Free Republic

An elite annual invite-only conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, organized by the investment bank Allen & Company is taking place this week, with the guest list including billionaires and powerbrokers from the Big Tech Masters of the Universe and the media such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Disney CEO Bob Iger, CNN host Anderson Cooper, Patriots Owner Robert Kraft, and possibly Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The estimated wealth of attendees tops $588 billion this year. The Daily Mail reports that key tech and media industry players are arriving in Sun Valley in Idaho this week for the start of the...

President Barack Obama is teeing off in Florida with a trio of oil and private equity moguls. Obama was joined for his round of golf Sunday by Jim Crane, who owns the Floridian. Crane is a major Democratic donor who also golfed with Obama and Tiger Woods in 2013. Also in Obama's foursome is Milton Carroll. He's on the board of directors of Halliburton, the oil company closely associated with former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.

A high-wattage gathering of Hollywood moguls feted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Brentwood on Thursday night, raising nearly $600,000 for his reelection campaign and quietly discussing their hope that Cuomo will seek presidency, if Hillary Clinton decides not to run. "Behind Hillary, he's the second pick," said one attendee at the evening gathering, held at the Spanish-style manse of Fox Film chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos and his wife Ann.

EXCLUSIVE: Internet sites on their SOPAStrike may be conducting a blackout but Hollywood studios are conducting a boycott. I’ve learned that Hollywood studio chiefs individually and as a group are drawing a line in the sand on the piracy issue with the Obama re-election campaign and refusing to give any more donations. The blowup came after President Obama on Saturday dashed moguls’ hopes that he would remain on the sidelines in the dispute over the U.S. House Of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP)—Cypress Mountain passed a major test Monday, as freestyle skiers completed their first pre-Olympic practice sessions and Winter Olympic organizers kept dumping snow on competition courses in unseasonably warm weather. “It’s absolutely fine,” World Cup champion Hannah Kearney said after her training runs. “It’s as if there was no problem.” Trucks and helicopters still were dumping snow onto the mountain in an effort to get the Olympic venues ready for the Vancouver Games, which open Friday.

Nowhere is the blurring of distinctions between industries more apparent than in the guest list of an exclusive, invitation-only summer retreat for corporate titans in Sun Valley, Idaho. Conceived in the early 1980s by banker Herbert Allen as a week-long mingling of Hollywood's elite, the 24th annual gathering kicks off this week with a group of executives unlikely to rub shoulders at other conferences.The informal event, which begins with presentations on Wednesday on topics ranging from healthcare to dependence on oil, was once dominated by media industry chatter. But this year's guest list suggests the topic du jour will likely...