Free Republic

Chuck Todd told Matt Lauer on Wednesday that the White House was “caught flat-footed” on the backlash against the prisoner swap for Sergeant Bergdahl. “I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as ‘we didn’t know that they were going to Swift Boat Bergdahl’,” Todd said, “And Matt, of course, that’s a reference to that political fight back in 2004 over John Kerry’s military service which became so controversial in that campaign. So there’s some fighting words there.”

Napolitano asks fliers for ‘patience’ on body scanners The nation’s Homeland Security chief asked for air travelers’ “cooperation” and “patience” with full-body scanning and pat downs this holiday season amid a growing public backlash that the airport tactics are intrusive. “Each and every one of the security measures we implement serves an important goal,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano writes in a column for today’s USA TODAY, which asks the public to be a partner in defending against terrorism. Will the Dept. of Homeland Security drop the hammer on the unhappy U.S. population and go against the people’s wishes? Will...

Julian Assange’s team wants the Pentagon’s aid in reviewing a new batch of U.S. military secrets it plans to publish soon—and the Pentagon is reviewing WikiLeaks’ request. Philip Shenon reports. Julian Assange wants the Pentagon’s help. His secretive WikiLeaks website tells The Daily Beast it is making an urgent request to the Defense Department for help in reviewing 15,000 still-secret American military reports to remove the names of Afghan civilians and others who might be endangered when the website makes the reports public. The request follows statements of regret from Assange and others at WikiLeaks that the site may have...

Rep. Mike Rogers, appearing on a radio show, said he would support the soldier involved in leaking classified documents on the war in Afghanistan being tried for treason, saying “people will likely be killed for this information being disclosed” and said if they won’t charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder.

He said: 'I can confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU files. 'The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.' The researcher added although he does not believe that manmade climate is a hoax, he and other researchers have been ‘bullied and subtly blackmailed’ to fit in the scientific mainstream. 'In this atmosphere, PhD students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the "politically correct...

An e-mail from a state labor group linking campaign donations to contentious worker-rights legislation has prompted legislative leaders to kill the bill and request an investigation by law enforcement. The e-mail raises "serious legal and ethical questions," Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate said in a joint statement Wednesday. They referred the issue to the Washington State Patrol for investigation. Lawmakers would not release the e-mail, but a copy was obtained by The Seattle Times. It was sent to several members of labor organizations as well as a small number of state lawmakers. The...

Bloomington, IN -- The Planned Parenthood staff member in Indiana who appears in a recent undercover video covering up an alleged case of statutory rape has been fired. The video sent shockwaves throughout the nation as "Diana" didn't want more information on the abuse and told a girl how to get a secret abortion.

A reporter hired by Newsweek to cover the presidential primary has written an article admitting that he was biased.Writing in the latest issue of GQ magazine, Michael Hastings describes his personal feelings about various candidates, including Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, and admits that he could not be objective about the people he covered: If that sounds like I had some trouble being “objective,” I did. Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it—influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates—and despite...

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release. Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to...

August 6, 2007 6:30 AM Harry Potter and the Deathly Intelligence Leakers can only Scholastic keep a secret? By Peter Hoekstra The fate of Harry Potter in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows was a closely guarded secret that was not supposed to be revealed before the book’s official release on July 21. The U.S. Postal Service tried to protect the secret when a mailman asked a Chicago-area woman to give back two copies of the book he had accidentally delivered before the release date. The mailman feared that he would lose his job for delivering the...

WASHINGTON - Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project. Computer-generated projections of the soon-to-be completed, heavily fortified compound were posted on the Web site of the Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm that was contracted to design the massive facility in the Iraqi capital. The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department. "We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas," said Gonzalo Gallegos, a department spokesman....

WASHINGTON - President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert "black" operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed. Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs. Under the plan, pressure will be brought to bear on the Iranian economy by manipulating the country's currency and international financial transactions. Details have also emerged of a covert scheme to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme. Security officials in Washington have disclosed that Teheran has been...

The Fine Line Between Pulitzers And Prison....