Free Republic

So, what about the video? The White House last week released nearly 100 pages of emails detailing some of the discussions within the Obama administration that resulted in major revisions to talking points about the Benghazi attacks drafted by the Central Intelligence Agency.

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing.

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

The D.C. Council is considering requiring people to purchase liability insurance before they can get a license to own a gun. The bill would mandate that prospective gun owners maintain at least a $250,000 policy. The policy would cover damages from negligent acts or intentional acts that aren’t undertaken in self-defense. A handful of states are considering similar measures, but none has passed such a law....

(CNN) -- Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steven Miller has said his agency has pinpointed two "rogue" employees in the agency's Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for "overly aggressive" handling of Tea Party requests for tax-exempt status over the past two years, a congressional source told CNN on Wednesday.

Officials in Washington are using dirty tactics to hide the investigation and decision not to prosecute David Gregory of NBC News for illegally possessing a “high-capacity” magazine in the District of Columbia.As I wrote in February, my requests to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and the Office of Attorney General (OAG) to turn over the documents in Mr. Gregory’s case were ignored. I finally had to use a Freedom of Information Act request, but the attorney general and police only turned over public documents. So I wrote separate extensively-detailed FOIA request to the attorney general, MPD and Mayor Vincent Gray....

WINEP told the Washington Free Beacon multiple officials are trying to trying track him down currently. It remains unclear where in D.C. he may have gone, or if he is even still in the city.

Radio Host to Lead Armed March on DC July 4th 'To Put Gov't on Notice that We Won't be Intimidated' May 5, 2013 Libertarian activist and radio host, Adam Kokesh plans to lead an armed march on Washington, D.C. this Independence Day. Launched as a group on Facebook, the "Open Carry March on Washington" hopes to get 1,000 supporters to march into the nation's capital with loaded rifles. The group plans to meet at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. From there, they will march across the Memorial Bridge into Washington, D.C. and continue down Independence Avenue. While Virginia permits open...

A third shocking undercover video has been released showing abortion clinic staffers saying they will not revive babies who are born alive after failed abortions. The videos show embattled abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell was not an anomaly. The new video comes on the heels of abortion doctor Cesare Santangelo of Washington, D.C, who was exposed on a recent undercover video telling a 24-week pregnant woman that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, “we would not help it.” Before that, the pro-life group released a video showing an abortion facility staff member saying an unborn...

>Last year, the average American driver wasted 38 hours sitting in traffic. While the occasional traffic jam inconveniences most drivers, some unlucky people live in the nationÂ’s most congested cities. In addition to spending an average of 42 hours a year in traffic, drivers in these cities face peak hour congestion that can increase travel time during rush hour by 15% or more. INRIX, a traffic information and services group, collects data for individual road segments. In its 2012 Traffic Scorecard, INRIX calculated the amount of time that congestion added to driversÂ’ peak hour commute for each road. After aggregating...

White House spokesman Jay Carney said in response to a question about the September 11, 2012 Benghazi terror attack that it "happened a long time ago."

<p>WASHINGTON—Elderly survivors of the Holocaust and the veterans who helped liberate them are gathering for what could be their last big reunion at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Some 1,000 survivors and World War II vets are coming together with President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust activist and writer, on Monday when the museum marks its 20th anniversary. Organizers chose not to wait for the 25th milestone because many survivors and vets may not be alive in another five years.</p>

The Land of Lincoln and home state of President Barack Obama has become nothing short of a fiscal and economic disaster. The Illinois labor market continues to weaken and the State government loses money by the truckload every day. If you think the nation's economic and fiscal conditions are bad, and they are, then pull up a chair and consider it could be worse...you could live in Illinois. Illinois has a population of about 12.8 million, making it the fifth largest state in the Union. It has oustanding debt of more than $153 billion or nearly $12,000 per citizen of...

A lot of Americans know that the US government is out of control. Anyone who has cared enough to study the US Constitution even a little knows this. Still, very few of these people are taking any significant action, and largely because of one error: They are waiting for “the good guys” to show up and fix things. Washington is an unfettered beast. The system will NOT fix itself.

In an age when it seems heroes are hard to come by, it’s stirring to see a genuine hero in action. Last August, FRC building manager Leo Johnson was temporarily manning the front desk at our Washington headquarters when a now-confessed terrorist intent on killing everyone in the building entered with a handgun and 100 rounds of ammunition. As he drew his gun, Leo courageously charged the attacker into oncoming gunfire. Even after sustaining a direct hit to his forearm, he subdued the attacker and wrestled the gun away from him. Leo Johnson’s heroism saved countless lives that day. Now...

The uncomfortable effects of government actions are being felt everywhere. Obamacare concerns are, anecdotally, delaying hiring, causing firms to change benefits for the people, and increasing taxes on the great majority. On the other hand, in the context of the "sequester", which is merely a slowdown in the breakneck rate of government spending, anyone who has traveled by plane in the last month knows the full court press efforts under way to ensure the American public knows just how 'devastating' the sequester cuts are - with delays rising exponentially with every dollar removed from the FAA budget. But there...

April 23, 2013 New Congressional Quest: End Prison Phone Call Price Gouging Bridget Johnson The Congressional Black Caucus Working Group on Prison Telecomm Reform is protesting high call costs for phone-homers behind bars. The CBC group will hold a press conference with former inmates and family members “to expose the often exorbitant rates that prisoners and their families are being charged for telephone calls and to announce the CBC response to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to resolve the issue after more than a decade of delay,” according to D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s (D)...

Security outside the White House was stepped up Monday afternoon following two explosions at the Boston Marathon. The Secret Service created a secure perimeter, pushing back members of the public back across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. One source confirmed to POLITICO that the increased security is related to the Boston incident

Under ObamaCare, insurers have the option of charging smokers up to 50 percent more to cover the associated higher costs of providing them with health care — but the District of Columbia, along with several other states, have decided that any plans being sold within their exchange are prohibited from adding tobacco surcharges. That simply wouldn’t be fair, you see: On Monday, the D.C. exchange’s executive board voted to prevent insurers from charging higher premiums to smokers than to nonsmokers — meaning nonsmokers are likely to pay modestly higher rates than if smoking surcharges were permitted. The District joins three...

The District of Columbia’s Obamacare czars — the board that sets rules for the phony insurance marketplace, or “exchange,” that the law creates — have decided that henceforth insurers shall be forbidden by law to charge smokers higher rates than non-smokers. Smoking, as it turns out, “is a preexisting medical condition,” according to Dr. Mohammad Akhter, the chairman of the D.C. Health Exchange Board. Two liberal states, California and Connecticut, have decided likewise, while Colorado and Alaska have rejected the idea.

In the name of tolerance, of course. At least a dozen students, including seniors Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen, say they have left the Newman Center in the last several years because Father Greg ShafferÂ’s strong anti-gay and anti-abortion views are too polarizing. Shaffer, a Roman Catholic priest, has spent five years preaching to GWU students.The former Newman Center members are creating a video with testimony from 10 other Catholic students, who cite Shaffer as the reason they left the chapel, hoping to inflame a largely liberal campus and force University administrators to act. Legacy and Bergen also plan to...

When President Barack Obama heads to Connecticut on Monday, it will have been 115 days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary – but just four days since the state legislature enacted what looks to be the strongest gun control law in the nation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A photo of the Obamas hugging that was released on Election Day 2012 has become the world’s most popular tweet on Twitter. A dressed-up version of Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech, packed with charts and graphs, is huge on YouTube. A playful picture of the president cavorting with a 3-year-old in a Spiderman costume is a favorite online.

On Saturday, the president was booed when he was shown on the giant screen at the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. According to a March 30 Breitbart report, nearly half of the crowd in attendance booed Obama in the first half, who attended a college basketball game with several Secret Service agents.

...Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in cases that challenge the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8. The Court should uphold these laws and respect the constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials to make marriage policy. Next Tuesday, March 26, as the Supreme Court hears these cases, thousands will come to our nation’s capital to March for Marriage.Make your voice heard in support of marriage between a man and a woman—and urge the Court to respect your constitutional authority. We don’t need an activist Court creating a...

The Washington, D.C., region has long been considered recession-proof, thanks to the remorseless expansion of the federal government in good times and bad. Yet it’s only now—as D.C. positively booms while most of the country remains in economic doldrums—that the scale of Washington’s prosperity is becoming clear. Over the past decade, the D.C. area has made stunning economic and demographic progress. Meanwhile, America’s current and former Second Cities, population-wise—Los Angeles and Chicago—are battered and fading in significance. Though Washington still isn’t their match in terms of population, it’s gaining on them in terms of economic power and national importance. In...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - D.C. police say 11 people have been taken to the hospital after a drive-by shooting outside an apartment complex in northwest Washington.</p> <p>Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham says 11 people reported some sort of injury in the Monday morning shooting on North Capitol Street.</p>

The artist assigned to illustrate author Orson Scott Card's upcoming Superman series for DC Comics is leaving the gig in the wake of protests regarding Card's views on gay issues.

The word “FREEDOM” is among the list of banned vanity license plate slogans for Washington D.C., according to a government file obtained by a Freedom of Information Request filed by the transparency website GovernmentAttic.org

And with that, he's done. 3m ago The president is hereby using the power of his office to advance his legislative agenda. He's spoken for 40 minutes to the press, an unusually long time in an administration when the president taking any questions at all has come to seem unusual. Obama's statement this morning is, let's talk about it. I've got nothing to hide. The more we talk about it the more my advantage grows.

Buzzfeed and Current TV contributor Michael Hastings joins Current TV to talk about Bob Woodward’s claims that the White House threatened him and his ongoing criticisms of the Obama administration. Cenk says, “[Woodward's] such a great microcosm of the media in Washington.

Some members of Congress apparently don’t like to be reminded about how much debt the country continues to rack up.

The District of Columbia seems not to want the public to know what it did — if anything — while investigating NBC News’ David Gregory for possession of an illegal 30-round magazine. The police refuse to turn over the public documents in the case, and the city council is allowing them to stonewall. Mr. Gregory wielded the “high capacity” magazine on his Dec. 23 “Meet the Press” show. Afterwards, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said that it had been asked by NBC if the multi-million dollar TV anchor could possess the illegal component and refused him. The police said it...

--IMAGE HERE -- It is becoming increasingly clear that anti-gun advocates, media personalities, and politicians are completely immune to the laws they insist the rest of must abide by, at least in the District of Columbia. While average citizens and veterans who have served our nation with distinction see their lives ruined, prosecutors repeatedly turn a blind eye when the person breaking the law is espousing an anti-gun agenda. It all started with David Gregory. Despite being warned by the Capitol Police that he could not possess a normal-capacity magazine inside the District of Columbia, he did so anyway. Even...

Living here in the shadow of our nation’s great Capitol in this fine Federal City, my neighbors and I enjoy the peace and serenity of a tightly enforced “no-fly” zone. By “peace” and “serenity” I mean that we are under near-constant assault by helicopters everywhere whapping just over our rooftops. Sometimes they are orange, sometimes green, sometimes they are blue with an orange stripe. And, yes, sometimes they are even actual black helicopters flying just overhead. I have even seen them ride over my little house with a guy tricked out in tactical gear hanging out the door holding a...

The coverage of two recent events in the District of Columbia shows how the old media in this country has dropped all pretence of impartiality. The first image is from yesterday, 25 January, in Washington, D.C. Please consider how much media coverage you have heard about it. It was a pro-life protest. The second image is from the next day, today, the 26th of January. It was from a protest against the the people's right to keep and bear arms: Consider how much media coverage that you have heard of this event. The camera shots are completely different. The first...

Young people walk with a banner past the U.S. Capitol during the annual March for Life in Washington Jan. 25. The pro-life demonstration marks the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion across the nation. (CNS photo/Bob Roller) (Jan. 25, 2012) WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the beginning, Nellie Gray imagined there would be a need for one march for life. It was a year after the Roe v Wade decision, and there was perhaps just enough outrage that people felt a legislative remedy could be attained. “But then we realized that Congress wasn’t going to help,...

More than 500,000 people are attending today’s March for Life in a massive attendance that could be well higher than that estimate and set records for the annual pro-life event challenging the mantra of unlimited abortion.Typically held on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that allowed virtually unlimited abortions at any point in pregnancy for any reason, the march for Life typically sees anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 people lining the streets towards the Supreme Court building.The huge crowd is expected to exceed last year’s 400,000 participants as they mark the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade...

A judge is holding secret hearings in the case of the man convicted in the 2001 killing of Washington intern Chandra Levy. Neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers have revealed the purpose of the hearings, which have been taking place in Washington behind closed doors. Several media organizations, including The Associated Press, are petitioning to open the proceedings. The next hearing takes place on February 7. Ingmar Guandique was convicted in 2010 of killing Levy, whose body was found in Washington's Rock Creek Park. The case captured the nation's attention because of Levy's relationship with California congressman Gary Condit. Condit was...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's lofty ideals from his inaugural address ran smack into reality Tuesday on the first working day of his second term.

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama starts his second term in office facing unprecedented budget constraints that will challenge his ability to implement his economic vision.

In the wake of the horrific elementary-school shootings in Newtown, Conn., last month, many Americans, desperate to do something in response, have decided that much stricter gun control is the answer. Democrats have proposed reinstating the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed legislation that would even restrict the use of some semiautomatic handguns. As a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who enforced firearms and ammunition cases while a severe local gun ban was still in effect, I am skeptical of the benefits that many imagine will result from additional gun-control efforts. I dislike guns, but I...

Washington, DC Mayor Vincent Gray is demanding that the City's NFL franchise currently know as the “Redskins” change its name. “The current name is demeaning to Native Americans,” Gray said. “Since the City has made major financial contributions in support of this franchise I am asserting our right to insist on a new monicker for the team.” Wags we quick to come out with a few risible possibilities. “I think 'Crackheads' would be a good name for the team,” said long time resident Joe Blough. “It would more accurately fit the culture of the city and could be seen as...

The attorney general for the District of Columbia, Irvin Nathan, announced Friday that he will not press charges against NBC News’ David Gregory nor any employee of the broadcast network for violating the city’s gun laws. Violation of the city's firearms laws carry a maximum $1,000 fine and one year in jail. Mr. Nathan wrote to an attorney representing Mr. Gregory and NBC News, Lee Levine of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, LLP, that, “OAG has made this determination, despite the clarity of the violation of this important law, because under all of the circumstances here a prosecution would not...

District of Columbia Attorney General Irvin Nathan issued a lengthy letter today explaining the decision not to prosecute David Gregory despite “despite the clarity of the violation of this important law,” despite rejecting NBC’s claims of a subjective misunderstanding of the law, and despite vowing vigorous enforcement of gun laws. -snip- t further undermines public confidence in such decisions to find out that Nathan knew Gregory and his wife, high-powered attorney Beth Wilkinson. Anne dug up the connection in which in 2011 Nathan and Wilkinson participated together in a charity mock trial for the Washington, D.C. Shakespeare Theatre Company (emphasis...

There must be something in the Potomac— According to a popular adult site, Washington D.C. has won the dubious title of America’s porn capital. D.C. residents reportedly watch almost twice as much online porn per capita as people living in the 50 states. It is a highly charged city, so who are we to judge how people relax? ******.com says D.C. residents watch 14.18 videos per person per year, followed by Hawaiians at 7.5.7 videos per person annually in the No. 2. spot. Other notables include Massachusetts (7.52) and New York (7.5). The Washington Post tries to take a crack...

Washington, D.C., residents watch more porn than the rest of America: study • Research from PornHub.com says residents of the nation’s capital watch 14.18 online videos per person in a year. Hawaii is second, with 7.57 per year. Politics has always been dirty, but a new study takes the expression to a level so stimulating that it’s hard to believe. Residents of Washington, D.C., watch nearly twice as much online pornography as people in any of the 50 states, according to a study published by XXX site PornHub.com. Horndogs in the nation’s capital consumed online pornography at a rate of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The mayor of Washington, DC, picked up on Courtland Milloy's piece in the Washington Post yesterday. The Redskins are gonna have to get rid of that nickname 'cause it's racist and it's bigoted. BREAK TRANSCRIPT Here's Vincent Gray. Vincent Gray is the mayor of Washington, DC, said this last night. GRAY: I think it has become a lightning rod, and I would love to be able to sit down with the team -- and I'm happy to do that, to sit down with the team -- and others who are concerned with this and see if a...

News has just broke that Scott Richard Swirling, former director of the pro-abortion National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), has been arrested in a child sex sting. Swirling was caught trying to solicit sex with a twelve-year-old girl online; luckily, it was an undercover police officer and Swirling was taken into custody. Scott Richard Swirling, 61, thought he was discussing plans to meet a District man who was offering to let him have sex with his preteen daughter, authorities said. It turns out Swirling was dealing with an undercover D.C. police officer. Swirling, of Gaithersburg, was arrested Tuesday...