Free Republic

VIDEO AT LINK..................... The White House on Tuesday repeatedly dismissed the 17 tapes allegedly showing Joe Biden and Hunter Biden speaking with a foreign national about a bribery scheme. A reporter from the New York Post asked the President about the existence of the tapes while walking through the White House. Biden appeared to laugh and shake his head before walking away in silence. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed a question about the tapes at Tuesday’s briefing, saying the allegations about the President and his family are “malarkey” — repeating what Biden said Thursday about the House Oversight...

“This is a huge victory for Moscow over Washington,” former national security director John Bolton declared this morning on CBS. “It endangers other Americans in the future, who can be grabbed and used by bargaining chips,” he said of the swap of Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout, one of the world’s most dangerous men before his arrest and conviction.Bolton also revealed in this clip that the Trump administration had an offer to trade Paul Whelan for Bout two years ago. They passed, and as Bolton says, “for very good reasons” (via Caleb Howe at Mediaite):The 1-for-1 prisoner swap of Brittney...

Eurowanker governments waiting around for Ukraine to die ======================================== "Translation: MOSCOW, August 16 – RIA Novosti. Western curators have practically written off the Kyiv regime and are already planning the partition of Ukraine, Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Colonel-General Volodymyr Matveev said at the Moscow Conference on International Security. “Obviously, the West is not concerned about the fate of the Kyiv regime. As can be seen from the information received by the SVR, Western curators have almost written it off and are in full swing developing plans for the division and occupation of at least part of the Ukrainian lands,” he...

On ABC’s ‘This Week,’ journalist Glenn Greenwald explained that Americans could expect him to reveal more secrets about the government surveillance programs. Greenwald wrote two bombshell stories last week in the Guardian newspaper – one about the National Security Agency obtaining phone records from Verizon customers and one about the agency’s PRISM program. “[S]hould we be expecting more revelations from you?” asked Stephanopoulos. “You should,” Greenwald answered shortly. Greenwald remained quiet about his sources, reminding Stephanopoulos about the importance of whistle-blowers.

House Oversight Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., appeared on CNN’s Face the Nation Sunday and made one of the weaker arguments defending the administration over the IRS targeting scandal.

Another weapon from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency's controversial Operation Fast and Furious was recently recovered at a Mexican crime scene, CBS News has learned. Congressional investigators say the crime scene was likely where a recent shootout took place between reported Sinaloa drug cartel members and the Mexican military, in which Sinaloa beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed. According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Justice Department did not notify Congress of the Fast and Furious firearm recovery in November, even though Grassley has requested an accounting of weapons that...

One of the earliest fears about tax-favored savings accounts like IRAs and 401(k) plans was that when this pool of savings grew large enough Congress would not be able to resist tapping it to help solve the nation’s debt problems. We’re about to find out if those fears—persistent for decades—have been justified. Everything including the sacred mortgage deduction is on the table as lawmakers wrestle with the fiscal cliff, a year-end avalanche of scheduled spending cuts and tax increases. With a combined $10 trillion sitting in IRAs and 401(k) plans, retirement accounts make a juicy target. Some of this money...

A think tank founded by GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich collected at least $37 million over the past eight years from major health-care companies and industry groups, offering special access to the former House speaker and other perks, according to records and interviews. The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction,” according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were...

Testing a re-election theme, President Barack Obama is telling donors during a fundraising rich tour of three western states that the country is suffering from an economic crisis and from a political crisis. "People are crying out for action," he says. Pointing to elements of his $447 billion jobs plan rejected by Republican lawmakers, Obama said they would likely linger as campaign issues in 2012. "This is the fight that we're going to have right now, and I suspect this is the fight that we're going to have to have over the next year," Obama told about 240 donors at...

The head of the Energy Department’s loan guarantee office, which approved the ill-fated $528 million loan to Solyndra, will leave his job on Friday. The department said that the official, Jonathan Silver, had said in July that he would leave soon after Sept. 30, which was the deadline for approving the loans financed by the Recovery Act. However, two loan guarantee programs remain in place, one for manufacturing advanced vehicles, the other for “innovative clean energy technologies.” In a statement he gave the House Energy and Commerce Committee dated Sept. 23, Mr. Silver gave no indication he was leaving and,...

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial," and must be "informed of the nature and cause of the accusation." Based on their conduct in raiding the Gibson Guitar Company, agents from the FBI and the Fish and Wildlife Service could stand a refresher course in the law of the land. In November 2009, Fish and Wildlife agents, accompanied by a heavily armed FBI SWAT team, stormed Gibson's Nashville plant and confiscated ebony fingerboards that had been imported from Madagascar. On August 24, 2011 the Feds gave...

"The interesting question is: What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President? Why do Republicans think this president is unpresidential and should dare to request this kind of thing? It strikes me that it could be the economic times, it could be that he won so big in 2008 or it could be, let's face it, the color of his skin. This is an extraordinary reaction to a normal sequence of events," MSNBC contributor Richard Wolffe said on "The Last Word."

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. unemployment rate increased in August, according to the Gallup polling company, which surveys approximately 30,000 people each month about their employment status. By Gallup’s calculation, unemployment was 8.8 percent at the end of July and rose to 9.1 percent by the end of August. At the end of June, it was 8.7 percent. Gallup’s unemployment rate differs slightly from the federal government's. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the federal agency that calculates the government’s official unemployment rate), the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in July. The BLS is scheduled to report its calculation of...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office worked behind the scenes to help the organizers of a mosque and community center near ground zero, intervening with city administrators to get a temporary prayer service permit and having an official ghostwrite a letter to community leaders.