Free Republic

One of the critical firewalls for the Romney campaign in 2012 was the (apparently mistaken) belief that Florida voters had turned sour on President Obama. The state’s demographics, including a surging older population seemed to seal the deal. In the RealClearPolitics final poll of polls before the election, Romney led by a small but significant 1.5%. In three of the six last polls, he led by as much as 6%, with one tied and Obama up in two polls by 1% and 2% respectively. However, when the votes started pouring in, a different story was told. There was Karl Rove’s...

Venezuela’s Tarek El-Aissami The Americas Report | Oct 03, 2008  By Nicole Ferrand [...] Mr. El - Aissami is a Venezuelan national of Syrian descent who, before becoming Minster of Interior and Justice, occupied the position of Deputy Interior Minister for Public Security. His father, Carlos Aissami, is the head of the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath political party. Before the invasion of Iraq, he held a press conference in which he described himself as a Taliban and called Osama Bin Laden, "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden." Tarek's great-uncle Shibli el-Aissami was a prominent ideologist and...

(CNSNews.com) – Vice-President Joe Biden’s stinging assessment that Sunni allies had been “our largest problem” in fueling extremism in Syria – comments for which he has now apologized – are in contrast to remarks he made two years ago when he said the U.S. was “working hand in glove” with those countries on Syria. Back then, Biden assured Americans that the administration and Sunni nations in the region were closely cooperating in their response to the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad. “We are working hand in glove with the Turks, with the Jordanians, with the Saudis and with all...

The Democrats and the institutional left have a new political tool that allows them virtually to ignore moderates yet still win elections. This tool, the Catalist database, was employed in the 2012 election. That election defied conventional wisdom: Mitt Romney sought and won independent voters overwhelmingly, but still lost. If you wondered why the conventional wisdom about independents and moderates didn’t seem so wise in 2012, the answer is Catalist. Beyond winning elections, Catalist also allows the Democrats to turn the policy narrative upside down and suffer no political consequence for implementing radical policies which appeal to their base. The...

You’ve seen the story of the Mike Brown family autopsy, and the grand press conference they produced to deliver it to the public. But a closer look points out why the Scheme Team actually used New York Times Frances Robles to deliver the ruse: Frances worked with the Scheme Team in 2012 (2012 bio below) while she was at the Miami Herald and was part of their inner circle of media types willing to sell the Trayvon Story. The actual truth appears to be – a rather controversial person Shawn Parcells, who is NOT a forensic pathologist, was used by...

Those were the days. It was June, 2011. 24,000 pages of former Gov. Sarah Palin’s emails were released by the state of Alaska. She had resigned as governor nearly two years before, and was by then a happy private citizen. The media were so interested in getting into every nook and cranny of those emails that they facilitated their release, and then crowdsourced processing them. The Guardian even published a guide. “We think it’s important to get the documents out into the world as soon as possible and see what you think about them – just like we did with...

In the summer of 2012, Michele Bachmann and four other House members sent a letter to the Inspector-Generals of key government agencies asking them to open an investigation into possible Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.The letter to the Department of State specifically raised concerns over Huma Abedin, then-Deputy Chief of Staff and top personal aide to the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The letter stated that Abedin “has three family members—her late father, her mother, and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations,” and noted that the Department of State had “taken actions recently that have...

Bill O’Reilly said there’s no question that the White House misrepresented the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack in Benghazi. Five days after the attack, then-Ambassador Susan Rice told the world that the attack was not pre-planned and was a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video. “That was not true, that was not even close to being true,” O’Reilly said. According to a White House memo obtained by Judicial Watch, Ben Rhodes sent an email to prep Rice about the attack, listing the following two goals:

IRS employees encouraged taxpayers to vote for President Obama during his 2012 reelection campaign and disparaged Republicans, a federal ethics watchdog said Wednesday. One IRS customer representative urged people calling into the agency to vote for Obama by “repeatedly reciting a chant based on the spelling of his last name,” the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said in its announcement. The office is responsible for investigating cases in which people violate the Hatch Act, which bans federal employees from engaging in partisan campaign activities. In that case, officials are “seeking significant disciplinary action.” A Kentucky-based tax advisory specialist was also...

Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth's magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet. That blast knocked out the telegraph system across the United States, according to University of California, Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann. "Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have...

The Muslim terrorist group Qa’adat el-Jihad claimed responsibility Saturday for a terrorist bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria. The bombing in Bulgaria last week killed five Israelis, one a pregnant woman. The Lebanese paper El-Nashra reported that the group, which has ties to Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility in an email to the Arab press.

<p>MILAN (AP) — Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirm that names of two nationals listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysian airlines flight match passports reported stolen in Thailand.</p> <p>Italy's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that an Italian man whose name was listed as being aboard is traveling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane.</p>

GAHANNA, Ohio -- Late Tuesday night, the pundits on TV began jabbering incomprehensibly along the lines of, "What does it mean?" The American people -- or, at the very least, a sufficient plurality of them -- decided that they want another four years of clumsy policy failures and vengeful "progressivism," as Democrats nowadays describe their agenda for wrecking what remains of our constitutional republic. Even before the unmitigated political disaster of November 6, 2012, a date that will live in infamy, the prospects of salvaging the United States were not particularly hopeful. Now, however, we are permanently and irretrievably screwed....

<p>Los Angeles gang members have joined the fray in Syria. The gang-bangers are reportedly fighting alongside the regime forces.</p> <p>MEMRI posted the transcript.</p> <p>A video-clip recently posted on the Internet shows two Armenian Power gang members from Los Angeles fighting in Syria. One of them, Wino Ayee Peeyakan, also posted a picture of himself in Hizbullah garb on his Facebook page.</p>

SNIPPET: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg is among four people who have been arrested on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences, police have said. Mr Begg, 45, who was held by the US authorities for almost three years, was arrested earlier with two other men and a woman in the West Midlands. He was detained on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas." SNIPPET: "Mr Begg was arrested in Hall Green in Birmingham. The other people arrested - a 36-year-old man from Shirley, a 44-year-old woman and her son, 20, both from Sparkhill - are being...

CHILLIWACK, B.C. — A former British Columbia hang-glider pilot whose passenger fell 300 metres to her death during a flight that was an anniversary gift pleaded guilty Friday to criminal negligence causing death. William Jon Orders was charged in the death of 27-year-old Lenami Godinez-Avila, who plunged from Orders’ hang glider shortly after takeoff during a flight above B.C.’s Fraser Valley on April 28, 2012. Orders was also charged with obstruction of justice over allegations he swallowed a memory card that may have contained video of the incident. It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen to that charge.

Like my PJ colleague, Victor Davis Hanson, I too am pessimistic about the future of our country. Like many of us, I fell into the trap of thinking that, during the election of 2012, the country would somehow come to its senses and evict from the White House an obviously unqualified charlatan with a threadbare act, and that we would begin the slow restoration of Foundational values to the Republic. Andy McCarthy, Roger Simon, Victor, Roger Kimball, Dr. Helen, J. Christian Adams — all wrong. And these are not stupid people; neither is Michael Barone, who also fell on his...

A new documentary about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney premiered Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The film, "Mitt," is an extraordinarily intimate look at the former Massachusetts governor as he ran for president twice, in 2008 and 2012. Director Greg Whiteley had impressed Romney with his 2005 documentary "New York Doll," which brilliantly chronicled a broken-down rock musician's conversion to Mormonism, and for the new film, Romney gave Whiteley unprecedented freedom to record behind-the-scenes moments as the candidate and his family endured the trials of two presidential campaigns..... the old lack of confidence came out again...

Vice President Biden’s national security adviser met with Iranian officials as far back as the summer of 2012, a new report reveals. Jake Sullivan secretly traveled to Oman in July 2012 to meet with Iranian officials, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. This would mark one of the earliest in-person meetings the U.S. held with Iran in recent years. Sullivan joined the State Department in 2009 and served under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as deputy chief of staff for policy. Although he moved to the White House in February, he continued to partake in backchannel discussions with Iran. The AP...

Why I believe the Rapture of the Church will take place between December 25, 2013, and January 4, 2014 The Lord has been giving me pieces to a puzzle for the last 13 years, leading me to the date for the firstfruits Rapture of the Church. The puzzle ends between December 25, 2013, and January 4, 2014. I very strongly believe that the Rapture will take place on January 3/4, 2014. However, it is possible that the puzzle can end as early as December 25, 2013.