Free Republic

On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson. “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,”...

Hugh Hewitt grills David Corn of Mother Jones on his claim that then-CBS News correspondent Bill O'Reilly exaggerated the capacity of his involvement in covering the Falklands War. DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: As Joe Walsh said, do the show, go play it straight, he’ll play fair. But you’re asking me questions you didn’t ask Bill O’Reilly. HUGH HEWITT, HOST: If you… DC: So you know, I’m given you one more… HH: Here’s Eric Engberg… DC: If you want to talk about the article or not, Hugh, because I’ve got better things to do than help you fill time on the...

Late last week, Democratic-leaning pollster Stan Greenberg released a focus group study showing that conservative GOP base voters live in an alternative universe of their own political paranoia. In this world, President Obama is ruthlessly advancing a secret agenda to ruin -- yes, ruin -- the economy so he can impose socialism upon the United States and destroy the core civil liberties of American democracy. And in this covert crusade, Obama is no more than a frontman for unseen interests aiming to annihilate the United States. This dark view was propounded by die-hard right-wingers -- older, white Republican-base voters --...

From a List to a GOP Civil War? Copies of The List (see below) have been sent by gay politicos to a variety of social conservative groups that look to the Republican Party to make their religious right dreams come true. The recipients include the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance for Marriage, Concerned Women of America, the Eagle Forum, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Officials at most of these groups have had something to say about homosexuality and gay rights in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal. What's the point? The senders--gay...

Doesn't the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee read? In a Washington Post article by Walter Pincus in Friday's edition, Representative Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), who has succeeded in pushing the Bush administration to start releasing some of the 2 million documents captured in Iraq, said,“Whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them, the most important thing is that we discover the truth of what was happening in the country prior to the war.”Conservatives and war-backers have been howling for the release of all these documents because they believe--or hope--that they...

AS THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS SPIDERWEB OF LIES SPUN BY former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV unravels, the media has gone out of its way to question the credibility of…Karl Rove. Despite Rove’s demonstrable non-leak of Valerie Plame’s non-secret identity, the dogs continue to gather, hungry for a second term scandal, while the Wilsons’ blatant self-promotion erodes whatever basis they had for a story in the first place. Perhaps Joe Wilson’s two biggest whoppers were his claim to have spoken out because of his deep, non-partisan commitment to “truth,” and his inconsolable remorse that his wife’s closely guarded anonymity had become...

AS THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS SPIDERWEB OF LIES SPUN BY former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV unravels, the media has gone out of its way to question the credibility of…Karl Rove. Despite Rove’s demonstrable non-leak of Valerie Plame’s non-secret identity, the dogs continue to gather, hungry for a second term scandal, while the Wilsons’ blatant self-promotion erodes whatever basis they had for a story in the first place. Perhaps Joe Wilson’s two biggest whoppers were his claim to have spoken out because of his deep, non-partisan commitment to “truth,” and his inconsolable remorse that his wife’s closely guarded anonymity had become...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., revealed Friday that two years ago he discussed the blown cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame with then CIA director George Tenet and that Tenet "was furious." Tenet promptly called the Justice Department to demand an investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak, Schumer said at a hearing held by House and Senate Democrats. Novak revealed Plame's identity in July 2003 in a column in which he said she played a key role in having her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sent to Niger to investigate...

I am thinking about writing a letter to my local fish wrap because editor was crying about the Rove nonsense and the fact that Judith Miller was a hero to all for standing up for the press and their "First Amendment Rights" and protection of confidential sources. The jest of my letter is going to focus on why we shouldn't feel sorry for Ms. Miller and the rest of the press because they (the liberal press) are the first ones to applaud when the First Amendment protections to free speech during federal elections was attacked (McCain/Feingold) and when a court...

In journalism, the definition of “leak” suggests that it is applied to government officials who purposely give reporters secret or confidential information in order to publicize something they do not like so that it can be defeated before being voted upon. “Outing” a CIA agent is only a crime if the agent is under cover overseas or has been during the past five years. This law was created to prevent the assassinations of CIA agents on foreign shores as had been caused by Philip Agee in 1978 who listed CIA agents undercover in foreign cities, causing the murder of some....

The buzz is that all of the fun-loving Dims are having "Rovegate" parties to trash Karl Rove and GWB over the CIA outing controversy. We need to show we can have fun too......by having a Wilson-Plame Look-Alike Contest. Post here your choices for the look-alikes.

Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA? It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA? What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?" I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program. On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an...

Now I read that Matt Cooper’s (the journalist who received Rove’s so-called ‘leak’) wife is Mandy Grunwald; media consultant and campaign advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton......

David Corn responding to Clifford May's column in National Review. Blah, blah, blah. Unconvincing. Those of you following this closely will want to read it for clues, but I'm only going to post what (to me) was the big news: Here's another fact that may interest anyone who thinks May might have a point:Number of times I've been contacted by Patrick Fitzgerald, interviewed or contacted by his investigators, and called before the grand jury: 0. What the h*ll is this? David Corn published an article only two days after Novak's column that exposed Plame in far greater detail than Novak...

Could minor Ambassador Joe Wilson himself have been the source in blowing his own Wife's "cover" (even if she had not been a covert CIA agent at the time of the alleged "leaks")? It is distinctly possible, (though it may be unlikely that Joe Wilson himself directly was NY Times Judith Miller's source), since Joe Wilson himself evidently routinely bragged openly to strangers about her CIA employment, prior to such "cover" being "blown" in the press. Here's an example of Joe's apparently routine and open bragging about Valerie being a "CIA agent," which became known directly to me over a...

An interesting post by Cliff May: "This morning, I have a piece up elsewhere on NRO showing that The Nation’s David Corn--not syndicated columnist Bob Novak--was the first to reveal that Valerie Plame was an undercover operative. It further suggests that David did so based on information provided to him by none other than Joseph C. Wilson IV. While working on that piece, I had an exchange with David and, with his permission, I thought I’d share that with you. Dear David: I have a question--one you may not be willing to answer but I’m curious so let me try:...