Free Republic

May 5, 2014 11:24 AM Wanted: Recording of Prep Call Before Susan Rice’s Post-Benghazi TV Interviews By Deroy Murdock I like the way Jim Guirard thinks. The former Democratic U.S. Senate aide is a conservative who sees things not just “out of the box,” but “out of the District.” The long-time chief of staff to the late U.S. senator Russell Long (D., La.) offers imaginative suggestions for unraveling various scandals and controversies in the national debate. His intriguing ideas and writings are gathered at TrueSpeak.org. Guirard now is focused on a detail in the previously obstructed Benghazi e-mail that finally...

De Blasio Announces Affordable Housing Plan The $41 Billion Program Will Create Units for More Than 500,000 New Yorkers By WSJ Staff Updated May 5, 2014 10:46 a.m. ET Mayor Bill de Blasio detailed a wide-ranging plan to build 200,000 new affordable housing units in New York City in 10 years, calling it a "fundamental plan to reduce income inequality." Those who benefit from the plan "won't be living doubled up with friends…they won't be living in homeless shelters," Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood. The plan would provide housing to service more...

May 05, 2014, 08:37 am GOP midterm edge biggest in 20 years By Rebecca Shabad A new poll suggests Republicans have the biggest advantage in a midterm year in two decades. The Pew/USA Today poll released Monday found 47 percent of registered voters support the Republican candidate in their district or lean Republican. By contrast, 43 percent favor the Democratic candidate or lean Democratic. Democrats have lost ground on the generic ballot in recent months. Last October, Democrats held a 6-percentage-point lead of 49 to 43 percent. Regardless, they usually need a double-digit lead in order to pick up seats....

May 04, 2014, 11:35 am Pelosi: GOP suffers from ‘poverty of ideas’ By Kyle Balluck Greg Nash House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in an interview broadcast Sunday that personal attacks against her “mean nothing,” adding that Republicans are suffering from a “poverty of ideas.” Speaking on MSNBC’s “Up with Steve Kornacki,” Pelosi said she thinks she’s targeted by Republicans because she’s effective. “We got the job done when we had the majority even under President Bush , but further under President Obama,“ she said. “It means nothing to me,” she added, referring to the attacks. “I consider the...

Passive Foreign Policy? Blame Lack of Carbon Taxes, Not Obama, Claims NYT's Thomas Friedman By Clay Waters Created 05/04/2014 - 10:26am While his New York Times columnist colleague Maureen Dowd made liberals nervous with some pungent punches at the Clintons (their "opprobrium and well-known taste for vengeance") in her Sunday Review piece, Thomas Friedman's "It's Not Just About Obama" was surely soothing, as he rose in "partial defense" of Obama's passive foreign policy, saying that the enemy is us and our collective failure to raise taxes to save the environment. And of course, President Bush. There has been a festival...

Malaysian terrorists ‘quizzed over disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370’ 1 hour ago May 04, 2014 8:43AM A GROUP of 11 terrorists with links to al-Qaeda are being quizzed over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, according to reports. Malaysian police arrested the 11 suspects in an operation to break up Islamic terror groups posing as humanitarian organisations, an official said. International investigators, including the FBI and MI6, asked for the militants to be questioned intensively about Flight MH370, the Daily Mail reports. Police arrested ten Malaysians earlier in the week during raids in and around the capital Kuala...

May 3, 2014 8:11 AM EXCLUSIVE: Rice Withdraws from Rutgers Commencement By NRO Staff Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is withdrawing from the Rutgers commencement ceremony. Her invitation by the school’s board of governors had sparked protests from faculty and students, and now Rice has decided not to speak to avoid creating a distraction. In a statement to be released this morning, Rice says, Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time. I am...

May 02, 2014, 02:22 pm Reid: Republicans using Benghazi to start ‘political food fight’ By Ramsey Cox Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Republicans are using the Benghazi attack to “gin up yet another political food fight” ahead of the November election. “For Republicans to waste the American people’s time and money staging a partisan political circus instead of focusing on the middle class is simply a bad decision,” Reid said on Friday. “While Republicans try to gin up yet another political food fight, Senate Democrats will remain focused on fostering economic growth for all hard-working Americans.” Reid’s comments...

May 02, 2014, 08:30 am Celebrities, athletes swarm White House for ObamaCare party By Justin Sink U.S. Says 13 Million Enrolled In Private/public Health Plans... The U.S. administration said on Thursday, nearly 13 million people signed up for public and private health coverage during Obamacare's open enrollment period, including late sign-ups for private insurance through April 19th. The... Celebrities, athletes, healthcare advocates and liberal activists gathered Thursday night at the White House to celebrate the release of final data from the first ObamaCare open enrollment period. According to data released by the administration, a surge of 3.8 million consumers in...

Jay Carney: I Wish Republicans Would Stop Talking About Benghazi by Charlie Spiering 2 May 2014, 7:21 AM PDT post a comment White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted on Thursday that he was tired of Republicans talking about the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. "I wish that rather than spending so much of their time -- and we all have limited time -- Republicans in Congress on this and on repealing the Affordable Care Act, Republicans actually got about the business of helping the economy grow and helping it create jobs, and making the necessary investments for the economy to...

May 01, 2014, 02:27 pm Pelosi: 2014 midterms won't be about me By Mike Lillis Lauren Schneiderman House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday dismissed the notion that she'll be a liability on the campaign trail this year for Democrats. Republicans have long used Pelosi's polarizing image to attack candidates by association, a tactic GOP leaders are again leaning on this election season. But Pelosi said Thursday she believes the strategy will backfire, arguing that voters are simply concerned with more substantive issues, such as jobs, the economy and immigration reform. "It's all subterfuge," she said during a press...

Carney Can’t Answer Why Supposed Non-Beghazi Email Was In Benghazi FOIA BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff May 1, 2014 2:52 pm White House Press Secretary Jay Carney dodged questions from Fox News’ Ed Henry regarding why the supposed non-Benghazi email was included in the emails the White House turned over to Judicial Watch. Henry asked Carney, “If the email was not about Benghazi, you said yesterday and you say again today, why did the White House turn it over to a conservative group seeking information about Benghazi?” Carney responded bluntly, instructing Henry to ask the State Department about how they...

US states may go back to electric chair and firing squads Shortage of drugs for lethal injections leads states to consider alternative methods of executing prisoners By Raf Sanchez, Washington 6:42PM BST 01 May 2014 US states may revert to killing their death row inmates with electric chairs, firing squads and gas chambers as it becomes increasingly difficult to source chemicals for lethal injections. The EU has banned the export of one of the most common sedatives used in lethal injections, forcing US states to experiment with new "cocktails" of drugs for executions. One such experimental recipe was used in...

April 30, 2014 5:08 PM Reid: NFL Should Punish Redskins Owner Like NBA Did Sterling By Andrew Johnson The NBA’s lifetime ban of Donald Sterling for his offensive comments should put the NFL on notice about Washington Redskins’ racist name, Harry Reid says. On the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Reid commended NBA commissioner Adam Silver for his response to the Sterling situation, and urged his NFL counterpart Roger Goodell to take similar action to “stamp out bigotry in its ranks.” The Senate majority leader also dismissed the tradition-based defense Redskins owner Dan Snyder has made of the team’s name when...

April 30, 2014, 02:39 pm Carney: Email was not about Benghazi By Justin Sink Press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that a newly-revealed email showing a White House official preparing then-U.S. ambassador Susan Rice for television interviews was not explicitly in reference to the terror attack in Benghazi. "The email and the talking points were not about Benghazi," Carney said. "They were about the general situation in the Muslim world." A set of documents obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request included an email from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes to...

Report: Kerry says US taped Moscow's calls to spies in Ukraine By Rebecca Shabad - 04/29/14 08:25 AM EDT U.S. intelligence officials have recordings proving the Russian government has been directing a network of spies inside eastern Ukraine, Secretary of State John Kerry said in a closed-door meeting Friday, according to The Daily Beast. “Intel is producing taped conversations of intelligence operatives taking their orders from Moscow and everybody can tell the difference in the accents, in the idioms, in the language. We know exactly who’s giving those orders, we know where they are coming from,” Kerry said in a...

ByTucker RealsCBS NewsApril 29, 2014, 8:28 AM Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: GeoResonance survey company says "wreckage of a commercial airliner" found The Malaysian government confirmed Tuesday that officials investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 were looking into an Australian company's claim to have located aircraft wreckage on the sea floor in the northern Bay of Bengal -- thousands of miles from the search area scanned meticulously for weeks to the south. Australian land and sea survey company GeoResonance said in a statement sent Tuesday to CBS News that it had discovered materials "believe to be the wreckage of...

Keystone Pipeline Protesters: ‘Man Camps’ Could Lead to Sexual Assaults of Native Americans April 28, 2014 - 9:35 AM By Penny Starr CNSNews.com) – Native Americans opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline said its construction could lead to Native American women being sexually assaulted, according to news reports from a protest held this week on the National Mall. However, a workers’ union that supports the pipeline said such claims were “disgusting” and harmful to the “hard-working people who build America.” “We are worried about man camps that are coming to our territory,” Faith Spotted Eagle, an elder with the Yankton...

Kindergarten show canceled so kids can keep studying to become ‘college and career ready.’ Really. By Valerie Strauss April 26 at 11:59 am An annual year-end kindergarten show has been canceled at a New York school because the kids have to keep working so they will be “college and career” ready. Really. That’s what it says in a letter (see below) sent to parents by Ellen Best-Laimit, the interim principal of Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, N.Y., and four kindergarten teachers. The play was to be staged over two days, May 14 and 15, according to the school’s calendar....

Obama says his foreign policy views are not always 'sexy,' but they avoid 'errors' By Justin Sink - 04/28/14 07:35 AM EDT President Obama offered a full-throated defense of his foreign policy on Monday, accusing critics who argue that he has not been aggressive enough on the world stage of failing to learn the lessons of the Iraq war. During a press conference in Manila, Obama said that while his foreign policy efforts “may not always be sexy,” he had strengthened partnerships and allegiances around the world that would pay dividends for years to come. “If you look at the...