Free Republic

As Ben Domenech notes in his Transom, Mitt Romney’s advisors have now advised him to support “a $2 gas tax, a VAT, and open Taliban talks.” Add to that list not repealing Obamacare. We’ve had this dribble out at the Romney Fan Club over at National Review too — just fix it, don’t repeal it. There are practical reasons for doing so, but we should not lose our perspective. The base of the Republican party is energized by the prospects of complete repeal. All the candidates have said they would repeal it. Mitt Romney, within the past two years, flipped...

Obama’s ACORN operative in the White House Patrick Gaspard, a former Working Families Party associate, is helping shape domestic policy– Obama political advisor Patrick Gaspard holds the same White House position his Bush-era predecessor, Karl Rove, did. But before he was the White House political czar he worked in several far left organizations as activist and agitator. NLPC.org reported: One of the more disturbing aspects of the Obama-ACORN connection is that the White House political affairs director is one Patrick Gaspard. Gaspard doesn’t register on the media radar screen in the way that his immediate Bush-era predecessor, Karl Rove, did....

Colombian singer Shakira made her debut on the commission to advise President Barack Obama on Hispanic education in hopes of contributing new ways to improve pre-schools. On her first day with the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, Shakira said she was "delighted" to share the lessons learned in the 15 years that have passed since she created the first of three foundations that aid poor children in Colombia, the United States and Haiti, among other countries. SNIP The multiple-Grammy-winning singer, a Unicef goodwill ambassador since 2003, has had close relations with the Obama administration since her performance...

Mitchell Reiss has helped lead a campaign to rehabilitate the reputation of anti-Iranian militants A foreign policy advisor to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been active in recent months in an advocacy campaign to rehabilitate the reputation of an underground organization in Iran known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq. The MEK has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a "terrorist" organization. Mitchell Reiss, former director of policy planning at the State Department during the Bush administration, is now advising the former Massachusetts governor on foreign policy, the New Republic recently reported. Reiss also advised Romney's 2008 campaign. Currently...

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – US President Barack Obama named Twitter's chief and a high-ranking Microsoft executive among a handful of technology veterans to be appointed as telecommunications security advisors. "I am proud to appoint such impressive men and women to these important roles, and I am grateful they have agreed to lend their considerable talents to this administration," Obama said in a White House press release available online Friday. "I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead," he continued in reference to those he picked to join his National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. The list...

In this week’s show, I had the opportunity to interview former FBI agent, John Guandolo. John is an expert on Islamic terrorism and is the Vice President of Strategic Planning and Execution for Strategic Engagement Group, a national security consultancy & educational group. I asked him questions about the Holy Land Foundation trial, Suhail A. Khan of the ACU, who has ties to Hamas & The Muslim Brotherhood, Eric Holder and the justice department’s stance on terrorism, as well as the level of infiltration of America by radical Islamic groups as evidenced by the recent meeting of Deputy National Security...

Financial disclosure forms released Friday show White House senior adviser David Plouffe, who ran President Barack Obama’s groundbreaking run for the presidency, made more than $2 million as a paid speaker and management consultant for corporations like General Electric, whose CEO is now a key Obama advisor. His income also included a six-figure advance for his memoir of the 2008 campaign, according to the documents. Plouffe, who was an executive in former White House adviser David Axelrod’s political communications firm before joining Obama’s campaign, has a net worth of between $1.6 million and $3.6 million, the documents indicate.

Obama’s Spiritual Advisor Trashes US in UK

When Mohamed Elibiary was appointed earlier this year to the Department of Homeland Security’s newly-formed Countering Violent Extremism Working Group, it was done quietly and without fanfare. It’s hard to believe that this silence was accidental, considering Elibiary’s appearance at a conference honoring Ayatollah Khomeini, his attacks on prosecution of terrorist fundraisers, his active promotion of jihadist ideology godfather Sayyid Qutb, and the threat he made against a Dallas Morning News journalist who repeatedly exposed his extremist views. But none of that has stopped Mohamed Elibiary from promoting himself as a “de-radicalization” expert courted not only by Janet Napolitano and

President Barack Obama (D) is treating his multi gazillion dollar spend our way out of debt and unemployment stimulus as his own private make work program, tossing taxpayer dollars to favored constituents, such as unions, and to favored areas, such as his home city of Chicago. And now he's making it even more private, choosing his family's personal cook, Sam Kass, imported from Chicago, as...Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives. As reported in Judicial Watch, prior to his latest elevation Michelle Obama made Kass a "Food Initiative Coordinator" for her new healthy nutrition program which is supposed to eliminate...

Note: The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-presidents-council-advisors-science-and-technology Home • Briefing Room • Presidential Actions • Executive Orders The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release April 21, 2010 Executive Order -- President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish an advisory council on science, technology, and innovation, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Establishment. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is hereby established. The PCAST...

El Salvador has officially joined the Red regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. South America is turning Red, dark Red, and little is being said to alert North Americans of the encroaching Red plague. Perhaps that's because North America is moving in the same direction. The President of the United States has surrounded himself with socialists, and some of those closest to him have had a part in turning South America Red. According to the Associated Press (March 17, 2009), Mauricio Funes, the presidential candidate of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the new head of...

Reporting from Beirut -- A top advisor to Iran's supreme leader today urged the country's establishment to be more tolerant of dissent, even as military officials stepped up their rhetoric in the latest signs of divisions created by the marred reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad one month ago. Mohammad Mohammadian, a midranking cleric who heads Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's office of university affairs, acknowledged simmering discontent over the vote, which sparked massive protests and a violent crackdown last month.

President George W. Bush assistant Tim Goeglein interviewed by Dr. James Dobson, on Dobson's Focus on the Family radio broadcast. Three day broadcast. Goeglein presents an articulate defense of President Bush as wartime president, pro-life president, and man of integrity, faith and prayer. Radio Show site: http://listen.family.org/daily/A000002029.cfm Focus on the Family site: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/

When I was a teen and worked as a summer intern on Capitol Hill, there was a fellow intern, Eitan Gorlin, who worked for Jack Kemp. An Orthodox Jew, Eitan was an extremely good-looking guy on his way to becoming a rabbi. Instead, he became a liberal. Eitan lost his looks, his religion, and his principles (assuming he had any in the first place, didn't know him well, other than "hello" and "good-bye"). He made a disgusting anti-Israel movie--funded by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jacques Gorlin--that had a brief, failed run at arthouse movie theaters. Since his career as...

Reporting from Cairo -- Egyptians are cautiously rejoicing over the recent appointment of a veiled Egyptian American Muslim woman as an advisor to President Obama. Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed this month to Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Arabs are closely watching for signs that the new leadership in Washington is making efforts to improve relations with Islam, which many Muslims believe were severely damaged during the eight years of the Bush administration. The selection of Mogahed is viewed by many in the Middle East as...

Warren Buffett Obama is frequently on the phone with billionaire CEO Warren Buffett: "One of my favorite people," says Obama, "he's just completely down-to-earth and as smart as they come." Buffett is a critic of the financial industry and of tax breaks for the rich - and he also happens to understand capital markets better than just about anyone. Austan Goolsbee, Economist, University of Chicago "A University of Chicago economist who rejects supply-side tax theory, Goolsbee has been Obama's go-to guy on economics from the beginning - and is behind proposals to raise taxes on business and investment. He would...

How do we know what Barack Obama really means? We need to listen not only to his own words, but also those of his very, very special advisor. Obama: Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people. If we could get some movement among Palestinian leadership, what I'd like to see is a loosening up of some of the restrictions on providing aid directly to the Palestinian people. Advisor (whispering in his ear): Sir, there are a lot of Jews in the U.S., not to mention a lot of people who are concerned about Israel. You might tread a bit...

Minnesotan Jim Johnson, the disciplined, discreet and obsessively meticulous vice presidential vetter for Barack Obama, is a stalwart of the Washington establishment. In the mid-1990s, he headed up a power trifecta: mortgage giant Fannie Mae, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Brookings Institution, one of the city's most prominent think tanks. At various times, political insiders have floated his name in Democratic administrations for White House chief of staff, Treasury secretary and president of the World Bank. His circumspect ways - rare in a town known for its shameless attention seekers - have helped make...

In 2005, President Bush articulated a national strategy for Iraq that hinged on successfully advising Iraqi security forces. "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down," he said. The critical piece of this strategy was the adviser capability itself. Although the military's special operations community had long nurtured the capability to conduct "foreign internal defense," the Army and Marine Corps had largely marginalized this capability by the time of the Iraq war, disdaining it in favor of conventional combat operations. To achieve the president's vision for Iraq, the Army and Marines would need to build this capability from scratch, tearing...