Free Republic

When analyzing Barack Obama’s electoral success a few years back, I pointed out that there was more than white guilt at work. He was, quite frankly, what every good little liberal had always been looking for. Sure, he was “black,” using that old bigoted “one-drop” standard, which, curiously, has been embraced by modern black activists. But more specifically he was half black, with Kenyan pedigree, half white and bore an exotic name. He was mentored by a Marxist, mothered by an atheist (when Momma Dunham was actually around), lived in Indonesia and Hawaii, had Muslim influence and black-church conscience. An...

In a shocking interview yesterday on the Sean Hannity Radio Show, author Ed Klein said Barack Obama’s former pastor helped Obama accept Christianity without having to renounce Islam. The Daily Caller reported: Klein also said Wright told him he “made it comfortable” for Obama to accept Christianity without having renounce his “Islamic background,” which Klein said he has on tape. -snip- Klein spoke more on this in a separate interview with NewsMax: Klein says Obama originally sought out Wright to discuss community activism. “Quickly the conversations turned from picking up garbage on the street and getting streetlights put up on...

John Edwards apparently didn't think too highly of his mistress. According to testimony Tuesday from Edwards' former top confidante, the ex-senator didn't give himself great odds when he doubted that he was the father of Rielle Hunter's unborn child. "He said that she was a crazy slut, and it was a one-in-three chance that it was his child," Young testified. Whether or not those were the odds, Edwards made a bad bet. After denying for months that he was the father, even after he copped to the affair, Edwards has acknowledged paternity for their daughter who is now 4 years...

The Daily Caller noted that in President Obama’s best-selling memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” the president recalls being fed dog meat as a young boy in Indonesia with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.

Disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards has reportedly decided to have another child with the woman who destroyed his marriage. Rielle Hunter is reportedly hoping to become pregnant before Edwards' trial in April, after which he could be sentenced to up to 30 years in jail. Edwards, who has four children from his 33-year marriage to his late wife Elizabeth, already has a daughter with Hunter, four-year-old Quinn. The couple has now decided to have another baby as 48-year-old Hunter's 'biological clock is ticking loudly', the National Enquirer reported. 'She's made having another baby a top priority,' a source...

The president of the National Organization of Women actually rose to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s defense yesterday (didn’t see that coming!), while Newsweek editor Tina Brown tried to justify the “Crazy Eyes� cover that inspired so much conservative commentary yesterday. But one person seem disinclined to talk about the cover one way or another and that was Bachmann herself. As of yesterday afternoon, Bachmann still hadn’t seen the picture and she didn’t seem to care too much to talk about it when she could be talking about her campaign and her ideas for the country: Brown claims the cover is OK...

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out-of-bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man. "Who has ever called a man 'The King...

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out of bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women (NOW) President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man.

NBC's Tina Fey guest-hosted "Saturday Night Live" last evening, and viewers could hardly be surprised her network took the opportunity to once again use her to bash former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. In a mock Republican presidential candidates debate, before depicting Palin as an idiot that doesn't fully understand English, Fey did manage to take a humorous swipe at the soon to be exiting CBS "Evening News" host saying, "I want to acknowledge that this week we finally vanquished one of the world's great villains, and I for one am thrilled to say good riddance to Katie Couric" (video follows...

Check out the first photo of Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in the upcoming HBO film "Game Change."

No Forgiveness for John Edwards The National Enquirer reports that when John Edwards realized that the end was near he begged his betrayed wife for forgiveness, but Elizabeth refused to relent. On her deathbed, a hurt, angry Elizabeth screamed at John, saying ‘You ruined my life — I’ll NEVER forgive you!’ Reports say that John Edwards repeatedly broke down in tears, and actually doubled over with grief at Elizabeth’s bedside. But she showed John no remorse. Nothing he said could change Elizabeth’s mind. The only concession Elizabeth was willing to grant her cheating husband was to pray with him that...

A New York Times Columnist, Paul Krugman, touched the third rail of Obamacare Sunday, while on ABC's 'This Week' when he made a statement confirming the need for 'death panels' as a means of containing health care costs (see video). Krugman is not the first person who has advocated the use of 'death panels' and yet liberals excoriated Sarah Palin for pointing out that the Obamacare bill contains what many on the left have said needed to be done. During the discussion, which was about the Deficit Commission's recent recommendations on cutting expenses, Krugman made his statement in response to...

But it's up to the Bureau of Prisons to determine whether he gets the 1 year in a halfway house or a penitentiary.

With Obama visiting Indonesia today, the New York Times has a story that is just chock-full of interesting tidbits about Obama's time living there as a child in the late 1960s. For example, the Times reports that back then Obama was "chubby" and that some of the locals referred to him as "the boy who walks like a duck." Then, of course, there's this: His nanny was an openly gay man who, in keeping with Indonesia's relaxed attitudes toward homosexuality, carried on an affair with a local butcher, longtime residents said. The nanny later joined a group of transvestites called...

This could confirm what many suspected all along - the corporate heads at General Electric (NYSE:GE) would try to use their media holdings to portray President Barack Obama and his administration in a positive light in order to gain a corporate advantage. That's how former CNBC reporter and current Fox Business Network senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino explains it in his forthcoming book, "Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street." According to Gasparino, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt had "helped his company feast off of the subsidies of Obamanomics," including the green energy initiatives and health...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Racism may be less of a factor in politics than other realms of life, according to a new University of Florida study, which found few white voters in Florida to be upset by the presidential candidacy of a black man, and many to be proud of it. To assess attitudes among white voters in a southern state about Barack Obama's historic election to the presidency, two UF political scientists analyzed results from four statewide telephone surveys -- each involving between 449 and 829 respondents – conducted in the fall of 2008 and spring of 2009. Their study...

JournoList was an email group of approximately 400 journalists, bloggers and academics, who reportedly worked to influence news reporting in favor of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party during and after the 2008 Presidential elections. The latest list of alleged "Journolistas" has turned up a very interesting name - Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect. This man is no basement blogger or CNN hack, he is the author of two books on the President and is connected to some of Obama's most influential enablers. Robert Kuttner's March 2008 "Obama's Challenge:American's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency" is...

The following 75 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect 2. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent 3. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly 4. David Dayen - FireDogLake 5. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect 6. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker 7. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America 8. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University 9. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect...

The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30....

f any large publication stands to suffer from the JournoList controversy, it’s the Washington Post. The paper hired JournoList founder Ezra Klein from the left-wing publication The American Prospect, and Klein continued to run JournoList while at the Post. In June, the paper quickly accepted the resignation of David Weigel, whom it hired from the left-wing publication The Washington Independent, over comments made on JournoList. (Klein announced he was shutting down the list-serv shortly thereafter.) It is not known whether other Post writers, some of whom also came to the paper from left-wing publications, took part in JournoList; I have...

For a long time, while the bias in the media has always been obvious, I’ve always assumed that it was something in the water around the media coolers — that these people all lived in a self-reinforcing cocoon, marinating in confirmation bias, in which the correct attitudes were subtly rewarded and the incorrect ones not-so-subtly punished. If someone had told me that they actively conspired to drive the message, trumpet and even make up stories that served their narrative, and suppress those that didn’t, or undermined it, I would have said that it was both unnecessary and that even they...

It’s encouraging for commonsense conservatives who are frustrated with media cover-ups and biases to see truth revealed. Remember the infamous “JournoList” – the listserv chat group of hundreds of “prominent” mainstream media personalities? It seems The Daily Caller obtained copies of the JournoList email exchanges from the 2008 campaign having to do with the media’s coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, then candidate Obama’s pastor of 20 years. It’s everything you may have suspected. This, in the words of one JournoList member: “I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump...

CNN has been marketing themselves as the "unbiased, neither left or right" news network. Yet, you have this quote from the Hotair story about the JOURNOLIST listsrv: "Update: But was the campaign effective? Ed Driscoll put together a video showing the correlation of this effort on Journolist and the declaration by CNN that it would be a “Wright-free zone.” Correlation isn’t causation, but this is a pretty interesting juxtaposition." It is clear that CNN was influenced by the JOURNOLIST effort, but you don't get this kind of results without someone on the inside (working for CNN) actively participating. So here...

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –...

| Print Article | | Share July 19, 2010We know more about the Tiger Woods sex scandal than our own presidentMonty Pelerin The cornerstone of a democracy or any representative government is an informed public. The U.S. Founding Fathers recognized the importance of an enlightened citizenry and saw fit to codify it in the very First Amendment. How important they considered the press is apparent when is is recognized that they provided it equal protection to religion, freedom of speech, assembly and petition: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or...

Estranged aide to John Edwards reaches movie dealBy MIKE BAKER 9:18 a.m., Friday, July 16, 2010 RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - An insider's account of John Edwards' affair and the lengths he went to hide his mistress will be developed into a movie, a former aide to the two-time presidential candidate said Thursday. Andrew Young said that he has reached a deal with writer and producer Aaron Sorkin. He declined to discuss the terms of the agreement, but Sorkin confirmed he had acquired the rights to Young's book, "The Politician." "This is a first-hand account of an extraordinary story filled with...

A group of lifelong Democrats recently produced a compelling documentary allleging rampant voter fraud by the Obama campaign during the 2008 election. Doug Ross reported: Referring to the controversial 2008 Democrat presidential primary, Carolyn Tackett asks, “Was Barack Obama selected rather than elected?.” Fox & Friends had an explosive interview with Gigi Gaston, a writer/director who has made a documentary outlining the rampant voter fraud perpetrated by the Obama campaign during the 2008 primaries against Hillary Clinton. Gaston is a lifelong Democrat whose grandfather was a Democratic governor of Massachusetts… Gaston is not some partisan hack but someone who cares...

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — During the latest episode of the battle over a sex tape showing ex-presidential candidate John Edwards being less than presidential, Judge Carl Fox stopped with a quizzical look. Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer with whom Edwards had an extramarital affair and a child, claims the tape is hers and wants it back from Andrew Young, the former Edwards aide who wrote a tell-all book about the politician's quest for the White House. At a hearing in Orange County Superior Court on Wednesday, lawyers for Young argued that Hunter had no claim to it. They contended the video...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Levi Johnston has acknowledged telling lies about Sarah Palin and her family after splitting with the former Alaska governor's daughter last year. The 20-year-old tells People magazine in an online story posted Tuesday that since his untrue statements were made in public, "I owe it to the Palins to publicly apologize."

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Ashley Taylor told Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that it was not just white voters who were intimidated by the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia during the 2008 election year. He talks about a black Republican poll watcher who was also harassed by the Black Panthers who were standing in front of a Philadelphia polling station. "There is a black victim that is often ignored. He was an African-American male, an older gentlemen who lived in the neighborhood in that part of Philadelphia, who was a poll watcher and happened to be a Republican poll watcher,..."

BIDEN: "I think Americans will recognize that there aren’t body counts . . .that they got 95,000 people home." Vice President Joe, Joey Buttafuoco, "Bite-me", Biden says there are no body counts from the Iraq war! We all know he's an idiot, but this one perhaps takes the cake. WTH is he talking about? Remember all the Bush Death Counts the left kept when it was Bush's war?... Hey Joey, there are indeed body counts. There are thousands of lives that have been lost, and many more that have been changed forever due to the sacrifices those in our military...

Portland police will investigate accusations that Al Gore groped woman Published: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 4:55 PM Updated: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 5:03 PM The Oregonian A Portland massage therapist accused former Vice President Al Gore of "unwanted sexual contact" at a hotel during an October 2006 visit, but no charges were filed due to lack of evidence, law officials said last week. Today, Portland police officials say they will reopen the investigation. Portland police announced today that it will re-open and investigate a Portland massage therapist’s allegations that former Vice President Al Gore sexually assaulted her at a downtown...

The Washington Post is now reporting the Al Gore-Redheaded Masseuse story. Surprisingly, they track how the National Enquirer report relied "heavily" on the documents behind the accusation, and point out the care taken before letting the story go to press. Gore and his attorneys have been trying to sweep this under the rug since 2007 and again in 2008. There can hardly be an "I don't remember" defense.

The former Civil Rights Division lawyer who quit the Justice Department after he was denied permission to speak about his work on a controversial voter intimidation case will testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights next month.J. Christian Adams at a Federalist Society meeting in Washington in November (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice). J. Christian Adams, the lead attorney on a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, resigned from the Justice Department on June 4.Adams’ lawyer said earlier this month that his client planned to cooperate with the commission.The...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is asking supporters for contributions to help prevent the "subpoenas and investigations" that would result from a GOP majority. In a fundraising letter for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Pelosi says if Republicans take back the House, they'll initiate "endless investigations against President Obama" and "bring back the days of Ken Starr and the politics of personal destruction." "Remember a Republican-controlled Congress that devoted more time to subpoenas and investigations than to solving our country's problems?" Pelosi asks. "There is far too much at stake for our country now to allow it to happen again." Rep....

Obama has apparently confirmed what many have suspected since the presidential campaign: that he is a Muslim, not a “committed Christian,” as he professed during the presidential campaign. The periodical Israel Today has reported that in a private meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Obama told Gheit that he is a Muslim. The exchange was aired on Nile TV.

Sarah Palin's next-door neighbor sought out author Joe McGinniss as a tenant, McGinniss's son said. "No one is stalking anyone," Joe McGinniss, Jr., a novelist whose father is the non-fiction writer, wrote in response to an email from a Palin supporter who confused his email address and his father's. (He shared the email with me.) "A woman was renting her house and sought out the author because the Palins had crossed her (owed her money for renovations she had done at their request and never paid her for). So she knew McGinniss was writing the book and found him and...

When the first Congress passed the Bill of Rights, it left no ambiguity about whether future Congresses could enact laws prohibiting Americans from speaking. "Congress," says the First Amendment, "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But the basic meaning of the First Amendment was very much at issue last March, when the Supreme Court initially heard arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The immediate question in that case was whether the FEC had been correct in preventing Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, from using cable Video on Demand to distribute...

KNOXVILLE — A federal jury this afternoon convicted Sarah Palin e-mail intruder David C. Kernell of felony destruction of records to hamper a federal investigation and misdemeanor unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer. The jury acquitted Kernell, 22, of wire fraud. It remains deadlocked on felony identity theft. It’s unclear if U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips will order the jurors, in their fourth day of deliberations, to continue.

Despite many people telling her it wasn’t the best idea to sit down with Oprah Winfrey for an interview, Rielle Hunter - politician John Edwards' mistress - decided to do it anyway. "I feel in my heart it’s the right thing to do," Hunter said Thursday, especially now that "Johnny," as she calls him, has admitted paternity of their daughter, Frances Quinn. Hunter said she wanted to set the facts straight about who she is, and that while she understands the judgment that has been heaped upon her, she doesn’t see herself as a home wrecker or gold digger, she...

As a federal jury began a third day of deliberating, it shows no sign a verdict is near in the trial of a former University of Tennessee student accused of hacking Sarah Palin's e-mail. There were no smiles among the six women and six men when they came back into court Wednesday after deliberating four felony charges against 22-year-old David Kernell. Palin's e-mail was hacked shortly after she was picked in 2008 to be on the Republican presidential ticket.

Campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs employees to President Obama are nearly seven times as much as President Bush received from Enron workers, according to numbers on OpenSecrets.org. President Bush's connections to Enron were well-hyped during the company's accounting debacle that rippled through the economy. Time magazine even had an article called, "Bush's Enron Problem." The Associated Press ran with the headline, "Bush-backing Enron makes big money off crisis." David Callaway wrote that Enron for Bush was worse than Whitewater for Clinton. But the mere $151,722.42 (inflation adjusted) in contributions from Enron-affiliated executives, employees, and PACs to Bush hardly add up...

KNOXVILLE, TN (WMC-TV) - Trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday in the case of a Germantown High School graduate who is accused of hacking into Sarah Palin's email account. Monday, David Kernell and his attorneys left a pre-trial hearing at the federal courthouse in Knoxville without commenting.

You may not remember this but way back in 2008 it was cool to be a Birther. That’s right even the mainstream media in 2008 were Birthers. They openly questioned whether or not a presidential candidate was qualified under the second amendment of the Constitutional to be president of the United States of America.(see article) Of course that presidential candidate wasn’t technically born in the United States of America. So one of those radical Birthers filed one of many lawsuits that were filed to protect the constitution and block a potential usurper from becoming president of the United States of...

The ultimate fall from grace, a Federal grand jury is about to indict John Edwards, The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively. In another shocker, close sources say Edwards' estranged wife Elizabeth could help send the former presidential candidate to jail! Edwards, the disgraced two-time Presidential loser, is being investigated by the feds, including the FBI and IRS, for possible campaign violations related to paying his mistress Rielle Hunter. The grand jury has been meeting since April 2009, and insiders say an indictment is imminent. "John is terrified that he's going to be indicted," a friend told The ENQUIRER. "While he believes...

A Guided Tour of John Edwards and Rielle Hunter's Future Love DenBy Maureen O'Connor The National Enquirer says John Edwards proposed to Rielle Hunter and is buying a $3.5M beach house. Now that we've found the real estate listing, a guide to the custom mahogany cabinetry (that's yuppie for "marital bliss") that lies ahead. The Enquirer's print edition included two photos from this listing with Bald Head Island Real Estate (which is, according to its website, the only real estate firm serving the North Carolina beach community), which is the only Bald Head property currently listed for $3.5 million. Since...

Andrew Sullivan devoted some space today to explaining why he is so (sometimes disturbingly) relentless in his criticism of Sarah Palin and yet, in hindsight, dropped the ball where John Edwards was concerned (no pun intended). Says Sullivan: So why did I let it go? My first reason is my leeriness of investigating people’s sex lives. I had my own ransacked a decade ago and it was a brutalizing experience. The exposure of such intimate thing coarsens our discourse, violates human dignity and should, in my view, be done only if massive hypocrisy is on the table and the person...

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag released a statement Wednesday about the birth of a daughter out-of-wedlock. The mother of Tatiana Zoe is Orszag's former girlfriend, Claire Milonas. She gave birth on Nov. 17, months after she and Orszag broke off their relationship. Orszag has since become engaged to ABC News reporter Bianna Golodryga, whom he met in April at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington. The joint statement from Orszag and Milonas said the two were in a committed relationship until the spring of 2009. “In November, Claire gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Although we...