Free Republic

What's the Matter with Soledad O'Brien? CNN's Soledad O'Brien isn't used to criticism. In the world of media elites, she's a beloved figure and an award-winning news anchor. But last week, she revealed her true, decidedly non-neutral colors. And she's not happy about the hoi polloi questioning her hallowed journalistic objectivity. On Thursday, O'Brien interviewed Joel Pollak, editor-in-chief of the late Andrew Breitbart's online empire. Breitbart's BigGovernment.com released a 1991 video of Barack Obama (then a 30-year-old law student) at a Harvard rally embracing radical racialist Derrick Bell and his push for more aggressive race-based hiring at Harvard. Bell is...

Gov. Jerry Brown is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his tax campaign from California Indian tribes at the same time many tribes are seeking to renegotiate lucrative gambling compacts with him. The Democratic governor, who proposes increasing the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners, is considered more accommodating of tribal interests than his predecessor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his administration is in compact talks "on various levels" with 15 to 20 tribes, Brown's tribal negotiator, Jacob Appelsmith, said Tuesday. Any compacts Brown signs could significantly affect a gambling industry that generates more than $7...

For years, the Left has asked why the Obama administration hasn’t pursued prosecutions against lenders who arguably engaged in fraud when foreclosing on mortgages in the wake of the housing-bubble collapse.  It turns out that these lenders had friends in high places in the Department of Justice.  Reuters reports that both Attorney General Eric Holder and his lieutenant Lanny Breuer, who ran the DoJ’s criminal division, were partners in a law firm that worked on behalf of those very same firms (via JWF’s Just A Grunt): U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal...

.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows. The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

The Texas redistricting process has now been marred by a conflict of interest. Since the conflict favors liberals, the media has been as quiet as a mouse (the latest media dereliction of duty). Here’s how your Texas media isn’t serving you: The United States judicial code provides for the disqualification of a judge if his spouse or a person within the third degree of relationship to either individual is a party to the proceeding. Democrat legislators sued to have maps drafted during the session disqualified and redrawn by judges. Democrat Senator Leticia Van De Putte is the sister-in-law of one...

New details have emerged on the judge who granted bail to former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was arrested on November 5 and charged with 40 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15-year period. Deadspin reports that upon his arraignment, prosecutors requested $500,000 bail for Sandusky. They also wanted him to wear a leg monitor. Judge Leslie Dutchcot freed Sandusky on $100,000 unsecured bail however, meaning he’ll only have to pay if he doesn’t show up for court. What’s truly interesting however is the information on Dutchcot’s biography on her former law firm’s website. Her profile...

Journalism: Is the New York Times a news organization or a front for left-wing activists? Reporter Natasha Lennard was filmed leading an Occupy Wall Street panel, offering radicals tips on keeping their identities secret. Openly. In a video that appeared on BigGovernment.com, Lennard, a Times freelance reporter who was arrested with 700 other leftists for shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge this month, revealed herself to be within the actual leadership of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. Along with four other "comrades," she addressed a roomful of people at a bookstore in Manhattan, officiously advising the fractious movement on how...

The evidence continues to cast strong doubts on the attorney general's truthfulness. Friday was just another day in a continuing series of bad days for the administration of President Barack Obama, as the furor surrounding the executive branch’s gun-walking scandal continues to escalate. The day began with a gritty montage-style video from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asking the question few in the media are willing to ask about the gun-walking program: Holder vs. White House: Who Is Responsible? Like a duffel bag stuffed with straw-purchased Draco pistols, the day quickly went “south� from there.The White House...

he AARP, formerly the The American Association of Retired Persons, sent U.S. senators a letter last week asking them to oppose any increases in Medicare copayments. But the self-described pro-senior group hasn’t acknowledged that it has a financial stake in the debate’s outcome. (Snip) The AARP collects 4.95 percent of every dollar United HealthCare takes in from AARP members’ Medigap plan premiums. Not allowing Medigap plans to cover seniors’ Medicare copayment costs is a disincentive for AARP members to continue purchasing the supplemental coverage. In its letter to Congress, the AARP made no mention of any financial stake it may

The House Judiciary Committee is launching an investigation to probe the involvement that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had in “health care legislation or litigation” when she was serving as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general and was responsible for defending the administration’s position in federal court cases. The investigation will look at whether Kagan is required by law to recuse herself from judging cases challenging President Obama’s health-care law and whether her answers to questions posed by the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation process were accurate.

A few weeks ago, the National Institute for Money in State Politics published a report showing a marked spike last fall in campaign contributions to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller by lawyers and law firms that represent big banks after Miller announced he was opening an investigation into the nationwide mishandling of foreclosures by Bank of America, Chase and others. On April 20, TIME reported that a lawyer and a consultant for Bank of America, which is in direct negotiations with Miller over its handling of foreclosures, gave a total of $15,000 to Miller’s campaign.

Jake Sinderbrand, son of Judge Maryann Sumi, poses a bit of a problem for his mother. Son of Sumi touts his work for the AFL-CIO and SEIU. He has developed his professional political experience serving as a lead field manager with the AFL-CIO and as data manager for the SEIU State Council through the 2008 election cycle.

The California Public Utilities Commission is running a bit short on cash, so it has blessed the creation of a foundation to solicit money from the very companies it is supposed to be keeping an eye on. The idea behind the CPUC Foundation is to have a pool of money to reward deserving staffers, host foreign guests and generally brush up the commission's image - in other words, to pay for activities not covered by agency coffers. Organizers plan to kick off the fundraising with a big dinner Thursday night coinciding with the commission's 100th anniversary. Companies buying $20,000 tables...

Complete title: Mayor Bloomberg’s Office Spearheaded Drive for Ground Zero Mosque Approval According to Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s office that show his office was instrumental in helping Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, his wife Daisy Khan and their partner Sharif el-Gamal obtain approval for a massive mosque and “community center” to be built in the shadow of Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch pursuant to an open...

The clock struck thirteen for Charlie Rangel yesterday. Listing 13 counts in its bill of par ticulars, the House Ethics Committee declared that there exists "substantial reason to believe that a violation of the code of official conduct, or of a law, rule, regulation or other standard of conduct," was committed by the dean of New York's congressional delegation. Let us note right up front that the findings represent an indictment -- not a conviction. For the moment, it seems Rangel will have every opportunity to make his case in public. But, at the end of the day, Rangel wasn't...

One talent Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan displayed in her career climb could create unique ethics questions for her as a justice: the ability to persuade Harvard Law School alumni and other wealthy donors to give hundreds of millions of dollars, more than meeting a daunting fundraising goal that came with her job as dean. The $476 million total Kagan reached for the "Setting the Standard" campaign was a record not just for her university but for all law schools....Kagan's prolific fundraising sets her apart from the current Supreme Court justices. ... If Kagan is confirmed to the court as...

It's probably safe to assume that a lot of reporters in the mainstream media lean to the left side of the ideological spectrum. And it was seen throughout the health care debate over the past year and a half - that somehow we need to raise the rhetoric beyond hyperbole like death panels, etc. One of those reporters was The Washington Post's health care reporter Ceci Connolly, who last summer appeared on MSNBC and made such a plea. And since then, she made other gestures to show she was in line with the Obama administration on this issue. Well, lo...

Journalism can reinvent itself without government 'help' The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking ways to "reinvent" journalism, and that's a cause for concern. According to a May 28 draft proposal, the agency thinks government should be at the center of a media overhaul. The bureaucracy sees it as a problem that the Internet has introduced a wealth of information options to consumers, forcing media companies to adapt and experiment to meet changing market needs. FTC's policy staff fears this new reality. "There are reasons for concern that experimentation may not produce a robust and sustainable business model for commercial...

Lehman Brothers collapse is traced back to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big mortgage banks that got a federal bailout a few weeks ago. Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs. A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama. Now remember, he's only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No....

One reason for the ongoing battle between Sen. Chuck Grassley and the Department of Justice over the identities of as many as 13 to 16 current Obama Administration political appointees who provided legal counsel to suspected or convicted terrorists and enemy combatants being held in detention, is not so much what these lawyers did before joining the administration. Rather, says a Department of Justice source, it stems from the administration's own attempts to identify any official paper or email trails of those DOJ attorneys that would reveal not just past but current efforts -- since their appointment, in other words...

Jennifer Daskal is a radical far left American lawyer who serves as senior counsel for Human Rights Watch, and focuses on issues of terrorism, criminal law and immigration. She is also currently a political hire at Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, which is seeking to prosecute terror suspects through the criminal justice system instead of through military tribunals. In 2008, Daskal claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was tortured and recommended that his guilty plea be thrown out of court. Now this radical is working for the Obama Administration. It figures.Human Rights Watch reported: ---Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others announced...

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood put Toyota's stock price into free-fall Wednesday, telling a House committee that Americans with cars made by the Japanese auto company should stop driv ing them. LaHood was addressing an issue of some significance: Toyota's recall of some 2.3 million vehicles due to a faulty gas-pedal design. "My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it," he said. But the company says the cars are safe to drive until repairs can be scheduled -- and LaHood swiftly backtracked. On its surface, LaHood's gaffe is just the latest instance of foot-in-mouth thoughtlessness for...

You may remember that more than two months ago, amid the controversy over the Obama administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to, and hold a civilian trial for, accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder about Justice Department lawyers who before joining the Obama/Holder team had represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups representing them. Grassley pointed to one high-ranking Obama Justice official who formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver and another who works on detainee issues despite previous advocacy for detainees. "This prior representation, I think, creates a conflict...

There's a massive conflict of interest -- along with ideological problems -- in Barack Obama's questionable pick to head the review of the failing watch-list "system" that carelessly allowed terrorist Abdulmutallab to get on board the flight to Detroit to try and blow it up. The questionable pick is one John Brennan, and here are his two biggest flaws as they relate to his ability to be able to conduct a competent and ethical review of the watch-list "system."

Max Baucus, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, recommended that the White House nominate his girlfriend as a U.S. attorney in Montana, his office announced late Friday night. Earlier this year, Baucus recommended that the White House consider Melodee Hanes and two other names for the U.S. attorney post – at the same time that the senator was carrying on a romantic relationship with Hanes, who had been his state director. Baucus was separated with his wife at the time when the two began their involvement, according to a source familiar with the situation, and now the two are...

A Georgia judge has blasted attorney Orly Taitz, who has handled a number of court challenges to President Barack Obama's eligibility under the constitutional demand the Oval Office be occupied only by a "natural born" citizen, fining her $20,000 for what he called "frivolous" court actions, and he then mocked the concern over Obama's background. "Although counsel's present concern is the location of the president's birth, it does not take much imagination to extend the theory to his birthday," wrote U.S. District Judge Clay Land in an order released today. "Perhaps, he looks 'too young' to be president, and he...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; his Staff; and the United States Department of Justice to which he Over-Sees Violated the Code of Federal Regulations as well as Federal Criminal Laws Pertaining to their Conflict-of-Interest Berg’s Qui Tam Case [False Claims Act] against Barry Soetoro a/k/a Barack H. Obama and Berg has filed a Motion for Reconsideration (Washington, DC – 07/02/2009) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, the first Attorney who filed suit against Barack H. Obama challenging Senator Obama's lack of Constitutional "qualifications/eligibility" to serve as President of the United States and his cases that are still pending in Federal Court,...

Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) has been under investigation for more than three years after NLPC exposed his cozy relationships with the recipients of earmarks that he sponsored. Yet, as chairman of an Appropriations subcommittee, he has jurisdiction over the budget of the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, the very entity that is investigating him. Mollohan claims he recused himself in a January 2007 letter to the full Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) but he refuses to release the letter. Republicans say they have never seen it.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is AWOL on the issue, having said nothing since she...

During a visit to a local Five Guys hamburger joint, President Obama ordered lunch for himself, some of his staff and NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams.

Some reporters are questioning the White House commitment to transparency. The Washington Times reports the administration is giving up on transparency by the labor unions. The labor Department is allowing union officials to skirt conflict of interest reporting rules. It said bringing enforcement actions against union leaders who violate the law, "would not be a good use of resources."

A telecommunications company has confirmed for this columnist that its vice president for policy—who is also an Obama donor and a former lobbyist—is advising Barack Obama’s transition team on telecom policy. Obama’s transition team, which has failed to disclose this executive’s involvement, happens to have proposed a significant change in telecom policy that will profit that very company, called Clearwire. ...snip... Salemme, a former telecom lobbyist who has given thousands to Obama, including $5,000 to Obama’s transition team, has helped Obama craft a policy that will benefit Salemme’s company. This is just the sort of arrangement that led to years...

Every time I catch sight of that flaming queen, Barney Frank (whom some have dubbed “The Banking Queen), lecturing some business or banking type from his perch in a House hearing room, I want to HURL! Let me see if I have this straight. And to borrow a line from a Jim Carey film “SOMEBODY stop me” if I get any part of it wrong: Barney and some of his cohorts (Dodd, Schumer, et al) FORCED banks to make mortgage loans to people who had no prospect of making the payments under threat of losing their bank charters; For a...

LONDON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush's special envoy for Iraqi debt, James Baker, is simultaneously working for a commercial concern that is trying to recover money from Iraq, a British newspaper said. The Guardian said that Baker, a former US secretary of state, has a reported 180-million-dollar (150-million-euro) stake in the merchant bank and defence contractor the Carlyle Group. This consortium, it said, is secretly proposing to collect 27 billion dollars on behalf of Kuwait, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. According to the Guardian, the Carlyle Group claims that Baker will not benefit...

The Supreme Court stepped into a sensitive dispute Friday over a state judge's decision to participate in a case that involved a key campaign supporter. The justices typically avoid cases about judicial ethics, but they agreed to review the actions of a West Virginia Supreme Court justice whose vote overturned a $50 million verdict against a company that is run by the most generous backer of his election. The high court's decision comes amid growing concern over the role of money in electing state judges. Don Blankenship, the chief executive of Massey Energy Co., spent more than $3 million to...

This is beyond belief. Its bad enough the moderator of tomorrow nights debate is an outspoken Obama supporter. But the fact that she has a pro-Obama book set to be released on inauguration day 2009 and thus has a vested interest in seeing Obama elected was the icing on the cake. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN??? Or more importantly, why is the McCain campaign not up in arms about it? If the moderator was a known McCain supporter you can bet the Obama campaign would be crying foul, as would their MSM cronies. This is no different then a lawyer defending...

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee declared Friday that an agreement on legislation to relieve a spreading financial crisis depends on House Republicans "dropping this revolt" against President Bush. Rep. Barney Frank said leading Democrats on Capitol Hill were shocked by the level of divisiveness that surfaced at a White House meeting Thursday, not long after key congressional players of both parties declared they'd achieved the broad outlines of an agreement on a bill implementing the administration's proposed $700 billion bailout plan.

Ifill is working on a book called Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, focusing on the Democratic nominee and such up-and-coming black politicians as Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., on panel that oversees federal agency - TVA has approved a water-access deal for a development group whose investors include U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., who sits on a committee that exercises oversight of the federal utility. On June 3, TVA CEO Tom Kilgore approved a transaction that provides 145 feet of water-access rights along the shoreline of Watts Bar Reservoir in Roane County to an entity called The Cove at Blackberry Ridge LLC. In exchange, The Cove agreed to relinquish 150 feet of water-access rights in Rhea County and also provide approximately $15,000 for...

New York (AP) -- A judge has ordered New York's governor, Senate and Assembly to raise the pay of the state's judges within the next 90 days. State Supreme Court Justice Edward Lehner in Manhattan said Wednesday that the defendants unconstitutionally abused their power by depriving judges of a pay hike for almost 10 years. He said state legislators illegally linked a judicial salary increase to one for themselves. Lehner, who acknowledged he would be affected by his own decision, ordered the state to raise judicial pay to reflect cost of living increases since 1998.

SEC readies report on credit rating agencies Stephanie Baum 23 Apr 2008 The US Securities and Exchange Commission will issue a report this summer following an examination of credit rating agencies and their roles in the credit crunch as they prepare new rules governing their behavior. SEC chairman Christopher Cox told the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs that the focus of the SEC’s research is to determine whether the ratings agencies violated their conflict of interest rules to determine their clients’ credit ratings. Cox told the committee that the SEC is looking at requiring more transparency...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has released a list of $740 million in earmark requests he made in the past three years, and it includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife Michelle is a vice president. The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a new pavilion. “I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Kelly Sullivan, another vice president at the medical center, told the New York Times. In any case,...

As American banks go hat in hand to foreign financial institutions and governments, begging for capital to help them get out of the mess into which their subprime loans have landed them, the question arises as to whether the United States should permit nations like China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the banks they control to acquire part ownership of our leading banks. The presidential candidates discussed this issue in their Nevada debate and Hillary was asked about it in an interview with Neil Cavuto on the FOX Business Network yesterday. She replied that she would not...

Link references article which can't be posted here. ~~~~~ As always in the liberal Beltway, no one's ever questioned Fitzgerald's unsupervised free ride and tenure as Special Prosecutor in the Plame/Libby case by his college summer roommate, James Comey, now legal counsel for the giant, Lockheed Martin.

In Wednesday’s edition of "Best of the Web Today" (BOTWT), James Taranto takes The Associated Press to task for its "accountability journalism" approach being a "departure from its old-fashioned just-the-facts style of journalism."Taranto also seizes upon this quote by Newsweek assistant managing editor Evan Thomas in an article published in American Journalism Review about coverage of the Duke "rape" case: "We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong." "The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong." This is reminiscent of the "fake but accurate" defense of CBS's Bush National Guard hoax. If...

James Taranto’s "Best of the Web Today" (BOTWT) on Thursday, July 5th, led off with an item about how the suspects in the failed London and Glasgow terror plots were depicted by The Associated Press ("[t]hey had diverse backgrounds, coming from countries around the globe, but all shared youth and worked in medicine"), which bent over backwards to sidestep the incontrovertible fact that the countries from which they immigrated to England are overwhelmingly Muslim.Then to buttress his case that it is disingenuous – and dangerous - to pretend that the terrorists aren’t all Muslim, Taranto adds: Why would that matter?...

It’s been a month since James Taranto and his wannabe pundit joined together in Best of the Web Today (BOTWT) to gangbang Harvard University terrorism expert Jessica Stern with erroneous accounts in the New York Sun and BOTWT about her remarks on religious extremism at a conference organized by security think tank EastWest institute.As of yet, Taranto has not seen fit to:† Correct the shoddy reporting he cited from , on which his shoddy analysis was based;† Disclose* to BOTWT and OpinionJournal readers why he did not verify the facts in the Sun article himself, instead of relying upon the...

James Taranto spotlights a piece about an EastWest Institute conference from the New York Sun in Friday’s edition of his "Best of the Web Today" column (curiously, he did not include this item in a new feature he calls "Wannabe Pundits" - but this is a whole ‘nother story that’s long and convoluted and has an expanding cast of characters, so The Stiletto must leave it for later). In a recent post, The Stiletto suggested that Taranto has been somewhat remiss in making disclosures ethical journalists typically make when they have a particular interest or stake in something they are...

In a classic example of misleading by omission, OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto’s bio states, "He attended California State University, Northridge." In a commentary about Marilee Jones, who had lied to her bosses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology about her educational credentials for 28 years, Taranto belatedly fills in the blanks: I left high school after my sophomore year; and although I spent several years in college, I never bothered to graduate. Noting that "[b]y all accounts Marilee Jones did an excellent job," Taranto brushes aside the central issue in her dismissal - "[o]stensibly Ms. Jones was forced out because she...

In many ways, Terri Hall was on a collision course with Texas toll road policies long before she and her family loaded up their van and drove from California to the Hill Country three years ago. A lifetime of volunteering, a hunger for staying on top of politics, and strong religious and moral convictions helped hone Hall's activist instincts. Her brains, drive, superb speaking skills, engaging personality and wholesome good looks — noted by friends and enemies alike — make Hall especially effective. They help explain why this 37-year-old mother of six is a leading force in a populist assault...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used her clout to get lawmakers to back a San Francisco redevelopment project near her multimillion-dollar rental properties, disclosure documents reveal. Pelosi got House members to authorize $25 million to improve the Embarcadero port area, clearing the way for cruise-ship-dock development and other improvements to aid the neighborhood's comeback. [Snip] "The appearance is obviously not good, and she needs to be forthcoming about how this impacts her financial interest," Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) told The Post. [Snip] Pelosi is the ninth richest member of the House, according to last year's disclosure reports, with stocks and real-estate...