Free Republic

The Twitter executive responsible for blocking stories about Hunter Biden's laptop is one of several advisers to the Aspen Institute's disinformation commission. Yoel Roth is one of several questionable advisers to Aspen's Commission on Information Disorder, which on Monday released its much-anticipated report. Commission members include Katie Couric, who recently acknowledged that she edited comments on National Anthem protests out of a 2016 interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to preserve the justice's reputation with liberals. Another commissioner, Rashad Robinson, helped fuel actor Jussie Smollett's hate crime hoax. Commission members' censorship of legitimate news stories could undercut their lofty mission. The...

A new public benefit corporation backed by billionaires Reid Hoffman, George Soros, and others is launching Tuesday to fund new media companies and efforts that tackle disinformation. Why it matters: Good Information Inc. aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information. As part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies. The group will be led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM. ACRONYM invested in for-profit companies that built media and technology solutions for progressive causes. It ran one of the largest...

THE COUNCIL ANSWERS THE CHALLENGE BY POPE FRANCIS TO APPLY PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY TO BUSINESS AND INVESTMENT PRACTICES ORGANIZATIONS COMMIT TO CONCRETE ACTION TO CREATE A MORE EQUITABLE, SUSTAINABLE AND TRUSTED ECONOMIC SYSTEM NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican ("the Council"), a historic new partnership between some of the world's largest investment and business leaders and the Vatican, launched today. It signifies the urgency of joining moral and market imperatives to reform capitalism into a powerful force for the good of humanity. Under the moral guidance of His Holiness Pope Francis...

Melissa Hodgman Named Acting Director of Enforcement at the SEC President Joe Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it hired Melissa Hodgman to lead the agency as its acting director of the Division of Enforcement. “Melissa’s dedication to investor protection, broad experience in the Division, and proven track record of collaboration and creative problem solving make her ideally suited to this role,” SEC Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee celebrated in a statement. “As Associate Director, Melissa has overseen a wide range of complex and programmatically important matters, and has been a leading voice in the Division on critical issues...

Remember how Christine Blasey Ford couldn't fly, until it turned out that she could fly? Just to spare her the indignities of commercial air travel, she was flown on a private plane courtesy of two very unpleasant and wealthy Silicon Valley characters. Among those who assisted Ford in the summer of 2018 were Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, game company Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, according to The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, written by New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly and on shelves Tuesday. Pincus and Hoffman, meanwhile, lent Ford and her friends their...

Reid Hoffman, a billionaire who was allegedly involved in a false information campaign in Alabama, played a crucial role in developing software capable of creating “deepfake” news articles, sources confirmed.Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggests he distanced himself from OpenAI in 2018 after disagreements about the direction researchers were taking the group. One of the big tech billionaires responsible for financing a project creating “deepfake” news articles is a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and Democratic donor.  The liberal billionaire who allegedly backed a misinformation campaign during the midterm elections played a significant role in funding a group responsible for creating a...

Facebook is investigating News for Democracy, an organization backed by liberal megadonor Reid Hoffman, over misleading news pages the group operated prior to the 2018 midterm elections, the social network said Monday. News for Democracy created several active Facebook pages that may have broken the social network’s advertising policies and rules against misleading users during the race, The Washington Post reported. **SNIP** Mr. Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder and Microsoft board member, did not return requests for comment, The Post reported. Dmitri Mehlhorn, his top political adviser and a News for Democracy, declined to comment, the report said.

Liberal abuse of Facebook to manipulate elections didn’t stop in 2017. A new Washington Post report indicated the same strategy was widespread in 2018 and earned as many as 16 million views in just a two-week span. Liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and member of the board of directors for Microsoft, was exposed last week for funding a project that created fake Facebook pages to manipulate the 2017 Alabama special election between Roy Moore and Doug Jones. A new Washington Post article has revealed that the group that created the project, News for Democracy, had created 14 fake...

The co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has apologized to Republican Roy Moore for funding an organisation that faked a ‘Russian bot’ involvement to mar his election campaign in Alabama. American Engagement Technologies (AET), which Hoffman gave $750,000 to, put $100,000 of the entrepreneur’s money towards New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm which fabricated some 1,000 Russian language Twitter accounts to follow Moore. The company used the tactic to link the controversial Republican to so-called Russian influence campaigns and then fed it to the mainstream media. They also created misleading Facebook pages urging Republicans to support a ‘write-in’ candidate instead of supporting...

Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized on Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose. Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, the...

Hoffman agrees that The Graduate’s success is a salutary reminder to the film industry of today that it takes bold creative decisions to bust apart conventional wisdom and make films that reflect real people’s lives. However, he’s sceptical about the movies’ ability to tackle racism. “I don’t think that’s ever going to go away,” he says. “I think there’s always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can’t feel that they have any hero qualities unless there’s someone beneath them.” He laughs. Does that account for the rise of...

Cori Thomas was in high school when she says Dustin Hoffman exposed himself to her in a hotel room. Melissa Kester was a recent college graduate when Hoffman allegedly sexually assaulted her while recording audio for the film “Ishtar.” A third woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Hoffman assaulted her in the back of a station wagon and manipulated her into a subsequent sexual encounter that left her traumatized. Speaking to Variety, the women described predatory incidents involving Hoffman that fit into a pattern of alleged behavior that has emerged in the wake of previous sexual-misconduct claims against...

On 23 July, 2013, Mark J. Hoffman of Somerset, Wisconsin, was arrested for legally openly carrying firearms. The charges were disorderly conduct (DC) and obstructing an officer.   Originally, Mark was told that he was under arrest for "being heavily armed".   Here is the  Gun Watch article.   The County attorney refused to press charges under Wisconsin statues. Mark Reported to Gun Watch that the charges were indeed dropped.  Then, out of the blue, three weeks later, he was issued two municipal citations from the Somerset Police Department.  Here are Mark's own words:  UPDATEThe St. Croix County DA did not...

Philip Seymour was found dead in his West Village apartment this weekend of an apparent drug overdose. As his Hollywood colleagues mourn the actor's loss, many are still left wondering what happens to Hoffman's many projects he had in the works. Hoffman had a fairly hefty role in "The Hunger Games" franchise, having just been introduced as game master Plutarch Heavensbee in November's super successful "Catching Fire," which earned nearly $860 million at the box office. At the time of his death, Hoffman was just finishing up shooting on "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2," but Lionsgate says his...

Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead of an apparent drug overdose inside a Greenwich Village home on Sunday, cops said. Hoffman’s body was found by a friend at 11:30 a.m. Sunday morning in an apartment at 35 Bethune St., sources said.

WSJ and KFI reporting that the great actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman has been found dead in his NY apt.

Another day, another story of a brutal attack by Arabs against Jews. And as usual, most news outlets will not cover this news. A large-bodied Arab man attacked an elderly Jew in Jerusalem's Old City last Saturday. The victim's daughter, Tali Hoffman, told Arutz Sheva that her father was making his way to Shacharit prayers, as he does every Sabbath, from his home in the Muslim Quarter to the Kotel. When he arrived at HaGay Street, just a few dozen meters from the Kotel, the Arab man stepped out of a falafel shop and tried to knock him down by...

PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — Calling her mother a "monster," Jennifer Hoffman said the 75-year-old woman deserves to be in prison for fatally shooting her teen son and strongly refuted the image painted of the boy during the Detroit-area grandmother's trial. Sandra Layne, of West Bloomfield Township, was found guilty Tuesday of second-degree murder in death of her 17-year-old grandson Jonathan Hoffman last May 18. Jennifer Hoffman and her ex-husband, Michael Hoffman, said the verdict is "vindication" for their son whose actions and lifestyle were called into question through Layne's testimony. Layne said she bought a gun because she feared the...

Back in May, 2011, this column had the great honor of being excoriated in a blog published by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. A superb Claire Wolfe quote cited in the author's Twitter profile drew some of the criticism, but the cause for most of CSGV's anguished bleating was this article, particularly the following passage: If gun owners are indeed a minority in the U.S., so what? Does being in the minority make one's rights less worthy of defending? Such a situation would hardly be consistent with the values that are supposed to be an essential part of what...

Senator Gretchen Hoffman isn’t letting police union opposition to a gun bill she sponsored get to her. Instead, she’s focused on the voices of support she’s received on a piece of legislation she’s dubbed the “Stand Your Ground” bill. The bill (SF 1357) expands gun owners’ self-defense rights. Currently, the use of deadly force is authorized when a person believes they are in danger of bodily harm or death, but the new bill presumes that threat may be posed by a home invader. It also eliminates residents’ “duty to retreat” from a threat if possible, instead allowing deadly force. The...