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President Obama believes in the public sector. He thinks it should be made ever more expansive and entrusted with ever more complicated tasks. Its unions should be powerful. It should be hailed by all the great and good, and attract the nation’s best and brightest. This is how the president portrays the public sector at a level of glittering generality. Then there’s the reality of all that government that is too big for him to monitor, the workings of which he learns about only when he reads the newspapers and watches TV. There’s the incompetence, the dishonesty and the self-justification....

I cannot say his name but if you like Van Holland and Martin O'Malley he's the right guy for Virginia.

Senator Charles Grassley, who launched the first Capitol Hill investigation of Operation Fast and Furious more than two years ago, today blasted the treatment of a chief whistleblower in the investigation by the former U.S. attorney in Arizona, and subsequent attempts to discredit him by the Justice Department. Grassley released a statement after the Office of Inspector General released a report Monday morning that shows former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke leaked “a sensitive document” to a Fox News reporter in an attempt to discredit John Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The IG’s...

While liberals are deploying behavioral science with stunning results, conservatives have failed to follow up on their success three decades ago with the psychology of ‘broken windows.’ Here are several policy initiatives with which to begin.In 1982, social scientist James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling published their “Broken Windows” article in The Atlantic, an idea that launched a savvy assault on crime. One unrepaired broken window, they posited, signals a community’s indifference and leads to many broken windows. “Vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers — the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility — are lowered...

As a major tea party group plans protests Tuesday at Internal Revenue Service offices across the country, a new national poll indicates that the IRS controversy has given the four-year-old movement a shot in the arm. The week-and-a-half-old controversy, which involves the IRS targeting of tea party and other conservative groups which were seeking tax exempt status, has dominated headlines and put the White House on the defensive. And according to a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday, it's also boosted the favorable rating for the tea party movement. Thirty-seven percent of people questioned said they see the tea party in...

Two senior White House aides knew weeks ago that a probe of the Internal Revenue Service had found that the U.S. tax agency had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, but did not tell President Barack Obama, a White House spokesman said on Monday. A Treasury Department official informed White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler on April 24 about the preliminary findings of a report that would fuel the latest in a series of scandals to confront Obama at the start of his second term. The report was issued by a Treasury inspector general on May 14, four days after an IRS official...

Nearly two-thirds of campaign contributions from IRS employees go to Democrats.NTEU president Colleen Kelley The IRS may be “an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees,” in the words of White House press secretary Jay Carney, but its employees are represented by a powerful, deeply partisan union whose boss has publicly disparaged the Tea Party and criticized the Republican party for having ties to it. The White House continues to insist that profound incompetence, not partisan malice, led the IRS to single out conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. If the testimony of acting commissioner Steven Miller is true,...

WASHINGTON — Saturday’s “Run as One” event in the nation’s capital featured a low-key appearance for disgraced former CIA director David Petraeus, who participated in the 5K amid some of his most ardent supporters. The event was one of dozens held nationwide by veterans with Team Red, White and Blue and Team Rubicon, in honor of friends lost to suicide. snip Petraeus, a long-time supporter of Team RWB, has kept a low profile since resigning from the Central Intelligence Agency over an extramarital affair with a military aide. But he spoke at the event about the importance of teamwork and...

Liz Trotta on the Obama Scandals -- 5-19-2013

Outspoken gay former Congressman Barney Frank was in San Francisco this week and told a gathering of the Commonwealth Club that while he won’t consider a presidential run, he predicted the U.S. could have a gay president in 20 years. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, has never shied from speaking his mind, and he held forth on a wide range of topics during an interview with gay radio reporter Scott Shafer of KQED. The audience of over 500 people, including former Ambassador James C. Hormel and his partner, Michael Nguyen, gave Frank a standing ovation as he stepped to the stage....

White Americans are more likely to see anger in the facial expressions of President Obama than non-white Americans are, according to a study from the University of Arkansas that will be published in the journal Political Psychology in July.

On Sunday, President Obama gave a commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta. “Keep setting an example for what it means to be a man,” he told the graduates. “Be the best husband to your wife, or boyfriend to your partner, or father to your children that you can be.” That’s what Obama said, according to the New York Times, USA Today, Politico, and dozens of other news organizations. But Obama never uttered those words. Here’s what he actually said: “Be the best husband to your wife, or your boyfriend, or your partner.” That’s not a small difference in wording....

You know things are getting rough for President Barack Obama when even The New Yorker, that bastion of liberal thought, starts ridiculing him. Reacting to how the president is distancing himself from his administration’s three emerging scandals — the mishandling of the embassy attack at Benghazi, the targeting of a right-wing group by the IRS and press snooping by the Department of Justice — the magazine’s resident humorist, Andy Borowitz, wrote a post on its Web site titled, “Obama Denies Role in Government.” To milk his point, as humorists are wont to do, Borowitz put words in Obama’s mouth: “Right...

A few weeks back, the Tea Party was little more than a relic of political history, and its former superstars such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were lost in a sea of irrelevance. Now the Obama administration has gotten the Tea Party started again. The trio of scandals that are rocking Washington smack of the exact kind of government overreach and abuse of power that fueled the movement in the beginning. Suddenly, Tea Party darling and likely presidential hopeful Rand Paul is selling out speaking events from Iowa to New Hampshire, and PalinÂ’s tweets are making headlines again. The...

Don’t let anyone fool you: Everyone in politics is tempted to believe that their noble ends could justify unethical and illegal means. Those who had hoped that President Obama would usher in a new era of higher standards in Washington must be shell-shocked by last week’s revelations: -The Internal Revenue Service admitted to delaying conservative organizations’ tax-exempt status while quickly approving groups that had liberal or progressive orientations. The IRS asked these groups all sorts of invasive questions, including what kind of books they read, and leaked some information to the media. -The Department of Justice secretly obtained two months...

THREE Fox News staffers were monitored by DOJ. WOW. WOW. WOW.— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 20, 2013 Whoa.Drip, drip, drip.Megyn Kelly is reporting that it was not just James Rosen who was targeted by Obama’s Department of Justice. @MegynKelly on @FoxNews now reporting not just Rosen targed by DoJ; 3 Fox News staffers.— Brian Faughnan (@BrianFaughnan) May 20, 2013 Not just one! Three Fox News staffers in DoJ sites reports @megynkelly #fb— johnny dollar (@johnnydollar01) May 20, 2013 Now @megynkelly reporting @JamesRosenFNC, another FNC reporter and producer were targeted by DOJ— Andy Lancaster (@andylancaster) May 20, 2013 Evidently, two...

In a bitter fight, Colorado Democrats recently muscled through the Statehouse a massive elections reform bill that allows voters to register up until Election Day and still cast their ballots. It’s the latest—and most substantial—development in a nationwide Democratic Party effort to strike back at two years of Republican success in passing measures to require identification at polling places and purge rolls of suspect voters. Democratic-controlled states like California, Connecticut and Maryland also all have sought to make it easier to cast a ballot as late as possible. They recently passed versions of same-day voter registration measures, which traditionally help...

The Legacy Lives On! Mark’s Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation “Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and TyrannyWelcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition… it’s America’s Clean-Up Hitter! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

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Just in time for the cooler spring that has swept the nation — complete with unseasonal snow in the Rockies region — scientists with the University of Manchester said pollution actually brings on climate cooling, not warming. The logic is that manmade pollutants make clouds brighter, and that impacts how sunlight is allowed to shine — and that brings about cooler temps, scientists say, TG Daily reported. “We discovered that organic compounds such as those formed from forest emissions or from vehicle exhausts, affect the number of droplets in a cloud and hence its brightness, so affecting climate,” said one...

joseph curl�@josephcurl8m CIA source says Fox News scandal the "4th Shoe"; says it goes much deeper; says WH also sitting on "something" that has top aides terrified.

A Fox News correspondent was accused in a Justice Department affidavit of being a possible criminal "co-conspirator" for his alleged role in publishing sensitive security information -- in a leak case that takes the highly unusual step of claiming a journalist broke the law. According to court documents, the Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about Fox News' James Rosen's conversations and visits to the State Department. This included a search warrant for his personal emails. The effort follows that by the department to secretly obtain two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a...

Contact Governor Bentley TODAY and ask him to sign Senate Bill 286 into lawToday, the Alabama House of Representatives accepted the conference committee report for Senate Bill 286 by a 73-28 vote.  This measure now goes to Governor Robert Bentley (R) for his approval.  While not perfect, SB 286 is an important step in the right direction for the law-abiding gun owners in Alabama and residents of other states traveling to and through Alabama.  Therefore, it is critical you contact Governor Bentley TODAY and respectfully ask him to sign Senate Bill 286 into law.Governor Robert Bentley:(334) 242-7100Click here to send...

House Bill 972, an important NRA-backed self-defense bill that would repeal the criminal prohibition on the possession of firearms on college campuses by Texas Concealed Handgun Licensees (CHL), is still pending in the Texas Senate – where final action must be taken on the measure by this Wednesday. Make no mistake: anti-gun Senators and gun control advocates are trying to run out the clock on this important reform bill, and it will die without a vote unless your state Senator hears from you TODAY! While HB 972 gives individual higher education institutions the authority to adopt administrative rules and regulations...

Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday. The acknowledgement is the White House’s latest disclosure in a continual release of details concerning the extent to which White House officials knew of the IG’s findings that IRS officials engaged in the “inappropriate” targeting of conservative non-profits for heightened scrutiny. Previously, the White House said counsel Kathryn Ruemmler did not learn about the...

"In two weeks the naysayers will find out just how wrong they have been" - Mike Zullo

With new reports today that the Obama Department of Justice leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, it is now more obvious than ever that this administration has, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) created a “culture of intimidation” that stretches from the White House down to myriad agencies of the executive branch. *** Department of Justice: Today’s report from the Department of Justice Inspector General, showing that former US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in Fast and Furious, are only the...

At the President’s 2009 address to Congress, Michelle Obama was seated next to a potentially very dangerous man (no, I’m not talking about Joe Biden). 27-year-old Richard DeCoatsworth, a former Philadelphia police officer hailed as a hero, has been arrested and charged with rape, sexual assault, and terroristic threats. He allegedly produced a gun and forced two women to use drugs and perform sexual acts. On Thursday around 2:00am, DeCoatsworth left a party with two 20-year-old females. The trio then went to the home of one of the women. This is where the episode involving a firearm, and “forced” sexual...

McCain warns Obama-Nixon comparisons are ‘overreaching’ Monday, May 20, 2013 PrintEmail Comments (37) By: Hillary Chabot U.S. Sen. John McCain bucked the party line coming from many of his fellow conservatives this morning, saying suggestions that compare the trio of scandals gripping the White House to Watergate are “overreaching.” “I think it’s overreaching. We need a full and complete investigation and then we will decide the dimensions of it,” said McCain while campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez in Dorchester. “It is terrible but we have to have a full investigation before we leap to conclusions.”

Howard Wolfson, the 2008 communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton, has said he will not return for a 2016 presidential campaign. Neither, for that matter, will Neera Tanden, the campaign’s policy director. Ditto for Mark Penn, the chief strategist, and Patti Solis Doyle, the embattled campaign manager. As core members of a dysfunctional “Team of Rivals,” these top advisers were seared, scattered and, to different degrees, forged by the 2008 experience. Haunted by the failures in management and messaging, they have worked hard to get over their shattered White House dreams and rejection by a Democratic base enamored with Barack...

Why the "I Am A Black Man" speech by the president ? Was it a simple invocation to young Black graduates or the president circling the wagons and rallying his troops? It was disguised as a Brother Souljah moment when the occupant of the White House gave a speech at Morehouse College last weekend telling young Black men to live a responsible life and stop making bad choices. He spoke about the "special obligation" he feels as a Black man to help those left behind. The president praised Martin Luther King and spoke of how the civil rights movement cleared...

He’s compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, evoked nostalgia for John F. Kennedy, sought to emulate Ronald Reagan, (belatedly) praised George W. Bush, and enlisted the assistance of Bill Clinton in his 2012 re-election effort, but as his second term stumbles along, the president with whom Barack Obama finds himself being compared is Richard M. Nixon. My father, Lou Cannon, covered the White House with distinction for the Washington Post for many years, beginning in the Nixon administration. He employed an easy rule of thumb when fielding phone calls from anonymous tipsters: If the caller said, “I have...

A hot microphone caught Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) coordinating which way members of the “Gang of Eight” who serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee would vote on immigration bill amendments, Breitbart News has learned. “Do our Republicans have a pass on this one if they want?” the microphone caught Schumer saying.

Well, it appears that TRADOC is now well into the process of attempting to destroy the greatest armed force that the world has ever known. Training and Doctrine Command has launched “two major efforts in support of this full integration of women soldiers.” TRADOC has started a scientific review working with U.S. Army Medical Command, U.S. Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine and Army Research Institute to assist in the development of gender-neutral physical standards for all Areas of Concentration for commissioned officers and military occupational specialties for enlisted soldiers.In addition, the “TRADOC Analysis Center is examining the institutional and cultural...

President Obama talked about “racism” at Morehouse College this weekend. The timing is interesting because the trial of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin in February 2012, will begin in June. Zimmerman is Hispanic and Martin was black. President Obama stated at Morehouse, “We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made quite a few myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not...

Judge Andrew Napolitano joined FM Newstalk 97.1 morning host Jamie Allman today to discuss the widening IRS targeting scandal. Judge Napolitano told Jamie that if Obama knew his IRS was targeting conservatives during the 2012 election, and did nothing, it is an impeachable offense. "Now it has become a question of integrity. What did he know and when did he know it? Because if he knew during his campaign that the IRS was targeting his opponents and he did nothing to stop. In other words, he let the IRS do this stuff in order to help him defeat Mitt Romney,...

[Team Obmaugabe]continues its demonization of anyone that stands in its way. Formerly Organizing for America, Organizing for Action, a non-profit, non-partisan(laughable) group the pushes President Obama’s liberal ideology and agenda, has been targeting everything and everyone who is supportive of the right to bear arms. Back in early April, we interviewed several OFA volunteers who attended a gun buy-back program put on by the Broward County, Florida Sheriff’s Department in Pompano Beach, Florida... Now OFA has sent out another ‘call-to-arms’ email to protest members of the South Florida Congressional delegation. OFA’s recent email announces that they are organizing ”Gun Violence...

The White House may invoke it in its peculiar way, but its occupants only show contempt for the rule of law. Last Thursday, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) started a Twitter prairie fire with his call for people to describe #ObamacareInThreeWords. (My contribution was “Sorry, Doctor retired.”) Other gems included “Max Baucus regrets,” “A massive failure,” “Rammed down throats” and the extremely uncomfortable proof of Godwin’s Law, “Arbeit. Macht. Frei.” Liberal participation brought “Win for kids,” “Republicans suck balls,” “Republicans hate me”... --snip-- House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) hit the nail on the head in his opening...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson. The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to be inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.” “We are referring to OPR our finding that Burke violated Department policy in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to a member of the media for a determination of whether Burke’s conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct for the state...

The Hill has a story today that leaves one wondering if, when it comes to gun control, there is any line too ridiculous for progressives to cross: A House Democrat inspired by the last James Bond movie has offered legislation to produce handguns with “personalization technology.” The idea is to produce guns that can only be used by the gun’s owners. Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) cited the latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” as inspiration for the bill. “In the most recent James Bond film, Bond escapes death when his handgun, which is equipped with technology that recognizes him as its...

DD ITAR Update 1 A few have criticized how quickly I responded to the DDTC and began participating in their regulatory process. It is said I should have stood and fought if I believed in keeping the files free, instead of complying. This compliance has been viewed as some kind of ultimate one, as if I don’t intend to do anything else. “No takedowns, ever.” Was a motto I had built into my vision of DEFCAD.com, not DEFCAD.org, and it referred to a strategy for dealing with intellectual property claims and social pressure- this is NOT the strategy DD/DEFCAD.org can...

President Barack Obama has an important new ally as emboldened Republicans work to derail his agenda: John McCain. The shift is striking: The 2008 rivals never got along throughout Obama’s first term in office. McCain has been Obama’s chief tormentor on issues ranging from the budget to Benghazi, tartly saying in late 2010 that the two men had “no relationship.” Yet during one of Obama’s toughest times as president, there was McCain, sitting down last week with him in the Oval Office for a private strategy session. At the urging of new White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who...

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg used a commencement speech to push his gun-control agenda, telling graduates of Kenyon College in Ohio that gun control is “something you really should think about.” Bloomberg, who co-chairs Mayors Against Illegal Guns, spent at least $14 million in support of legislation that would have required universal background checks for all gun-buyers. Although the bill died in the Senate on April 17, Bloomberg said the battle isn't over. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) “I believe we will win, sooner or later, because I believe that all of you, your generation more than any other at least since the 1960s,...

Why does the U.S. Constitution make no mention of education? Because the Founding Fathers understood that the education of children must be at the local level. We now stand at the edge of a cliff as the federal Common Core State Standards continues its march across the country. How did we get here? In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education blackmailed the states with stimulus money in the form of Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. If states wanted to get out from under No Child Left Behind, and wanted more funding they had to agree to adopt the Common...

News reports from the time indicate the now-chief counsel of the IRS, William Wilkins, helped a church connected to President Barack Obama’s friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright get out of an IRS probe in 2008 while working as a private attorney. “Lawyers from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have won the dismissal of an IRS case against United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's denomination,” The American Lawyer’s Zach Lowe wrote on May 22, 2008.

Our democracy is endangered. Not by the Russians, North Korea, the Iran regime, or even terrorists. To quote Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Inside the beltway, the fingers point and the media tuts and struts in glee, and we, the American public, respond by becoming more rigid and divided ourselves. No more "truth springing from argument amongst friends," as David Hume said. A recent nonpartisan Pew Research Poll finds our knee-jerk partisanship has increased dramatically. This road we're on will lead us step-by-step to an extreme: either an autocratic government that functions, or a dysfunctional...

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 17 (UPI) -- Nobel Energy of Houston, which discovered Israel's big natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, is pressing the government to decide on an energy export policy as the prospect of an undersea pipeline to Turkey gains credibility. Israel's deep-water Tamar field, found in 2009 and containing an estimated 9 trillion-10 trillion cubic feet of gas, began production March 31. But Nobel and Israeli partner Delek Energy, the team that discovered Tamar and other fields off Israel, is reluctant to develop the much bigger Leviathan field, found in 2010, until it the government makes...

Fewer groups sught recognition as 501 (c)(4) social welfare organizations that year than in 2009, according to the Treasury Department. ...

Remember all the headlines during the election, wondering what happened to the Tea Party, the liberal crowing that it had gone silent? NPR, February 2012: "Strong in 2010, Where Is the Tea Party Now?" - "what's most striking about the movement this election has been its notable absence." Mother Jones, "The Tea Party is Dead." ." ABC: "What Happened to the Tea Party?" New York Times, June 2012: "The Movement Has Fizzled Out." Remember how odd it was hear conservative pundits saying, 'our voters would crawl over broken glass to vote against Obama', while pollsters correctly predicted that Republican turnout...