Free Republic

We live in the information age, which is called that for the same reason the ice age got its name: an overwhelming proliferation of the stuff. We automatically assume that more information is better than less. But as the dinosaurs learned about ice, even something useful can be dangerous in excess. The lesson is, so far, lost on most lawmakers and regulators. In July, President Barack Obama signed a bill requiring foods containing genetically modified organisms to be labeled as such. It's an outwardly innocuous requirement that is supposed to leave consumers better informed but will actually cause many...

During Monday night's presidential debate, former DNC chairman and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean tweeted: "Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?" Even the tabloid site TMZ described Dean's tweet as a "low blow." Unbowed, Dean doubled down at MSNBC on Tuesday, to the point where a clearly uncomfortable Kate Snow tried to maneuver him into backing away a bit. He wouldn't, which is fine with Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, who told the network's Peter Alexander on Wednesday that "we should probably be talking more about" Dean’s speculation. At the Washington Free Beacon Tuesday afternoon, David Rutz reported that...

In his second speech on Sunday morning's terrorist massacre in Orlando, Florida, President Barack Obama said  on Monday that "the shooter was inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet," that "we see no clear evidence that he was directed externally," and that "this is certainly an example of the kind of homegrown extremism that all of us have been so concerned about for a very long time." The press, led as usual by the Associated Press, is certainly cooperating with those characterizations. Presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has clearly made up her mind that...

The New York Times did its best to begin the Supreme Court debate by mainstreaming Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee, as a “brilliant” “centrist” and moderate voice of reason. Reporters Michael Shear and Gardiner Harris treated the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit with kid gloves in the paper’s initial reporting Wednesday, with the same kind of pro-Democratic labeling slant the paper has always shown toward Supreme Court nominees. A 2010 Media Research Center report, Supremely Slanted, exposed the Times stark disparity in labeling “conservative” justices nominated by Republicans compared to “liberal” ones...

Layers of editors and fact-checkers at the Columbus (OH) Dispatch and others involved in its production "somehow" failed to detect the creation of an obviously false caption to a campaign rally photo of Donald Trump taken by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer. The photo, taken on Friday at Trump's St. Louis appearance by the Post-Dispatch's David Carson, had the following caption, apparently added surreptitiously, when it appeared in print at the Columbus Dispatch: "Donald Trump addresses a campaign rally in St. Louis. He was scheduled to go to Chicago for a rally, but canceled as his supporters became violent."  If any press...

he Washington Post's obsession over Donald Trump is a sight to behold — but not a pretty one. On Monday, following two week-earlier Trump-demonizing columns, one comparing the billionaire to medieval emperor Charlemagne, and another claiming that Trump's electoral progress thus far had helped her understand "exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany," the Post issued a house editorial directly comparing Trump's "assault on democracy" to Hitler's rise to power. In other words, last week's columns were merely appetizers for the paper's institutional assertion that, as far as they're concerned, the "authoritarian" Trump should be rejected because of the likelihood...

On Wednesday's CNN Tonight, W. Kamau Bell claimed that white supremacy is the new ideology of the Republican Party: "If the Republican Party is a gumbo...the roux of that gumbo is white supremacy, and the core of that is the Ku Klux Klan." Bell later asserted that the Obama birther issue was when white supremacy supposedly became dominant in the GOP: "It came from the first four years of Barack Obama's presidency...where they allowed Donald Trump to demand the President show his birth certificate — and they just stood by and went, maybe he's not born here." [video below] Host...

Conservative and center-right columnists often have to do far more digging than their liberal counterparts, simply because overwhelmingly left-leaning beat journalists, aka "Democrats with bylines," provide such unbalanced reporting on current events on a daily basis. Fortunately, the Washington Post's Marc Thiessen did the entirely necessary work of rummaging through available information about federal court nominations in 1988 and 1992. Any beat reporter could have done the same thing, but either didn't, or decided not to report what was found. What Thiessen unearthed makes an argument-ending mockery of Vice President Joe Biden's claim, made in a Monday evening tweet, that when he...

Here’s a story which seemed to get lost in the shuffle this month, what with so many other alerts devouring the news cycle. A memo was sent out from the Obama administration early in January directing a change to how products from Israel are labeled. As Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon explains, this has riled up many folks on both sides of the aisle. A memo issued earlier this month by the Obama administration directs the U.S. "trade community" and government partner agencies to explicitly label Israeli-made goods that have been produced in the West Bank.The Jan. 23...

Greetings to all of you from Boston. Just last night, we had reports of a 'thaw' in Israel's relations with the 'most pro-Israel administration evah.' William Daroff ✔ @Daroff Obama speaks at the #Israel Embassy amid a thaw in relations between U.S. and Israel http://cnn.it/23u6OGJ  (@Kevinliptakcnn in @CNN) 6:30 PM - 27 Jan 2016 Obama speaks at Israeli embassy amid thaw in relations - CNNPolitics.com President Barack Obama will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Israeli Embassy as relations between the U.S. and Israel have shown new signs of improvement. I'm sorry to report that the 'thaw' has...

A mail from the Cargo Systems Messaging Service of the US Customs and Border Protection dated to this Saturday, and revealed by Channel 1's "Mabat" show on Thursday, shows the US is now required products from Judea and Samaria to be labeled differently. In new instructions on marking requirements sent out to American importers, goods from Judea and Samaria are not to be marked "Israel." Those who do not comply are to be sanctioned. "West Bank Country of Origin Marking Requirements," reads the title of the mail, which begins by clarifying that "the purpose of this message is to provide...

The US does not oppose the European Union's decision to label products as coming from Jewish West Bank settlements, the State Department said Tuesday. "We do not view labeling the origin of products as being from the settlements a boycott of Israel. We also do not believe that labeling the origin of products is equivalent to a boycott," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said at a press briefing. Kirby was also asked about the timing of US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro's harsh criticism against Israel on Monday.

US President Barack Obama's administration on Thursday voiced its approval of the discriminatory EU decision the day before to label Jewish goods from Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The administration said the move is only a "technical guideline," and is not a boycott, reports Associated Press - despite the obvious assumption that consumers would follow the labeling when choosing what products to buy. US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said, "we do not believe that labeling the origin of products is equivalent to a boycott. And as you know, we do not consider settlements to be part...

As Israeli politicians and organizations continue to rail against the European Union for its decision to label products made in Judea and Samaria, MK Stav Shaffir said that Israel - and especially the current government - had no one to blame but itself for the situation. “The 'right wing' government in this country long ago sold the settlements down the river for a long list of benefits from the European Union,” Shaffir wrote on her Facebook page Thursday. “Israel has signed many agreements that exclude Judea and Samaria as entities within Israel.” Shaffir was referring to scientific, economic, and academic...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday likened the European Union's decision to label Jewish goods from Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Israel in retaliation also called off a number of scheduled EU meetings. "The labeling of products of the Jewish state by the European Union brings back dark memories, Europe should be ashamed of itself," Netanyahu said as he wrapped up a visit to Washington. "It took an immoral decision...this will not advance peace, it will certainly not advance truth and justice. It's wrong," he said in an English-language video...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu denounced the European Parliament’s decision to label products from the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria (Shomron) as “settlement products” on Thursday, stating that the move only hinders efforts for Middle East peace. “This is unjust,” he stated. “It is simply a distortion of justice and of logic and I think that it also hurts peace; it does not advance peace.” “The root of the conflict is not the territories, and the root of the conflict is not the settlements,” he warned. “We have historical memory of what happened when Europe labeled Jewish products.” …

As always, the Food and Drug Administration has its eye on the ball and its arms around freedom…in a big, stifling bear hug. The Founders no doubt intended that the federal government would have a passel of people in charge of telling successful condiment producers what they can put on their labels. For freedom. In this case, the federal government has decided a vegan company cannot put the name “Just Mayo” on its clearly labeled vegan mayonnaise product because the company doesn’t include egg whites in the mixture and does include some healthy stuff, like beta carotene. One would think...

The first clue that Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t know what she was talking about on Capitol Hill earlier this month came with the first words she spoke: “I’m here as a mother.” Apparently, the actress thinks that any mom can show up in Washington and hold a press conference that attracts lawmakers and the media. Memo to Ms. Paltrow: The rest of us moms don’t have that celebrity power. We haven’t won Oscar awards, assumed glamorous roles in the “Iron Man” movies, or married (let alone divorced) rock stars. But Ms. Paltrow has done all of these things so, of course,...

Martin Crutsinger has been a business and economics writer at the Associated Press for over three decades. Certain people in high places apparently hold him in high regard. In early 2014, on his 30th anniversary with the wire service, he is said to have received congratulatory letters from soon-to-be Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, soon-to-be-former chair Ben Bernanke and Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, which he clearly enjoyed as those in attendance munched on a very delicious-looking cake. We can't know whether the congrats from those heavy hitters merely marked a career milestone, or if they included an element...

"The World Trade Organization (WTO) has rejected the United States' appeal of the international body's October ruling against meat labeling that Canada and Mexico say is too costly for their livestock producers."