Free Republic

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court declared Obamacare's penalty to be a tax, it doomed the healthcare reform act as an "unconstitutional violation of the origination clause," columnist George Will says. This Thursday, the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, the nation's second-most important court, will hear arguments on whether the Affordable Care Act adheres to the Constitution's "origination clause," which declare that "all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills," Will writes in his column in The Washington Post Saturday. Will points...

The House will vote next week on a resolution demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor to look into the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS, and specifically, Lois Lerner. There will also be a vote on whether to formally hold Lerner in contempt of Congress. The Hill:

Strategy comes before tactics. Strategic goals dictate tactical actions. Today we are allowed to talk about the obvious tactical lies and malfeasances that the Obama administration blew in our faces in the Benghazi fiasco and its aftermath, but not about its strategic meaning. But Obama’s secret policies have also been exposed to public view with the Benghazi fiasco. It is now clear that since Obama came to power, the U.S. government has overturned all the fundamental values that have characterized American policy from Thomas Jefferson onward. Under Obama we have secretly joined the terrorist side in the Jihad War. That...

South Carolina Republican congressman Trey Gowdy claimed he has evidence of “a systematic, intentional decision to withhold certain documents from Congress” about the Benghazi attacks and alleged White House cover-up. Gowdy spoke with Fox News’ Greta van Susteren about Speaker of the House John Boehner’s Friday decision to form a select committee on Benghazi. The congressman explained that the committee will allow a more complete investigation into the issue, unburdened by the jurisdictional restraints that often plague other committees. “If you want to have Greg Hicks and the station chief from Tripoli and Hillary Clinton all sitting at the same...

On Friday, CBS Evening News caught up with its Big Three competitors and reported on the latest developments on the controversy surrounding the September 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya. CBS also finally mentioned its own president's family connection to a White House official involved in the Obama administration's handling of the immediate aftermath of the attack. Nancy Cordes gave a full report on how the "the White House released previously unseen e-mails" about the federal government's response to the terrorist strike, which led to House Speaker John Boehner forming a new select committee to investigate...

Three Republican U.S. senators wrote to President Obama Friday demanding to know where Obama was on the night of the Benghazi U.S. Consulate attack on Sept. 11, 2012. Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said it’s time for the White House to disclose the president’s location on the night four Americans, including Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed during an assault on the consulate. Former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Fox News on Thursday that the president was not in the White House basement Situation Room at...

Sharyl Attkisson spoke with Philadelphia radio host Dom Giordano Friday about the latest Benghazi news and how she believes that the media is slowly becoming more interested in covering the story and “sounding the alarm” about the press restrictions being imposed by the Obama administration, in spite of their early pledge to be the most transparent administration. Attkisson said this week’s big Benghazi revelations aren’t necessarily new information, but now there an “appetite for the information” in the mainstream press that wasn’t there before. She pointed out how there are journalists from every news organization starting to speak out on...

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last summer by Judicial Watch, the Obama administration last week released 41 documents related to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. An email from the deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, has received most of the attention. In it, Rhodes laid out four goals for Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who would be appearing on five Sunday talk shows 36 hours later. “To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities...

Jay Carney faced a second consecutive day of sustained questioning from reporters regarding the White House’s political response to the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Yesterday he suggested that lead inquisitor Jonathan Karl might have been too jet-lagged to formulate coherent questions. Today he smirked and chuckled through many of the questions, taking personal jabs at correspondent Ed Henry and his current employer, Fox News:

President Barack Obama, whose popularity is continuing to drop on both his domestic and foreign programs, is at what late President Abraham Lincoln referred to as being at a "dead point," says National Review Editor Rich Lowry. The president, Lowry wrote in an opinion piece for Politico Magazine Wednesday, is "weak abroad, frustrated at home, and looking at a brutal November" as his ratings continue to slip. There was a bit of hope at the end of March, said Lowry, when a Washington Post-ABC poll showed 49 percent of Americans support Obamacare. But just a month later, the Obamacare ratings...

Cummings is a despicable human being. In Retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell’s prepared testimony at the hearing today, he said this: There are accounts of time, space and capability discussions of the question, could we have gotten there in time to make a difference. Well, the discussion is not in the “could or could not” in relation to time, space and capability — the point is we should have tried. As another saying goes: “Always move to the sound of the guns.” He’s simply saying that the discussion should never be can or can’t we make a difference...

On Thursday's broadcast of CNN's "New Day," network political analyst John King was critical of the White House's handling of the revelations in recently released Benghazi emails, particularly White House press secretary Jay Carney's interaction with ABC White House correspondent Jon Karl a day earlier. “I don’t know how you can say this is not about Benghazi," King said. "If you look at the timeline of events, I can’t understand why the White House did this.” Video at link

This hearing....had serious blockbuster information.....We are covering...how will others? This is not politics folks, this is about truth

Joe Scarborough ripped into co-host Donny Deutsch on Morning Joe earlier today after Deutsch attempted to make the issue of the Benghazi cover-up at the White House all about Republicans in 2014. The segment starts off with some fluff, and then turns to Benghazi shortly afterward. The big explosion starts after the six-minute mark, when Deutsch begins to warn the GOP not to bite on this scandal, and then asserts that the media has “covered it” sufficiently. Mika Brzezinski can’t buy that one, either (via Mediaite):

Here is the main point: The rioting at the American embassy in Cairo was not about the anti-Muslim video. As argued here repeatedly (see here and here), the Obama administration’s “Blame the Video” story was a fraudulent explanation for the September 11, 2012, rioting in Cairo every bit as much as it was a fraudulent explanation for the massacre in Benghazi several hours later. We’ll come back to that because, once you grasp this well-hidden fact, the Obama administration’s derelictions of duty in connection with Benghazi become much easier to see. But let’s begin with Jay Carney’s performance in Wednesday’s...

Darren Rovell breaks down what the Clippers could be worth and how difficult it might be for the NBA to get Donald Sterling to sell the team. Video at link

When paparazzi caught up with V. Stiviano, Donald Sterling‘s girlfriend and the woman on the other end of Sterling’s racist rant, Stiviano went on an odd tangent about how one day, she will become a future president. She said, “One day I will become President of the United States of America, and I will change the legislation and laws.” Stiviano kept going on for a bit, bringing up “modern day history [and the] civil rights movement” for some reason. The entire time, Stiviano’s face is hidden by a gigantic visor. Stiviano has been accused of leaking the tape of Sterling’s...

DETROIT (WWJ/AP) -On Tuesday, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was banned for life by the NBA in response to racist comments the league says he made in a recorded conversation, but what comes next? The other NBA owners need a 75 percent vote to have Donald Sterling removed as owner. But Detroit News columnist and 97-1 The Ticket co-host Terry Foster wonders if the other owners may be worried about their own skeletons in their closets. “I think there is a fear … some owners may not … want an investigation, so they want this thing to go away...

<p>GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: This is a Washington Post/ABC News poll. Registered voters, 53% to 39% they would rather see Republicans in control of Congress to counter balance President Obama. 53% to 39%. Tell me about that poll.</p> <p>JAMES CARVILLE: I saw that poll. My day started out about as good as Donald Sterling, wasn't too good. That was one way to ask the question. Look, thee poll was not good. I'm not one of these people that say trash the poll or something like that. The poll was not good on a variety of fronts. If I saw -- an ABC/Washington Post poll, I would say is generally a pretty highly respected poll. Sometimes they can be a little bit off. I am hoping this is it. I will wait and see the next one before I get my straight razor out. But it was not a great poll for Democrats at all.</p>

While we don't know exactly happened between L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his presumably now-ex-girlfriend V. Stiviano that led to the release of his racist rantings, it can be safely assumed that it was ugly. It could have also had something to do with a lawsuit filed by Sterling's wife, Rochelle, on March 7, in California. Sterling's partner for more than half a century, Rochelle claims that Stiviano "engages in conduct designed to target, befriend, seduce, and then entice, cajole, borrow from, cheat, and/or receive as gifts transfers of wealth from wealthy older men whom she targets for such...