Free Republic

The stunning expansion of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Washington, D.C., area is profiled in a long, interesting and meticulously accurate CNN story that suggests "the nation's capital has become a Mormon stronghold, with Latter-day Saints playing a big and growing role in the Washington establishment."-SNIP-"It's hard to point to federal legislation or a White House initiative that bears distinctly Mormon fingerprints," Gilgoff writes, "while it's easy to do the same for other faiths." He cites as an example a recent White House "compromise" on contraception funding, which he says was "mostly a reaction to...

If we want to reduce fossil fuel consumption, I say, we should raise the price of gasoline to $7 a gallon. Reason: Today this country burns through 21 million barrels of oil per day, 60 percent of which is imported. Only with some shared economic pain will we ever change our habits. High gas prices will force us to think before we drive. It will encourage mass transit use, car pooling, and the sale of more fuel-efficient cars. The auto industry will not suffer because it has learned that it can charge more for cars that are cheaper to build...

“I just don’t want to see something this significant – whatever the pros and cons – go through without anyone noticing,” “ says one source on the Hill, who is disturbed by the law. According to this source, the law would allow "U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population." The new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight...

"Whatever people think about this issue, we know it's controversial, there's no denying when a president speaks out for the first time like that, it is history," co-host of ABC's "Good Morning America" George Stephanopoulos said to Robin Roberts. And let me tell you, George, I'm getting chills again," "Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts said about her interview with Obama. "When you sit in that room and you hear him say those historic words. It was not lost on anyone in there right there. You never know what he's going to say until you ask him," she added.

There may be a good reason voters can’t get a good bead on Mitt Romney. And it may be because the real Romney has a troubled, sadistic history. High School classmates of Romney recall an incident that’s disturbing to its core. Romney, then a popular senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School in Michigan, disapproved of classmate John Lauber’s long, blond locks, which Romney allegedly took as a clue that Lauber was a homosexual. So Romney assembled a posse of bullies and held the boy down and brutally chopped off his hair. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look...

More than six decades ago, when the federal standards on the strength of airplane seats and seat belts were written, government regulations specified that seats be designed for a passenger weight of 170 pounds. But now the average American man weighs nearly 194 pounds and the average woman 165. Now, some engineers and scientists have raised questions about whether airplane seats, tested with crash dummies that reflect the 170-pound rule, are strong enough to protect heavy travelers. “If a heavier person completely fills a seat, the seat is not likely to behave as intended during a crash,” said Robert Salzar,...

Some of Mitt Romney's best moments on the 2012 campaign trail have come during town hall meetings when the candidate, long criticized as too uptight on the stump, strays off script to take questions from voters. But the freewheeling nature of voter forums can have its drawbacks. Romney has faced hostile questions on everything from his wealth to his religion. And on Monday, he experienced another awkward moment, when a supporter stood and declared that President Barack Obama should be "tried for treason." The comment came during a town hall meeting in Cleveland. Taking the microphone, a woman told Romney...

Washington is full of nerds. I know. I speak nerd, not fluently mind you, at least not anymore. But I certainly know more than a few phrases memorized from a Berlitz nerd-to-English phrase book. I can talk Dungeons & Dragons (both D&D and AD&D). I know about the Golden Age of Comics (as in comic books -- if you thought that was a reference to Bob Newhart's heyday, subtract 20 nerd points right there). Anyway, if you spend any time in Washington you'll find nerds. What happens is most of them sublimate their fixations with comics, or baseball cards, or...

Washington Post columnist Patrick Pexton made a rather startling admission in the paper’s Sunday edition: The Post never meant for their recent story about how President Obama’s health care law expands the budget deficit to become a viral Internet sensation. In fact, they deliberately tried to bury the story. ... The story in question was titled “Health care law will add $340 billion to deficit, new study finds.” It pointed out that the administration had double-counted Medicare savings in the law and once you adjusted for that it added to the deficit rather than reducing it, as the White House...

Wither the Tea Party? A major force in the 2010 midterm elections, the movement has stalled in public popularity, its support well below a majority and decidedly lukewarm. And Americans by a broad 23-point margin say the more they hear about the Tea Party movement, the less they like it, rather than liking it more. That negative buzz has worsened from a 9-point gap in an ABC News/Washington Post poll as the movement was gathering speed two years ago. And its avenues for resurgence may be limited: Interest in learning more about Tea Party is down 7 points from spring...

By now many of us have seen Zimmerman on television for the first time(aside from his photos) Now, does he look like your typical white person? He looks much more hispanic than white. Yet Black Leaders and Groups already want to hang this "Guilty White Man" for killing a black man in cold blood. Now that the world has seen him standing in a court room and not looking as white as he is accused of, how embarrassing will this look for Al Sharpton,Rep.Wilson and the rest who kept egging on as if it were a white man? This will...

With the way the Obama-loving media have mishandled the Trayvon Martin shooting, there's seems to be no question the Left wants race to be an issue in the upcoming elections. Appearing on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend, HDNet's Dan Rather ominously said, "Race will be a factor in this presidential campaign" DAN RATHER, HDNET: But this will be, let's don't forget that race will be a factor in this presidential campaign. Yes, the country can feel good about we elected a person of color, which I did not expect to see in my lifetime. But race will be...

The individual at the center of the controversial Trayvon Martin shooting is a registered Democrat. George Michael Zimmerman, born Oct. 5, 1983, registered as a Democrat in Seminole County, Fla., in August 2002, according to state voter registration documents. It is unclear whether he voted for President Barack Obama in 2008. Some in the media have sought to blame Republican politicians and conservative activists for Martin’s death. “[Republican politicians] reinforce and validate old stereotypes that associate the poor and welfare as criminal behavior with African-Americans and people of color, calling us lazy, undeserving recipients of public assistance. In the case...

<p>WASHINGTON — It's the political cure-all for high gas prices: Drill here, drill now. But more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, math and history show.</p> <p>A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.</p>

Writing in this space two months ago, I laid out the media advantage that President Obama has in his quest for reelection. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, 32 percent of journalists say they are liberal, 53 percent moderate and just 8 percent conservative. Ask John McCain how the press treated him in 2008 if you want specifics on the tilt toward Obama. A great illustration of media bias is the recent dustup over Sandra Fluke. She is the liberal activist trotted out by the Democratic Party to deflect the contraception issue away from the "church-state"...

Just when you thought you’d seen everything. Poor Sandra Fluke, the 30 year-old far left activist who wants you to pay for her $9 a month birth control, is dating a rich socialist. They recently traveled to Spain and Italy together. It was a lovely getaway for the women’s rights activist and her rich socialist boyfriend. Here the two lovebirds are roughing it late at night in Barcelona – drunk. And, here the poor little darling tries to make ends meet in Pompeii.

Forget slut-shamming. Sir Richard’s Condoms and the ad agency TDA_Boulder are using the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke flap to encourage the Georgetown law student’s supporters to embrace their inner and outer slut.The effort to mock Limbaugh includes a “Sluts Unite” website and social media campaign, which urge supporters to change their social media avatars to one of their 24 slogan-logos. Popular picks include “In Sluts We Trust,� “Proud Father of a Slut,� “You Can Call Me Slut,” “I Believe In Slut,” and “Pro-Slut.�Naturally, the Boulder, Colo. companies have topped off the campaign with an oath for unified sluts:I believe that sex...

[...] These are just a few samples from the arsenal of degrading language Limbaugh deploys on women, people of color, lesbians and gays, immigrants, the disabled, the elderly, Muslims, Jews, veterans, environmentalists and so forth. Limbaugh doesn't just call people names. He promotes language that deliberately dehumanizes his targets. Like the sophisticated propagandist Josef Goebbels, he creates rhetorical frames -- and the bigger the lie the more effective -- inciting listeners to view people they disagree with as sub-humans. His longtime favorite term for women, "femi-nazi," doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore, an example of how rhetoric spreads when unchallenged by...

A group calling itself "The Women of the 99 Percent" is making robocalls across the United States in an attempt to link Republican members of the House of Representatives to "the war on women led by Rush Limbaugh". The automated calls are illegal because they do not state who they are from (there is no known group called The Women of the 99 Percent) or provide a callback number, as required under the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. ...snip... Telephone calls and emails to the DCCC and the Democratic National Committee asking whether either organisation was connected to...

In an appearance on ABC’s “The View” on Monday, Georgetown Law student and women’s contraception activist Sandra Fluke told viewers to check out Media Matters for examples of over-the-top conservative rhetoric. When asked by co-host Joy Behar if she had anything to say to her critics, Fluke, who made headlines last because of the attacks and subsequent apology she received from conservative talker Rush Limbaugh, encouraged viewers to check out Media Matters’ website. “Well, I would encourage everyone to go to Media Matters because they have an excellent story on their website that gives a list of the various commentators...

Politico is a bit upset about the recent investigative journalist piece done by The Daily Caller on Media Matters. In that piece they spoke to many former staffers at Media Matters, and what did they find? Yet those same interviews, as well as a detailed organizational planning memo obtained by The Daily Caller, also suggest that Media Matters has to a great extent achieved its central goal of influencing the national media. Founded by Brock in 2004 as a liberal counterweight to “conservative misinformation” in the press, Media Matters has in less than a decade become a powerful player in...

Whatever happened to the good old days, when the MSM glorified "speaking truth to power"? We all know the answer: that epoch ended on January 20, 2009. Nowadays, opposing power, particularly in the person of the president, far from being something to be praised, is downright illegitimate in some liberal media eyes. Take the latest "Lean Forward" promo by MSNBC, in which Ed Schultz actually claims that those "standing up to the president" are nothing but "bullies." View the video here.

Victoria Jackson doesn't want to meet at her house. "The Nation of Islam wants to kill me," she explains apologetically in her inimitable shrill voice. Instead, she picks up a reporter at a Miami-area strip mall. Her weathered Honda Civic is adorned with "Nobama," Marco Rubio, and Tea Party bumper stickers, and inside, it smells like it's been fumigated with sweet incense. She hurtles through intersections and down side streets, holding a Flip cam to her face with her left hand. Steering with elbows and the occasional pinkie, she opens a Bible inscribed with her name and quotes Scripture. Then...

Mitt Romney attacked his GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich over what has to date been one of Gingrich’s most effective debate methods — going after the moderators and the media for questions he deems inappropriate. “It’s very easy to talk down a moderator,” Romney said Wednesday on Fox News. “The moderator asks a question and then has to sit by and take whatever you send to them. And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media.”

Here’s a blast from the past. Remember Eason Jordan? Every conservative political blogger worth his/her salt knows and remembers who he is. Former CNN head Eason Jordan is the disgraced journalist who admitted in a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves” that he deliberately and intentionally whitewashed Saddam Hussein’s atrocities and regurgitated Hussein propaganda for a decade in exchange for access. Let me underscore that: In 2003, after the U.S.-led Coalition invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Jordan confessed that CNN had deliberately reported Baathist propaganda during the Saddam era...

In an explosive interview on MSNBC, Chris Matthews has harsh criticism for President Obama and his team of advisers.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, played by SNL's Bill Hader, paid a visit to 'Weekend Update' to explain his recent strange behavior in New Hampshire that some have speculated was driven by drinking too much alcohol. Republican presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry gave a remarkable speech in New Hampshire last week that set in motion broad speculation that Perry, who is losing badly in every nationally-recognized poll, was intoxicated. Perry contended the speech was more reflective of the fact that he "felt great" during it, according to the Washington Post, where full video of Perry's speech was included.

Facing grim economic news and weak poll numbers, President Barack Obama’s campaign said Monday morning that the leading GOP presidential candidates are too outside the American mainstream to be elected. “From economics to immigration, Governor Perry, Governor Romney and the Republican field have embraced policies that the American people oppose,” campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt writes in a strategy memo sent to reporters Monday morning. “The campaign to win the Republican nomination has become a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Tea Party.” The argument is not a new one for Team Obama, but the 850-word memo is...

ASPEN, Colo. – At a bustling farmers’ market, Trevor Washko worked on a square of leather in his booth of finely stitched journals. To his right was a stand packed with fresh-picked fruits and vegetables; to his left, a cooking demonstration. “We are not at all anything like the way we are portrayed by the media,” Washko said of the extraordinary mix of super-rich and resort workers who live in Aspen. Washko spent life in Springfield, Ill., until he graduated from college and moved to Colorado. He has worked as a naturalist, as a field guide, in several service jobs...

The Alabama Legislature opened its session on March 1 on a note of humility and compassion. In the Senate, a Christian pastor asked God to grant members “wisdom and discernment” to do what is right. “Not what’s right in their own eyes,” he said, “but what’s right according to your word.” Soon after, both houses passed, and the governor signed, the country’s cruelest, most unforgiving immigration law. The law, which takes effect Sept. 1, is so inhumane that four Alabama church leaders — an Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop and bishop — have sued to...

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out of bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women (NOW) President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man.

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out-of-bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man. "Who has ever called a man 'The King...

The president of the National Organization of Women actually rose to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s defense yesterday (didn’t see that coming!), while Newsweek editor Tina Brown tried to justify the “Crazy Eyes� cover that inspired so much conservative commentary yesterday. But one person seem disinclined to talk about the cover one way or another and that was Bachmann herself. As of yesterday afternoon, Bachmann still hadn’t seen the picture and she didn’t seem to care too much to talk about it when she could be talking about her campaign and her ideas for the country: Brown claims the cover is OK...

I suffer from Tea Party envy. There is little about the actual party I like, and there are some members I abhor, but I am jealous of its sense of purpose, its determination and its bracing conviction that it is absolutely right. In its own way, it waves a crimson battle flag while President Obama's is a sickly taupe — the limp banner of an ideological muddle. Obama would be a good White House chief of staff, but as a president he lacks political savvy. He never knew how to get ahead of the Tea Party wave. He never knew...

Right now if you go to newsweek.com, you'll see a basic magazine website, updated with content from the print version of the mag and a top navigation bar that directs you to content on its sister site, dailybeast.com. But starting July 19, we hear, newsweek.com will no longer exist. Instead that URL will redirect users to a channel on the Daily Beast site, like its current "politics," "entertainment," and "fashion" verticals. The Newsweek channel will still have all the archived magazine content from before (unlike Time, Newsweek puts all of its print content online), and it will be edited and...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52%) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35% who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15%. Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian? 2002 and 2011 Trend The findings, from a Gallup poll conducted May 5-8, 2011, mark the second time Gallup has asked Americans to estimate the gay population. In 2002,...

Malcontent Caller #1: Walter Explains His Support for ObamaMay 24, 2011 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, we have some "malcontents" on the phone, Snerdley tells me. You described them as "malcontents." All right, well, we're gonna start with one. Walter in Edgewater, New Jersey. Great to have you, sir. You're malcontent number one on the EIB Network. CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. Yeah, just a quick question: If President Obama if doin' such a bad job, then why are a lot of Republican candidates droppin' out or don't want to run against him? Don't they care about the country? RUSH: Uh, the...

At a press conference last week, someone asked Chris Christie for his views on evolution vs. creationism. "That's none of your business," the New Jersey governor barked in response. ...it says even more about the current state of the national Republican Party, where magical thinking trumps rationality, and even to acknowledge basic realities about the world we live in runs the risk of damaging one's political future. Christie is not part of the natural constituency for Darwin-denial... (but) he must constantly ask himself the question: Am I about to say something to which a white, evangelical, socially conservative, gun-owning, Obama-despising,...

At a press conference last week, someone asked Chris Christie for his views on evolution vs. creationism. "That's none of your business," the New Jersey governor barked in response. This minor incident, which barely rated as news for a few political blogs, offers a glimpse of Christie's personality, which seems increasingly grumpy and snappish. But it says even more about the current state of the national Republican Party, where magical thinking trumps rationality, and even to acknowledge basic realities about the world we live in runs the risk of damaging one's political future. Christie is not part of the natural...

CHERRY HILL, N.J. -- A New Jersey teenager says she's received threats since challenging U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to a debate over the Constitution. Ann Myers challenged the tea party favorite in a letter dated April 29. After it started getting media attention last weekend, commenters on tea party websites have threatened to publish her home address and some have threatened violence.

The White House said it is ending its long-running practice of having presidents re-enact televised speeches for news photographers following major addresses to the country, a little-known arrangement that fed suggestions of fakery when Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden. After Obama's live, late-evening address from the East Room of the White House on May 1, five photographers were ushered in to shoot pictures as the president stood at the podium and re-read a few lines of his speech — a practice that news organizations have protested for years. Even though The Associated Press and other news...

It was just a firehouse chat with the guys of Engine 54 in lower Manhattan. But President Barack Obama delivered a message he hopes will also hit home with every American in this week of national catharsis: "You're always going to have a president and an administration who's got your back." In the denouement to the daring raid that brought down Osama bin Laden, the president has in effect been reintroduced to the nation. While taking care to strike the right tone — trying to savor the success of the dramatic covert operation without appearing to gloat — Obama has...

One thinks of rats scurrying off a sinking ship. Meaning the new exodus of birthers from birtherism. Fox News now says in a blog post that it hardly pushed the birther issue at all. Wonder how folks got the idea Fox did that? Oh yeah: by watching Fox. And Rush Limbaugh says he “warned people this was a dead end.” This is the same Limbaugh who recently said there were “legitimate citizenship questions” about President Obama. Granted, some on the right were starting to distance themselves from this absurdity even before Obama finally released his long form birth certificate last...

Today CNN quoted Rush Limbaugh, who said "Thank God for President Obama." What CNN did not make clear, however, was Rush was being HIGHLY sarcastic during his monologue and was thanking him for saying one thing and doing another. This is, of course, a fine example of what we are fighting in terms of MSM bias. CNN basically lied to their entire viewing public without actually lying. The implication is that Rush was thankful for Obama and what he did in terms of bringing Osama to justice...which anyone who actually heard the monologue can tell you is not true.

Spot the Satanic Obama 2008 logo, again rearing its ugly head?? College students may well have an agenda I would say.Send your photos as well showing a revival of support for "The One" more so then celebrating a united AMERICAN MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCY victory, more of a hoped-for conclusion on the WOT rather than a redoubled effort to proceed even further to get more Jehadi scalps (al-Awaki, al-Zawahiri), and fully support our US military and intelligence agencies first and foremost in the process.

'Obama Got Osama': T-Shirts Commemorate Osama Bin Laden Death May 02, 2011 12:21 PM ABC news’ Faisal Sidiq and Devin Dwyer report: Looking for ways to commemorate the death of one of the world’s most wanted terrorists? Some enterprising businessmen hope so. Dozens of specialty t-shirts celebrating the killing of Osama bin Laden have begun appearing for sale online and on U.S. street corners less than 12 hours after news broke. “Hot off the press! Get your shirts here, guys,” this vendor yelled from a park outside the White House in Washington, DC. His “Obama Got Osama” screen print shirts...

That’s apparently how Joy Behar & co. feel today, reflecting on the news that U.S. Special Forces killed al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden on Sunday. “I would hate now to be a Republican candidate thinking of running,” Barbara Walters adds.

ABC News' Jake Tapper reports here and here on the Obama administration giving Osama bin Laden a Muslim-led Islamic burial at sea so as not to "inflame" the Muslim world....The SEALS shot the terrorist leader dead after he refused to surrender. Bin Laden's corpse was taken to Afghanistan to have his DNA tested for positive identification. The body was then flown to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, officials told ABC News and he was buried at sea. The burial was done in accordance with Islamic law, officials said. A Muslim seaman conducted the process and said the prayers, with...

Yesterday, the Chronicle reported that the White House had threatened to kick veteran reporter Carla Marinucci off the press pool because she posted a video of a protest at a San Francisco fundraiser last week. Today Politico.com ran a story on the controversy that included White House claims that the Chronicle report was "not true." Let me assure readers that the Chronicle does not run a story of this nature -- plus an editorial and a blog by Phil Bronstein lightly. It may well be the case that Carla remains on the pool -- I can't tell from this statement...

Let's see: The Arab world is in tumult, with worrying signs that a Libya-style descent into civil war may be happening in Syria, where the stakes are unimaginably higher. Nearby, the warring Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, may be forming a united front. Closer to home, new leaders are being tapped for the Pentagon and the CIA. The government is fast approaching its legal debt ceiling. Painfully high gasoline prices have put the nation in a sour mood. Tornadoes are wreaking death and destruction across the South. So the leader of the free world summons the media for an important...