Free Republic

The White House sent the administration’s chief technology officer to testify Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee on the botched ObamaCare rollout, complying with a subpoena issued by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Issa and Chief Technology Officer Todd Park appeared to share a laugh as they greeted one another ahead of the hearing. As late as Tuesday, the White House had declined to say whether Park would appear with other witnesses. Park’s subpoena has sparked intense political fighting between Democrats and Republicans. As Wednesday's hearing began, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, thundered that Issa had...

The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities. The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.'s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers. The agency is using...

A Washington IRS attorney named Carter Hull closely oversaw the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups and suggested questions that IRS employees could ask of conservative and Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, according to interviews that two IRS employees gave with congressional investigators. “I was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no authority to act on [applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or input,” said Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the Cincinnati IRS office, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. Hofacre’s office, which oversaw tax-exempt applications, reportedly requested help from the...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Security Agency has been collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order, according to a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper.</p> <p>The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the newspaper reported Wednesday. The order requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.</p>

In no uncertain terms and with no hedging, The New York Times reports that the Obama Administration was aware of the fact that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups as far back as June of 2012. The Treasury Department's Inspector General confirmed that he told senior Treasury officials in June of 2012, a full five months before Election Day: The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware...

THIS COULD BE HUGE: What did the briefings Romney received say about Benghazi? After he got the GOP nomination, Romney was SUPPOSED to be getting PRESIDENTIAL briefings on national security. BUT HE DID NOT GET THEM UNTIL AFTER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SANITIZED THE BENGHAZI ATTACK (from a Google news feed word-search):

Not long after Barack Hussein Obama first took office in 2009, I’ve been saying that he is a Muslim and not a Christian as he claims. He has done everything to assist Muslims and hinder Christians. He has hosted Muslim leaders who have vowed to destroy America. He gives billions of dollars and weapons to Islamic extremists, yet he refuses to help a Christian family that only wants to homeschool their children. I am convinced that Obama has been actively paving the way to change America from a Christian nation to Muslim nation, and I’m not the only one. Egyptian...

Brunswick, Georgia (CNN) -- Two teenagers were arrested Friday in the shooting death of a 13-month-old boy who was in his stroller, according to police in Brunswick, Georgia. The suspects are a 17-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy, Police Chief Tobe Green told reporters Friday. He said they are being held on suspicion of first-degree murder. Green identified the older suspect as Demarquis Elkins, saying he will be treated as an adult in criminal proceedings. The 14-year-old was not identified because of his age. "We are turning every stone to get a motive," said Green. A weapon has not been...

The Associated Press has learned that the Homeland Security Department official in charge of the agency's immigration enforcement and removal operations has resigned after hundreds of illegal immigrants were released from jails because of government spending cuts.

Halfway through her rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at President Barack Obama's inauguration on Monday, Beyonce dramatically did away with the earpiece that singers use to hear themselves and their bands in a live setting. One viewer likened it to the gutsy move Luke Skywalker made in the dramatic chase scene in the original "Star Wars," tweeting: "Taking out the earpiece is Luke turning off the targeting system in the Death Star trench." But now a rep for the United States Marine Band says Beyonce was not even singing the song live. She was lip-syncing. The rep said that...

NEW ORLEANS — Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been indicted on 21 corruption charges including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering. The charges announced Friday come from a City Hall corruption investigation that already has resulted in guilty pleas by two former city officials and two businessmen.

In remarks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai at the White House this afternoon, President Barack Obama said the U.S. has fallen "short of the ideal" in Afghanistan:

President Obama's Two Hundred and Seventh Week in Office1/10/2013Obama Ethics, Year 4U.S. Taxpayers are giving Planned Parenthood $1.5 million each and every day - 11% growth in 2 yearsCalifornian women told to have more children as birth rate in most populous state plummetsObama signs bill giving himself lifetime Secret Service protectionJohn Brennan – The CIA - Zbigniew Brzezinski – Columbia University and ObamaChief Justice Of The Supreme Court John Roberts Schedules A Case By Attorney Taitz Regarding Obamas Forged IDs to be Heard in Conference Before the Full Supreme CourtObama's nominees settle it: A more radical, confrontational termEric Holder to...

Vice President Joe Biden, while addressing representatives of gun safety and gun violence victims' groups, says President Obama could use "executive orders" to enact gun control measures. VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: "The president is going to act. There are executives orders -- executive action that can be taken. We haven't decided what that is yet. But we're compiling it all with the help of the Attorney General and all the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action, we believe is required."

<p>The following letter, written by U.S. Marine Joshua Boston and headlined “No ma’am.,” was posted in the CNN iReport on Dec. 27 with the included note from the producer and photo. It has struck a nerve with many and is being circulated around social media venues like Twitter and Facebook.</p>

Link is crashing with too much traffic.

<p>The Obama administration's chief environmental watchdog, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, is stepping down after a nearly four-year tenure marked by high-profile brawls over global warming pollution, the Keystone XL oil pipeline, new controls on coal-fired plants and several other hot-button issues that affect the nation's economy and people's health.</p>

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- OCTOBER 2012 Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 171,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 7.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade. _______________________________________________________________________________ | | | Hurricane Sandy | | | |Hurricane Sandy had no discernable effect on the employment and unemployment | |data for October. Household survey data collection was completed before the | |storm, and establishment survey data collection rates were within normal ranges| |nationally and for the affected areas. For information on how unusually...

The White House is disavowing a statement from their own Cairo embassy that apologized for anti-Muslim activity in the United States. "The statement by Embassy Cairo was not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government," a senior administration official told POLITICO. The U.S. embassy in Cairo put out a statement early Tuesday that apologized for an anti-Muslim film being circulated by an Israeli-American real estate developer. "The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts...

BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics Happy by the headline establishment survey print of 133,245 which says that the US "added" 163,000 jobs in July from 133,082 last month? Consider this: the number was based on a non seasonally adjusted July number of 132,868. This was a 1.248 million drop from the June print. So how did the smoothing work out to make a real plunge into an "adjusted" rise? Simple: the BLS "added" 377K jobs for seasonal purposes. This was the largest seasonal addition in the past decade for a July NFP print in the past decade, possibly ever, as...