Free Republic

As with its rush to declare Eric Holder “cleared” upon release of the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General’s report, major media outlets are unquestioningly accepting Department of Homeland Security OIG conclusions from its long-awaited “Fast and Furious” report, strategically pre-released last Thursday to the Los Angeles Times. “[T]he report determined that top Department of Homeland Security officials in Washington did not learn about Fast and Furious until [Border Patrol Agent Brian] Terry was shot to death in December 2010 and two of the 1,430 lost firearms were found at the scene of his murder,” The Times dutifully accepted,...

General Electric has brushed aside the doubts leading Republican presidential contenders have raised about climate science. The US industrial and financial conglomerate said it had long seen climate change as a valid concern after an internal evaluation of the scientific case in 2005. (Snip) Observers have attributed the party’s shift since the last election to a range of factors, including the rise of the anti-regulatory Tea Party and fears about unemployment. Others suggest the change is due to fossil fuel interests using so-called super PACs – the new generation of political action committees empowered by a 2010 Supreme Court ruling...

But now, with Democrats in charge of the entire U.S. government and George Bush nowhere to be found, Pelosi and others in her party are suddenly very, very worried about U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. “There is serious unrest in our caucus,” the speaker said recently. There is so much unrest that Democrats who show little concern about the tripling of already-large budget deficits say they’re worried about the rising cost of the war. It is in that atmosphere that Obama makes his West Point speech. He had to make certain promises to get elected. Unlike some of his supporters, he...

President Obama's budget contains a [universal savings account mandate for employers.] But small-business owners, advocates and lawmakers already are working to water down the proposal, which would force many employers to participate in such savings plans. "We want to have small-business employees to have retirement-savings options, but we don't want to add a hurdle for business owners," said Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business. "We need to look at whether this is the best time to put a proposal like this into place." To increase the reach of workplace pension plans, the administration's 2010 budget...

Is former Weather Underground terrorist Jeff Jones claiming that Barack Obama's "centrist" appointments are a "smokescreen" and that he is pursuing a strategy of governing that would "make Lenin proud?" That shocking information is being reported by many different conservative blogs and Internet sites as proof that the President-elect is pursuing a political strategy designed to confuse people about his revolutionary agenda. Obama may be a Marxist attempting to fool people, but the "Jeff Jones" post on the Rag Blog website doesn't necessarily prove it. It turns out that the "Jeff Jones" claiming Obama to be a disciple of Lenin...

Aww poor Diddy has to ride commercial, while he asks his Saudi brothers to increase production, while the idiot knows nothing of supply and demand econmics. Hey Diddy you should be asking Nancy Pelosi to increase production. She won't, so get used to riding commercial.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- Proponents of a constitutional ban on gay marriage in Virginia are tapping black churches, hosting luncheons for clergy, speaking before ministerial conventions and adding staffers with connections among black ministers. They're targeting the pastors--all-trusted and consulted on everything from marriage to job decisions--as a bridge to black voters who traditionally vote Democrat but often hold conservative social positions. "African-American churches and social conservatives have more in common in our belief system than anyone could imagine," Chris Freund, of the Family Foundation, told a group of mostly black and Latino ministers last month at Pat Robertson's Regent...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com A conservative bentBy Barry CasselmanPublished July 28, 2004 In many ways, the most important recent national election took place in 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter. It is true that this result was precipitated in large part by a foreign-policy disaster, the Iran hostage crisis, but in many ways the politics of that election were predetermined by Mr. Carter's failure to produce a reform of the New Deal liberalism that had dominated the Democratic Party since the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.     Another pivotal election occurred in 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated...

December 2, 2003 Q: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian? A: Someone who knocks on people's doors all day but isn't sure why. Your Curmudgeon is of the opinion that the words "conservative" and "liberal" are labels for emotional predispositions rather than well-formed, consistent political ideologies. Partly, this is because of the divergent applications to which the words are put in Europe and Asia. Partly it's because the positions self-nominated conservatives and liberals have held have gone through a number of changes even in the past few decades. And partly it's because there...