Free Republic

The RepublicanParty has a tenuous hold on the conservative movement in America. At present the only home for the 40 per cent of the electorate that identify themselves as conservative is the Republican Party, but it appears that those who are nominally identified as the "Republican Establishment" are doing all they can to alienate the vast majority of the current base of the Party. There is no office on ConnecticutAvenue in Washington with a sign reading "The RepublicanEstablishment" or the "The Democratic Establishment"; rather it is an amalgam of like-minded groups with one common interest: control of the government purse-strings....

Ordinary people can only guess at the goings-on at the meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group, which is bringing together the world's financial and political elite this week. Conspiracy theories abound as to what is discussed and who is there. Why, asks Tom de Castella?The belief in secret cabals running the world is a hardy perennial. And on Thursday perhaps the most controversial clandestine organisation of our times - the Bilderberg Group - is meeting behind closed doors. In the manner of a James Bond plot, up to 150 leading politicians and business people are to gather in a ski...

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil. The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. SNIP "I still have some concerns, and at this point I'm...

Breaking: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski wins re-election to Senate as write-in candidate

Conservatives have long claimed that the media is biased against them and tries hard to shape stories in ways that help Democrats and hurt Republicans. This has sometimes been dismissed as paranoia - as in my former MSNBC co-blogger Eric Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media?" - but it turns out to be truer than they imagined. If this were a Hollywood movie, there would have been clandestine meetings in basements or bars or parking garages. But since it was real life, it was just an e-mail list, called "JournoList," set up by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. It had over...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to address a throng of rich and powerful men on Friday under the towering redwoods at the Bohemian Grove as the annual encampment along the Russian River in Monte Rio enters its final weekend. No one other than Bohemian Club members and their guests will hear the governor's speech, which is — like everything that transpires during the 17-day midsummer enclave — done in absolute privacy. Plutocrats and powerbrokers, including former presidents, annually flock to the 2,700-acre wooded retreat where neither women, other than grove employees, nor outsiders of either gender are permitted. “It's a...

On the seventh day of Journolist, Daily Caller gave to me — the party line on post-debate sensibility. The latest from Jonathan Strong looks at the access by political operatives of Journolist and their sometimes-naked attempts to push the members into political advocacy. The strongest evidence comes from a posting by Jeff Hauser, who advocated to Journolist members to skew their opinions on an upcoming debate between Barack Obama and John McCain: The single biggest thing journolist can do is to lay the analytical framework within the media elite necessary for an actual Obama debate win to be viewed as...

The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30....

f any large publication stands to suffer from the JournoList controversy, it’s the Washington Post. The paper hired JournoList founder Ezra Klein from the left-wing publication The American Prospect, and Klein continued to run JournoList while at the Post. In June, the paper quickly accepted the resignation of David Weigel, whom it hired from the left-wing publication The Washington Independent, over comments made on JournoList. (Klein announced he was shutting down the list-serv shortly thereafter.) It is not known whether other Post writers, some of whom also came to the paper from left-wing publications, took part in JournoList; I have...

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –...

clandestine summit meeting took place at the Aspen Institute, in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The participants, all Democrats, were sworn to secrecy”. Soros, through his Open Society Institute, provides support for the Aspen Institute... Soros has also been a major funder of the Community Rights Counsel, a left-wing “public interest law firm.”

Some of America's leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world's population and speed up improvements in health and education. The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change. Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America's wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah...

He said: 'I can confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU files. 'The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.' The researcher added although he does not believe that manmade climate is a hoax, he and other researchers have been ‘bullied and subtly blackmailed’ to fit in the scientific mainstream. 'In this atmosphere, PhD students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the "politically correct...

Sources say White House cadre bypassing agencies, jeopardizing security JERUSALEM – A small group of officials working mostly from the White House are tightly controlling U.S. foreign policy, bypassing other government agencies and making decisions without employing the expertise of those agencies, according to diplomatic sources speaking to WND. The sources said some of the decisions may be jeopardizing U.S. security. A senior Middle East diplomatic source said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently apologized to a Mideast leader, explaining to him U.S. policy regarding his country is being dictated by the White House and not her agency. The diplomatic...

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList. Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

The White House says former Vice President Dick Cheney is the second most popular member of the "Republican cabal," behind only talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Monday brushed off Cheney's criticism of President Barack Obama's new administration. Cheney said Sunday that Obama's decisions are threatening the nation's safety. Obama reversed many of his predecessor's executive orders, including how the country treats suspected terrorists.

WASHINGTON -- Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage confessed to the FBI three years ago that he was the government official who first tipped columnist Robert Novak about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband's CIA mission, according to an article in this week's Newsweek. But Armitage was engaging in "chitchat" when he talked to Novak, not trying to undercut Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the White House rationale for invading Iraq, the article said. The tip led Novak to write a July 14, 2003, column that outed Plame's undercover status, resulting in a still-active federal leak...

The most egregious attack is the allegation that Alito is a closet racist because of his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. The conservative group opposed affirmative-action and lower admission standards in 1984. The organization's newsletter carried articles by contributors, none of whom was Alito. Yet, the Kennedy-Schumer-Durbin-Biden-Leahy cabal is trying to tattoo objectionable articles from that newsletter on Alito's chest. So fierce were the accusations that Mrs. Alito left the hearings with tears streaming down her face after she endured watching the man she knew and loved smeared by a bunch of less-than-honorable men. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham...

Yaa, you repukes are not doing so well, huh? Imagine, you repukes control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and appointed 7 of the 9 Supreme Court justices. Yet the Supreme Court thre out sodomy laws in all 50 states and recognized the right of government to seize land for any reason. And you couldn't pass your Social Security changes could you? Sorry, that was your last shot. Come November, we're going to start seeing more Democratic faces in the House. It's the end for you guys. You guys are celebrating when Bush's numbers go *up* to 45%. Then Faux...

Bush’s giant Right Wing Noise Machine (RWNM) loves to preach about the Bush economic miracle. In fact, the RWNM’s current thinking is Bush doesn’t spend enough time talking about his economic triumphs. If only he did, then everyone would fall in line and believe in the great Bush economic miracle. There is one problem with this argument: it’s a lie. Any way you look at the Bush economy, it comes up short. Today, I want to compare Bush’s job creation record with other economic recoveries. As usual, Bush comes up way short. The national Bureau of Economic Research has identified...

Why does anybody support George w Bush as President? He is clearly the worst President I have ever seen -- a complete disaster. And before you say anything, I have been a registered Republican for 25 years.

Lies of omission about 9/11 -- stoking fears of terrorism THEY WANT YOU TO BE AFRAID The following post was censored by freerepublic.com shortly after it was posted on their "public" forum on 9/11/04. That forum is designed to appear as though it is a community forum open to all, but this post only received three responses before it and its replies were deleted, and a repeat posting at 4 am PST on 9/20/04 didn't stay online for 5 minutes! Someone is apparently watching closely over the content of the freerepublic.com forums and censoring them 24/7 (though they might have...

Did the CIA Build a “Bridge to Nowhere” ? We’ve heard the mantra: “Bush lied-people died !” – so many times and in so many ways, a high percentage of the American people have actually come to believe it. One of the key issues was whether Iraq was seeking uranium to resume its nuclear weapons program. ( A previous attempt , which had progressed rather far, had been interrupted by an Israeli bombing raid on Saddam’s nuclear facilities,and by Gulf War 1.) It is my considered belief a small ,politically partisan “cabal” in the CIA furnished misleading intelligence to the...

LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005. IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief...

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday. In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions...

For decades, federal officials have ignored the pleas of American citizens to secure our borders against an immense, ongoing migration invasion that includes not only millions of “common variety” illegal aliens, but also drug traffickers, terrorists, and other violent criminals. Now, under the pretense of providing security, the Bush administration is adopting an outrageous policy that, in effect, does away with our borders with Mexico and Canada altogether. Regular readers of THE NEW AMERICAN know that this magazine has been warning that this direct assault on our nationhood was coming, that it is part and parcel of the NAFTA-CAFTA-FTAA process....

I was a long-time, once very active member of Free republic. My screen name was DEFcon4, and I belonged to the N.E.Chapter of Free Republic, we travelled to DC to attend FR rallies, and freeped Clinton numerous times. Voted for Bush Senior, and W on his first election. I am a tried and true PATRIOT. I believe in the greatness of the USA, in which I grew up in. I am not a liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, or any other label that people like to try to pidgeonhole others with - I am a patriot of our country. When I...

Two items: [1] From Laurie Mylroie's "Iraq News" Newsletter - Tue, 17 May 2005 20:03:39 -0400 Subject: Michael Rubin, Prior Isikoff Use of Faulty Source From the list of Michael Rubin, previously at DoD and now at AEI (May 17, 2005): This was not the first time Michael Isikoff has used faulty or fabricated sources. In reporting the myth that Doug Feith’s office created its own intelligence unit, he relied on Karen Kwiatkowski, who associated with the Lyndon LaRouche movement. Kwiatkowski said on tape that she was Isikoff’s chief source. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Report on the U.S....

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

Gas costs so much. I cant afford it. Why want Bush do something? Don't say he can't. His daddy or his handlers could be on the phone in 2 minutes with the Rothchilds and by 1 week, oil prices would be under $20 and gas would be 1 dollar a gallon. You know it and I know it. Why want he? Do you know? Is there sombody we can call? Plaese advice.

<p>What is this palce? Are you peeple for reel? Is this some kind of joke?</p>

I apologize for being me, true and dedicated to freedom for everyone especially those who haven't seen it truly in a long time.

<p>Stop inhumane experiments on liberal trolls!!!!!!! Oh my! I recently encountered stunning liberal talking points concerning trolldom! Or concerning what FReepers do on the forum with idiots.</p> <p>I was really shocked and my eyes wide open when I was reading it! Unfortunately I lost the link but I will retell you what I happened to get to know. The people at the DNC set inhumane experiments over trolls! It is outrageous!</p>

The assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri has initiated an international political chess match which is being played out on the streets of Lebanon and in the media worldwide. Hariri's murder twenty-four days ago sparked a governmental crisis in Lebanon that resulted in Prime Minister Omar Karami's resignation, cries of blame on Syria, street protests by the opposition in Lebanon, a massive counter-protest by government supporters, the reinstatement of Karami, and continuing uncertainty.

i just joined up. i'm a liberal who's looking for some stimulating political discussion. i wasn't sure what the procedure was, so i thought i'd say hello. howdy.

The Media CIA CONTROLED MEDIDA AND/OR MEDIA MANIPULATION IS A VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO A FREE PRESS CONCERNING ALL 50 STATES AND EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN PLEASE REVIEW: http://government.rantnetwork.com/usgovcoverups (read website on "operation mockingbird") Journalism is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists, and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout. Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The agency wanted these journalists not only to...

What is it about a conspiracy that makes them believable to some otherwise intelligent people? From time to time I receive e-mails, which purport to tell me, nay prove, all manner of wild conspiracies. That President Bush is a Satan worshipper in league with the ‘real’ Prince of Darkness (who I thought was Robert Novak or Darth Vader). Apparently together they are going place the entire planet under a United Nations government with U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan replacing Vice President Cheney as the puppet master who controls the Bush marionette. This conspiracy “theory” is currently en vogue.

8:38PM CT The first report from St. Louis is in - and presidential candidates Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) and David Cobb (Green Party) were just arrested. Badnarik was carrying an Order to Show Cause, which he intended to serve the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Earlier today, Libertarians attempted to serve these same papers at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the CPD - but were stopped from approaching the CPD office by security guards.

( Boston Globe Archives, 2004-09-08 ) In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records, White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

( Boston Globe Archives, 2004-09-10 ) THE GLOBE SPOTLIGHT TEAM HAS SCORED ANOTHER BULL'S-EYE WITH ITS REPORT ON GEORGE W. BUSH'S VIOLATION OF HIS CONTRACT WITH THE GOVERNMENT FOR SERVICE IN THE AIR NATIONAL GUARD, AND HIS STAFF'S SUBSEQUENT EGREGIOUS DENIAL AND MISREPRESENTATION OF THE FACTS (PAGE A1, SEPT. 8).

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny . . . what great fun you are to watch. Sincerely, I thank you for all the great belly-laughs these past weeks. Y'know, Johnny, I've been watching political campaigns for well over 40 years and I've seen some really stupid ones. Yours is quickly rising right up there with the top four or five silliest, too. Of course, you don't realize that yet, do you Johnny. But, Johnny, it's really your own fault. It's a leadership thing and leadership is something you know very, very little about. That will become rather obvious if you just look around...

<p>A set of hearing aids costs about $2,200 on average. Mead Killion thinks that's crazy. He believes an effective aid for mild-to-moderate hearing loss could be sold over the counter for around $100 -- using technology that already exists.</p> <p>But bringing inexpensive hearing aids to the masses won't be easy. Dr. Killion, a hearing-aid pioneer, is battling a tight-knit group of licensed specialists who by law are the only people allowed to dispense hearing devices. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the industry, so far has sided mostly with the specialists, who are trained to calibrate and fit devices suited to each patient. If anyone could sell a hearing aid, the FDA says, elderly people might be victimized by shoddy merchandise and fail to get treatment for serious medical conditions.</p>

Oakland Tribune Cal-EPA nominee left of most Democrats Terry Tamminen puts governor at odds with Bush administration By Douglas FischerSTAFF WRITER Friday, November 14, 2003 - Incoming California Environmental Protection Agency boss Terry Tamminen outlined an agenda Thursday that places the Schwarzenegger administration at odds with the Bush administration, while simultaneously defending the governor-elect's decision to put a timber industry executive in the agency's No. 2 slot and Bill Jones as the state resources chief. "We have to get beyond balkanizing ourselves," Tamminen said shortly after addressing business leaders gathered for the 17th annual San Francisco Bay Decisionmakers Conference....

Time to face facts: Gays gain victory The gays have won. The problem is no one will admit it. The biggest and latest news is that Canada is poised to legalize same-sex marriage. But the signs of the gay victory have been all around for us for years. The sitcom "Will and Grace" features openly gay characters who joke about their sex lives in ways that little more than a decade ago would have sparked complaints if uttered by heterosexuals, let alone homosexuals. Showtime's "Queer as Folk" depicts random gay sex in precisely the same trivial terms that HBO's "Sex...

The GuardianFormer US vice president Al Gore is planning to launch a liberal cable TV news network to challenge the dominance of rightwing media such as the market leading Fox News.Mr Gore, a Democrat who was beaten to the White House by George Bush in a controversial contest three years ago, is talking to financial backers and entertainment veterans about launching the channel.Although it is not clear what format the liberal network would take, sources close to Mr Gore said the former presidential candidate was firmly behind the venture. "He can pull out at any time. He can say, 'This...

Why not blame the war on a sinister clique which has duped the public and even the President? Hardly a day passes now when I don't wake up to read about myself in the papers. I've become one of the hottest topics in journalism. In European, American and even Canadian newspapers, the articles proliferate. The world continues prostrate in awe or rage toward the "Straussian" legions who allegedly control American foreign policy and brought us the war against Saddam. The "Straussians," c'est moi. True, unlike my friends in the Bush administration, I just belong to the academic wing of our...

BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq. Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down. The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He...

by David Yeagley Discovering conspiracy is exciting. It’s makes terrific TV shows like The X-Files, and great James Bond movies. Political conspiracy makes for great media fodder too. The Clintons have proven an exhaustless source of inquiry. Whether created by Communists or by space aliens, conspiracies keep us intensely occupied. Discovering conspiracy is such a strong propensity of the human mind that one has to wonder whether suspicion of conspiracy is itself not some Jungian archetype of the Collective Unconscious. Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), the Swiss ‘anthro’-psychologist insisted there was memory of common, primordial human experience imbedded in the unconscious...

An e-mail sent by a Yale professor naming Jewish students from an Israel advocacy group as a "pro-war cabal" has caused an uproar at the elite Ivy League university. Students charge that listing the Jewish names was anti-Semitic; many claim they are outspoken opponents of the war against Iraq. "Just to insinuate that people who espouse pro-Israel views at Yale are automatically complicit in promoting the war is ridiculous and offensive," said Nelson Moussazadeh, co-president of Yale Friends of Israel. The e-mail, sent Saturday by an associate professor of genetics, Mazin Qumsiyeh, to the several hundred members of Yale’s anti-war...