Free Republic

Republicans are fighting to extend tax cuts for high earners with the intensity of a "holy jihad," a Democratic senator charged Monday. Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) said he didn't see any room for compromise with Republicans on the extension of income tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year, blaming the GOP for being unflinching on tax rates. "We talk about bending — it's incredible. There's no bending! Pick up your morning Washington Post and find out what Republicans are willing to bend on," Kaufman said during an appearance on CNBC. "This is like a...

How Republicans won the Internet By Mindy Finn and Patrick Ruffini Sunday, January 24, 2010 Scott Brown's supporters became fans of the candidate on Facebook, where they commented on his status updates and uploaded their own photos. The Republican Senate hopeful took to Twitter, using the #masen hashtag to let his followers know how the race was going. His campaign powered its field operation through targeted online ads and Web-based spreadsheets, and raised $12 million from 157,000 individual donations in the last two weeks of the race. After he won last week, his team live-streamed the election-night party in Boston...

September 8, 2009The Blogger Who Nailed Van Jones Cliff Kincaid If the Van Jones resignation is blamed on his statements about Republicans and 9/11, a great lesson will have been lost. As we argued in a previous column, “It’s the communism, stupid.” If people don’t recognize the dangers of having a communist in the White House, then the nature of the scandal will not have been understood. Blogger Trevor Loudon of New Zealand broke the story on April 6th and has some thoughts on what happened and where this story is heading.   His main point is that Van...

The blogosphere has, once again, proven itself a worthy investigator. Unsurprisingly, that same investigatory spirit is nearly nonexistent in the mainstream media. This morning on Fox and Friends, Michelle Malkin gave an interview on a story that she and HotAir have been following for several days (video embedded to the right). Apparently, many of the Chrysler dealers that have been chosen for closing have made a habit of donating money to Republicans, or nobody at all – and those who donate to Democrats are miraculously safe. Why is it miraculous?

The blogosphere has, once again, proven itself a worthy investigator. Unsurprisingly, that same investigatory spirit is nearly nonexistent in the mainstream media. This morning on Fox and Friends, Michelle Malkin gave an interview on a story that she and HotAir have been following for several days (video embedded to the right). Apparently, many of the Chrysler dealers that have been chosen for closing have made a habit of donating money to Republicans, or nobody at all – and those who donate to Democrats are miraculously safe. Why is it miraculous? The odds are massively against this pattern emerging – to...

EAGAN, Minn. — On a laptop at a kitchen table in this cheery Twin Cities suburb, headlines ripping into Al Franken ... are written up day after day for Minnesota Democrats Exposed, a political blog created by a former Republican Party researcher. * * * But Minnesota Democrats Exposed has dealt several blows to Mr. Franken’s campaign lately: revelations that he owed $25,000 to the State of New York for failing to pay workers’ compensation insurance and that his corporation was in forfeiture in California. With only weeks until the state Democratic Party’s convention, where Mr. Franken is expected to...

On 4/11/08, The Newseum opened its new quarters in Washington, DC. I was specifically interested in an exhibit in the Internet, TV and Radio Gallery. The exhibit was "Bias at CBS" and it featured the September 2004 "60 Minutes II" Dan Rather report aimed at discrediting President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. This 9/04 report was meant to hurt Bush's re-election chances in November, 2004. Comments among FReepers quickly exposed inconsistencies in the documents and led to bloggers on the internet exposing the report as deeply flawed, as well as using forged documents. These inconsistencies ultimately forced CBS...

An unclassified 2006 report by the Strategic Studies Department of the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations University relates the story of how Freepers, followed by others in the blogosphere, took down Dan Rather over the forged Killian memos as a way to demonstrate the growing ability of individuals using the Internet to influence the world at large.The report also discusses the feasibility of "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers" for information warfare and of the reticence the military has toward using the Internet for disinformation campaigns.The report was authored by Maj. James Kinniburgh and Dr. Dorothy Denning. The authors demonstrate...

Reading Nicholas Burns speech is like entering the twilight zone. A handmaiden for Islamazis, he is delivering America into the claws of Islamic jihad. Worse still, he has a svengalian influence over Condhimmi. If you have trouble reading or understanding this, merely pretend it is 1942 and substitute Nazi Germany for Palestinian state. That should do it. Burns is just another State Dept Arab loving hack with, we now discover, a Palestinian-Arab in his family. Any wonder why and where his misguided sympathies are? The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) held its second annual gala Oct. 17 at the...

If any definitive evidence to the contrary of our story is found, we will report it. So far, there is none. — CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never! — Former Iraqi Minister of Information Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob” A coordinated effort Outflanked by the new media tactics of the anti-Kerry veterans groups, much of the establishment media now prepared to focus with laser-like intensity on the military service, not of John Kerry, but of George W. Bush. That decision would lead to the sharpest single confrontation between the...

Abortion questioner is declared Edwards supporter (and a slobbering Anderson Cooper fan); Log Cabin Republican questioner is declared Obama supporter; lead toy questioner is a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers

CNN and YouTube had weeks to select the questions for last night's debate, poring over 5,000 submissions to select the handful that made it to the candidates. They even flew a few of them to the debate in order to allow them a response to the answers provided by the Republican presidential hopefuls. Yet within minutes of the debate, bloggers discovered what CNN missed -- that one prominent questioner flown to Florida by CNN worked on the campaign of a Democratic rival, and that at least three other questioners have declared support for Democratic candidates. Michelle Malkin rounds it up:...

CNN, as part of its Republican debate with YouTube, failed to mention that retired general Keith Kerr, who announced he was gay after his retirement from the Army, is a member of Hillary Clinton’s "LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee." Not only did General Kerr ask the question via a YouTube video, but he was also present in the audience, and got to ask the candidates for a "straight answer" (pardon the pun). General Kerr’s, whose question came 47 minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour the debate, is also part of the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network's advisory council, an...

From CNN Transcripts -> Dated 12-11-03 GENERAL KEITH KERR ON CNN 2 YEARS AGO. A DEFINATE PLANT ---> TWO TRANSCRIPTS FOLLOW. CNNFN December 11, 2003 Thursday SHOW: THE FLIPSIDE 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time Gays In The Military: 10 Years Of Unfair Policies, CNNfn GUESTS: Keith H. Kerr, Matt Coles BYLINE: Kathleen Hays, Valerie Morris, Gerri Willis SECTION: Business LENGTH: 2596 words KATHLEEN HAYS, CNNfn ANCHOR, THE FLIPSIDE: Let's get on to our big story, this year marks 10th anniversary of the "don't ask, don't tell policy", a bill intended to permit gays and lesbians to serve in the armed...

Dan RatherÂ’s Last Big Story Is Himself By Joe Hagan Published Nov 25, 2007 If he werenÂ’t famous, heÂ’d be mistaken for a veteran of a long-ago war: khaki safari shirt on his back, scuffed combat boots on his feet, that wiry crest of a brow, rheumy eyes under heavy lids, lower lip jutting out like an ornery fish resisting a hook. When Dan Rather sits on a bench in Central Park to tell how his 44-year career at CBS News ended in ignominy and humiliation, he is in fact still waging a war, a bitter and personal one. And...

Hello everyone, its been an interesting few days. I had no idea my post about the family used by democrats to push for expansion of the S-CHIP program would cause such a stir. There have been many questions and comments raised about me and my simple Google research that I thought I'd deal with them all on this post if it's ok with the Mods. My interest in the S-CHIP issue came about because of the way it's portrayed in the media. President Bush's veto was of an EXPANSION of this health insurance program to include higher income families. It...

The media piled on when President Bush used his veto pen on this children's health insurance bill. They tried to drop the absolute moral authority bomb on it big time and paint him as not caring about children. Now it looks like a little backfire is on the horizon. On September 29th, 12 year old Graeme Frost of Maryland got to do the Democrats’ radio address, in which he told his story of how he and his sister were seriously injured in a car accident, and if it hadn’t been for SCHIP, they wouldn’t be here today. The Baltimore Sun...

Graeme Frost, who gave the democrat rebuttal to George Bush’s reasons for vetoing the SCHIP Bill, is a middle school student at the exclusive$20,000 per year Park School in Baltimore, MD. Graeme was in a severe car accident three years ago, and received care paid for by the government program known as SCHIP-(State Children's Health Insurance Program) "I was in a coma for a week and couldn't eat or stand up or even talk. My sister was even worse," Graeme wrote. "My parents work really hard and always make sure my sister and I have everything we need, but we...

<p>Dan Rather’s $70 million lawsuit alleges there was more to his CBS departure than meets the eye. But former colleagues aren’t convinced.</p> <p>In parts, it reads like a political thriller, with a cast of “right-wing” hit men out to force a powerful journalist to heel. Or a tale of corporate deceit, in which Machiavellian suits sacrifice their own to cozy up to the president of the United States. Or a behind-the-scenes saga of a network news division assembling a story that could help unseat an incumbent president at the polls.</p>

The twentieth century was the high point of mass culture—or “the overculture” as some call it. Any culture that could produce Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Honeymooners can’t be all bad. But eventually, the connection between media elites and their audiences began to fracture. Though apocryphal, the line frequently attributed to Pauline Kael of the New Yorker in 1972 sums up the growing chasm between the overculture—particularly the media—and its audience: “I don’t know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him.” Just as the Big Three car manufacturers, with a once-monolithic hold on American consumers, seemed unaware...