Free Republic

A soon-to-be-released book by Mark Leibovich reveals in excruciating detail the White House’s efforts to defend longtime Obama friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett in the run-up to a New York Times profile that ran in September 2012. Leibovich, himself a reporter for the New York Times, got ahold of a White House memo titled “The Magic of Valerie” that included 33 talking points circulated throughout the administration. Here are the talking points excerpted in Leibovich’s forthcoming book, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital: The magic of Valerie is her intellect and her...

On NBC on Sunday, Meet the Press had a segment on Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. “Our Cynthia McFadden was granted unique access and spent a day behind the scenes with Valerie Jarrett at the White House,” host David Gregory said introducing the segment. Strangely, inside her office is this photo with figures bowing before a picture of Jarrett.

You know the old saying: You can fly the candidate into Tuzla with her daughter under a hail of non-existent sniper fire, but you can’t take the Tuzla out of the candidate. Perhaps sensing that she needs a resumé enhancement, Hillary Clinton returned to fabulism on the campaign trail eight years after the Tuzla Dash, telling Iowans that all of her grandparents came to the US as immigrants. As BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski painstakingly details, she’s only 25% correct. Kaczynski picked up on this part of her stump speech about just plain folks working, emphasis mine: We are turning down...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Tuesday that fellow candidate Chris Christie’s “oppo research guys” got their facts wrong when the New Jersey governor attacked Cruz during a Fox News appearance. Christie, addressing comments Cruz made about not believing in “Republican-on Republican violence,” said on Fox News Monday that he didn’t “need to be lectured by Ted Cruz.” Cruz made those comments when asked to comment on Donald Trump’s controversial remarks on Mexican immigrants. “I find it ironic that Ted Cruz is giving lectures on Republican-on-Republican violence,” the New Jersey governor said on Fox News Monday. “The guy who put...

Donald Trump also wrote about his “pro-choice instincts.” Real-estate mogul and now Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump briefly flirted with the idea of running for president in 2000 as a member of the Reform Party. Trump, who launched his presidential campaign for the Republican nomination Tuesday, published an outline of his positions in a book titled, The America We Deserve.((snip)) On guns: “The Republicans walk the NRA line and refuse even limited restrictions. I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun.”

What We Know So Far Hastert, the former Speaker of the House, was indicted Thursday on federal charges of evading reporting requirements and lying to the FBI The Illinois Republican allegedly agreed to pay an unnamed individual $3.5 million for previous misconduct Source: Investigators considered including a second alleged victim in the Hastert indictment, but ultimately chose not to do so. A source familiar with the investigation told BuzzFeed News that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon considered but did not pursue additional charges against former Speaker Dennis Hastert, which would have included a reference to an Individual B, one of potentially...

Another nice catch by Andrew Kaczynski and BuzzFeed to go with the old clipping of Carson’s mother telling a newspaper in 1997 that the stabbing incident most certainly happened. Nothing’s going to prove that definitively, but knowing for a fact that Carson was telling this story before he had any reason to (when he had every professional reason not to) is the next best thing. And every time one of Carson’s biographical anecdotes is tested and checks out upon close scrutiny, the impulse to believe him among those who are already well disposed to him and see him as...

Trump also took credit for bringing to the public’s attention the death of a San Francisco woman killed by an undocumented immigrant. (AUDIO-AT-LINK)Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday compared undocumented Mexican immigrants to the “hardcore criminals” Fidel Castro sent to the United States in the early 1980s. Speaking on conservative radio, the real estate mogul addressed the controversy surrounding his characterization of Mexican immigrants as “rapists” in his presidential announcement speech. “A lot of people said, ‘Would you apologize?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, I’d apologize, if there was something to apologize for,” Trump told radio host Wayne Dupree on Wednesday....

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is expected to announce a presidential bid, says if the Supreme Court rules same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional, then it will be time for Republicans to move on. Graham told Boston Herald radio on Monday that society is changing and a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and woman is no longer possible. “Well, can you be for traditional marriage? Yes. Am I for traditional marriage? Yes, I believe marriage has stood the test of time between a man and a woman, ordained by God, and that’s — most societies have been organized...

Speaking in Iowa Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that all her grandparents had immigrated to the United States, a story that conflicts with public census and other records related to her maternal and paternal grandparents. The story of her grandmother specifically immigrating is one Clinton has told before. Clinton’s sole foreign-born grandparent, Hugh Rodham Sr., immigrated as a child. “Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants,” a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed News. “As has been correctly pointed out, while her grandfather was an immigrant,...

Donald Trump’s campaign manager says Trump has specific policy positions ready for release at a time and method of the campaign’s choosing. “Candidly? They’re all done,” Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told The John Fredericks Show this week. Lewandowski said the mainstream media will not dictate to them how they should release their specific policies, reiterating that the policy positions are in place. “They’re done and we’re waiting for our schedule and we won’t be dictated to by the mainstream media to tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing and how these positions should be put out front,”...

It was September 1986, and Annabel Hill, 66, was facing an auction where she would lose the farm that had been in her family for five generations. Hill’s husband, Lenard, had committed suicide eight months earlier, 20 minutes before a scheduled auction, in a last-ditch attempt to save his property with life insurance money. The life insurance money wasn’t enough, covering only $175,000 of debts than ran in excess of $300,000, from two years of a drought that Hill said had ruined their livelihood. Even when several hundred acres of the 1,300-acre Waynesboro, Georgia, farm were sold, the now-widowed Annabel...

In a speech on Senate floor last week, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King was controlling the party’s position on immigration and derailing immigration reform. (SNIP) Thursday, King responded to Schumer’s comment on the House floor saying it was Schumer not him who represented the fringe. Specifically King said Schumer represented “socialists, marxists, progressives, liberal Democrats.”

In his first interview since he announced Tuesday that he was actively exploring the possibility of running for president, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he thought he could persuade the Republican base to support his position on immigration. Bush has advocated for Republicans to soften their tone on immigration, and has repeatedly called on Congress to address the issue with comprehensive legislation. “A candidate gets to persuade,” Bush said to Miami’s NBC 6. “I think there’s a compelling case that if we want to be young and dynamic again, we have to make legal immigration easier than illegal immigration,...

“And I would imagine from my first glance at her credentials that she would get approved by the Senate. This is a very outstanding young woman from everything that I can tell.”(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said Monday that based on his first impression, he assumes U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch will get approved by the Senate to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder. McCain called Obama’s nominee and the chief federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York an “outstanding young woman.” “I think elections have consequences and therefore you give his nominees the benefit of the doubt,...

The character is part of The Bible a ten-hour television series airing on the History Channel.

Mitt Romney has been mocked for suggesting he could have got an “E” letter grade. But according to a copy of his freshman year report card he could in fact have gotten an “E” letter grade.

Andrew Kaczynski dug up this Romney press release today from the Web Archive, showing that he signed off on a permanent Assault Weapons ban in 2004: In a move that will help keep the streets and neighborhoods of Massachusetts safe, Governor Mitt Romney today signed into law a permanent assault weapons ban that forever makes it harder for criminals to get their hands on these dangerous guns. “Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,” Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony with legislators, sportsmen’s groups and gun safety advocates. “These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They...

Picture at link.... Actually, both the women standing behind Biden misspelled "Forward" on their shirts.

It was September 1986, and Annabel Hill, 66, was facing an auction where she would lose the farm that had been in her family for five generations. Hill’s husband, Lenard, had committed suicide eight months earlier, 20 minutes before a scheduled auction, in a last-ditch attempt to save his property with life insurance money. The life insurance money wasn’t enough, covering only $175,000 of debts than ran in excess of $300,000, from two years of a drought that Hill said had ruined their livelihood. Even when several hundred acres of the 1,300-acre Waynesboro, Georgia, farm were sold, the now-widowed Annabel...