Free Republic

Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the US copyright czar, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails. The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, (.pdf) show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms, and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July. One top official even used her personal e-mail account at least once during the negotiations with executives and lobbyists from companies ranging from AT&T...

Link only: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20111017/BENEFITS01/110170303/

Unions representing around half of Greece's 4 million-strong workforce have called a 48 hour general strike for Wednesday and Thursday to protest against a sweeping package of austerity measures due to be passed in parliament this week. A wave of smaller strikes over recent days by groups ranging from rubbish collectors to tax officials, journalists and seamen has given a foretaste of this week's protest which will culminate in mass demonstrations in front of parliament, the scene of violent clashes in June. The protest, dubbed "the mother of all strikes" by the daily Ta Nea newspaper, is expected to be...

The United States has invited Russia to use its own radars and other sensors to size up one or more U.S. missile-defense flight tests as part of a new push to persuade Moscow that the system poses it no threat, a Pentagon official said on Tuesday. Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told the forum that the United States was prepared to offer Moscow written assurances that the system being built is not directed against Moscow. Russia would not receive any classified performance data on the U.S. system, said Richard Lehner, an MDA spokesman, but...

Tonight I will be appearing at Houston-based King Street Patriots at 7 p.m. CDT to talk about my new book Injustice. PJM has covered the work of King Street and their True the Vote project for many months, include this Bryan Preston roundup of Andrew Breitbart’s hilarious speech to them last January. You can actually watch the regular Monday night events at King Street on a nationwide web broadcast (King Street Live) that has amazingly been attracting tens of thousands of viewing patriots across the nation every week. In response to the good work that King Street is doing, Soros-funded...

CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. By Christopher Horner, CEI.org for WUWT Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the ‘bad timing’ file. Or it’s good timing, depending on one’s perspective. Just as a brand new...

UPDATE: The White House has responded to our inquiry and they deny that this week’s weekly address video was shot in front of a green screen. They also explained that the production line that the president was posed in front of is always shut-down on Fridays, the day President Obama taped his message. It’s impossible to resist the temptation to speculate that this odd production schedule must suggest that the production line is designated for the Chevy Volt. President Obama delivered his weekly address to the nation from Detroit, Michigan this week after visiting workers at a GM assembly plant....

The Blaze’s exclusive story on the McAllen, TX high school that assigned students the task of memorizing and reciting the Mexican national anthem and pledge of allegiance grabbed headlines across the blogosphere on Monday. It naturally grabbed the attention of many parents. On Monday morning, then, Glenn interviewed the father behind the story, William Brinsdon. William’s daughter, Brenda, is the 15-year-old girl who refused to participate in the assignment and recorded it. “So you’re in a Spanish class and you have to sing the National Anthem of Mexico,” Glenn began, explaining the controversy’s nuances. “You have a problem with that....

‘I Took My Opportunity’: Explosive, Emotional Debate Between Fox Business’ Charles Payne and Union Leader About Collective vs. Individual Accomplishment (With Blaze Exclusive Footage of the Pre-Argument That Didn’t Air)

Last week Breitbart.tv pointed out that CNN's John King noted a contradiction in Attorney General Eric Holder's testimony before congress on "Fast and Furious." Today, Mr. King re-interprets his findings and gives an enormous benefit of the doubt to Holder after Rush Limbaugh cited his segment earlier today.

9-9-9 follows the basic premise that all taxation, ultimately, comes from one place. You! 9% Business Tax: When you purchase a good or service, the 'business tax' that the business pays is coming from the money you paid for their goods and services. For example, you buy a car. Iron ore is mined by a mining company and sold to a steel plant, the mine is taxed. The railroad ships the ore, its taxed. The ore is smelted into steel and sold, they are taxed. The steel is transported, taxed again. Manufactured into cars, the manufacturer is taxed. The car...

The "green" loan scandal grows to include yet another seemingly hopeless company. The resignation of Jonathan Silver, the U.S Energy Department’s top loan officer, over the Solyndra scandal may be the tip of the iceberg. He supervised a much larger DOE loan program that suffers from the same problems as Solyndra: over the last 18 months, the Department has awarded more than $9 billion in below-market loans to auto companies under its Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program. The most troubling transaction: a $465 million loan to California’s Tesla Motors. Tesla received a loan rate of 1.6% from DOE...

The news that Holder’s DOJ had bagged a ‘terrorist mastermind’ named Manssor J. Arbabsiar followed shortly on the heels of my last post about ‘spin,’ and the ways ‘stakeholders’ in the DOJ/ATF Fast and Furious story may be using it to sell their own POV, lack of culpability, or, in the case of the press, newspapers or their e-equivalents. So the caller who woke me up way too early to tell me about US law enforcement’s latest tour de force, the discovery and preemption of an Iranian murder plot to assassinate the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia, really only had one...

Claim unfair to be stigmatized for sexual orientation by Jack Minor – Using the same tactics used by “gay” rights activists, pedophiles have begun to seek similar status arguing their desire for children is a sexual orientation no different than heterosexual or homosexuals. Critics of the homosexual lifestyle have long claimed that once it became acceptable to identify homosexuality as simply an “alternative lifestyle” or sexual orientation, logically nothing would be off limits. “Gay” advocates have taken offense at such a position insisting this would never happen. However, psychiatrists are now beginning to advocate redefining pedophilia in the same way...

I was on Fox Business with Lou Dobbs talking about Fast and Furious. The video is here and has some important new information about how soon Holder knew about Fast and Furious. Remember this name: Gary Grindler. He will be the key person in determining whether or not Holder told the truth. I explain why in the piece

There seem to be two avenues of document extraction in the ongoing Gunwalker scandal, in addition to witness testimony. One is the subpoena process being used by House and Senate committees investigating the plot. The other is selective leaking to favored media sources, which appears to be a preferred tactic of the White House. The former is official process, the latter an attempt to short-circuit the process. Both approaches have been used in a pair of articles released via the Associated Press (via National Public Radio) and ABC News about an early Operation Gunrunner interdiction effort known as Operation Wide...

A day wouldn’t be complete without a left-wing member of the African American community, or, media, attacking GOP presidential contender Herman Cain’s “blackness.” In this instance, MSNBC host Martin Bashir brought TheGrio.com columnist Goldie Taylor on his Friday program to again criticize Cain for suggesting racism is no longer a factor holding African Americans back from attaining success in America. Taylor asserted that “If he [Cain] could become what I would call the color of water, he would do it.” “You’ve got to wonder which country Herman Cain is living in or which planet, for that matter,” Taylor said. “Planet...

Did President Obama know about "Fast and Furious"? According to Deputy Attorney General David Ogden he ordered the Justice Department to institute the program. Watch this clip from a press conference in March, 2009.

Sources familiar with the congressional investigation into the Gunwalker Plot say that investigators are homing in on early conversations -- and meetings -- between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Division William Newell and his self-described "long-time friend," Kevin O'Reilly, a State Department employee then on the National Security Council. This is reflected, say the sources, in the subpoena issued this week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee seeking, among other things, "All communications to or from William Newell, former Special agent in Charge for ATF's Phoenix Field Division, between . . . March 16,...

CNN's John King discovers an interview with President Barack Obama that directly refutes Attorney General Eric Holder's testimony before congress.