Free Republic

Trust: The so-called mainstream media in general and The New York Times in particular are waging a relentless campaign undermining the war on terror. The Fourth Estate is beginning to look like a Fifth Column. It's hard to imagine a major American newspaper in 1942 announcing before the Battle of Midway that we had broken the Imperial Japanese code or before D-Day that the Allies had a machine that let us read the Nazis' highest-level transmissions. Yet in the war on terror, that's exactly the kind of information that papers like the Times and The Washington Post, in the name...

n a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own. "The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority...

Florida's Riviera Beach is a poor, predominantly black, coastal community that intends to revitalize its economy by using eminent domain, if necessary, to displace about 6,000 local residents and build a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex. "This is a community that's in dire need of jobs, which has a median income of less than $19,000 a year," said Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown.

HOLD THE PRESSES. I've discovered that the use of torture by the U.S. government is far more pervasive than previously believed. There are major facilities all over the country where thousands of men and women who have not committed any crime are held for prolonged periods while subjected to physical and psychological coercion that violates every tenet of the Geneva Convention. They are routinely made to stand for long periods in uncomfortable positions. They are made to walk for hours while wearing heavy loads on their backs. They are bullied by martinets who get in their faces and yell insults...

MIAMI, Dec 12, 2005 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Roy Black, Rush Limbaugh's attorney, issued the following statement regarding Judge David F. Crow's decision today prohibiting prosecutors from asking the talk show host's doctors about his medical treatment and condition or information he shared with his doctors during his care and treatment. Judge Crow's ruling upholds our argument that the State cannot breach doctor-patient confidentiality just because it has obtained some medical records, and thus the state cannot ask the doctors its questions posed to the court during the hearing. Judge Crow's decision prohibits the State from questioning Mr. Limbaugh's physicians...

Is It Treason Yet? By Joe Mariani December 9, 2005 Treason is defined, in part, as "giving aid and comfort" to the enemies of the United States, according to the Constitution (Article III, Section 3) (web site) and the United States Code (Title 18, Part I, Chapter 115, Section 2381). (web site) Yet the Constitution also states, in the First Amendment, (web site) that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." How do we distinguish between free speech and treason? Where do we draw the line? The answer may be found using that least-used resource: common...

On Friday Rush read an email he received from a GI in Iraq. It is an example that the troops have not lost their sense of humor: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ RUSH: I want to share with you excerpts from a letter I got today, an e-mail letter... Dear Mr. Limbaugh, I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am knowing that you are behind that microphone and honoring our troops here in the Iraqi theater. Thank you, sir, for your unwavering support for all of our airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen fighting the global war on terror --...

More than 17 million individuals and families could start the new year facing higher taxes because of a provision unfamiliar to most taxpayers -- the alternative minimum tax. The new year means the expiration of a temporary fix that prevents the alternative minimum tax from hitting millions of people this year on taxes due next April. But if Congress doesn't act, the additional tax will return for the 2006 tax year. Originally designed to make sure wealthy individuals paid some tax, the alternative minimum tax reaches further into the middle class every year as inflation pushes more and more people...

Seems that failed Presidential Candidate John "Crushed" Kerry (Who, if you don't know it, was in Vietnam) is really, really, mad, and when that happens he lashes out with schoolyard insults, and not very good ones at that. Seems the Crushed One was upset that Rush Limbaugh and Ken Mehlman called him out for likening American troops to terrorists. So he responded like a 2nd grader: Quote: 'Ken Mehlman’s filthy and shameful lie about a decorated combat veteran is disgraceful. Political hack Ken Mehlman and draft dodging, donut eating Rush Limbaugh have something in common. Neither of them know anything...

RALEIGH — Watching Monday Night Football the other night, it occurred to me that if one imagined the mainstream media covering that game the way they cover the war in Iraq (or the economy), the absurdity of their reporting would be plain for all to see. INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Colts, seeking to silence critics who say they are overrated, fell short of that mark on Monday night by outscoring the Pittsburgh Steelers by a mere 3-point margin in the first quarter. Despite the unspectacular first-quarter margin, Colts head coach Tony Dungy insisted that his team was winning the battle....

NEW YORK Hold on to your gas guzzlers: Cheap oil may once again be just around the corner. Even as consumers worry about high gasoline prices and rising heating bills, oil executives in London, Texas and Saudi Arabia seem to be concerned about a prospect of falling oil prices. In a recent speech in Singapore, John Browne, the chief executive of BP, spoke of a possible sharp drop in prices and called current levels "unsustainably high." John Hofmeister, head of Shell Oil in the United States, said during an interview, "This high price cycle is artificially inflated." The notion of...

During a quarter century of analyzing and forecasting the economy, I have never seen anything like this. No matter what happens, no matter what data are released, no matter which way markets move, a pall of pessimism hangs over the economy. This onslaught of negative thinking is clearly having an impact. During the 2004 presidential campaign, when attacks on the economy were in full force, 36% of Americans thought we were in recession. One year later, even though unemployment has fallen from 5.5% to 5%, and real GDP has expanded by 3.7%, the number who think a recession is underway...

IT’S AS IF RACHEL CORRIE WERE KILLED BY THE PLO, and her parents blamed Israel, anyway. Yesterday, the previously unknown jihadist group “The Swords of Righteousness Brigade” took hostage four Westerners – including American Tom Fox – for allegedly acting as “undercover spies.” However, all four men belonged to Christian Peacemaker Teams, a “peace” organization of human shields that blamed 9/11 on American foreign policy, ran an “Adopt-a-Detainee” campaign, regularly interfered with Israeli anti-terror operations, trespassed at a U.S. military base during wartime, has waged a relentless propaganda campaign against the American “occupation” of Iraq, has demonstrated against Americans and...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Fatter rear ends are causing many drug injections to miss their mark, requiring longer needles to reach buttock muscle, researchers said on Monday. Standard-sized needles failed to reach the buttock muscle in 23 out of 25 women whose rears were examined after what was supposed to be an intramuscular injection of a drug. Two-thirds of the 50 patients in the study did not receive the full dosage of the drug, which instead lodged in the fat tissue of their buttocks, researchers from The Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin said in a presentation to the annual meeting...

Rush Limbaugh calls them "Schumer’s Plumbers” – two Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staffers who worked for Senator Chuck Schumer and are now accused of illegally obtaining the credit report of a Republican candidate for the Senate. The two staffers have resigned, and Sen. Schumer – chairman of the DSCC – denies any involvement. In his latest must-read "Limbaugh Letter,” Rush writes that the media is continuing a cover-up of the scandal. Limbaugh notes that despite Schumer’s denial of any involvement, his organization is picking up the $400-an-hour tab for the pair’s attorney. The Senator from New York "has presided over...

A petition has been posted here to demonstrate support for a congressional investigation into Able Danger. If you support seeing an investigation please sign the petition. And then you can spread the word here: http://www.petitiononline.com/cgi-bin/mailpage.cgi?weldon/petition.html

Sergeant Clay: Afghanistan Vet and Adopt-A-Soldier Adoptee in the UK November 22, 2005: A Fourth Hour Phone Call Download Windows Media PlayerListen to Rush Conduct Broadcast Excellence BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is Sergeant Clay calling from the UK, the United Kingdom. Welcome, sergeant, to the program. It's an honor to have you with us. CALLER: Oh, my gosh! Hey, Rush. Professor Limbaugh, mega-mega-megadittos if ever such a thing there could be. We owe it all to you, brother. I just wanted to call and to let you know I've been listening to you since 1989, and I've been a...

Roger Hedgecock was the substitute host on Rush's show yesterday. Close to the end of the second hour Roger had a few words to say about Able Danger. The audio file is up at QT Monster's Place.

That used to be the primary question of Able Danger, but now that we have seen what the DIA has done to the primary whistleblower, the questions have to run deeper than the incompetence of the Omission Commission. The Defense Intelligence Agency stripped Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer of his clearances over a series of old and bogus charges relating to the use of pens and pads of paper from more than twenty years ago. That effectively ended his career in civilian intelligence work, although it doesn't affect his status in the Army Reserve. The DIA's attack on Shaffer on transparently...

This dismissive and apparently unsupported conclusion would have us believe that a key piece of evidence was summarily rejected in less than 10 days without serious investigation. The commission, at the very least, should have interviewed the 80 members of Able Danger, as the Pentagon did, five of whom say they saw "the chart." But this would have required admitting that the late-breaking news was inconveniently raised. So it was grossly neglected and branded as insignificant. Such a half-baked conclusion, drawn in only 10 days without any real investigation, simply ignores what looks like substantial direct evidence to the contrary...