Free Republic

Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday. The acknowledgement is the White House’s latest disclosure in a continual release of details concerning the extent to which White House officials knew of the IG’s findings that IRS officials engaged in the “inappropriate” targeting of conservative non-profits for heightened scrutiny. Previously, the White House said counsel Kathryn Ruemmler did not learn about the...

NOTE: Full title of article is, "In rare public Q-and-A with reporters, Obama denies knowing Benghazi terror-attack survivors have been forbidden from talking to Congress" ---------------------------------------------------- At least four career officials have hired lawyers as they prepare to share sensitive information with CongressWould-be State Department whistle-blowers claim harassment, intimidationObama: I'm not familiar with this notion that anybody's been blocked from testifying' President Barack Obama said during a rare public session answering reporters' questions that he was unaware of any efforts to prevent survivors of the 2012 Benghazi, Libya terror attack from testifying before Congress about what they experienced. 'I'm not...

President Obama has been forced to reassess his view of what caused the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, raising questions about whether the White House has a solid grasp on the underpinnings of the angry convulsions rocking the Middle East and the impact of the so-called “Cairo doctrine” laid out by Obama shortly after he took office in 2009. The White House initially laid the blame for the attack, as well as dozens of other protests that continue to roil the Mideast, on a YouTube clip from a movie called “The Innocence of Muslims” insulting...

Asked about what the questioner saw as an increase in racial tension Thursday, President Obama said a "tribal attitude" can come as a result of economic hardship. "Historically, when you look at how America has evolved, typically we make progress on race relations in fits and starts," he said at a town hall event with young Americans. He then suggested that the recession has played a part in driving racial antagonism while he has been in office. "Often times misunderstandings and antagonisms surface most strongly when times are tough. And that's not surprising," Mr. Obama said, arguing that Americans are...

Way back in the depths of time, Greek philosophers ended up with two basic and incompatible ways of looking at the universe. One way was materialism, which says that there is a material universe which behaves in a consistent way, and if you study it you can learn the way it works. That’s the world view of engineers and scientists — and businessmen, for that matter. It’s the world view of people who understand and use mathematics, and statistics. It is a place where cause leads to effect. It’s the place that game theory studies. It isn’t necessarily inherently atheistic;...

America faces two overriding national security challenges: win the death-struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism and keep the world's most dangerous weapons away from its most dangerous people. To prevail, we need a new approach -- and a new president. After 9/11, I believed -- and still do -- that if we exercised the full measure of our power, including our ideas and ideals, we could have united this nation and other nations in common cause. Ultimately, history will judge this administration harshly not for the mistakes it made, but for the opportunities it squandered. Had they been asked, Americans...

<p>For years, manufacturing jobs have been leaving New Jersey, first for North Carolina and other non- union, low-cost states, then out of the country entirely, to China and other countries that offer even lower costs.</p> <p>The average citizen was not to worry. A new "information economy" was coming, and we would thrive by serving it. Let others make the widgets. Americans would make the "knowledge," as a blue-collar work force evolved into a white- collar one.</p>