Free Republic

Transparency and truth are the fuels that run sophisticated civilizations. Without them, the state grinds to a halt. Lack of trust -- not barbarians on the frontier, global warming or cooling, or even epidemics -- doomed civilizations of the past, from imperial Rome to the former Soviet Union. The United States can withstand the untruth of a particular presidential administration if the permanent government itself is honest. Dwight Eisenhower lied about the downed U-2 spy plane inside the Soviet Union. Almost nothing Richard Nixon said about Watergate was true. Intelligence reports of vast stockpiles of WMD in Iraq proved as...

In late October, continuing a four-year pattern of making such claims, MIT's Jonathan Gruber, who along with Ezekiel "Zeke the Bleak" Emanuel is considered one of the two "architects" of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, pointed to a study which claimed that "the Affordable Care Act is working even better than expected, producing more coverage for much less money." But, as Wingfield noted in his Friday column, Gruber sang a totally different tune when quoted in the Washington Post on Thursday. WaPo's Sarah Kliff failed to tag Gruber as an Obamacare architect, making it appear as if he's just...

Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submited a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills. When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.

JON KARL: On Monday the president said that f you had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, you really like that plan, what we have said is that you can keep it if it hasn't changed since the law was passed. I'm wondering, could you give me a citation of when the president ever said such a thing. JAY CARNEY: Sure, we went through this the other day, the president was referring to the law, and I can obviously point you to the law, and people who covered it and wrote it. KARL: But...

A new study of images apparently from the Syrian attack last month concludes that the rockets delivering toxic sarin gas to neighborhoods around Damascus held up to 50 times more nerve agent than previously estimated, a conclusion that could solve the mystery of why there were so many more victims than in previous chemical attacks. The study, by leading weapons experts, also strongly suggests that the mass of toxic material could have come only from a large stockpile. American, British and French officials have charged that only the Syrian government and not the rebels was in position to make such...

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz says the prosecutors in the George Zimmerman murder trial should be charged with "prosecutorial misconduct" for suggesting the defendant planned the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. "That is something no prosecutor should be allowed to get away with … to make up a story from whole cloth," Dershowitz told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV. "These prosecutors should be disbarred. They have acted absolutely irresponsibly in an utterly un-American fashion." Zimmerman, a 29-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, is charged with gunning down Martin, 17, as the two fought following a confrontation in the gated Sanford,...

CNN's Managing Editor sent an email around the office today, praising Candy Crowley and trying to blunt criticism that she was unfair to Mitt Romney. The email -- sent by Mark Whitaker and obtained by TMZ -- is almost a series of talking points to address Candy's critics. Here's the full email: "Let's start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. She and her team had to select and sequence questions in a matter of hours, and then she had to deal with the tricky format, the nervous...

A focus group of media professionals convened by Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly burst into a heated yelling match on Wednesday during a discussion of CNN anchor Candy Crowley’s performance as the moderator of the second presidential debate. RELATED: Candy Crowley’s Debate Moderation Exemplifies Why Americans Do Not Trust Their Media Several of the Republican focus group participants said that they believed Crowley’s fact checking was inappropriate, both because she was supposed to be the impartial moderator and because the fact that she checked was debatable. Media writer and entrepreneur Carol Roth said that it was “clear that she was...

How can Obamacare save money for Medicare? Easy. Double count; apply the same savings to both organizations. Apparently that's what Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did. Speaking at session of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, Rep John Shimkus (R-IL) asked her "There is an issue here on the budget because your own actuary has said you can't double-count," said Shimkus. "You can't count - they're attacking Medicare on the CR when their bill, your law, cut $500 billion from Medicare." He continued: "Then you're also using the same $500 billion to what? Say your funding health...

Earlier today the left sent up cheers for an Alaska “teacher” that is seen on video attacking Governor Palin as “the worst Governor ever” as the sign she was putting up read. When Gov. Palin interacted with her, the woman told Palin she was a “teacher.” Looks like the woman, Kathleen Gustafson, is a liar. As we find on GatewayPundit, she isn’t a teacher but a theater tech. Even more absurdly, the woman belongs to a band that features drag queens as its attraction! Another blogger whose blog is named Mac’sMind did some digging and the only Kathleen Gustafson he...

During his confirmation more than a year ago, Attorney General Eric Holder failed to notify lawmakers he had contributed to a legal brief dealing with the use of federal courts in fighting terrorism, the Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday. “The brief should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process,” Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller said in a statement. “In preparing thousands of pages for submission, it was unfortunately and inadvertently missed.” Still, the “amicus brief,” filed with the Supreme Court in 2004, resonates years later as Holder finds himself defending the handling of some recent terrorism cases, particularly...

On Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010, in a televised speech to the OIC a 57-country block of Islamic States, President Obama named 31-year-old Rashad Hussain as his envoy to the OIC. “Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo,” Obama told the gathering in the video message. “And as a hafiz of the Koran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work.” (A hafiz is someone who has memorized the Islamic text.) Soon as Rashad was named the controversy began, specifically because...