Free Republic

Russia appears to have moved to take direct control of Wagner, after months of infighting between defence officials and the private military group. Deputy Defence Minister Nikolai Pankov said on Saturday "volunteer formations" will be asked to sign contracts directly with the ministry of defence. The vaguely worded statement is widely believed to target the group. But in a furious statement on Sunday, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces would boycott the contracts. The private military group has played a major role in the war in Ukraine, fighting on the side of Russian forces. But Prigozhin, who is said...

Moments after the story hit the wires that Gary Webb had been found dead of an apparent suicide, the radical left began hinting that the former San Jose Mercury News reporter who broke the Nicaraguan Contra-Crack Connection story had met with a more sinister fate. Alex Walker, of the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, got the conspiracy ball rolling with the help of single quotation marks and a bit of idyllic prose: They are calling it a 'suicide.' What an amazing 'coincidence' that this happens just when Our Dear Great Dumb 'Intelligence Community' is under scrutiny again. Also...

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is out with a deceptive new mailer that masquerades as official government business and promises people there's a "check enclosed" when it's actually asking for money instead. A New Jersey resident sent The Huffington Post the latest piece of mail he received from Cruz's campaign. The envelope appears to have come from Cruz's Senate office and has his name printed the same way it often is for Senate business. In small type the mailer clarifies that it is for "personal" matters and was not sent at taxpayers' expense. It also promises a check...

Media dereliction of duty to the citizenry I recently watched the movie “Kill the Messenger” which was released in the fall of 2014. It’s the story of journalist Gary Webb who in 1996 began looking into links between Nicaragua’s drug-running Contra rebels and the CIA. He published his findings under the title “Dark Alliance” in the San Jose Mercury News in which he submitted that a US-backed rebel army in Latin America was supplying the drugs that made their way into some of Los Angeles’ poorest neighbourhoods. More importantly, he tied the CIA to the drugs. “For the better part...

**SNIP** On Wednesday, four members of Congress sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and California Attorney General Kamala Harris requesting that they launch an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress. In a joint statement about the letter, Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., say the “elaborate scheme” merits investigation. “We are writing to request that you investigate whether any laws were broken by individuals who participated in an elaborate, multi-year scheme to impersonate corporate officials from a fake biologics company, secretly filmed video of a Planned Parenthood physician...

"....A 2007 study found that in the 2000 presidential election, “Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News.” The study’s estimates “imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 28 percent of its viewers to vote Republican, depending on the audience measure.” In addition to being influential, I also learned that Fox News is an extremely poor source of information about current events....One of the first things I noticed was how similar all of the on-air personalities were..... Shep Smith seems to be the exception to this. In contrast, he comes across as refreshingly candid...

The Betrayal of American Prosperity by Clyde Prestowitz,- Reviewed.As a product of Temple Univ. Business School I was indoctrinated by a few economics professors into free market principles. We studied various models, like the theory of Comparative Advantage. The theory of Comparative Advantage developed by the 19th century English economist David Ricardo, works likes this: You have 2 countries England and Portugal, in the 19th century. Portugal makes good wine, having an ideal climate for growing grapes. England produces good textiles. England produces excellent wool, and has advanced manufacturing, If you have free trade between England and Portugal, getting rid...

Dale Robertson is a racist and a kook. Robertson carried this “n*gg*r” sign at a Texas tea party in March of 2009 and was asked to leave… But he won’t go away. Andrew Ian Dodge wrote about the Robertson problem at Pajamas Media: Dale is very much not a hero to those who first encountered him in February of last year. He has been described as a fake, a con artist, and worse by frustrated tea party groups across the land. Houston’s, in particular, is so upset at being associated with the man that they sent out the following press...

Hunter: Hello, Duncan Hunter here PA: Hello congressman, how are you?. Hunter: I’m here in my hotel room with a couple of hours to kill before I go on the Sean Hannity show. I thought I’d call and we could finish up. PA: Great. Did Hannity out of the blue get a hold of you or… Hunter: His producer called us. They got this panel they put together on the show, kind of a panel, his sounding board, if you will. PA: Oh, OK. Hunter: Well how are you doing old fella? How are politics up there? PA: Actually, the...

On Sept. 12, a large crowd gathered in Washington to protest ... what? The goals of Congress and the Obama Administration, mainly — the cost, the scale, the perceived leftist intent. The crowd's agenda was wide-ranging, so it's hard to be more specific. "End the Fed," a sign read. A schoolboy's placard denounced "Obama's Nazi Youth Militia." Another poster declared, "We the People for Capitalism Not Socialism." If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong,...

On their way to taping “Washington Unplugged” on the balcony of the Senate Russell building Capitol Hill Correspondent Nancy Cordes and producer Jill Jackson ran into Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who told them he feels the Democratic leadership, who will issue a resolution of reprimand against him this afternoon, is using his comments has a "distraction" from "real' issues. He also confirmed to CBS News that he will defend himself on the House floor this afternoon.

(San Bernardino, CA) -- Today the videographer James O'Keefe's hidden camera "interview" with San BernardinoACORN organizer Tresa Kaelke, airing repeatedly on Fox "News", including the Glenn Beck show, and onBigGovernment.com, has been caught out in an obvious set of lies and manipulations. When the actors approached Ms. Kaelke with their provocative costuming and outlandish scenario, she could nottake them seriously. So she met their outrageousness with her own personal style of outrageousness. Shematched their false scenario with her own false scenarios. "They were not believable", said Ms. Kaelke of the two actors. "Somewhat entertaining, but they weren't evengood actors. I...

Fox's attempt to smear ACORN Thursday September 10, 2009 is despicable, part of a coordinated, long-term campaign by Fox to damage ACORN, the premiere community organization of low- and moderate-income people in the United States. Every day ACORN members are working for health care reform, living wage jobs, to end the foreclosure crisis, and to strengthen our public schools. For its part, Fox is running a campaign to demonize ACORN. They will get attention, but they will not succeed. In July 2009, Fox agents attempted to enter ACORN offices in New York, in Philadelphia, in San Diego, in Los Angeles,...

<p>The protectors of the Reagan legacy are in full cry.</p> <p>Critics who believe former President Ronald Reagan is portrayed unfairly in CBS' "The Reagans," a miniseries scheduled for broadcast Nov. 16 and 18, have challenged the network and its advertisers to either revise or abandon the project, which they consider a partisan hatchet job and a distortion of history.</p>

Whereas over 80% of Americans support external, high-stakes, standardized testing as the best method for determining what students are learning; discovering their academic deficiencies, so that they may be remedied; and in deciding whether to promote students from grade to grade; you’d never know it, to listen to the socialist, establishment media or the progressives and constructivists who have taken over university departments of teacher education and the nation’s public schools. One such progressive is Kevin Kumashiro. Kumashiro, who is the “director of the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education, a resource center for educators, leaders, students and advocates base in California,”...