Free Republic

As the United States continues on its downward trajectory, thanks to the policies of the Obama administration, the debate rages about whether he’s doing it all on purpose or whether he is merely incompetent. When talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh discusses this, he concludes that “it doesn’t matter” because the result is the same either way. Limbaugh misses a critical distinction. If Obama is incompetent, it means he must be voted out of office. If he is intentionally destroying the country as it was founded, it means he has malicious intent and must be removed through impeachment and a Senate...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is asking the Obama campaign for records about past or proposed fundraising activities involving the White House or White House officials. A letter Issa sent Tuesday to Obama for American campaign manager Jim Messina is similar to missives Issa sent to the White House and to the Democratic National Committee earlier this month. All three letters demand information about planning for political events at the White House, such as a meeting between Obama and Wall Street donors on March 7 in the Blue Room and a video Obama filmed in...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is demanding records from the White House about Democratic Party-organized and fundraising-related events involving the Obama administration, POLITICO's Jake Sherman reports. Issa's Monday letter to the White House, posted here, cites a variety of press reports including some in POLITICO about fundraising-related activity involving President Barack Obama and his aides. The events include a Democratic National Committee-organized meeting with Wall Street donors in March and the recent videotaping of a fundraising appeal by Obama at the White House.

Rep. Darrell Issa says he’s had to go directly to the field to get information about Project Gunrunner because the Obama administration has stonewalled on all of the information subpoenas they’ve been sent. But now it’s their turn. Issa says that he’s ready to subpoena people in the Obama administration for hearings this summer. He points out that this isn’t the discovery phase of the process because they know exactly what happened. They now want to know what the administration was thinking by approving a process that sent high-powered weapons to the ‘worst of the worst’ on both sides of...

Countrywide’s VIP program is the first subpoena target for House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said a committee aide. The “Friends of Angelo” program, named for former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, has been under committee investigation since 2008 for allegedly granting generous mortgage deals to influential government officials, lawmakers and employees at Fannie Mae. “Countrywide orchestrated a deliberate and calculated effort to use relationships with people in high places in order to manipulate public policy and further their bottom line to the detriment of the American taxpayers even at the expense of its own lending standards,”...

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the combative foil to top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa, is making his first significant power move to cut Issa down to size, demanding authority to stop Issa from issuing congressional subpoenas “unilaterally.” In a Jan. 24 letter, Cummings claims Issa vowed to him privately to aggressively use his subpoena power “more expansively” than past oversight committee chairmen. Congressional subpoena power gives Issa almost unlimited authority to demand documents and compel testimony from the Obama administration. Now, Cummings is pushing to give Democrats input on which subpoenas Issa issues and force a committee vote on any...

Vice President Joe Biden welcomes California Rep. Darrell Issa to the White House Tuesday, the White House’s first outreach to the chairman that has vowed to investigate every corner of government. The meeting, which will be at 3 p.m. in the White House, will focus on tracking stimulus spending, White House and Hill sources say. Issa is looking to dig into specifics about stimulus oversight: enforcing the law that the spending of stimulus dollars must be reported, empowering inspectors general with subpoena power and potentially some improvements to Recovery.gov.

Bolstered by the backing of key watchdog groups, top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa is pressing House oversight committee Chairman Edolphus Towns to help investigate a mounting number of technology-related ethics problems for a White House that has prided itself on both transparency and its technological savvy. Issa’s latest move is a June 30 letter to Towns requesting the chairman join Issa in “launching a formal investigation” into numerous allegations the Obama White House has played fast and loose with its ethics rules and disclosure requirements under federal law.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) got the made-for-YouTube moment of last week's House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder: Smith repeatedly attempted to make Holder say that "radical Islam" inspired terrorism, and Holder looked for ways to be diplomatic and avoid saying it. But if Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) wins Tuesday's U.S. Senate primary in Pennsylvania, expect to hear more about the issue on which Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) grilled Holder -- Sestak's off-the-cuff comment that the Obama administration offered him a job if he would drop out of the race. (He says he was being recruited before Sen....

The top Republican on the House Oversight committee is demanding answers from the White House about whether it offered Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) a job to drop out of his state’s Senate primary. This time Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) target is White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Issa, for the past few weeks, has been seeking information about whether the Obama administration broke the law in offering Sestak an appointed position to drop out of his battle to unseat Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in a primary. Earlier this month Issa sent White House general counsel Robert Bauer demanding answers about...

The outrage over ACORN, the controversial grass roots community organization, reaches a fever pitch as lawmakers in Washington begin to act. Chris Wallace gets the story behind the accusations from ACORN's CEO Bertha Lewis and from one of the group's harshest Congressional critics Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Late last night I watched an interview of this man, Darrell Mansfield, on TBN, and couldn't help but admire his musical skills on the harmonica - he JAMS! Looked him up on YouTube for my daughter and Mom to see, and am in tears after watching this...

To: U.S. Congress Six Ohio-based reservists were court-martialed for taking Army vehicles abandoned in Kuwait by other units so they could carry out their own unit's mission to Iraq. Members of the 656th Transportation Company said they needed the equipment to deliver fuel that was needed by U.S. forces in Iraq for everything from helicopters to tanks. The reservists took two tractor-trailers and stripped parts from a five-ton truck that had been abandoned in Kuwait by other units that had already moved into Iraq, one of the reservists, Darrell Birt of Columbus, told the Associated Press on Sunday. Birt, a...

At Least 3 Dead, 4 Wounded In Nightclub Shooting Witnesses: Alleged Gunman Went Onto Stage, Fired Shots POSTED: 10:32 pm EST December 8, 2004 UPDATED: 11:36 pm EST December 8, 2004 COLUMBUS, Ohio -- At least three people died and four others were wounded after a shooting at a Columbus nightclub on Wednesday night, NBC 4 reported. The shooting took place shortly after 10 p.m. at Alrosa Villa, located at 5055 Sinclair Road. Two members of the heavy metal band Damageplan were reportedly shot and killed, including Dimebag Darrell, formerly with the band Pantera, NBC 4's David Wayne reported. The...

<p>Bill Simon's political team inadvertently accomplished what no one thought possible just two years ago: They ran a campaign against Democrat Gov. Gray Davis without mentioning the energy crisis.</p> <p>Team Simon tried to run the Republican candidate for governor as an ethical standard-bearer in moderate California. The strategy wasted four years of work by Republicans in the Legislature, who hammered Davis on energy missteps and then heroically sustained a budget debate until September even as it was obvious that Team Simon was doing nothing to take advantage of their efforts. Instead, the Simon campaign defied the wisdom of all its polling, its extensive focus groups and even recent California political history. It entered the ethics minefield.</p>