Free Republic

<p>Despite 6-1/2 years of horrid governance and dozens of acknowledged scandals, several of which a few of the credible remaining outposts of liberal thought have actually agreed are scandals, David Brooks, the New York Times's resident fake conservative, asserted on Friday's PBS NewsHour, as if it's an indisputable fact, that "President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him."</p>

Apparently, Hillary Clinton isn’t even ready for the 10 a.m. phone call. Information obtained from her emails released by the State Department Friday revealed that Clinton missed President Obama’s first daily intel briefing after the 2012 terrorist attacks on Benghazi. “I just woke up,” the former secretary of state wrote at 10:43 a.m on Sept 15, 2012. It was a far cry from her 2008 campaign ad against then-Sen. Barack Obama asking if he would be ready for a 3 a.m. phone call.

That the standards of transparency are seemingly higher for an NFL Super Bowl quarterback than for a former Secretary of State and presidential wannabe does not bode well for our republic nor speak well of the state of the so-called mainstream media. But the double standards regarding media treatment of Tom Brady versus Hillary Clinton are many and troubling. We should all be asking ourselves just why there is more concern and angst over Tom Brady’s use of slightly deflated footballs to get a better grip and improve his chances of winning a football game than regarding Hillary Clinton’s use...

The White House reacted to the news today that Chairman Trey Gowdy of the House Select Committee On Benghazi requested an interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the use of her private email address and her home server. During the White House press briefing today, Earnest said that the issue was now in the hands of Clinton and her lawyers as well as the leaders of the congressional committee. “I don’t have an opinion on it,” Earnest said, when asked about the request by reporters, reminding them that the former Secretary of State was acting as a “private...

Scandal: Which is worse — keeping classified information in a personal journal at home or doing government business and transmitting classified data on a private email account managed from the Clinton family home? This adds a new level of premeditated secrecy and deceit to the actions of the presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee. It also adds a new level of hypocrisy to the most transparent administration in history's pursuit of former CIA Director and commander of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus. Petraeus, who had an extramarital affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, pleaded guilty, after a lengthy...

Scandal: The former secretary of state's use of a personal account to exclusively conduct government business and to protect her political future in violation of the law ought to disqualify her from the presidency. 'Witch hunts" sometimes find a witch, and those who dismissed the establishment of the House Benghazi Select Committee, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., as just another witch hunt are eating their words. The existence of a personal account that Hillary Clinton used to conduct government business as secretary of state was discovered by the committee and reported by the New York Times. Clinton's use of...

Hillary Rodham Clinton is facing a new set of questions about ethics and transparency - the sort that have dogged her and husband Bill for decades. The latest disclosure, that Clinton used a personal email account while serving as secretary of state, comes on the cusp of her likely second bid for president. Combined with recent news about her family foundation raising money from foreign governments while she was at the State Department, it added fresh fuel Tuesday to the longstanding charge the Clintons play by their own rules. "Does she believe that leadership means acting outside the law?" said...

Scandal: Documents from Judicial Watch show that Hillary Clinton's closest advisers knew from the onset, before she launched an inflammatory video lie, that Benghazi was a terrorist attack for which Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility. 'Mrs. Clinton, name an accomplishment," Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and prospective 2016 GOP presidential candidate, asked Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Last year, when ABC's Diane Sawyer asked the former secretary of state that question, Mrs. Clinton changed the subject, not even bothering to mention dodging sniper fire in Bosnia. Nor is she likely to mention Benghazi, a place now synonymous with...

candal: Heavily redacted documents show a military response had been drafted in answer to the Benghazi terrorist attack by a group supporting "an Islamic state" in Libya. It also showed the attack wasn't inflamed by a video. It's taken Judicial Watch two years to obtain from the most transparent administration in history the 486 pages of documents pertaining to the military response to the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on our Benghazi diplomatic mission. They confirm what we have said repeatedly, that the Benghazi tale spun by President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was indeed a lie...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama had a bad day at the office this week. His top advisers were leaving him in droves. His fourth nominee to be defense secretary was taking positions that betrayed deep disagreements over national security issues. And a long line of Republican presidential contenders have begun lobbing a barrage of attacks on his policies that aren't going to end until Nov. 4, 2016. Ashton B. Carter, Obama's choice to run the Pentagon, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday that he was "very much inclined" to provide high-powered weaponry to the besieged Ukrainian government to deter Russian...

3. Why wasn’t surveillance video that was recorded at the U.S. compound in Benghazi ever released, as promised? In fall of 2012, U.S. officials promised to publicly release a declassified version of surveillance video taken by multiple cameras at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, as well as video recorded by an overhead drone. At one point, officials on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence told the news media the video would be released on or about Thanksgiving of 2012. However, the video was never released and, more than two years later, no explanation for the reversal in plans has...

Cover-Up: Reporter Sharyl Attkisson alleges the White House and, specifically, press secretary Josh Earnest are hiding official photos of what President Obama was doing the night four Americans died in the Benghazi attack. Other than possibly resting up for a fundraising trip to Las Vegas the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when an American ambassador and three others were killed in a terrorist strike on our Benghazi mission, we do not have a clear idea or a definitive timeline of what President Obama was doing during those fateful hours. As we asked in May 2013, where was the president during...

Following cinema chains across the US pulling Sony Pictures' The Interview, the California-based firm is now considering ways in which the controversial film can be shown online. Sites such as YouTube, Netflix and Crackle are among the options currently being discussed to make sure the film gets distributed. During an interview with CNN, Sony Entertainment boss Michael Lynton said the movie will be released, but it just needs to work out the best way of doing so.

The Democratic assault on the CIA’s tough interrogation tactics against al Qaeda and other terrorists after 9/11 was pushed Wednesday to a new level when a top senator accusing the Bush White House of playing a role in the destruction of video evidence of “torture.” Sen. Carl Levin, the retiring chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said it “reminds me of Watergate.” The Michigan senator was referring to a section of the Democratic report on the CIA tactics released Tuesday that noted the destruction of videos the day after his proposal to establish an independent commission to probe the...

A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. […] In the aftermath of the attacks, Republicans criticized the Obama administration and its then-secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for president in 2016. People in and out of government have alleged that a CIA response team was ordered to “stand down” after the State Department compound came under attack, that a military rescue...

Speaking to a mostly white college audience: "“This progress has been hard but it has been steady and it has been real,” Obama said at Northwestern University on Oct. 2. “And it’s the direct result of the American people’s drive and their determination and their resilience, and it’s also the result of sound decisions made by my administration. So it is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office.” Obama griped to party donors several days later that his accomplishments are a mystery even to his most loyal supporters. “Most of you don’t know the statistics...

Seems Leon Panetta is already getting trashed by the left -of course- for attempting to come-clean and salvage his own personal legacy now that walls have come crashing-in on the serially incompetent, habitually dishonest, and always on-borrowed-time Obama regime... But his own mild truth telling (why didn't he speak up when it still mattered?) is cracking open the floodgates of reality now, and regardless of any intimidation/threats, survivors will likely now begin to speak-out more on what really happened in the 9/11 Benghazi consulate attack. The stories they tell will likely bear little in common with the contemptuous horseshit we've...

The United States has conducted an escalating campaign of deadly airstrikes against the extremists of the Islamic State for more than a month. But that appears to have done little to tamp down the conspiracy theories still circulating from the streets of Baghdad to the highest levels of Iraqi government that the C.I.A. is secretly behind the same extremists that it is now attacking.

Scandal: The California Democrat who suggested that his party boycott the Benghazi Select Committee as a waste of time now accuses those who fought on the CIA annex roof of lying "to promote a new book." The last we heard from Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, was in May. That's when he told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" he thought the planned select committee to investigate the 2012 Benghazi attack was a "colossal waste of time." Calling the yet-to-be-approved committee a "tremendous red herring," Schiff said: "I don't think it makes sense, really,...

September 18, 2014 Democratic Lawmakers Call Benghazi Security Officers Liars Scandal: The California Democrat who suggested that his party boycott the Benghazi Select Committee as a waste of time now accuses those who fought on the CIA annex roof of lying "to promote a new book." ..... Calling the yet-to-be-approved committee a "tremendous red herring," Schiff said: "I don't think it makes sense, really, for Democrats to participate." Well, the Democrats participated in the committee that conducted its first hearing on Wednesday, and Schiff, along with Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., finds himself one of the Democrats picked by ...Nancy Pelosi...