Free Republic

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: According to latest CNN poll, Obama's job approval is down from 53% in May to 45% now. Approval of his handling of the economy is down 2% to 42%. On foreign affairs Obama's down five points to 44. On illegal immigration, Obama's disapproval is up to 56. And only 49% of respondents say Obama is honest or trustworthy. You know, this polling data, this is huge, folks. We haven't seen this before. We have not seen this kind of intense evidence of Obama losing approval, losing popularity, and losing support. And it's a CNN poll. Now, I...

-- 56 percent of voters believe Obama did not try to rescue the doomed garrison in Benghazi, Libya because he didn’t want to risk his re-election. -- 62 percent agree that Obama’s NSA phone surveillance constitutes “an unacceptable and alarming invasion of privacy rights.” -- 63 percent believe that Obama’s Justice Department seized reporter’s records for political reasons, compared to 29 percent who take the administration’s national security argument to be true. -- 68 percent believe that the White House isn’t telling the truth about the targeting of the president’s political enemies by the IRS. Just 24 percent believe the...

This ought to make your day. Barack Obama’s massive “mother of all databases” includes information on your children.Barack Obama reads a book about himself to a group of children ages 3 to 5 back in 2011. (USA Today) Tea Party Nation reported: Speaking of databases, there’s one out there that’s more than a little bit disturbing. It’s but one more devious plan created by none other than Barack Hussein Obama to store personal information on our children. No wonder Maxine Waters spouted off that Obama’s database knew everything about everybody – this is one of the few times that Maxine...

Sure most people just see refugees, but Democrats see voters. A number of the refugees will be Christian, but somehow I think Obama isn’t all that interested in Christian refugees. Taking in Muslim refugees from Muslim civil wars in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere has largely been a disaster. The original World Trade Center bombing happened in part because the United States was willing to host Egyptian Islamists who would have been arrested in their own country. And who exactly will be taking in now? If the Muslim Brotherhood Jihadists lose in Syria, their leaders will flee to Europe...

Critics say intimidation keeps shops, others, from complaining about lack of progress A congressional committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., may have moved on to other Obama administration scandals, but Arizonans still want answers to the Fast and Furious gun-running project that sent thousands of weapons to drug lords in Mexico. Will they get them? Not if a reported conspiracy of intimidation and enforced silence wins. Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association President Noble Hathaway said it angers Arizonans that it looks like the federal officials involved with Fast and Furious “got away with it.” “To Arizonan’s it looks...

Politico rips into Obama's cratering trust deficit today and makes a crucial admission that much of the media has been dancing around since the revelations hit last week about the NSA's seizing of phone records and the PRISM program. Politico describes Obama's moves as a "secret program that dragnets most phone records and much of the Internet." The very same media that doesn't want to admit what Obama is doing is the very same media that spent years savaging President George W. Bush for doing much less. But to admit Their Precious One is Bush on steroids is probably a...

President Obama and his family will be going to Africa later this month. But the trip won't be cheap; it's expected to cost American taxpayers $60 to $100 million, according to the (The Washington Post) "When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-Saharan Africa later this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances. Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case...

Erik Nielson, writing at the Huffington Post, says that President Obama deceived many who supported him during his first presidential campaign, including hip-hop artists. He says that Obama's policies haven’t helped the minorities who elected him to office. There was something remarkable about seeing rappers pledge their support to a mainstream presidential candidate, especially given the history of antipathy between national politicians and hip hop. And, of course, there was something equally remarkable about watching a future president embrace hip hop culture. Indeed, whereas politicians on both sides of the aisle had made a political tradition out of demonizing hip...

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized. Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of...

The Obama Administration “strongly objects” to a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday that would have protected the religious rights of soldiers – including evangelical Christian service members who are facing growing hostility towards their religion. The amendment was authored by Rep. John Fleming, R-La. It would have “required the Armed Forces to accommodate ‘actions and speech’ reflecting the conscience, moral, principles or religious beliefs of the member.” The Obama Administration said the amendment would have a “significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.”

This little item could give the IRS’ whole “targeting” conservatives scandal a brand-new twist. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) tweeted that he observed IRS agents training with AR-15s when he toured the Department of Homeland Security: A few weeks ago when I toured a DHS facility I saw #IRS agents training with AR-15's. I'm looking into the issue now. #PJNET

The Muslim Lawyers Association (MLA) in Johannesburg has submitted a 600-plus page document to the Office of the National Director of Public Prosecution calling for the arrest and prosecution of President Barack Obama when he visits South Africa later this month. The submitted document calls for authorities to “arrest Obama when he visits.” The group says Obama has ordered drone strikes that killed innocent civilians, warranting a formal investigation. “The complaint, dubbed the ‘Obama Docket’ encourages South Africa to take seriously its domestic and international obligations and to act against International War Criminals lest they consider South Africa a safe...

A majority in the U.S. Senate has told President Barack Obama not to do it. There’s no doubt that an overwhelming majority of Americans would oppose it — if the media ever told them about it. Nonetheless, this past Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that Obama will sign a controversial gun-control treaty promulgated by the United Nations. “We look forward to signing it as soon as the process of conforming the official languages is completely satisfied,” Kerry said in a prepared statement. The Rest…HERE

The Obama Administration has dropped its legal battle against a judge’s decision that would allow young girls to purchase the Plan B morning after pill over the counter. The decision allows anyone to purchase the drug and opponents of the decision say it paves the way for male sexual predators to purchase the drug for girls they victimize, by removing safeguards currently in place. Previously, the Justice Department appealed a court ruling saying the morning after pill known as Plan B should be available without a prescription for teenagers starting at age 15. Late Monday, the Obama administration said it...

The White House signaled Monday that President Obama will delay signing a controversial arms trade treaty until after Congress leaves for summer recess. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president aims to sign the pact “before the end of August.” Obama could have signed it as early as Monday. The National Rifle Association (NRA) opposes the treaty, and the delay would allow Obama to sign the pact during the August doldrums, with Congress out of town. That time frame appears to validate the concerns of treaty advocates who had worried the administration would wait until the cover of darkness...

June 10, 2013 EXCLUSIVE: Jailed filmmaker vows to finish film wrongly blamed for Benghazi attack by Joshua Rhett Miller EXCLUSIVE: The controversial filmmaker whose crude Internet trailer was wrongly blamed by the White House for sparking last year's deadly Benghazi attack vowed to finish his movie, which he said is aimed at fighting terrorism, not denigrating Islam. Breaking his silence from inside a facility under the authority of the federal Bureau of Prisons in southern California, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula told FoxNews.com in a series of phone interviews that his film "Innocence of Muslims" has been widely misunderstood, and not just...

. . . In the meantime, there are a number of actions President Barack Obama can take that do not require approval by Congress. We urge the administration to take additional actions using its existing authority both to improve the federal government’s ability to prevent dangerous individuals from acquiring or possessing guns and to enhance law-enforcement investigations of gun-related crime. . . . .

Urgent. While some Tea Party groups testified at the House Ways and Means Committee Hearing last week over the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) abuse of power for targeting and harassing them and approximately 500 other conservative groups when they sought tax-exempt status, if you are looking for a political judicial solution, such as congress, impeachment or a special prosecutor to solve the tsunami of unlawful acts coming out of Washington, you are looking in the wrong place. What the IRS did tilted President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election in his favor. The bottom line is this. You can’t get justice within...

You don’t trust President Barack Obama? No faith in the massive federal bureaucracy? Don’t hold a huge reservoir of confidence in Congress representing your interests? How much do you trust the federal courts that handle secret requests from the Department of Justice . . .and then issue secret decisions based on the judge’s secret interpretation of the law? Be advised: President Obama finds “your lack of faith disturbing.” “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch, but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process, and rule of...

The key question that needs to be answered now is...WHY WAS CATHERINE TARGETED PERSONALLY? Bell asked: "Was there anything in particular that you think may have triggered that special attention?" Catherine answered: "We believe that much of it had ultimately had to do with True the Vote activities involving our 'Verify the Recall' project to ensure that petition-gathering connected with actions in Wisconsin to remove Governor Scott Walker were following the rules. This was obviously seen as a threat by liberal organizations and unions bent upon recalling him. "It's important to understand that our purpose and actions in this project...

Elizabeth Hofacre has turned out to be a gold mine to investigators of political corruption at the IRS. The Cincinnati-office specialist didn’t take kindly to having the entire mess dumped on the shoulders of her colleagues and herself, and has made it plain in depositions that this was no low-level innovation. The Hill became the latest media outlet to peruse the transcripts, and added a little more to the growing public record of the targeting effort’s genesis in Washington rather than Cincinnati: An IRS staffer in Cincinnati told congressional investigators that a Washington official was the driving force behind the...

I just got back from hunting buffalo in Zimbabwe for the last two weeks. It’s always a pleasure for me to go beyond the pavement, where the cell phones don’t work, and I can’t go online and there isn’t a television that functions within a sixty-mile radius. Yep, when I’m hunting out in the African bush, or in an Alaskan swamp, or I’m out of cell phone range crushing some mahi in the Atlantic, I truly enjoy the technological fast from my Mac book, my iPhone and my TV. That said, while I’m disconnected from the digital crap I cannot...

<p>There is no question that the big winners from last week were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two men vilified for years by the left, the media, and Barack Obama as eager to use the War on Terror as an excuse to violate the Constitutional rights of everyday Americans. Obama ran for president as the anti-Bush in many respects, but especially on the issue of surveillance and snooping.</p>

“Even the ACLU is shocked” by the Obama administration’s secret grab of phone records of millions of Americans, says talk-radio host Michael Savage. He noted on his nationally syndicated show Friday night that while Obama has characterized the government’s access to the data as a “modest encroachment” on privacy, an ACLU senior policy analyst called it a “gross privacy invasion.” Recalling the warnings in his “Beware the Government-Media Complex” speech to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2000, Savage told his listeners the NSA’s snooping is “the biggest scandal of your entire life.” “I’ve always run my life as if...

'Much worse than Watergate' Newt says. The Obama Adm. "methodically, systematically say whatever they need to say to manipulate the American people... This is an administration that refuses to be honest about who our enemies are but they're gathering up huge amounts of data on innocent Americans"

When President Richard Nixon collided with the Watergate scandal, he was a very unpopular man. The nation at the time was suffering one of the worst recessions in history and one of the highest inflation rates, too. So Watergate sunk Dick Nixon, but for good measure, the economy sunk him even more. Roughly 25 years later, Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But despite his personal transgressions, he never really lost his popularity. Why? The economy was roaring. So you might say scandals are less scandalous during prosperity and more scandalous during recession....

And while we're continuing to learn that the IRS scandal involved much more than some rogue agents from Cincinnati, it's not difficult to envision other similar incidents, with other government bureaucrats, armed and energized with a mere wink or nod. Although there probably exists no smoking gun smudged with Obama fingerprints, his henchmen acted like Barney Fife with a bullet in their pockets. But now, all the president's yes men who said "yes" are noticing that the shadow of the Obama image may not stretch far enough to cover their backs. The holes in Obama's transparency promises have allowed some...

Obama's real crime is not his citizenship status (He was certified and qualified by the governing entities responsible for doing so, that I must accept until that entity find otherwise). It is not Benghazi (because he is Commander and Chief of the U.S armed forces and her agents and is entitled to the leeway and lattitude it takes to function as such, I dont' want any President encumbered by anything but public outrage and opinion in regards to CIC duties). The true scandal and 'high crimes and misdemeanors' lies within his cabinet and political appointees, i.e the IRS, DOJ, EPA,...

On Friday morning, President Barack Obama defended his administration’s massive telephone records surveillance programs by explaining that “every member of Congress has been briefed on this program.”There’s only one problem: both Republican and Democrat Congresspeople say that isn’t true. On Friday afternoon, the press office for Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), one of the authors of the Patriot Act, tweeted, “Obama’s claim that ‘every Member of Congress’ was briefed is FALSE.” It wasn’t just Sensenbrenner. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that only certain members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been told about the program, and he only knew...

Privacy stalwarts peel away from White House on the left while on the right Rand Paul sees his signature issue ascend. As this week drew to a close, the scandal trifecta of Benghazi, IRS targeting and snooping on journalists seemed so five days ago. The late-week revelation that the National Security Agency accessed the Verizon phone records of millions of Americans snowballed within a day as more phone companies were included and operation PRISM, which involved agreements with nine Internet companies to monitor email and web activity, put the Obama administration on the defense. The main White House defense is...

Obama: If People 'Can't Trust' Government, 'We're Going to Have Some Problems Here' by Ben Shapiro 7 Jun 2013, 11:11 AM PDT 32 post a comment During his speech in San Jose, California on Friday, President Obama took one question from the press on national security monitoring of Americans. Without any sense of irony whatsoever in the aftermath of the IRS’ targeting of conservatives, the administration’s stonewalling on Benghazi, the Department of Justice’s targeting of reporters, the Department of Health and Human Services’ leveraging of private organizations for Obamacare public relations cash, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s secret email addresses,...

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.

...After running the PRISM Internet surveillance program for roughly three-quarters of its existence, expanding phone record seizures to include everyone with a phone — not just terror suspects and their contacts — and expanding the drone assassination program to levels never before seen, Obama owns all of this. All of it. Barack Obama is the anti-civil-liberties president — the surveillance-assassination president. America needs to wake up quickly and undo his legacy — and that of his recent predecessors, because they contributed to the problem, too....

The last few weeks have been among the worst of Barack Obama’s time in office, recalling earlier periods of turmoil for the president in 2010 and 2011, when his ratings also plummeted. In 2013, the situation is significantly worse for the White House, with the Obama administration engulfed in a series of major scandals (IRS persecution of conservative groups, the Benghazi debacle, and the Justice Department seizure of journalists’ phone records) that are not only eroding trust in government but also in the office of the president itself. This is undoubtedly a period of steep decline for the Obama presidency,...

The Obama Administration has presented such an array of botched domestic and foreign policies that an observer can become disoriented. Seeing a blur of so many negative events is like watching a Jason Bourne movie, with the camera on high speed. Each alleged malfeasance or scandal is worthy in itself of deliberate scrutiny, yet as we start to examine each one, others suddenly compete for our attention. It is a dazzling tapestry of mismanagement at best. But there is one theme that connects it all: contempt... --snip-- In a disingenuous and cynical act, Attorney General Eric Holder invited journalists to...

Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights. Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants...

<p>This is about the best cliff notes version of the Obama regime ever.</p>

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: From TheHill.com: "A new poll finds a trio of controversies raising public concerns about the 'honesty' of the Obama administration," not the president. "A new poll finds a trio of controversies raising public concerns about the 'honesty' of the Obama [regime], even as the president maintains his approval rating." Limbaugh Theorem again. "A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released late Tuesday shows 55% believe the IRS targeting of conservative groups raised questions about the administration's 'overall honesty and integrity...'" But Obama had nothing to do with it. They don't associate Obama with what the IRS did. He...

Watergate investigator Bob Woodward of the Washington Post compares Barack Obama to Richard Nixon. Members of Congress say it’s about time to consider it. Rock legend Ted Nugent says Obama’s constitutional violations make him eligible. And even Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin has called for Obama’s impeachment.

Recently, although he failed to return a Marine guard’s salute, Barack Obama later approached the Marine and “shook hands” with him had a brief conversation with him. The follow up “handshake” part of the story was not reported and many on the Right mistakenly howled at the “insult.” This brief and otherwise meaningless “gotcha” moment allowed a half-witted liberal blogger named Charles Johnson to gloat and laugh at conservatives who had jumped on the story. Score one for the Left. Nevertheless, the genuine insults Obama heaps on veterans each day far out-number this small minded “victory” in the Left’s war...

The U.S. government can require gun dealers in border states to disclose records of certain firearm sales, a federal appeals court has ruled, upholding a key component of the government’s recent crackdown on illegal gun trafficking. The ruling on Friday, by a unanimous three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Washington, comes over strenuous objection by the firearms industry. And it could renew calls among gun-rights supporters that the government’s program trammels rights of gun sellers and owners. In 2011, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm and Explosives began issuing so-called “demand letters”...

At first, Democrats were quick to claim that the scandals erupting over the last month were just flashes in the pan. When that proved to just be wish-casting, the meme changed to the dangers of Republican overreach. According to a new poll from a series normally friendly to the White House, that meme will soon disappear, too. Solid majorities in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll say that the scandals raise doubts about the integrity of the Obama administration — although they’re not impacting Barack Obama himself, at least not on job approval.The Hill provides a good analysis of...

A media outlet has uncovered what may be a massive conspiracy by the Obama administration to evade public accountability laws — and in at least one case to intimidate the media from asking questions. “There is widespread use throughout the administration of private email accounts to do public business for the obvious reason that it avoids transparency,” Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow and attorney Christopher C. Horner told this writer in an interview yesterday. Horner is also author of The Liberal War on Transparency. Horner spoke in light of the Associated Press discovery that some of President Obama’s political appointees...

As the Obama administration seeks to move beyond a welter of scandals, a new report by investigative journalist Patrick Poole reveals that the frenzy isn’t quite over yet. On top of the IRS’s targeting of conservatives, the DOJ’s seizure of reporters’ phone records and the coverup surrounding the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, the White House’s years-long collaboration with supporters of terrorism is finally getting the scrutiny it deserves. Poole’s comprehensive GLORIA Center article, “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Policy,” details the Obama administration’s extensive relationship with accomplices to...

In August 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama vowed to the American people that he would undo "the cynicism we all have about government," an odd promise from a man intently focused on growing the size and scope of government. Now nearly five years later in the wake of the recent IRS scandal, President Obama has made another promise to the American people: "I'll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again." Everything? But what about Obamacare? In spite of the blatant, political corruption at the IRS, the Obama administration is moving full steam ahead with Obamacare,...

President Obama supports many things he opposed as Senator Obama—such as unlimited terrorist detention—but for flip-flopping with a high degree of artistic difficulty nothing beats his judicial filibuster ultimatum on Tuesday. If Republicans don't confirm his three, yes, three, new nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, he'll unleash Democrats to gut the Senate's filibuster rules. Mr. Obama didn't explicitly state the threat portion of that ultimatum—he's leaving that dirty work to the reliable Harry Reid. But everyone knows that's the subtext of Tuesday's announcement, which is a political attempt to realign the balance of power on an appeals...

Currently the Obama administration is facing three big scandals — the IRS targeting, the bugging of AP and Fox, and Benghazi. Now we have scandal Number Four, just as large in scope. For the last four years, the Obama administration has conducted a major “outreach” program to Islamic groups in the United States and in the Middle East. In a comprehensive article, investigative journalist and PJ Media contributor Patrick Poole now presents the full scoop and scope of what’s been going on. His article — “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S....

The corrupt—even criminal—activities rife in the Obama Administration has panicked its staunchest defenders. Forget the comparisons to Watergate or even to classic TV sitcom’s “I know nothing; I see nothing” Hans Schultz. Oh so yesterday. The triage of scandals, which initially stunned Democrats and Obama apologists into uncharacteristic silence, has since been re-branded to be something quite different than it actually is. For this, they owe Groucho Marx a debt of gratitude. Lying and cover-ups regarding Benghazi; stomping on the First Amendment; the IRS criminally targeting American citizens? Time to roll out the “Groucho Defense:” Who are you going to...

The Associated Press has uncovered what may become a vast new scandal for the Obama administration: the possibly widespread use of covert email accounts by political appointees, enabling evasion of sunshine laws designed to protect the public. Jack Gillium of AP reports: Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery:...

An Obama secret email is just one of many making news headlines this week, as News Max reported this Tuesday, June 4, that several of the appointees of President Barack Obama have been revealed to be using hidden government email accounts that are being kept “hidden” from many. While these Obama secret emails of political officials may sound understandably suspicious, a review of government policy has stated that these accounts (including some used by the Human Services Department and Health Department heads) are simply used to keep their inboxes from spam and emails that are unnecessary or unwanted. Yet what...