Free Republic

The chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Monday night that the panel will not make any criminal referrals, even though its leaders have previously hinted at the possibility of doing so. "Our job is to look at the facts and circumstances around January 6 — what caused it — and make recommendations after that," Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters as he left the House chamber after the second day of public hearings by the panel. When pressed on the matter and whether the committee had ruled out the possibility of referring criminal charges, particularly for...

Integrity. A movement is only as strong as its integrity. Part of our collective work is to protect this integrity, even when, or especially when, doing so is uncomfortable or hard. It is in this spirit that I write, to address a lapse in integrity within the activism community so glaring that to be silent is to be complicit. We never aim to replicate the power dynamic of the system we are up against — a system that embraces a devious lack of transparency, willingly sacrifices the vulnerable to protect itself, and replaces truth with convenient lies. Yet Shaun King...

Dinesh DSouza and Michael Shermer discuss "Alternative View to ObamaCare". (Sorry if it was posted before... didn't find it listed. Not even sure)

I know there are questions on my beat larger and more pressing than who’s worse as a TV journalist, Chelsea Clinton or Jenna Bush Hager, the presidentially-connected, pretend correspondents at NBC News. But I continue to be fascinated by a network news division putting someone as outrageously unqualified as Clinton on a prime-time newsmagazine. I watched her again last week in a softer-than-soft piece on a weight loss program started by Pastor Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church, and I can say with absolute certainty that she has not improved one lick in the last year. In fact, I think...

By Jake Tapper Nov 21, 2011 Rush Limbaugh Says First Lady Was Booed Partly Because NASCAR Fans Hate Her ‘Uppityism’ On Sunday, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden visited Homestead Miami speedway to serve as ceremonial grand marshals of the Ford 400, where some in the crowd booed them. The White House downplayed the incident today, with the First Lady’s communications director Kristina Schake saying only that “Mrs. Obama was proud to join NASCAR in recognizing our nation’s veterans and military families to raise awareness of this important issue for all Americans. As she has always said, she...

Television comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert drew tens of thousands of people to the National Mall on Saturday, promising to skewer partisan politics three days before contentious U.S. elections. The Comedy Central hosts' "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" started off as part slapstick comedy show and part outdoor festival concert. Stewart opened the festivities by declaring that "10 million" people showed up, representing all ethnic groups in America. "It is a perfect demographic sampling of the American people," said Stewart, who hosted U.S. President Barack Obama on his show on Wednesday. "As you know, if you have too...

Voter dissatisfaction with Republicans and Democrats is at historic levels, and the tea-party movement is hoping to play kingmaker in the November elections. The country’s current breed of discontent is ideal for the tea parties, because economic concerns are foremost, allowing the movement to sidestep the divisions between its libertarian and conservative wings. As the elections near, however, voters will want to know where the party stands not just on the economy but on social issues. A perfect illustration is drug policy, where conservatives advocate continued prohibition but libertarians argue for legalization. Which way should the tea party lean when...

When Barack Obama’s two faculty mentors at Harvard Law got in trouble for plagiarism, they were rescued by Dean Elena Kagan. In 1989, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe hired first-year Harvard law student Barack Obama as his research assistant.  After Obama was elected president, Tribe would gush, "His stunning combination of analytical brilliance and personal charisma, openness and maturity, vision and pragmatism, was unmistakable from my very first encounter." Obama had one other prominent mentor among the Harvard faculty, Professor Charles Ogletree, an African American.  In the run-up to the election, Ogletree would enthuse, "I'm so excited about this candidacy...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting. Think you know who's behind that "friend" request? Think again. Your new "friend" just might be the FBI. The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes clear that U.S. agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or...

I found 2 "fake anthrax" cases today: one involved an elementary school in Willingboro, NJ. The second was an attack on the American people by a Left wing blogger and his "expert".

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. Faking American medals of honor is apparently a growth industry. In fact, federal authorities now say there are more Medal of Honor impostors than actual living recipients.----

Best-selling author and Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq argues that freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it against attacks from totalitarian societies. If the west does not stand in solidarity with the Danish, he argues, then the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Tens of thousands of angry Muslims marched through Palestinian cities, burning the Danish flag and calling for vengeance Friday against European countries where caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were published. In Washington, the State Department criticized the drawings, calling them "offensive to the beliefs of Muslims." While recognizing the importance of freedom of the press and expression, State Department press officer Janelle Hironimus said these rights must be coupled with press responsibility. "Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable," Hironimus said. "We call for tolerance and respect for all communities and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington on Friday condemned caricatures in European newspapers of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, siding with Muslims who are outraged that the publications put press freedom over respect for religion. "These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims," State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said in answer to a question. "We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."

By JIM LITKE, AP Sports WriterThe $6 million the Lakers are paying Phil Jackson isn't nearly enough. Not when you consider owner Jerry Buss has 10 times that much invested in the talent Los Angeles puts on the floor, but no guarantees he will get his money's worth every night. The Lakers in full flight are the best team in the NBA — four likely Hall of Famers were in the starting lineup Tuesday — but don't kid yourself. It requires heavy lifting to get that much ego off the ground. That's where Jackson comes in.   "I go along...

<p>Living or working in San Francisco, you can't avoid the homeless. Near our office at Fifth and Mission, I walk past many homeless people every day, yet I never talk to them. And, whenever I read about them, it's about the homeless as an issue, not about individual human beings with unique lives.</p>

Tancredo doesn't see Jericho in desert wall Lawmaker trumpets benefit of crumbling barrier on borderNACO, Ariz. - At last, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo has found a wall separating the United States from Mexico.It's about 12 feet high and is made of weather-beaten, corrugated metal that resembles the sides of a boxcar.It runs for about two miles through the small town of Naco and out into the desert. The Army Corps of Engineers built the wall in 1993 to block Mexican criminals from making high-speed drug runs through the town's quiet streets."This wall has been a godsend," said rancher Charlie...