Free Republic

Correction on the title of this piece: His campaign advisory role carried over to a ongoing Presidential advisory role, so “Former” isn’t quite accurate. Google Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt tried to use his influence within Google to gain privacy from searches about him, specifically trying to hide his political donations through secret “whitelists” whose existence has only recently been admitted. This revelation from Steven Levy’s new book In the Plex is not surprising given Schmidt’s high level of political activity, advising candidate Barack Obama on tech issues, and now rumored as a candidate to be the next Secretary...

Kansas Attorney General Says Localities Cannot Ban Unloaded Open Carry in Town, or at City Hall But Law Remains Clear as Mud When it Comes to Concealed Handgun Permit Holders. AG Standing Ready to Help Legislature Clarify Permit Holders’ Rights. OpenCarry.org Sacramento, California --(Ammoland.com)- Like most states, Kansas state law allows law-abiding adults to openly carry properly holstered handguns without any permit. And now Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has issued an opinion . . ."

The White House has released the list of tech leaders meeting with President Obama this evening in San Francisco: • John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers • Carol Bartz, President and CEO, Yahoo! • John Chambers, CEO and Chairman, Cisco Systems • Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter • Larry Ellison, Co-Founder and CEO, Oracle • Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix • John Hennessy, President, Stanford University • Steve Jobs, Chairman and CEO, Apple • Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO, Genentech • Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google • Steve Westly, Managing Partner and Founder, The Westly Group • Mark...

Google CEO Eric Schmidt really has a knack for expressing relatively benign ideas in a way that makes him and his company look incredibly creepy... " With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about. "

  A major Internet company is under investigation by more than 30 state attorneys-general for alleged wiretapping violations. In Europe and now Texas that same company faces anti-trust inquiries on whether it unfairly penalizes its competitors, and its operations face criminal wiretapping inquiries throughout Europe, as well as in Australia and South Korea.Yet, inside the Beltway, it’s business as usual. The Obama Administration plans to award the company a sweetheart, no-bid contract for satellite imagery and access to classified data. After protests, the Administration backtracks, allowing other companies to bid, but still intends to award the contract to the...

Former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt tells Sam Stein of the Huffington Post why gay marriage is now a conservative cause: "There is a strong conservative case to be made in favor of gay marriage," former McCain campaign manager and fellow same-sex marriage fundraiser Steve Schmidt told the Huffington Post on Tuesday. "Marriage is an institution that strengthens and stabilizes society. It is an institution that has the capacity to bring profound joy and happiness to people and it is a matter of equality and keeping faith of one of the charters of the nation, the right to live your...

Cyberspace has become an indispensible component of everyday life for all Americans.  We have all witnessed how the application and use of this technology has increased exponentially over the years. Cyberspace includes the networks in our homes, businesses, schools, and our Nation’s critical infrastructure.  It is where we exchange information, buy and sell products and services, and enable many other types of transactions across a wide range of sectors. But not all components of this technology have kept up with the pace of growth.  Privacy and security require greater emphasis moving forward; and because of this, the technology that has brought many...

Citing multiple irregularities in this week's election of party leaders, a couple of dissident Philadelphia Republicans want the Republican State Committee to void Vito Canuso's re-election as city GOP chairman. Kevin J. Kelly, a newly elected State Committee member and outspoken critic of the local Republican organization, and his attorney, Matthew Wolfe, the Republican leader of University City's 27th Ward, filed a formal petition yesterday contending that Canuso violated state election laws and the party's own bylaws when ward leaders convened Wednesday night to elect a citywide leadership slate. If all the legal issues had been properly handled, the petition...

A Republican ward leader, claiming internal party shenanigans, has petitioned the GOP State Committee to overturn a vote Wednesday that allowed Michael Meehan to retain control over the city party. Kevin Kelly, leader of the 22d Ward in West Mount Airy, on Friday handed the 162-page petition to Pennsylvania Republican Chairman Robert Gleason at the state committee's summer meeting in Hershey, according to Kelly's attorney. At a raucous city Republican Party meeting Wednesday night, ward leaders were asked to vote on either retaining Vito F. Canuso Jr. as city chairman or elevating Al Schmidt to the position. Though Canuso is...

I had never met Steve Schmidt and only knew him through the media. When I found myself seated at the former McCain campaign manager's table at a Washington dinner hosted by The Week magazine, it was like a flashback to the 2008 campaign. Schmidt is instantly recognizable with his trademark shaved head, his bulldog physique, and the restless intensity that marks him as a political operative of the first order. He had spent 10 weeks trying to mold Sarah Palin into a plausible national candidate, and when the campaign ended, he assessed her shortcomings, as she did his, in what...

GOOGLE FRANKENSTEIN: MACHINES TO CHOOSE YOUR NEWS Mon Apr 12 2010 08:15:34 ET GOOGLE CEO and Obama political activist Eric Schmidt declared this weekend that his machines will help decide what news you receive! News sites should use technology to PREDICT what a user wants to read by what they have already read, Schmidt told the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWS EDITORS, where a few humans still remained in the audience. "We're all in this together." MORE Schmidt said he doesn't want 'to be treated as a stranger' when reading online. He envisions a future where technology for news editing could...

What was that we were hearing a few days ago from Google about the importance of free speech, protection from tyranny, etc.? We take it that this moral crusade doesn't include support for a free press. "An attorney for Google and YouTube indicated today that the Web giants may call a prominent tech reporter to the witness stand in an effort to reveal who leaked the journalist confidential documents from the ongoing Viacom and Premier League copyright cases." the enormously public stance and actions Google is taking right now to protest censorship and government control over the media in China,...

In her new role as a Fox News Channel contributor, Sarah Palin blasted a “60 Minutes” report on her knowledge during the 2008 presidential campaign. She appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor,” the top-rated program in cable news. The segment on the CBS newsmagazine suggested that she didn’t know the difference between North and South Korea. “I had been warned, you know, don’t watch,” Palin said of the segment. “It’s a bunch of B.S. from [Steve] Schmidt and from of those.” Schmidt was the manager of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, and Palin was McCain’s running mate. She said the Korea...

Fresh details emerged today of the backroom dramas as Sarah Palin alarmed her campaign managers with a string of gaffes during her run for vice-president in 2008. Race of a Lifetime, a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin which is serialised in The Times this week, reveals that advisers to John McCain were taken aback by how little Mrs Palin knew about politics and history when she was confirmed as Mr McCain's Republican running mate after a cursory, 12-hour selection process. "You guys have a lot of work to do," Steve Schmidt, Mr McCain's campaign chief, is said...

Friends, Romneybots, CBSnewmen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Palin, not to praise her. The gaffes that candidates do lives after them; The good is oft interred on the cutting-room floor; So let it be with Palin. The noble Frum Hath told you Palin was uncultured: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Palin answer'd it. Here, under leave of Brooks and the rest - For Brooks is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men - Come I to speak in Palin's funeral. She was my friend, faithful and just...

John McCain’s top campaign strategist said in an interview Sunday that Sarah Palin was dishonest as the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee and that her untruths have done long-term damage to her public image. “There were numerous instances that she said things that were – that were not accurate that ultimately, the campaign had to deal with,” said Steve Schmidt in an interview broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “And that opened the door to criticism that she was being untruthful and inaccurate. And I think that is something that continues to this day.”

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sarah Palin believed that Sen. John McCain chose her to be his running mate in 2008 because of "God's plan," according to a top political strategist in the Arizona Republican's campaign. In an interview with the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," Steve Schmidt described Palin as "very calm—nonplussed" after McCain met with her at his Arizona ranch just before putting her on the Republican ticket. McCain had planned to name Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., as his vice presidential choice until word leaked, sparking what Schmidt called political blowback over picking the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee. Schmidt...

WASHINGTON – The White House has tapped a corporate cyber security expert and former Bush administration official to lead the effort to shore up the country's computer networks and better coordinate with companies that operate 80 percent of those critical systems. Howard A. Schmidt, a former eBay and Microsoft executive, will become the government's cyber security coordinator, weathering a rocky selection process that dragged on for months, as others turned the job down. In a letter posted on the White House web site Tuesday, John Brennan, assistant to President Barack Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism, said Schmidt will have...

Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her. Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchanan button, but only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. She and her husband had both attended meetings of the Alaskan Independence Party—he as a member—but its name, she later tried to claim, only meant "independent." (The AIP is a straightforward secessionist party.) She didn't disbelieve all the evidence for evolution, only some...

The map, which demonstrates the devastating effects of global warming in just a century, shows how San Francisco Airport would be completely underwater if sea levels were to rise by ...60in. The coastline on the map was also coloured, highlighting how nearly half a million Californians are at risk from rising sea levels. The map, named CalAdapt, which was revealed at a press conference on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay by Mr Schwarzenegger and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was created as part of a plan for the state to adapt to global warming. 'Within a century, Treasure Island, this...