a scoop by a former staffer, was forced to admit that its networks had been penetrated for years. The Journal provided fewer details than the Times, but said that "in the most recent incident," hackers had managed to break into computers in the Journal's Beijing bureau in mid-2012. From there, the Journal said, the intruders were able to access the Journal's worldwide computer...

In May of 2009, Barack Obama made a "joke" at White House Correspondents Dinner. He said about those in attendance: "Most of you covered me (pause)... All of you voted for me." Mildly amusing if it weren't true. Not only do they vote for Obama, they are allied with Obama. They are his public relations people. They protect him. They defend him. In turn, he makes them giddy and tingle. Chrissie Matthews tingles whenever he even thinks of Obama: I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when...

Big Business Sells Out Small Business CEOs say yes to higher individual taxes in return for Obama's promise of corporate tax reform. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL Were the Hollywood academy to hand out Oscars for roles in this fiscal cliff drama, the winner of the Best Charlatan award would not be in much doubt. Corporate America, take your bow. Say this for the Republicans and Democrats: Both sides are fighting over principles. Nothing so generous can be said for the bulk of America's corporate chieftains, whose agenda lately has been to stick it to everyone else. As the negotiations have...

An article published in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday reported that while the number of homicides has decreased over the last decade (2001-2011) due to improvements in medical technology, the number of people treated for gunshot wounds increased by almost half. Here is an excerpt from the WSJ article: After a steady decline through the 1990s, the annual number of homicides zigzagged before resuming a decline in 2007, falling from 16,929 that year to an estimated 14,722 in 2010, according to FBI crime data. At the same time, medical data and other surveys in the U.S. show a rising...

IÂ’ve elsewhere addressed other shortcomings in this morningÂ’s Wall Street Journal editorial urging Republicans to reassess what is portrayed, in the wake of strong Hispanic electoral support for President Obama, as their hostility to immigration. Here, IÂ’d like to focus on the editorsÂ’ swipe at Mitt Romney's endorsement of "self-deportation": " Mr. Romney ... often pandered to his party's nativist wing (especially after Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the primaries), even endorsing what he called 'self-deportation.' That may have endeared him to one or two radio talk show hosts, but it proved a disaster on Tuesday. This is an...

Live Coverage of Election 2012- Videos on all aspects of the election leading up to final vote tally.

Neil King in the Wall Street Journal assesses the Battlegrounds following Mitt Romney’s post-debate surge. But before we get to that let’s get the disclaimers about King out of the way first. He is the opposite of Jon Ralston below. King is a lefty hack who does consistently partisan reporting in what are supposed to be news stories. This one is no different. After President Obama threw up all over himself in the debate and is hemorrhaging support, King writes a piece on the state of the race and every section is a glass-half-empty scenario for Romney despite the overwhelming...

KARACHI, Pakistan, Feb 01, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was a friend of Arabs and Muslims and often supported their cause, says a former editor of the Asian edition of the newspaper. "You have got the wrong guy," said Kenneth Neil Cukier, in an article published in Pakistani newspapers on Friday. "Freeing him unharmed is in your interest." Appealing for his release, Pearl's former boss said "the Arab and Muslim world has no greater in American media than Danny Pearl." The 38-year reporter is newspaper's bureau chief in Bombay, ...

CNN reporting live that "New organizations have received Email claiming that kidnapped WSJ has been killed. Searching for wirecopy confirmation.

The largest-circulation newspaper in the United States, the Wall Street Journal, has penned a scathing editorial against the Obama Administration's handling of the crisis with Iran, saying that its attitude is pushing the Jewish state to strike Iran on its own. Following Gen. Martin Dempsey's statement that "I don’t want to be complicit" if Israel chooses to attack Iran, the Journal writes acidly: ”We don’t know what exactly Gen. Dempsey thinks American non-complicity might entail in the event of a strike. Should the Administration refuse to resupply Israel with jets and bombs, or condemn an Israeli strike at the U.N.?...

Barack Obama is fond of insisting that he "has Israel's back." Maybe he should mention that to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In remarks to journalists in London quoted by the Guardian, General Martin Dempsey warned that any Israeli attack on Iran would "clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran's nuclear programs." He also said economic sanctions on Iran were having an effect and needed more time to work, but that the good they were doing "could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely."

<p>After all the shouting, tweeting and protesting is over, the fried-chicken empire of Chick-fil-A will be just fine. Sales at the company, which recently leapt into the debate over gay marriage, may even get a lift in the near term.</p>

Obama's desperate protests that his anti-business rant was taken out of context are betrayed both by that very context and because they are a part of a piece -- just one more component of his war against the American entrepreneurial spirit. He would have us believe that his words "you didn't build that" referred to roads and bridges and not businesses. Given his accompanying statements -- "you didn't get there on your own," etc. -- that is an absurd construction. But even if that's what he meant, why would he have felt compelled to point out that businesses don't succeed...

This column has already told the story of Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman who last year contributed to a group supporting Mitt Romney. An Obama campaign website in April sent a message to those who'd donate to the president's opponent. It called out Mr. VanderSloot and seven other private donors by name and occupation and slurred them as having "less-than-reputable" records. Mr. VanderSloot has since been learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list. Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth his divorce records. This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate...