Free Republic

The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time. In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that "a small number of line IRS...

Third place? We couldn’t do better than #&@$ing third place? New Jersey residents were beaten out by Ohio and Maryland in a survey ranking individuals most likely to drop swear words on a complete stranger during a phone conversation. On the flip side, analysis by the Marchex Institute found that Washington, Massachusetts and Arizona topped the list of state residents least likely to lose their cool. …

Confusion about the IRS scandal is distracting from its importance, so that thinking conservatives should be prepared to debate the issue. Some basics matter. Conservatives may need to share a summary such as this article to help convince moderate friends. Callers to C-SPAN badly misunderstood these details when Jenny Beth Martin, Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, appeared on C-SPAN television last week. I interviewed Keli Carender of Tea Party Patriots on the radio on May15, who helped clarify some of the pushback and distractions from liberals. First, don't let people forget: the IRS scandal is not about conservative accusations. The...

Published April 29, 2013 FoxNews.com WASHINGTON – SNIPPET: "On multiple occasions, first after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and again after 9/11, Congress mandated that immigration officials come up with a verifiable entry-exit system to track foreign visitors. To date, the Department of Homeland Security has failed, despite spending billions in tax dollars. The current system, known as USVISIT, does take fingerprints and photos of international visitors when they arrive at U.S. airports, but it has no similar biometric exit system. The goal is to match entry and exit records to determine which individuals comply with their visa and...

"Seven smuggled forged 'eye scan pass' seals into UAE Seven Uzbeks, including a woman, brought 60 seals through Abu Dhabi and Sharjah airports" SNIPPET: "Seven Uzbeks, including a woman, allegedly smuggled 60 forged eye scan seals into the UAE through Abu Dhabi and Sharjah airports and used them, the Dubai Criminal Court heard."

 SNIPPET: "We also confiscated in his car some forged stamps. He confessed to getting the stamps from MJA who in turn had got them from MYY,” he testified. 

Searching his two flats in Al Nahda area, police confiscated ten other eye scan pass seals in addition to...

Gold And Silver True Story Is All About Time - Be Prepared Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013 May 19, 2013 - 06:10 PM GMT By: Michael Noonan We are going to start off with one of the most eye-popping pictures of just one central bank, the privately owned corporate Federal Reserve, and its purported gold holding. Occasionally, we drop a bit of history that most people either ignore or simply do not believe, but this one cannot be conveniently shunted aside. One of the provisions in the FEDERAL Constitution, the 14th Amendment, [the original, organic Constitution had only 10...

Scientists believe they have found the first evidence of the existence of other universes beyond our own, following analysis of the radiation left behind by the Big Bang. Data gathered by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft enabled researchers to map the "cosmic microwave" of background radiation left behind when the universe began 13.8 billion years ago. The findings imply the universe could be just one of billions, or even an infinite number, they say. The map showed anomalies that cosmologists believe could only have been caused by the gravitational pull of other universes outside our own. "These anomalies were...

Yale University has been fined $165,000 for failing to report serious sex crimes on its prestigious campus. After a seven-year investigation into the Ivy League university’s violations, it was discovered that Yale had failed to report four sex attacks and compiled “incomplete and unreliable” crime reports, lulling students into a false sense of security. Yale reported only five sex offenses between 2000 and 2002, while Harvard reported 80 from that same period and Princeton reported 29. … The world-class university was also found to have ill-defined the boundaries of its campus, leaving crimes committed at the Yale-New Haven Hospital out,...

The Innocence of Muslims film, (Desert Warrior) describes it as a "historical Arabian Desert adventure film." By, Sam Bassiel, Sam Bacile, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a filmmaker with ties to Coptic Christian groups; which cost $100,000 to produce, co-ordinated by Joseph Nasrallah Abdelmasih's Media for Christ nonprofit. Directed by soft pornographer Alan Roberts, an industry veteran whose prior work was dominated by titles like "Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood"..

The Week Begins, And Silver Is Instantly Getting Destroyed Joe Weisenthal May 19, 2013, 6:18 PM Fans of precious metals have been getting creamed lately. Thanks to declining volatility and a growing sense that real interest rates are on the rise, gold and silver have been getting taken to the woodshed. And in early Asian trading there's no letup. Silver is getting demolished. From Kitco, here's the sharp downward spike. Screen Shot 2013 05 19 at 6.16.13 PM Kitco As you can see here, the decline in gold is more muted, but still visible. Silver's not the only thing going...

Those who grew up during the Hungry Thirties, and fought in World War II, were called “the greatest generation” in a 1968 book by U.S. author and broadcaster Tom Brokaw. … Now it’s suggested that Tory David Cameron’s 2010 coalition with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats won’t last as long. In an interview, the PM mentions the possibility of it ending prematurely, and facing the new circumstances “in whatever way we should”. In 70 years, have we gone from the greatest to the weakest? In 1943, our coalition government was threatened by a Germany dedicated to our destruction. The 2013 coalition...

Police have come under fire for asking homeowners whether they were gay or bisexual—in a Neighborhood Watch survey. The questionnaire by West Midlands Police asked residents in Birmingham questions about their sexual orientation so they could help officers “detect crime and antisocial behavior.” The force claim that by asking whether people were straight, gay or bisexual it would help them decide where certain information about police initiatives should be best sent. But residents and politicians in the city have accused the police of being too politically correct. …

If you’re planning on being amorous with a married woman try to make sure her husband doesn’t arrive home halfway through and force you to climb through a window like this man reportedly had to do. A video released on YouTube shows a distressed lothario making his getaway through a window while a couple fight on a balcony next to him. The man, who was only dressed in white boxers, eventually had to jump onto an inflatable pad put out by firefighters. The situation itself was excruciating enough without the added embarrassment of having an audience and everyone cheering his...

It comes as no surprise that, during a CBS interview in February, President Obama supported having the Boy Scouts of America open its membership to gays and, presumably, those who lead scout troops as well. “My attitude, the President said “is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does, in every institution and walk of life.” Spoken like a good Communist hiding the true intent of debasing the cultural and moral life of America.

On the evening of 23 March, 1983, Ronald Reagan delivered a televised address about defence and national security. "Let me share with you a vision of the future," the president began in what was a last-minute addition to the half-hour speech. In Reagan's vision, we would "embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive." It was the first mention of Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), the plan to change America's nuclear posture from offensive to defensive. His goal was to render the Soviet nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Reagan's admirers praised SDI...

(Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Pope Francis on Saturday and, apparently responding to his criticism of a heartless "dictatorship of the economy", called for stronger regulation of financial markets. On Thursday, Francis appealed in a speech for world financial reform, saying the global economic crisis had made life worse for millions in rich and poor countries. Merkel visited Rome for a few hours specifically to meet the pontiff and spoke with him privately in his library for 45 minutes, unusually long for a private papal audience. She told reporters afterwards that the scandals and excesses criticized by Francis...

May 20, 2013   Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time   Reading 1 Sir 1:1-10 All wisdom comes from the LORDand with him it remains forever, and is before all timeThe sand of the seashore, the drops of rain,the days of eternity: who can number these?Heaven’s height, earth’s breadth,the depths of the abyss: who can explore these?Before all things else wisdom was created;and prudent understanding, from eternity.The word of God on high is the fountain of wisdomand her ways are everlasting.To whom has wisdom’s root been revealed?Who knows her subtleties?To whom has the discipline of wisdom been...

The feast of Pentecost is the celebration of one of the most important moments in church history. It commemorates the day when, after the Resurrection of the Lord, the Holy Spirit gave the Faithful a special ability to speak to crowds of different nationalities in their own languages. Now, we don’t know exactly what happened that day – whether the Apostles instantly learned other languages, or their audiences instantly learned to hear them in their heads as if they had. All we know is that the leaders of the Church were suddenly, miraculously, able to reach people, and this was...

From deep within the bowels of America’s most beloved bureaucracy: The good news: free colonoscopies for everybody! The bad news: they’re part of the new airport screening protocol. Here’s one that didn’t make the cut: 6. Someone once said: “The nine most dangerous words are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Do you know who said it, and do you think it’s humorous?

One of the things which has so *maddened* conservatives during the oh-so-dolorous-and-slow Chinese water torture of the Obama administration, is the way that the Administration seems to be "above the law" or "unaccountable"; and at that, not only in a Nixonian sense, but in a Louis XIV sense ("L'état, c'est moi"). Look back at some of the initial scandals and/or muckraking topics from the first term, or from the campaign against Romney: "They acted stupidly" / beer summit The non-prosecution of the Black Panthers for voter intimidation The brouhaha over the "birth certificate" The non-closure of Club Gitmo The run-up...

Looks like yet another left-winger missed the meme on the New Civility. Attorney and "Ring of Fire" radio show co-host Mike Papantonio, guest-hosting on Ed Schultz's radio program yesterday, revealed two things -- he hates old people and wants tea party retirees to hurry up and die. Don't take my word for it, listen to Papantonio's remarks after a caller said he saw "one of these baggers" push a woman during dueling protests over the weekend in Madison, Wisc.

According to Daryl Ruiter of 92.3 The Fan, former Cleveland Browns linebacker David McMillan was shot and killed on Saturday: I should note that as of this post, no local Atlanta newspapers or television stations seem to be reporting the news; the only source so far appears to be Ruiter, so there is a slight chance that the report could be erroneous. If it stands as true, may McMillan rest in piece. UPDATE: Ruiter responded to our question by tweeting to us, "sadly my report is 100% true." McMillan was a 5th round pick by the Browns in 2005 and...

What’s worse than a high-ranking federal bureaucrat dishonestly setting up a planted question in order to stage a modified limited hangout in order to downplay an explosive scandal coming on quickly? Using a lobbyist to do it: Remember when Barack Obama pledged to reduce the influence of lobbyists in his administration? Less than five years later, his administration’s using them to set up alibis. Hopenchange!

... About 11,000 police officers and soldiers blocked an annual conference at Tunisia’s main religious centre in the central city of Kairouan by a radical Islamist movement that has been implicated in attacks across the country. Security checkpoints were in place and patrols were out in the streets after authorities declared the conference by the ultraconservative Muslim group Ansar al-Shariah a threat “to security and public order.” Police clashed with tens of thousands of members of Ansar al-Sharia who had intended to go to the main rally. Protesters threw stones at police, who fired tear gas in response. Kairouan hospital...

Word is that both Israel and Turkey are seriously entertaining the notion of constructing an undersea pipeline to deliver Israeli natural gas to Turkey and, perhaps, hence to Europe. The Turks reportedly have expressed willingness to foot part of the estimated $2 billion bill. Such pipelines exist elsewhere in the world, most notably from Russia and from Norway. It is becoming evident that a veiled agenda underpinned the recent Turkish willingness to consider a rapprochement with Israel. Turkey, it appears, hankers after Israeli gas. The perceived Turkish softening was fueled by Israel’s offshore gas discoveries, a fact which nevertheless did...

May 16, 2013 Dear : The VEA Fund for Children and Public Education Executive Committee (VEA Fund) and The VEA Fund Directors, your elected representatives from across Virginia, have offered recommendations for the June 11 Democratic primaries. The Democratic Party is choosing Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General candidates in an open primary on that day. Republican Candidates are being chosen by a convention this Saturday in Richmond. Regrettably, none of the Republican candidates chose to complete the candidate questionnaire required to gain a recommendation. In Virginia voters do not register by party, so our primaries are open. Any voter can...

House of Representatives Committees through June 9th - no hearings on Scandals

Harvard students, outraged over a doctoral dissertation arguing that Hispanic immigrants lack “raw cognitive ability or intelligence,” this week urged the university to investigate how the thesis came to be approved and to ban future research on racial superiority. The students presented 1,200 signatures to president Drew Faust and the dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, David Ellwood. “Academic freedom and a reasoned debate are essential to our academic community,” the petition said. “However, the Harvard Kennedy School cannot ethically stand behind academic work advocating a national policy of exclusion and advancing an agenda of discrimination.” …

A group of North Koreans claim to have hijacked a Chinese fishing boat, are holding hostages, and demand some 600,000 yuan in ransoms. The initial hijacking took place on May 6, but authorities are struggling to pin down exactly what happened. They are investigating the boat owner's claims that his ship and its crew were taken, but officials have been silent. North Korea isn't just fun-runs and basketball stars; there is a serious concern that the hijackers were in the nation's military, and may be harming their prisoners, as South China Morning Post reports: Yu [the boat owner] was not...

A group of North Koreans claim to have hijacked a Chinese fishing boat, are holding hostages, and demand some 600,000 yuan in ransoms. The initial hijacking took place on May 6, but authorities are struggling to pin down exactly what happened. They are investigating the boat owner's claims that his ship and its crew were taken, but officials have been silent. North Korea isn't just fun-runs and basketball stars; there is a serious concern that the hijackers were in the nation's military, and may be harming their prisoners, as South China Morning Post reports: Yu [the boat owner] was not...

Bill Clinton, and all the baggage he brought with him from Arkansas, was a true gift to talk radio. Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Chinagate, Monicagate and various other matters would plague the Clinton presidency for eight years. ... After Whitewater came the Paula Jones allegation of sexual harassment. This case led to the president answering questions about Monica Lewinsky under oath, a subsequent cover-up and the first impeachment of a president in 130 years. Throughout 1996, Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Oliver North and others piled on Clinton. So did radio host Alan Keyes, who jumped into the 1996...

Bill Clinton, and all the baggage he brought with him from Arkansas, was a true gift to talk radio. Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Chinagate, Monicagate and various other matters would plague the Clinton presidency for eight years. ... After Whitewater came the Paula Jones allegation of sexual harassment. This case led to the president answering questions about Monica Lewinsky under oath, a subsequent cover-up and the first impeachment of a president in 130 years. Throughout 1996, Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Oliver North and others piled on Clinton. So did radio host Alan Keyes, who jumped into the 1996...

New defenses and distractions in the IRS scandal are going to come rolling out from the administration and its defenders like water off a duck's back. One ploy is evident in this sympathetic story from Friday's Washington Post seeking to portray the IRS Determinations Unit as a just a group of nice, non-partisan number-crunchers: The [determinations] staff member [in Cincinnati], who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through...

Progressives are horrified at the prospect of profiling, even though prejudice is a natural self-defense mechanism. Yet somehow it's ok for the IRS to target conservative groups.

We sing the Psalms because the people of God have been doing so since as early as Moses (Ps. 90) and especially during the days of David, when the Psalter became the “hymnal” of Israel. When we sing them, we identify with our most ancient forefathers and offer transcendent praise, applicable in all times and in all places.

Apartheid South Africa looked after white people and nobody else. Now some of its white communities face a level of deprivation, or of violence, which threatens their future in the country. Everyone here, regardless of colour, tells you that white people are still riding high. They run the economy. They have a disproportionate amount of influence in politics and the media. They still have the best houses and most of the best jobs. All of this is true but it is not the only picture. Look below the surface and you will find poverty and a sense of growing vulnerability....

Hacker group Anonymous has been been pretty tight-lipped about its political beliefs — with operations in the organization’s name conducted against Western democracies, authoritarian countries like China, and Muslim countries like Egypt, Syria, and Iran. And, of course, Israel. But one thing has become clear in the lead-up to its next major hacking attack: Anonymous members are “gold bugs,” people who believe that the yellow metal is the proper method for the exchange of goods and services and advocate the use of precious metals as the proper currency for the sale and purchase of oil. That’s the main reason the...

The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time. In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that "a small number of line IRS...

The Internal Revenue Service has been caught engaging in political profiling while processing applications for tax-exempt status. In this case it was against organizations with “tea-party” or “patriot ” in their names and other right-wing groups. Next time it could be libertarian or left-wing antiwar and pro-civil-liberties groups. No dissenter can ever rest assured he is safe from the arbitrary power of the IRS. Nothing will have been learned from this scandal if all that happens is the firing of some IRS administrators and the issuance of new guidelines on 501(c)(4) applications. That is not nearly enough. Obviously, tax exemptions...

The family of Kaitlyn Hunt wants prosecutors to reconsider the charges against their daughter. Under a plea deal on the table, she would face two years of house arrest and one year of probation for engaging in a physical relationship with her younger girlfriend, a student at a Sebastian, Fla., high school. Her mom says she’s no criminal and was being targeted, in part, because of her sexuality.

I took piano lessons for 6 years in elementary school and junior high. It never came easy for me and I always had to practice to master even simple pieces. Every spring we had the dreaded recital where about 30 of us would perform from memory for our families. It was hard to know who was more uncomfortable on these evenings–those of us on the stage or our parents who had to endure our missed notes and shaky re-starts. I only had one rule about the music I played at recital: it had to be written in the key of...

The Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press reporters’ phone records was reportedly one element of a “sweeping” federal investigation to find out who leaked classified information about a failed Al-Qaeda plot to bomb an American airliner. Now, the Obama administration has reportedly apologized to Israel for another leak of classified information to the media, one that occurred earlier this month and which Israeli officials are concerned could place Israeli lives at risk. Israel Radio’s diplomatic correspondent Chico Menashe reported Sunday morning (via the Jerusalem Post): American officials apologized to their Israeli counterparts for confirming that Israel was behind the airstrikes...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Dana in Columbus, Ohio, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: (background noise) Thank you so very much. I am calling because you mentioned earlier that no liberal would dare call and say that you're right or give any sort of credence to any conservative point of view. I want to tell you that -- as a soon-to-be-40 African-American woman who has been told my entire life to vote down the Democratic Party line -- I appreciate your point of view, and I appreciate you staying firmly behind your beliefs. Because over the past...

See the video of the exchange via the link DAN PFEIFFER, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR: The point that our Chief of Staff is making is that this is the Republican playbook here which is try, when they don't have a positive agenda, try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings and false allegations. We're not going to let that distract us and the President from actually doing the people's work and fighting for the middle class. BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: You know, I don’t want to compare this in any way to Watergate. I do...

Sometime near the end of the twelfth century, a wealthy young man named Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone came upon a shepherd driving his flock to market. And apparently for the sheer joy of it — the extravagant pleasure of saving those sheep from slaughter — the young man promptly bought the entire flock, led the sheep out to open meadows, and set them free.This is the man everyone knows as St. Francis of Assisi (ca. 1182–1226) — namesake of the newly elected pope, a saint beloved throughout the world, even by people who have nothing to do with the Catholic...

Forty-six years after being killed in action, the U.S. Navy honored Lt. Dennis Peterson of Huntington Park during an interment ceremony on May 2. Lt. Peterson was 27 when he left to serve in the Vietnam War on March 27, 1967.

Benghazi. The IRS targeting the Tea Party. Feds snooping on the Associated Press. These dizzying controversies around the Obama administration all carry the same lesson: Watch what you say. On Benghazi, set aside for a moment the dust-ups over State Department officials changing talking points, White House officials misleading the media, and congressional Republicans misrepresenting administration emails. Go back to what the administration was saying just after the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facility. Many administration officials -- although they may have known better -- blamed the attack, and thus the death of four Americans, on...

FBI agents die in Virginia training accidentPair of agents from elite hostage rescue team (excerpt)

President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years. “Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.” The President’s outrage only increased, he said, when he “recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice.” “The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more...

Everyone who thinks one of these scandals will remove Obama from the White House is sadly mistaken. Let's look at Nixon to see what it takes to remove a President. In Nixon's case, it took a well prepared and knowledgeable witness John Dean, a lot of tape recordings, a press that hated Nixon, and a political party that was the same as the president and somewhat honest and fair minded. In Obama's case, we have nothing close to John Dean, we have no recordings, the media still likes Obama and the democrat party is ruthless and corrupt as the mafia....