Free Republic

Donald Trump is right: It was the Hillary Clinton campaign that spread the rumor in 2008 that Obama was not born in America and, therefore, might not be eligible to serve as President. Hillary sent out her Chief Goon to take care of this high-priority matter. It was Sidney Blumenthal who spread the rumor. Remember him? The one who sent hundreds of wacky long-winded memos about Benghazi and the Middle East to the Secretary of State, including several that contained classified material. Well, before Sid was a fake spy and clandestine adviser to Hillary, he was her chief enforcer. Blumenthal...

MOSCOW (AFP)--The defense Moscow mounted during World War II should serve as a warning to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and the U.S., Moscow's mayor said following last month's war in Georgia. "In the tough times of war, Moscow's defense against the enemy was crushing," Yury Luzhkov said during celebrations for the 861st anniversary of the founding of Moscow, standing alongside Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "Let that be a stern and appropriate reminder to those who surround Russia with their missiles and bases. Let it be a warning to Saakashvili's regime," Luzhkov said in televised comments, in reference to NATO and...

As the families of U.S. hostages currently held in Iran have struggled for years to rally the determination to bring their loved ones home, newly released emails from the former secretary of State reveal the infuriating truth that those with connections get their case raised to the top. In 2009, Iason Athanasiadis was covering the protests of the disputed election win of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir-Hossein Mousavi for the Washington Times. The Greek citizen was detained by Iranian authorities on June 17, 2009, as he tried to fly out of the country. Athanasiadis was thrown in Evin prison and released...

n the summer of 2008, as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression was unfolding, Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor and brother of then President George W. Bush, traveled to Mexico to ask Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú to rescue Lehman Brothers, The New York Times reported. In a front page article on Monday, The Times revealed that within a year of ending his term as Florida’s governor, Bush had signed on as consultant to Lehman Brothers, where he was enlisted to reach out to Carlos Slim in a plan code-named Project Verde (Green Project). Slim, says the...

A verified and convicted terrorist who attacked a U.S. Consulate with a grenade and automatic rifle fire has taken over the ruthless Los Zetas cartel, a group headquartered at the Texas border in the Nuevo Laredo-Laredo metropolitan border area. Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, sits immediately across the border from Laredo, Texas, and is the only urban location along the entire U.S.-Mexico Border that does not have any fencing or constructed security barrier of any kind. The convicted terrorist, Hector Raul Luna Luna, is known as “El Tory” and was convicted in the 2008 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey,...

Even people who don't follow the stock market closely are aware that the global economy is weakening and appears to be heading into recession.For those who track the stock market, the signs are ominous: the U.S. was the last major market to notch gains this year and in October the U.S. market followed the rest of the global markets into an extended slide which has yet to end.Just as sobering, key sectors such as oil, banking and utilities have crashed with alarming ferocity, reaching oversold levels last seen in 2008 as the global financial system was melting down.These sectors...

In June 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a stirring speech to AIPAC, making strong commitments to the Jewish people and Israel. In December 2016, President ObamaÂ’s Secretary of State John Kerry delivered an important policy speech that directly contradicted some of candidate ObamaÂ’s words. The contrast is striking, unnerving, and downright hypocritical.To be fair, there is some consistency between the speeches, as both advocate a two-state solution, among other parallels. And on a certain level, President Obama has kept some of the commitments he made to Israel, including massive defense contracts and military aid. And it is true that,...

Obama tried to get Rev Wright to stay quiet 'by paying him $150,000 during the 2008 campaign' https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2143817/Obama-tried-Rev-Wright-stay-quiet-paying-150-000-2008-campaign.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top … via @MailOnline

As this is being written, Manuel Zelaya, the ousted and exiled ex-president of Honduras, is holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, having been smuggled there on Sept. 21. His followers acted like the anti-capitalist protesters who haunt G-20 meetings, smashing windows, spraying graffiti, attacking police cars, and suchlike. Here is how we got to this point: Zelaya was elected president of Honduras in 2005. His administration has been plagued by charges of corruption, with the impartial group, Transparency International, ranking Honduras under Zelaya as corrupt as Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya. In 2008, Zelaya joined the...

Almost two years after the mortgage crisis and stock market crash, no one seems to wonder about the “September surprise” that shifted the 2008 presidential election to an unknown leftist politician who had been elected to the Senate only two years before. A pulp-fiction writer could hardly have created a more contrived and bizarre story. But this was not make-believe. No, it is now our own gritty reality show that we only wish we could turn off. The week of Sept. 15, 2008, was a debacle of huge proportions. On Monday, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy while other lending institutions...

Under the Senate Judiciary Committee as run by Patrick Leahy, even plans on which the two parties have previously agreed to collaborate disintegrate into partisanship. Witness his effort to expand the federal judiciary now that President Obama can pick the new judges. The original version of the Federal Judgeship Act, proposed in March 2008 and co-sponsored by Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, was supposed to give both parties a say in the composition of an expanded federal judiciary. Then the election results would determine which party's President got to nominate the judges. The idea was to pass a plan and then...

Chinese security forces continue to surround the Kirti Tibetan monastery in Sichuan after local residents tried to stop them from arresting the 2,500 monks holed up inside. The standoff began earlier this week, when hundreds of people living in Sichuan's Aba region converged on the monastery determined to stop police from removing the monks for reeducation. The monks could soon face food shortages because they depend on offerings from locals, the Voice of America reports. A U.S. State Department spokesman said the U.S. is concerned about China's actions in Aba, which it called it inconsistent with the internationally recognized principles...

The gut-wrenching slide of the 2008 stock market crash is unforgettable for those caught in it. In the six weeks from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on Sep. 17, the stock market lost over 40 percent of its value. A quarter of trading days had plunges of 4 percent or more. Investors saw life’s savings dissipate. Traders saw a year’s work and bonus compensation vaporize. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, which had been scrambling to cope with the developing financial crisis, accelerated their efforts to a frenetic pace, developing program after program to stem the panic. A chart of the...

Ten years ago this week, I was in Madrid on a Monday afternoon, watching as some of the 26,000 employees of Lehman Brothers spilled onto a Manhattan sidewalk, their mighty investment bank suddenly non-existent. As I could plainly see, this was no mere American crisis: the streets around me were already filling with Spanish and Central American workers forced to walk away from construction projects where work had halted, permanently, their U.S. and European bank financing having suddenly vanished. Over the next couple of days, the world economy ground to a halt, some of the mightiest financial institutions of the...

This is a phony funeral, with phony honors, filled with phony swamp creatures, paying phony respect, for a phony hero. Covered non-stop by phony news organizations.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who was Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, has been excluded from his funeral. Breitbart News has independently confirmed an earlier report in People magazine, which reported that Palin was not sent an invitation, and was told through intermediaries to stay away from the ceremony. McCain fundraiser Carla Eudy confirmed to People that Palin had not been invited — possibly, People speculated, at the behest of the McCain family. The news comes on the tenth anniversary of the date in 2008 when Palin was announced as McCain’s pick for Vice...

I was going to send flowers but have decided instead to send a contribution to Trump 2020. Even in your final days on this good earth you spewed anger and hate. Now I hear that Sarah Palin, a loyal VP running mate, is not invited to your funeral. Have a nice day.- Sincerely, just one of the millions who had no choice but to cast their vote for you in 08.

Amid glowing tributes to the life and career of Arizona Senator John McCain on Monday, MSNBC took time to use the Republican lawmaker’s passing to trash his 2008 vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin, labeling McCain’s selection of the then-Alaska governor as his “biggest political mistake.” “McCain made some controversial decisions, some much-criticized decisions. One of those decisions was who he chose to run with in 2008, Sarah Palin,” proclaimed anchor Katy Tur early in the 2:00 p.m. ET hour. She then recited a column from Washington Post Associate Editor David Ignatius making that case: The anti-Washington rage embodied by...

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance. The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable. As tough as the...

Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate, called her former running mate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a “maverick and a fighter” in a statement after his death Saturday afternoon. “Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life — and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self,” she said. “John McCain was my friend. I will remember the good times. My family and I send prayers for Cindy and the...