Free Republic

The seeds of the IRS targeting of conservative groups were planted by Eric Holder in 2001 when as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton he convinced incoming Attorney General John Ashcroft to seize the building of a conservative megachurch, says the church’s retired pastor. “Our church was taken over by the IRS in 2001 based on the recommendations of Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder to incoming Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft,” said Greg Dixon, former pastor of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple. “The church was the sacrificial lamb to pave the way for the future targeting of conservative groups. We...

I was recently over at the website 'Obama Release Your Records' viewing their articles and came across a revealing post in the comments section by king obot Kevin Davidson aka Dr. Conspiracy. He runs a disinformation website called 'Obama Conspiracy Theories' that claims Obama's birth certificate is 100% authentic. He opposes Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigation into Obama's birth certificate and selective service registration. The post revealed that Mr. Davidson is trying to get Sheriff Joe's Cold Case Posse in trouble with the IRS. His post states: "I and some other anti-birthers have referred certain matters to the IRS that we...

The editor of the New York newspaper that created a furor by publishing the names and addresses of gun-permit owners suddenly is out of a job. According to the Rockland Times, a competitor to the Gannett-owned Rockland County Journal News, editor Caryn McBride is among the casualties of a recent purge at the Journal News. The report said 17 journalists were among a total of 26 staff members at the Journal News who were let go. It was the Journal News that in 2012 published the names and addresses of all gun owners in Westchester and Rockland counties under the...

The problem with bad ideas from Europe is that they eventually become bad ideas in America too. And so it goes with the latest nitwit scheme from Britain’s Liberal Democrat Party, which is cousin to our own liberal Democrat Party, separated not ideologically or by a vast ocean, but only by accents. The Lib Dems want to outlaw gas and diesel powered cars from the United Kingdom with a goal to create a “zero-carbon” UK by 2040. No word yet whether they will allow people to “breathe,” which-- incidentally to Lib Dems it seems-- also pushes carbon into the atmosphere....

The Pentagon is poised to extend health care, housing and other benefits to the same-sex spouses of military members by the end of August, but may reverse earlier plans to provide benefits to gay partners who are not married. According to a draft Defense Department memo obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, the department instead may provide up to 10 days of leave to military personnel in same-sex relationships so they can travel to states where they can marry legally. While no final decisions have been made, the memo from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to top defense leaders would reverse...

Critics of the president are convinced that Barack Obama will do lasting damage to the U.S. I doubt it. Obama came to power in the third year of large Democratic congressional majorities. In his first referendum, he lost the House and he may soon lose the Senate; in other words, there followed a somewhat normal reaction against a majority party. Obama’s popularity rating is well below 50%, despite an obsequious media and a brilliantly negative billion-dollar campaign that long ago turned Mitt Romney into a veritable elevator-using, equestrian-marrying, canine-hating monster. In the second term, there is little of the Obama...

Just revealed Democratic anti-NRA talking points urge anti-gun advocates and politicians to hype high-profile gun incidents like the Florida slaying of Trayvon Martin to win support for new gun control laws. In talking points likely followed by top Democratic leaders including President Obama after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December, the anti-gun "guide" urged gun foes to speak out when a shooting "creates a unique climate" to shout down the National Rifle Association."The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak," said the 80-page document titled "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective...

Obama on recent threats: 'We don't get terrorized' By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 8/7/13 4:07 PM EDT President Obama weighed in Wednesday on the latest terror threats against U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad, warning would-be attackers that the United States does not back down. "The United States is never going to retreat from the world. We don't get terrorized," he said at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego. Though U.S. and other allied forces have "decimated the Al Qaeda leadership," Obama said, "Al Qaeda affiliates and likeminded extremists still threaten our homeland" and they "still threaten our diplomatic facilities ... we've been reminded...

When considering the modern Left, I am often reminded of a quote by William F. Buckley “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” David French has, in the past, has also delved into the destructive group-think that makes the Left a mean and hyper-idological movement. Don’t believe me? In 2008, McCain/Palin won 73 percent of the Evangelical/born-again vote. By contrast, San Francisco gave Obama/Biden 84 percent of its votes. All the boroughs of New York City (except Staten Island) went for Obama by...

Major health insurance companies—Blue Cross, Aetna, United, Humana—have fled the Obamacare health care exchanges in various states, which are scheduled to start on Oct. 1. Insurance companies like Aetna and United have said, “thanks, but no thanks” to the public health insurance marketplace set up under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, which will facilitate government subsidies to individuals and small businesses to buy approved health plans to comply with the law. The ACA requires every American to have health insurance, or pay a penalty. Individuals who are not covered by their employer can enroll in the state or...

Secretary of State John Kerry announced Wednesday the formation of the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, which will be headed by Shaun Casey, a former religion advisor to President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and a liberal professor who last year touted the end of “civil religion” in the United States. “I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” Casey said at a discussion last year at the Center for American Progress focused on “God and Politics” in the last presidential election. Kerry introduced Casey as a person who cares about faith in American society. …

According to Nick Colas, the chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, recent graduates under 25 years-old are in a particularly bad spot right now. "It's usually college grads that do well," Colas says in the attached video."They get the first time jobs, they're pretty cheap to employ, and generally have pretty high job satisfaction." But, he says since the recession new government data shows that this unlucky group stands out in three key ways like never before. Overqualified: 52% of recent grads are in jobs where a college degree is not required. Colas calls this the "most startling" new problem,...

A firm funding the car company founded by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has claimed on its website for months that its MyCar electric vehicle had been approved by the Defense Department “for U.S. military installations worldwide” — but government officials say they have no record of such an approval. The Washington Times searched a database of companies and contractors with business before the federal government and found no mentions of GreenTech Automotive or its MyCar two-seat vehicle. Government officials, too, found no evidence that GreenTech had been approved by the Defense Department to be a listed supplier for military...

Should Democrats have at least one presidential primary debate on Fox News? Will Republicans once agin have primary debates on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, with Democrats only debating on CNN and MSNBC, but not Fox News? And why not have both parties have one presidential debate (once each party has their nominee) on: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and finally Link TV (for a total of 4 presidential debates), where Link TV can rip into both political parties on the NSA program, interventionism, NAFTA, the federal reserve, etc? Surely the Dem-e and GOP-e would love this...

Is the recent news concerning U.S. embassy closures in 20 countries and that the NSA program uncovered this, how did they manage to miss the overseas calls from at least one of the Tsaernaev brothers? Will this bolster the case for the NSA? Is this action a result of Benghazi fatigue as some pundits have said on cable news? Swcondly, are McCain and Graham the only U.S. Senators allowed to go to Syria? Where are the Democrat senators? No Dem Senators to go for Obama?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued a final rule for the amount of renewable fuels to be added to the nation’s transportation fuel supply in 2013. The most publicized issue related to renewable fuels has been the ethanol “blend wall,” the theoretical point at which ethanol use will be surpassed by the amount of ethanol required by law. As Americans drive less, demand for gasoline falls also reducing demand for ethanol. Because blenders are required either to use the mandated amount, regardless of demand, or pay for credits for the amount they don’t use, the EPA has been...

The federal government has determined that obesity is a national health epidemic, and while obesity-prevention goals were established at the national level in 2012, the question now is how to determine if those goals are being met—not just nationally, but in your very own neighborhood. The federally funded Institute of Medicine (IOM) has just released a report listing 83 ways to “assess the progress made in every community”—and at the national level—in the fight against obesity. Some of the benchmarks would require new legislation or executive action to change the way we live and work. …

President Barack Obama’s job approval dropped to the lowest level of his second term during the week of July 29 to Aug. 4, when 45 percent of respondents told the Gallup poll they approved of the job the president was doing and 48 percent said they disapproved. In the previous week, which ended on July 28, Obama’s approval had been 46 percent in the Gallup poll and his disapproval had been 47 percent. …

During a May appearance on Rachel Maddow Lean Forward Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said gun rights are not "God-given" and any claim that the Founding Fathers wanted U.S. citizens armed so they could repel a tyranny "is insane." Murphy said, "The Second Amendment is not an absolute right, not a God-given right. It has always had conditions upon it like the First Amendment has." This is disturbing language from a sitting Senator, especially when you consider that the First Amendment opens with the phrase "Congress shall make no law" and the Second Amendment states that the right to keep and...

Did Valerie Jarrett Issue the Order to Stand Down in Benghazi? August 06, 2013 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: There is a somewhat shocking report that I came across today at a website run by Doug Ross. It's called the Conservative Report. Doug Ross maintains here that Valerie Jarrett gave the orders to stand down in Benghazi. Valerie Jarrett, who constitutionally is not in the chain of command and cannot do that. And that's why this, if true, is a bombshell. Valerie Jarrett nixed the raid on bin Laden three separate times, remember, and the adults had to come in and basically...

Politico’s Dylan Byers, in a piece for his buddies in the MSM, declares that conservative criticism of the mainstream media is overblown. Byers writes: So often conservative media, like conservative media criticism, can't be taken seriously because it overplays its hand. Like someone who shouts "thief!" the second his keys go missing, much of the conservative echo-chamber has a hyper-aggressive penchant to see conspiracy where they'd do better to see questions in need of answers. As a general rule -- albeit with plenty of exceptions -- there is a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach among those who fashion themselves as "anti-MSM," which can...

Valerie Jarrett, Commander in Chief Confidential sources close to Conservative Report have confirmed that Valerie Jarrett was the key decision-maker for the administration, the night of the Benghazi terrorist attack on 9/11/2012. The chronology of the evening of 9/11 are as follows: At approximately 5 PM Washington time, reports came in through secure-channels that Special Mission Benghazi was under attack. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey summoned the President,and briefed him on the crisis, face to face. Subsequent to that brief meeting, President Obama proceeded to the White House to...

NEW YORK (MainStreet)—"Be careful what you wish for," goes the old saying. After all, you might just get it. Apparently, this choice advice was was forgotten by some major labor union leaders. These union bosses campaigned vigorously for President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) to be passed by Congress into law. They did so despite warnings from those opposed to the ACA – commonly referred to as Obamacare - that the plan would be problematic. Nonetheless the chiefs of the ...

During an August 4 appearance on C-SPAN's Newsmakers, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said gun control failed in April and "has no chance of passage now" because of "some on the left like the mayor of New York City." As reported by Andrew Johnson at National Review, Leahy said, "[NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg] actually turned some people off that we actually might have gotten for supporters." He said that Bloomberg's ads were especially detrimental to the gun control push and he took issue with the rabid nature in which Bloomberg approached the issue. Earlier in the summer, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)...

Philip Rucker leads the Post today with a story about a study that claims there is a “vast” gun market thriving online that allows gun buyers to evade the background check system. Rucker’s story is full of misleading statements. The marketplace for firearms on the Internet, where buyers are not required to undergo background checks, is so vast that advocates for stricter regulations now consider online sales a greater threat than the gun show loophole. Misleading statement #1: Buyers are only not required to undergo background checks if they’re not buying from a licensed firearms dealer. If you buy...

America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver. Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased. Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer....

Perhaps you’ve heard the radio or TV commercials sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services urging seniors to report instances of Medicare fraud. There’s a number to call, along with cheerful suggestions. The intent here seems benign enough — saving taxpayer money by catching the dishonest. One might even be tempted to praise it, were it not for what the Obama administration is doing with the other hand — issuing an engraved invitation to commit fraud when signing up for the health-care exchanges. Obamacare is proving too unwieldy even for the greediest of big-government centralizers in the Obama...

When former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked the existence of a massive spying program siphoning up Americans' personal phone records earlier this year, President Obama declared: "I welcome this debate and I think it's healthy for our democracy."Shortly thereafter, his administration revoked Snowden's passport and hit him with Espionage Act charges (filed under seal, naturally).That's the thing about the self-styled "most transparent administration in history": Often you can't find out what they're up to until somebody breaks the law to let you know.One suspects Obama "welcomes this debate" about as enthusiastically as Anthony Weiner greets the debate over...

Note: Videos and photos included. SNIPPET: "In 1967, at the Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, World History teacher Ron Jones was asked about the Holocaust by a student. "Could it happen here?". According to the press release accompanying the latest retelling of the events that followed, "Jones came up with an unusual answer. He decided to have a two week experiment in dictatorship. His idea was to explain fascism to his class through a game, nothing more. He never intended what resulted, where his class would be turned into a Fascist environment. Where students gave up their freedom...

Some weird, decidedly left-wing politics were espoused by Ross Township, PA shooter Rockne Newell. Newell killed three before being shot by his own gun. His facebook profile paints the picture of a left-wing ideologue. He ranted about environmental issues and voted for Barack Obama.

A race to define Obamacare to the masses began today between the stacks at the Centreville Library. Over pizza in Decatur, Texas. And with a glass of wine in Naples, Fla. Dozens of communities around the country hosted pro-Obamacare events, convened by the president’s foot soldiers at Organizing for Action. The series is the first salvo in what is fixing to be a month of high-stakes health care spin. When Congress returns from its summer recess in early September, there will be less than a month until Obamacare’s most sweeping coverage programs start signing up customers in new health insurance...

Attorney General Eric Holder has racked up more than $4.2 million in travel expenses over four years, including $697,525 in taxpayer-provided personal trips to resort areas like Martha's Vineyard and Atlantic City, according to documents provided to the watchdog group Judicial Watch. The records from Justice and provided to Secrets show that Holder, who is required to travel on government aircraft because of security, submitted bills of $16,452.50 to speak at Al Sharpton's National Action Network on New York in April 2011, $38,108.18 in expenses to address the pro-immigration reform group LULAC in June 2012, and $38,108.18 to speak to...

There was no briefing on Friday so this was the first chance to press him on CNN’s scoop. Ace says he watched most of it and didn’t hear a peep about it. When he tweeted at Ed Henry of Fox to ask what’s up, Henry tweeted back — well, go look. Consider this a bleg: Did anyone watch, start to finish, and can confirm or deny that it’s true? Even with the big terror alert preoccupying the media, it’s unfathomable that they wouldn’t pick up a story pushed by a major cable news net that kinda sorta hinted the CIA...

Today’s term is psycho-political projection |siko'p?'litiko'pr?'jekSH?n|.  This contraction of words labels the political application of the word projection in the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, “…in a psychoanalytic context, it describes the unconscious process in which the individual attributes to others his or her own emotions and impulses.  Sigmund Freud regarded it as a common defence mechanism, used by the ego to control unacceptable feelings, thereby helping to reduce anxiety.” This is the syndrome that I hereby assign to those of the LEFT who so freely launch accusations for which they themselves harbor a secret sense of guilt.  The pattern for...

Demanding access to organ transplant procedures for undocumented immigrants, a group of hunger strikers set up camp outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Sunday. They said they would stay until hospital CEO Dean Harrison agreed to a meeting, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The group of about 40 picketers included 14 people who were in the sixth day of a hunger strike. “We’re asking for help,” said Blanca Gomez, 23, who needs a kidney transplant. “I go to dialysis three times a week. I’m not going off the hunger strike until I get on the transplant list.” Gomez said she had lost...

More than 80 lawmakers have called on the Obama administration to allow gay men to donate blood. The lawmakers say the administration should change what they say is an "outdated" policy. Eighty-two lawmakers in the House and Senate signed on to the letter, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Enzi was the only Republican to sign the letter. They said Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should re-evaluate blood donation criteria that ban gay men from donating blood for life.

In an interview with the Guardian published Saturday, Damon revealed that he had just moved to Los Angeles from New York, but that he didn't "have a choice" when it came to putting his four daughters into private schools. The multi-millionaire did say that it was "a major moral dilemma" and then made the bizarre excuse that the public schools aren't "progressive" enough. This would probably mark the first time anyone has ever complained that America's public schools, especially in Los Angeles, aren't left-wing enough.

"There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House...They hate not just his politics but him," says Chris Matthews. Let me finish tonight with this. I said it before and am now saying it again. There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House. It grates on them, just as it thrills – even now – tens of millions of others. They hate not just his politics but him. Think about all the days we have...

Confidential sources close to Conservative Report have confirmed that Valerie Jarrett was the key decision-maker for the administration, the night of the Benghazi terrorist attack on 9/11/2012.

A newly discovered tape of a phone call from Monica Lewinsky to President Clinton is said to vindicate the contention that the former President was “the innocent victim of a sexual predator.” On the tape the then 19-year-old White House intern can be heard offering to take her clothes off and hoping the President will “do what I want.” “We said all along that Lewinsky was a stalker,” former First Lady Hillary Clinton said. “The emergence of this tape proves we were right. A youthful seductress lured an older man with a legendary reputation for kindness toward younger people into...

(CNN) -- This is the day San Diego Mayor Bob Filner enters a behavior counseling clinic for two weeks of what he describes as intensive therapy. The 70-year-old is battling a tide of sexual harrassment allegations, and is hoping that voluntarily subjecting himself to the counseling will quell the mounting calls for his resignation. He has repeatedly said he'll not leave the office he was elected to barely eight months ago. San Diego's city charter does not require him to appoint an interim mayor during his temporary absence. His decision is unlikely to appease his opponents.

Based on the White House’s past lawlessness and corruption in the service of Obamacare, I’m willing to venture the following prediction: The Obama administration will announce in August, probably in a classic Friday news dump, that (1) it will offer Exchange subsidies to workers enrolled in multiemployer union plans, and (2) it will pay the FEHBP contribution toward the Exchange premiums for members of Congress and their staffs. Here’s what makes this prediction interesting: neither of those things would be legal. So, for the record, I really hope this prediction does not come true.The last time I made a prediction...

>Speaking “on the condition of anonymity,” a Republican lawmaker told one Capitol Hill newspaper last week that conservatives pushing to stop the implementation of Obamacare had “no plan B.” Before diving into the substance of the criticism, let’s spend a minute on how that criticism was delivered. Folks in Washington love speaking “on the condition of anonymity.” In a meandering profile of NBC News’s Luke Russert, a reporter for the liberal New Republic wrote, “Fellow reporters related the meanest anecdotes they could think of—‘but not for attribution, OK?’” For one reason or another, these reporters have decided criticizing Russert wasn’t...

“American intelligence agencies (issued) an unusual global travel alert to American citizens on Friday, warning of the potential for terrorist attacks by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates beginning Sunday through the end of August.” NYT Wait a minute: I thought Osama was dead and GM was alive -- maybe we got that backwards? Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula GM in Detroit: the ash heap of history In response, Big Guy’s birthday celebration originally scheduled for August 4, his alleged day of birth, has been extended through the entire week! A global travel alert and 21 embassies...

A White House spokesman called July’s 7.4 percent unemployment rate proof that “the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.” He said it with a straight face. The data tell another story: America remains mired in the Great Obama Depression. The unemployment rate that the administration trumpets is a liar’s number. The formula for the unemployment figure that is released every month is rigged to look favorable to the administration in power. The true numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a far different picture. They show an America that is in...

Remember the 'Flush Rush' boycott attempted by David Brock and Media Matters which called for advertisers to drop their sponsorships of Rush Limbaugh's radio show? How did that work out in the long run? According to liberal radio talk host Thom Hartmann on CNN's Reliable Sources yesterday it completely backfired because it ended up hurting liberal shows: David Brock and Media Matters were leading the boycott Limbaugh crusade, which did presumably some damage to the Limbaugh show. I can tell you it did a lot of damage to progressive talk radio, because a lot of advertisers right across the board...

We can say we were right when we warned them not to trust Barack Obama but even now they probably wouldn’t listen. The “takers” and their “guilt ridden” enablers in eight states that voted for Obama are getting what they voted for, substantially higher healthcare insurance rates. Their greedy nature made it easy for Obama to trick them. “You can’t cheat an honest man,” comes to mind. In the states of Maryland, Oregon, Colorado, Virginia, California, Ohio, Washington and Rhode Island the average cost of the Obamacare’s basic level healthcare plan – “bronze” – will be 122% more than comparable...

Congress possesses the power of the purse, but only if it wields it. And it should do so to defund Obamacare, before this medical Godzilla grows larger and more ferocious. Republican senators Mike Lee (Utah), Marco Rubio (Florida), Rand Paul (Kentucky), and Ted Cruz (Texas) are leading a valiant effort to pass a continuing resolution in September that will finance the federal government as is but zero out Obamacare. Short of repeal, which Obama surely would veto, this may be the last exit before Obamacare’s New Year’s Day implementation. Once this beast is unleashed, its fire-breathing destruction could become uncontainable....

<p>To adapt H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the cynicism and self-dealing of the American political class. Witness their ad-libbed decision, at the 11th hour and on the basis of no legal authority, to create a special exemption for themselves from the ObamaCare health coverage that everybody else is mandated to buy.</p>

Nineteen firefighters died fighting a forest fire in Arizona earlier this summer. Curiously, almost no one is talking about why it happened, only that it was a tragedy. Arizona Deputy State Forestry Director Jerry Payne has been the only one to speak out about the cause, and he backtracked immediately afterwards, apologizing for what he said. He claimed that the superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshots violated wildlife safety protocols while fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30th, 2013, 60 miles north of Phoenix. According to Payne, the superintendent’s violations allegedly included not knowing the location of the fire,...