Free Republic

The state of Hawaii has verified President Barack Obama's birth records to Arizona's elections chief after a nearly three-month back and forth that Arizona officials said could have ended without the incumbent's name on its November ballot. Joshua Wisch, special assistant to Hawaii Attorney General David Louie, told The Associated Press late Tuesday that the matter is resolved after Hawaii gave Arizona the verification it was looking for. Arpaio said health officials in Hawaii refused to talk to his deputy and posse investigator on Monday, though an assistant attorney general came out to talk to the investigators. "They won't have...

Alternate headline: “Fake Indian in real trouble.” I don’t know, guys. I’m grudgingly coming around to the idea that maybe it’d be better if she won in November. We can’t afford to lose her; she’s a daily one-woman content goldmine for the blogosphere, every bit the equal of Martha Coakley. A blogger has to eat, and she’s serving up an awful lot of pow wow traffic chow. But apparently it’s based on someone else’s recipe: "Two of the possibly plagiarized recipes, said in the Pow Wow Chow cookbook to have been passed down through generations of Oklahoma Native American members...

... It was an unremarkable January day, with a steady stream of lobbyists among the thousands of daily visitors to the White House and the surrounding executive office buildings, according to a Washington Post analysis of visitor logs released by the administration. The Post matched visits with lobbying registrations and connected records in the visitor database to show who participated in the meetings, information now available in a search engine on the Post’s web site. The visitor logs for Jan. 17 — one of the most recent days available — show that the lobbying industry Obama has vowed to constrain...

Elizabeth Warren, the fake Indian, has another problem with the Pow Wow Chow cookbook. It seems that at least two of her “special recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families” are identical to ones from The New York Times [NYT] that were printed in 1979. And they’re not just from any eatery either — the recipes came from Le Pavillon, the fabulous French restaurant that domin-ated le haute cuisine in Man-- hattan from 1941 to 1966. Amazing, too, that Granny’s recipes for Crab With Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing, and Cold Omelets With Crab Meat, while no doubt popular along the...

Arizona's secretary of state said Friday he had asked officials in Hawaii to verify that Barack Obama was born in their state in order for the president's name to appear on the November ballot in Arizona. Ken Bennett, who is Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign co-chairman in Arizona, said he made the request on behalf of a constituent. Earlier this year, hardline Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio announced that an investigation by his office had found that Obama's birth certificate was a forgery. Most Republican critics of Obama have given up pushing widely discredited long-running allegations that he was not...

If I might make one suggestion before the updated version of the “Pow Wow Chow” cookbook is released: Next time, Liz, hold the mayo. Even if you were 1/1000th Native American — which you’re not — and even if Cherokees did hold pow wows — which Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes told the Herald yesterday they don’t — even then, your contribution to authentic teepee cuisine is “Crab With Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing?” Why didn’t you throw in Tuna Casserole and Some Twinkies while you’re at it? Like her recipe (“serve salad with remaining mayo on the side”), everything about Liz Warren...

The race for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts has taken a turn toward the absurd. The contest pits two highly qualified candidates — Scott Brown, the incumbent, who made history by snatching Ted Kennedy’s seat away from the Democrats, and challenger Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor and whiz-kid of the Obama administration who created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If any election could be counted on to maintain a high-minded tone and stick to important issues, it’s this one. Instead, Topic A is Warren’s facial features. From a campaign standpoint, Warren hasn’t done much to end this silly brouhaha. She...

The White House says President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hold assets worth between nearly $2.6 million and nearly $8.3 million. The White House released financial disclosure documents Tuesday showing the couple's assets for last year. In 2010 the first family's assets were valued between $1.8 million and nearly $12 million. The disclosure form requires public officials to list their assets in broad ranges, for example, between $1 million and $5 million, making it difficult to determine a precise net worth.

No more slow-walking Fast and Furious probeJustice has waited long enough. It’s time to pull the trigger on contempt charges against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. for withholding documents from Congress in the Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal. Allowing further delay would only confirm what many Americans suspect: There is one set of laws for bureaucrats and another for the rest of us. Congress has been waiting since October 2011 for Mr. Holder to comply fully with a subpoena seeking records in 22 categories of information about the federal firearms-smuggling operation. The attorney general has provided some material...

Two days after Christmas last year, Rep. Bill Owens, D-N.Y., and his wife, Jane, boarded a first-class flight to Taiwan for a four-day tour of the island. Owens and his wife roomed at $500-a-night luxury hotels and enjoyed fine meals between meetings with Taiwanese officials and a day trip to Taipei’s famed National Palace Museum. Interactive Timeline How Lobbyists Arranged Rep. Bill Owens’ Trip to Taiwan The Chinese Culture University in Taiwan had ostensibly invited the congressman and his wife “to promote international cultural exchange.” In fact, lobbyists for Taiwan’s government had organized the trip. Congressional ethics rules prohibit members...

The Daily Caller has obtained a scrapped sketch critical of President Barack Obama that was intended for airing at the opening of last night’s “Saturday Night Live” on NBC.

A brief but telling episode from As The MSM Mask Slips . . . On her MSNBC show this afternoon, chatting with chum and fellow Obama fan Tom Daschle about the anniversary of the killing of OBL, Andrea Mitchell said: "What do you think of the Republican criticism that we are politicizing it, that the White House, I should say, is politicizing it"? View the video here.

BOSTON — There’s a reason why most would-be politicians start by running for lesser offices, as Massachusetts Democrats are finding to their chagrin this spring, as their anointed US Senate candidate springs one unpleasant surprise after another. Elizabeth Warren, a 62-year-old Harvard Law School professor, seemed to have all the right stuff to regain the lost Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy from Republican usurper Scott Brown. In this bluest of states, she remains competitive, out-fund-raising the incumbent 2 to 1 in the last quarter. In recent statewide polls, she’s been running even or slightly ahead. Yet her campaign...

Elizabeth Warren said yesterday she is “proud” of her Native American heritage and indicated she had no problem with Harvard Law School using her roots to claim her as a diversity hire, but her campaign still could not produce documents proving her lineage. “I am very proud of my Native American heritage, thank you,” said Warren when asked if she disapproved of the school counting her as a minority woman on the faculty. “These are my family stories ... This is our lives and I am very proud of that.” The Herald reported yesterday that Harvard Law School officials listed...

If you’re looking for light summer beach reading then do not, I repeat … do not … buy Katie Pavlich’s disturbing new book, Fast & Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up. Further, if you want to live undisturbed in Obama la-la-land, you need to put your tennis shoes on and run away from this tome. Indeed, Pollyanna, this book will smash all the windows of your enchanted little cottage and grind your rose-colored Obama glasses into powder. Fast & Furious parlays into the public arena the scurrilous way the ATF, at the behest of the DOJ, allowed...

In capitulating to the drug cartels and appeasing the Mexican government the Obama Administration has ordered 900 National Guard troops to abandon their patrols against smugglers along the border as reported by Brian Bennett for the Los Angeles Times. In explaining the troop withdrawal to Congress last week Brian J. Lepore, a director at the U.S. Government and Accountability Office, said their presence on the southwest border "threatened to strain diplomatic relations with Mexico." The Mexican drug cartels move $50 billion in bulk product and bundled cash across the border each year. Although the Obama Administration insists that there is...

Colombian authorities are probing whether any of the women involved in the prostitution scandal that’s cost six Secret Service agents their jobs were underage, according to a new report.

Barack Obama's reelection campaign has released the most recent list of names of fundraising bundlers. On that list is Jon Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey and embattled money man, the former head of MF Global: Corzine, according to the Obama campaign, has once again helped raise more than $500,000. (He was likewise named a bundler in January, when the Obama campaign last released the names of their money men.)

The Secret Service sure knows how to party. Cocaine and several bottles of whiskey apparently fueled the elite agents’ boneheaded fling with about 20 hookers at a posh hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, a hotel staffer told The Post. The employee responded to the trashed room with police and other Hotel El Caribe workers when one prostitute raised hell after a Secret Service member initially refused to pay her. “When I went upstairs I walked into a messy room. The room was littered with two whiskey bottles — and a line of white powder, I believed to be cocaine, was on...

A very specific set of words was cut. It was not random. And it was not a mistake. So the question becomes: whose head should roll? The answer is obvious: Brian Williams. Williams has been, since 2004, the managing editor of NBC News. And this was no mistake. It was a purposeful attempt to drive the narrative against Zimmerman. It is Williams’ job to see that the facts are reported rather than skewed. And the buck stops with him. This is no isolated incident for Williams. He’s an ardent leftist who began his career by interning for Jimmy Carter. When...

Boston utility NStar has agreed to pay a starting price for power from the Cape Wind project that is substantially above the cost of conventional energy and will slightly increase the average customer’s monthly bill beginning the first year the offshore wind farm generates electricity, according to a 15-year contract filed with state regulators Friday. The price, 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour, is the same as what National Grid agreed to pay when it signed a contract in 2010 to purchase half the power generated by Cape Wind. NStar’s deal is to purchase 27.5 percent of the wind farm’s total...

When the Supreme Court on Monday began hearing oral arguments in the cases challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—AKA “Obamacare”—Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan showed up to hear the arguments and gave no indication she would recuse herself from judging the cases even though she had cheered enactment of Obamacare as an Obama political appointee and had personally assigned her top deputy in the Obama Justice Department to defend the law in federal court. A federal law, 28 USC 455, says a Supreme Court justice must recuse from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might...

The Obama administration today endorsed new oil and gas exploration along the Atlantic Coast, setting the stage for possible future drilling lease sales. The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur. There are also no guarantees the administration will approve drilling permits at the end of the environmental review. "The president's actions have closed an entire new area to drilling on his watch and cheats Virginians out of thousands of jobs," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who chairs the House...

A few nights back, Mark Levin made a powerful point on his radio show: Fox News boss Roger Ailes is a well-known and infamous name in media circles, like some sort of cable-news Voldemort or Darth Vader. Meanwhile, MSNBC boss -- quick, can you name him? -- Phil Griffin is unknown and not the least bit controversial after hiring, as Levin unforgettably put it, a "conga line of morons." NBC news used to be the channel for sober, boring Huntley-Brinkley journalism. It was liberal, to be sure but serious. NBC's news wasn't always objective, but it had a reputation for...

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was informed of management corruption and abuse issues at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) before allegations of “gunwalking” surfaced, but opted to do nothing about it. That allegation comes from veteran Special Agent Vince Cefalu, who recently informed Gun Rights Examiner of his efforts to persuade the powerful Democrat to investigate documented instances of gross mismanagement and perjury. Cefalu is the veteran street agent who was served termination papers last June for his efforts to bring management wrongdoing to light, a move perceived by other whistleblowers and observers as not just retaliation,...

I am making public the letter that I wrote to Senator Grassley (Feb. 23, 2011) regarding circumstances that led to my firing after 2.5 months by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), particularly my writing about mortgage fraud and its roots in mortgage securitization that CBO sought to deny was a problem. I was repeatedly pressured by the CBO Assistant Director, Deborah Lucas… to not write nor discuss issues in the banking sector and mortgage markets that might suggest weakness in these sectors and their consequences on the economy and households... …Issues at the heart of the foreclosure problems pertain to...

A Republican bid to fast-track the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline was defeated by Senate Democrats on Thursday in a vote to amend the chamber's highway funding bill.

Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin. … The seven endangered islands in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea include one the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The Russians are also to get the tens of thousands of square miles of oil-rich seabeds surrounding the islands. The Department of Interior estimates billions of barrels of oil are at stake. The State Department has undertaken the giveaway in the guise of a maritime boundary agreement between Alaska and Siberia. Astoundingly, our federal government itself...

Broadband company LightSquared’s CEO made a maximum-allowable political donation to the Democratic Party on the same day his lawyers were trying to arrange a meeting between him and top White House technology officials, records and emails obtained by The Daily Caller show. Those same records also show a questionable inconsistency, listing the CEO’s employer as a company he hadn’t worked for in a decade.The requests and donation came soon after President Barack Obama’s Federal Communications Commission successfully propped up LightSquared, and subsequently demolished its competitor GlobalStar with regulatory muscle.

Chelsea Clinton is close to signing another deal with NBC, despite criticism of her reporting. Clinton is nearing the end of a 90-day contract as an NBC News special correspondent, where she contributes to the “Making a Difference” segments that air during “Rock Center With Brian Williams.” While her reports have been tepidly received by critics, sparking strong rumors and reports she would not sign again, sources tell us NBC plans to keep her involved with the network.

While criticism surrounding Operation Fast and Furious has so far focused on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, three other federal agencies knew about the operation and some of their agents tried to stop it, according to the former chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Tucson. Tony Coulson, the DEA’s agent in charge of Southern Arizona during Fast and Furious, says many federal field agents knew the ATF was walking guns to Mexico, but supervisors told them to back off when they objected. “Clearly, we went too far,” Coulson said. “The question we had among rank and...

Fast running out of money, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC last summer sold off nearly $60 million worth of inventory for less than $20 million in cash to a newly formed corporate entity closely tied to the company’s biggest investors, records show. Backed by $535 million in federal loan guarantees but burning through the little cash it had left, Solyndra made its first sale in late July to a corporate entity that had been formed just a day earlier. Three more transactions followed over the next few weeks with the same buyer, Solyndra Solar II.

Two American brothers of a Mexican casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States and has been seeking a pardon enabling him to return have emerged as major fund-raisers and donors for President Obama’s re-election campaign. The casino owner, Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, known as Pepe, jumped bail in Iowa in 1994 and disappeared, and has since been linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. A State Department cable in 2009 said he was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business rival and making illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials. When The New York Times...

With Republican-controlled Indiana on the verge of becoming a "right to work" state, Democrats in the state House on Tuesday took the only step they have left to prevent it, if only for a bit longer. They disappeared. Again. A final vote on the measure, which would bar union contracts from requiring nonunion members to pay fees for representation, had been expected Tuesday in the House, which Republicans dominate, 60-40. But with scores of union members and supporters filling the Statehouse halls in Indianapolis in protest, most Democrats refused to turn up for floor sessions -- not once, but twice...

Hypocrisy: As the great investor's secretary sat with the first lady at the State of the Union, the president spoke of economic "fairness." Is it fair to make a supporter wealthier at the expense of the American people? During the 2008 campaign, candidate Barack Obama cited billionaire Warren Buffett as one of his economic muses. In the 2012 State of the Union address Tuesday night, the president returned to his advocacy of the "Buffett rule," a proposed minimum tax on millionaires and billionaires. To highlight his theme of "fairness," there in the first lady's box sat Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek,...

Warren Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, served as a stage prop for President Obama’s State of the Union speech. She was the President’s chief display of the alleged unfairness of our tax system – a little person paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss. Bosanek’s prominent role in Obama’s “fairness” campaign piqued my curiosity, and I imagine the curiosity of others. How much does her boss pay this downtrodden woman? So far, no one has volunteered this information. The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an...

As the U.S. government Venture Capitalist-in-Chief (and President) Barack Obama and his Department of Energy investment guru (and Energy Secretary) Steven Chu pour other peoples’ money into their favorite “clean” technology schemes, private backers appear to be following them off the cliff, “as publicly traded battery makers watched their stocks tank and their businesses stumble,” according to a Dow Jones report late last month. According to a Dow Jones-owned industry tracker called VentureSource, private investors put $372.7 million into 14 battery deals over the first three quarters of 2011. Whether they would have transferred so much cash into the...

Now seems an unlikely time for handing out bonuses at bankrupt Solyndra LLC, but that’s the plan of company attorneys intending to dole out up to a half-million dollars to persuade key employees to stay put. Nearly two dozen Solyndra employees could receive bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 each under a proposal filed by Solyndra’s attorneys in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The attorneys say the extra money will add motivation at a time when workers at the solar company have little job security and more responsibilities because so many of their colleagues have been fired. The names of...

The untold story of the Obama Administration’s widely reported, $335 million discrimination settlement with Countrywide Financial Corporation is that, under a secret Justice Department program, a chunk of the money won’t go to the “victims” but rather leftist groups not connected to the lawsuit. The Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine which “qualified organizations” get leftover settlement cash and Democrat-tied groups like the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR) stand to get large sums based on the

It isn’t just Richard Cordray. Obama is also set to use recess appointments to install his picks to the National Labor Relations Board, according to White House officials and others familiar with ongoing discussions. The move, which is arguably as impotant as the Cordray appointment, will ratchet up opposition from Republicans and make this an even bigger fight, since they have been attacking the NLRB regularly for its moves to streamline union elections and inform workers of their rights. Obama is set to appoint Sharon Block, Terence Flynn, and Richard Griffin to the board — something unions have made a...

Since my New Year’s prediction that Obama would select Hillary Clinton for his running mate in 2012 (and Joe Biden would become Secretary of State), I’ve been swamped by requests for my GOP prediction. Here goes. You can forget the caucuses and early primaries. Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Republicans may be stupid but the GOP isn’t about to commit suicide. The other candidates are all weighed down by enough baggage to keep a 747 on the tarmac indefinitely. For his running mate, Romney will choose Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida. Why do I say this? First,...

Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law was quietly nominated this month to a federal judgeship in New Jersey — a move that has some in the Garden State crying political foul, The Post has learned. Kevin McNulty, who is married to Schumer’s sister, Fran, was named to the US District Court by the White House late on Friday, Dec. 16. According to a boilerplate quote, President Obama believes McNulty is a “distinguished individual” who “will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.”

There’s been no shortage of establishment-minded Republicans and members of Congress to have served in the 1990s that have come out and endorsed Mitt Romney for president, or raised concerns about Newt Gingrich’s candidacy. But perhaps more unexpected has been the emergence of outside-the-Beltway conservatives to bolster Romney’s candidacy in the few weeks before primary voting begins Jan. 3 in Iowa. A surprising group of conservatives have lined up for Mitt Romney – or, at least, against Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who’s zoomed to frontrunner status on the strength of his support from anti-establishment Republicans.

Following a pattern established in previous hearings, today's House Judiciary Committee hearing produced fireworks from the Republicans and calls for more gun control from the Democrats. The grilling of Eric Holder climaxed at the very end of the day's proceedings, when Rep. Darrell Issa threatened the attorney general with contempt of Congress for his refusal to produce communications and logs, resulting in the embattled top law enforcement officer shooting back a line reminiscent of the McCarthy hearings: "Have you no shame?" Among some of the surprises: Holder was not sworn in as Issa had requested. Chairman Lamar Smith indicated the...

A couple of days ago Conunderground.com was the first to point out that the circumstances surrounding the “crash” of the top secret RQ170 Sentinel drone simply didn’t add up. And we were tight! The story continues to develop and it doesn’t look good! To recap, first we were told that Iran might’ve shot it down and then the story changed to “the drone crashed on Iranian soil ” After realizing that the Iranians were about to parade a perfectly functional drone with nary a scratch on it, the official story changed to “the drone landed because it wants to live”...

As if Congress didn’t have enough evidence that the Department of Justice has completely lost its mind, the New York Times is reporting that the Drug Enforcement Agency has helped launder “millions of dollars in drug proceeds” on behalf of Mexican drug cartels, a figure much higher than previously estimated. The Department of Justice has been under investigation by Congress for facilitating gun smuggling during Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was a gun running scheme on the US-Mexican border that’s resulted in violence and death on both sides of the border including the deaths of federal agents in...

As the United States and other nations grapple with how best to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, a high-ranking Chinese military official has raised the stakes considerably on any possible military action. On Dec. 4, according to a report in Press TV, a news network owned by the Iranian government, Chinese rear admiral and prominent military commentator Zhang Zhaozhong said, “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third world war.”It is not clear when the statement was made or in what context. Once reported, the statement went viral in China and elsewhere. Apart from being...

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Dec 8 - With the European debt crisis dominating the news and threatening to pull the world into a double-dip recession, there are growing calls for Uncle Sam to come to the rescue. The U.S. is already committing untold billions to the $1.4 trillion European bailout fund, but that's not enough, according to some European leaders and even U.S. politicians. They say that while the EU bailout is costly, it's also necessary. They are only right about the cost. These endless bailouts are not only unnecessary, but are in fact...

AG Eric Holder attempts to avoid question about lying to congress. Saying that lying depends on one's state of mind. (December 8, 2011)

Scandal: The House committee probing government gun-running now sets it sights on possible money-laundering involving drug cartel funds run in the name of drug enforcement. Why should we believe DOJ this time? It's an old adage that when investigating criminal activity you should follow the money. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has announced an investigation into a money-laundering operation allegedly run by the Drug Enforcement Administration. We may need to follow the people following the money. Just as Fast and Furious was allegedly intended to track and interdict gun-trafficking into Mexico, this operation,...