Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney finally released his tax returns last week, revealing that less than 14 percent in federal taxes was paid, of his more than $20 million income earned last year. Once again, the question Warren Buffett first asked this past summer is being raised: Why do the super wealthy in this country pay less in taxes than the working class? How do people making millions of dollars a year pay roughly 15 percent in taxes, while someone with a salary of $100,000 per year will pay as much as 28 percent in taxes? This is because of...

President Barack Obama painted the state of the union as strong and safe in his third address to the nation, but glossed over solutions to some of the nation's biggest problems. The President, running for reelection, touched base on all major issues including the economy, energy, regulation, immigration and education. He exuded confidence and laid out many points he is expected to hit on the campaign trail. Although Obama has failed in the past at every attempt to work with the Republicans in the Congress, he still attempted to reach out to the opposition. Most Republicans and Democrats could agree...

Salman Rushdie, the author of “The Satanic Verses”, was quietly deleted from India’s Jaipur Literature Festival after the protests of the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary – one of Islam’s most powerful bodies. Rushdie went into hiding after the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian Shia leader, issued a fatwa calling for his death. Rushdie’s saga is now, in many parts of the Islamic world, associated with a “Zionist plot” and the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a short book concocted by the czarist police and presented as minutes of a secret meeting where Jews plotted world domination. According to...

The leading Republican candidates made their last-minute blitz for supporters in Iowa. They each personalized their credentials. The election struggle was a classic, with the candidates trying to out-rival each other over their dedication to conservatism. A call for smaller government, lower taxes, and balancing the budget topped the agendas of nearly all the ultra-conservative candidates. One wonders why they seek to be at the helm of a powerless federal government. Candidate Ron Paul hopes to eliminate the Social Security system, which has been in effect since 1935 when former President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the Social Security Act in...

”When Al- Qaeda attacked our country on 9-11, Ron Paul told us the CIA was behind it. And that Bush and Cheney knew about the attack in advance.” That is a quote from ex-Ron Paul staffer and confidant Eric Dondero about Ron Paul. Eric called Paul ”the original 9-11 truther”. This makes sense on so many fronts. When Congress was getting ready to vote on a military response in Afghanistan, Ron Paul initially OPPOSED responding to the attack, and expressed no concern about those who died that day. In fact, his only concern was that this attack would be used...

Hitchens had a serious problem with Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism. The universal encomia for the departure of Christopher Hitchens, the most celebrated atheist in the world, has been matched only by the earlier demise of Apple’s guru, Steve Jobs. Some of Hitchens’ praise is deserved, since he had been an exception in the leftist debacle after 9/11. But Hitchens had a serious problem with Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism. Despite the well known fact that the journalistic superstar boosted a deadly Judeophobic propaganda, Hitchens was given a pass by many US Jews for the anti-Semitic cheap shots about Israel just because...

Ron Paul's latest flap over a series of racist newsletters has won him the support of a group no politician wants on their side: White supremacists. And it's not the first time, either. The Republican presidential candidate is a perennial favorite among those on the white supremacist message board Stormfront, where he's getting all kinds of unabashed support for his campaign, his newsletters, and his political persona in general. Paul has already said he doesn't want white supremacists' support. But like it or not, he's got it. And stories like the newsletter thing really seem to lock that support down...

Pioneering White House correspondent Helen Thomas told a National Press Club audience Dec. 7 that the country is endangered by what she called government leaders' greed, fear, and subservience to war-mongers. “I came here in 1943,” she told a dinner audience of 30, “and I don’t think I’ve ever seen our country so bereft of ideals and ideas. I don’t see anything on the horizon that can pull us out. I hope I’m wrong.” Shown at left in a 2009 photo courtesy of Wikipeda, she described current leaders as weak and selfish. The self-described liberal doled out criticism to all...

The U.S. is pulling its troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. Well, not quite.There will still be a large group of soldiers left behind to train Iraqis and to repair the war-damaged sites. Now, will someone from the White House hierarchy, past or present, please tell the American people why we invaded Iraq in March 2003? The truth and nothing but the truth - that will be the day. Why are we still speculating on the reasons we went to war in the first place, other than to hunt down and kill Saddam Hussein, the brutal...

U.S. leaders haven't spoken of disarmament lately. Why not? Iran is on the verge of creating a nuclear weapon. This is bad news for the U.S. and Israel, who have warned Tehran against holding nuclear power. The U.S. needs to step in and mollify at the crucial moment. Israel has been able to sabotage any Iranian progress in developing nuclear prowess, but no one has produced a key to a more peaceful route to reconciliation. So where are the peacemakers? Israel wants the U.S. to step in or even lead the way to block Iran's new nuclear ambitions. Iran, which...

We’ve been reporting on the Occupy Wall St. protesters for some time now, but we haven’t seen any signs of racism. Until now. But are they the ramblings of a disturbed man? National Review correspondent Charles Cooke posted video Tuesday of a young man berating an older Jewish man, calling him a bum (it seems in response to being called the same term), mocking him by asking him if he speaks English, and telling him to “go back to Israel.” Cooke describes the exchange: Moments after I arrived, I saw a Jewish gentleman being berated when he criticized a protester....

Judging by the comments for the post, it would seem that a nexus of support for Ron Paul and Louis Farrakhan has coalesced around conspiracy theories concerning Jewish political power and banks.  Among other artifacts of extremism found in the discussion attached to the post is a link to an article in the Nation of Islam's official newspaper, The Final Call, spinning a conspiracy theory blaming the popular uprising against Qaddafi not on an expression of Arab Spring revolutionary spirit, but (predictably) on a conspiracy of bankers upset about Qaddafi's monetary policies.  (Read here.)  The Final Call article fails...

Republican congressman Ron Paul says the US is aiding and abetting Israel in Gaza through its financial and military support for Tel Aviv. "The weapons being used to kill so many Palestinians are American weapons, and American funds, essentially, are being used for this," said the congressman Friday. Israel launched an all-out war against the Gaza Strip and its democratically-elected ruler, the Hamas movement, to put an end to rocket attacks against southern Israel. At least 821 Palestinians have been killed during the operation and some 3,330 others are reported wounded. At least 10 Israeli troops have been killed during...

At 3:22 p.m., I posted this photo of Vice President Joe Biden and Shimon Peres, with an accompanying caption that indicated it had been taken last year in Jerusalem, Israel: The point of posting the photo was to show that, although the State Department refuses to say that Jerusalem is in Israel, even the White House website acknowledges this elementary truth (at least for Western Jerusalem, west of the 1949 armistic lines). But not any more. Within two hours of posting, the White House has apparently gone through its website, cleansing any reference to

I’ve been puzzled ever since Obama first started campaigning for president. Why do Jews support him? It cannot be their love for learning influenced by his great grades in any of his colleges. He has refused to disclose them. So it’s, Oh! Who cares about them? “He had to do well to become editor and chief of the Harvard Law Review,” they chirp. Actually, he was the president of the HLR, and he was appointed to that position. It couldn’t be because of his great record in the Illinois Senate. He never initiated a bill and merely voted a majority...

President Barack Obama is finally setting goals to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's about time. Americans are coming around to the futility of all that killing and dying. The timetables are admittedly loose and flexible. Some interests would keep us in the hostile sites forever. We still have troops in Japan and Germany - thousands of soldiers are still there, so many years after World War II ended. We also have 700 military outposts around the world, some big and some small. Why? We have yet to hear the real reason we invaded Iraq. I have heard several...

Last week I posted on a clearly antisemitic piece of legislation in San Francisco and Santa Monica banning the Jewish religious tradition of circumcision. Judenrein in Sunny Southern California: Banning Male Circumcision. America, this is getting very, very ugly. Male circumcision is significantly healthier with or without the important religious significance. The Islamic practice of female genital mutilation (cutting off the clitoris) is sick misogyny. To equate the two is officially legislating Jew-hatred. Any doubt this was motivated by hatred and racism? Zombie over at PJM: Proof that S.F.’s circumcision ban is anti-Semitic As you may have heard by now,...

President Barack Obama took a giant and courageous step when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to call. He literally told the Israeli leader where to jump. Actually, he told Netanyahu that the 1967 borders should be the starting point for peace negotiations with Palestinian leaders. As expected, the Israeli leader rejected the proposal outright. Why? Because of the "facts on the ground" - facts incidentally created by the Israelis, who have illegally usurped land and water from the Palestinians, by sheer military aggression. Israel now has 78 percent of Palestinian land, taken in violation of the international law that...

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a warm welcome from a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, freshman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) skipped out on the speech, staging what appeared to be a silent protest of America’s foreign aid to Israel. As senators gathered on the Senate floor before the address, Paul was spotted speaking to his staffers toward the back of the chamber. As the Senate procession across the Capitol began, the tea-party-backed senator quietly walked to his desk, sat down and began shuffling through papers and newspapers.

So many American Christians support Israel and all things Jewish. HERE is a peek at how these objects of our tender solicitude regard us.

Richard Goldstone’s stunning recantation of his war crimes accusation against the Jewish state has reverberated through the Jewish community here and in Israel. The U.S. reaction was mild; the British was worse, explicitly refusing to call for the revocation of the report. (You can understand why Israel doesn’t consider European countries to be honest peace brokers.) The legitimately pro-Israel groups were delighted by the retraction of Goldstone’s libel. David Harris of the American Jewish Committee told the Jerusalem Post: “Judge Goldstone should apologize to the State of Israel for the accusations of intentionally targeting civilians, which he now admits were...

President Obama has finally taken a stand in favor of the revolt of the masses in Libya. It's good and wise, but not, he said, a stand to depose of Muammar Gaddafi by military means. Obama hopes to force his ouster by other means. Obama's goals - using jet air strikes and missiles to help the out-gunned - is aimed at saving lives. "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries," Obama said in a national televised address Monday night, "but, the United States is different." He also noted that he was not...

As stories leak out regarding who was responsible for Barack Obama's sudden pivot from passivity regarding Libya towards military engagement (albeit with England and France being in the lead) one name has emerged as playing a key role in persuading him to push the button: Samantha Power. Her influence might cause qualms among supporters of the American-Israel relationship...Power has been critical of the strength of this friendship and alliance. This concern should be now be heightened. Not only has she emerged as a key player in foreign policy but the rationale that was used to justify American actions towards Libya...

Anti-semite centerfold By ALANA GOODMAN Veteran reporter Helen Thomas turned up in Playboy magazine this month (fully clothed, don’t worry) as part of her ongoing anti-Semitic publicity tour. The former “dean” of the White House Press Corps sat down for an interview about her recent controversy. “The Palestinian violence is to protect what little remains of Palestine. The suicide bombers act out of despair and desperation,” said Thomas, when asked about Palestinian terrorism against the Israelis. The 90-year-old reporter also took a shot at Holocaust-remembrance programs, insisting that Jews exploited the memory in order to persecute Palestinians. “Do the Jews...

Helen Thomas is not sorry, nor were the comments that ended her career accidental. “I knew exactly what I was doing – I was going for broke,” she told Playboy in the magazine’s April interview. “I had reached the point of no return. You finally get fed up … I finally wanted to speak the truth.” Thomas, of course, left her perch as the dean of the White House press corps last year after telling a rabbi and blogger that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.” Her...

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas told a national conference of campus journalists that President Obama owes her an apology for his criticism last year of her comments about Israel. "I want an apology from the president," Thomas, 90, said Tuesday to the hundreds of student journalists and their advisers attending the keynote session of the annual spring convention of College Media Advisers (CMA) at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. Shin Inouye, director of specialty media in the presidential press office, said the White House would not comment on Thomas' demand for a presidential apology.

THE JESSE LEE PETERSON RADIO SHOW TUNE INTO JESSE'S SHOW HERE 6 am to 9 am PST, 9 am to 12 pm EST BOND Action, Inc. has been created to educate, motivate and rally Americans to greater involvement in the moral, cultural and political issues that threaten our great country ”Rebuilding the Family by Rebuilding the Man”... BOND Action Inc. PO Box 35586 Los Angeles, CA 90035-0586 T: 1-877-WE ACT77 T: 1-877-932-2877 Buy this bumper sticker and support BOND! Click HERE ARCHIVE RADIO AND SUNDAY SERVICE… HERE

A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement. “The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move,” declared Schiller, who runs NPR’s foundation. In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing...

During an interview with Joy Behar last night, Helen Thomas made it clear that she was standing behind her statements that Israeli Jews should “go back” to Germany and Poland. However, she did make a couple of additions to the list of countries that Jews should “return” to, such as Russia and the United States. “They’ve been free ever since,” said Thomas, referring to the Jews after the Holocaust. “They didn’t have to go anywhere really, because they weren’t being persecuted anymore, but they were taking other people’s land.” A visibly uncomfortable Behar then asked Thomas whether she considered herself...

The fall of Helen Thomas has been a storied and sad tale and almost every day it seems like another chapter is added. An article by Michael Miner, which appeared in the March 3 Chicago Reader, detailed some of the fallout that occurred following the Society of Professional Journalists’ decision to retire its “Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement.” The story describes some of the internal friction within the SPJ over the decision to retire the award, but also pointed out Thomas’ reaction to that decision. It wasn’t pretty. (h/t Alana Goodman, Commentary magazine) According to Miner’s article, in a...

No stranger to controversy for speaking her mind, Rosie O'Donnell was one of the few to offer veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas comfort last summer, when Thomas retired under fire for speaking out against Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands in a manner that was falsely alleged to be anti-Semitic. O'Donnell sent Thomas, now age 90, flowers in sympathy for the highly upsetting incident and, along with President Jimmy Carter, was one of only a handful of her longtime colleagues and friends to reach out to her. So, it turned out to be quite the unexpected encounter at the studios...

PARIS (JTA) -- A video of fashion designer John Galliano saying he loves Hitler has emerged after he was suspended from the Christian Dior fashion house for allegedly harassing a couple, using anti-Semitic and racist slurs. The video, posted Monday on the website of the British The Sun newspaper, shows Galliano yelling at a different couple at the same cafe at a different time, and captures him saying "I love Hitler." He also tells the couple "People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f**king gassed." Last week's altercation, which resulted in Galliano's suspension, took...

I wasn’t going to write anything about Charlie Sheen’s career suicide this week, since I don’t watch Two and a Half Men or much episodic television at all these days. Sheen appeared on the Alex Jones radio show yesterday, not an unusual place for a Truther to make an appearance, and went on a bizarre-even-for-Sheen rant that included anti-Semitic comments about his show’s producer and co-creator, Chuck Lorre, calling him “Hymie Levine� (Levine is Lorre’s birth name). CBS responded by putting the show on hiatus the rest of the season, and probably won’t bring it back, at least not with...

News-Press columnist and legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas has had the name plate affixed to her historic front row center seat in the White House press briefing room returned, albeit mysteriously, the news outlet Mediaite has reported. The item disappeared last August with apparently no one in the White House press office or with the White House Correspondents Association aware of it. Last week, following the report that Thomas had been hired by the News-Press and is seeking a renewal of her White House press pass, the name plate has suddenly reappeared, equally mysteriously.

Why, at age 90, and after a devastating departure from her last job, is Helen Thomas returning to the battlefield of punditry? [SNIP] We spoke to Thomas on Friday, a day after she emerged from seven months of unwilling retirement with a new column in the weekly Falls Church News-Press. While she initially agreed to speak only about her new gig, Thomas was the one to bring up the circumstances that led to her downfall - her videotaped comments that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine." She told us her words were "distorted": "I didn't tell the Zionists...

This year, 2011, marks the beginning of baby boomers receiving Social Security checks and they should be alerted of past perennial Republican attempts to partially privatize the program. Heaven forbid that plans prevail to invest a certain amount of those checks in the stock market, as many pension plans have taken a bath in the current meltdown. While there have been past GOP plans to partially privatize the program, fortunately they have all failed. So far the Social Security trust fund remains tempting for the gamblers and other risk takers on the market. As a Detroiter, I remember the Great...

After a seven-month retirement, Helen Thomas has a new journalism gig: columnist for the Falls Church News-Press in Virginia, as the ARLnow blog in Arlington, Va., reports. The 90-year-old retired from Hearst newspapers in June after a media uproar over controversial comments she made about Israel. That move sent shock waves through the press corps and left White House reporters scrambling to see who'd get Thomas' front-row seat in the briefing room. So why'd the News-Press give her another chance?

Former White House correspondent and columnist Helen Thomas’s anti-Semitic remarks haven’t stopped the Society of Professional Journalists from eliminating or renaming its “Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award,” which recognizes individuals “for a lifetime of contribution to the journalism profession.” SPJ, which has come under fire for recommending that journalists use the phrase “undocumented workers” rather than “illegal immigrants,” still advertises the award named for the disgraced former Hearst Newspapers columnist. The group reportedly considered eliminating or renaming the award following Thomas’s original remarks — when she said Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” — but has yet to...

Public hearings would instead be used to drag unfavorables like Rush Limbaugh before the Commission to "explain how they justify" their availing themselves of their First Amendment rights. And to threaten their stations' broadcast licenses should they fail the FCC's definition of "justification."

Pro-Israel activists launch all-out war against Helen Thomas and American Arabs It is all out war between Jews and Arabs. Make no mistake about it. American Jewish organizations have launched a vicious campaign to silence Helen Thomas, the 91 year old, 80 pound champion of Palestinian and Arab rights who fearlessly has chosen to take on one of the most powerful organizations in America. Thomas has criticized and denounced Zionism, a political movement with headquarters in new York City. The purpose of the organization is to champion the interests of a foreign country, Israel.

Can't post the article due to copyright issues. So, here's a link: http://www.freep.com/article/20101208/NEWS01/101208012/Helen-Thomas-calls-group-s-criticism-of-opinions-intimidation-

Helen Thomas's latest may be too much for the Society of Professional Journalists. If your lifelong ambition is to win the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award from Detroit's Wayne State University, you might as well end it all now. Thomas's alma mater terminated the award Friday "after she made controversial remarks in Dearborn on Thursday... As you might expect, Thomas is not happy with Wayne State's decision. "The leaders of Wayne State University have made a mockery of the First Amendment and disgraced their understanding of its inherent freedom of speech and the press," she told the Free Press....

One sometimes wonders what the Dems would do if they didn't have Fox News to kick around anymore. Former president Jimmy Carter got in on the act this weekend telling Reliable Sources host Howie Kurtz that "Glenn Beck and others on Fox News, I think, have deliberately distorted the news." From the interview (video below): KURTZ: CNN started six months before you left office. Now, of course, cable news is a much bigger operation, three 24-hour channels. And you write in the "Afterward" to your book that, "To gain viewers, these 24-hour news channels have now come to rely on...

TEL AVIV - Former President Jimmy Carter told the Palestinian government he would work privately to push for U.S. and international sanctions against Israel, according to officials in the Palestinian Authority. Separately, Carter told Hamas leaders that he would lobby the Obama administration to open dialogue with the terrorist organization, Hamas officials in Gaza told WND.

President Carter Says Palestinians Live in a ‘Cage’

Historically, the structural and class bases of anti-Jewish feeling in Europe were inextricably linked with the ruling classes and the forces of reaction. The Catholic church propagated anti-Semitism as a matter of religious ideology as well as expediency. Landed aristocracy created the class of Jewish moneylenders, and then allied themselves with the peasants against their Jewish creditors. Reactionary regimes like the Tsarist Regime in Russia used the Jews as scapegoats for the ills of their society. [snip] Much literature and philosophy of the 19th century, especially socialist and communist literature, was permeated with anti-Semitism. Proudhon and Fourier were notorious anti-Semites....

Helen Thomas Defends Comments on Israelis in Radio Interview Thomas Says Remarks on Israelis 'Distorted,' Calls Charge of Anti-Semitism 'Baloney' By DEVIN DWYER WASHINGTON, Oct. 12, 2010 Veteran White House journalist Helen Thomas, who resigned in June over comments many viewed as anti- Semitic, has taken to the airwaves to defend the remarks, saying they were "exactly what I thought." "I hit the third rail," Thomas told Ohio radio station WMRN-AM in an interview that aired today. "You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive." Thomas, 90, caused an uproar May 27 when she said Israelis should "get the...

25-54 demographic (Live +SD) Total day: FNC: 354 | MSNBC: 130 | CNN: 120 | HLN: 142 Primetime: FNC: 558 | MSNBC: 262 | CNN: 162 | HLN: 152

Disgraced former White House correspondent Helen Thomas will be receiving a lifetime achievement award next month from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Coming roughly three months after Thomas was forced to resign from Hearst Newspapers for disgustingly telling Israeli Jews to move back to Germany and Poland and "get the hell out of Palestine," this is clearly going to raise a lot of eyebrows especially with all the media's recent hyperventilation over so-called Islamophobia. Consider how the following report from The Hill is going to play in an environment where the press are accusing Americans of being anti-Muslim (h/t Hot...

  The transformation of Reverend Al Sharpton from street provocateur to civil rights eminence ranks as one of the more remarkable image makeovers in American public life. And mainstream journalism has played a central role. Anyone doubting as much should read the recent (August 2) cover story of Newsweek magazine, "The Reinvention of the Reverend." [1] Written by Allison Samuels and Jerry Adler, the article is a fawning and misleading portrait of the Harlem-based preacher/politician. The piece doesn't quite beatify Sharpton. But it does make a highly selective use of information, some of it factually wrong, in stating the...