Free Republic

After it was reported Monday that Malia Obama was going to Mexico for spring break with 25 Secret Service agents, people began to notice that such reports were being scrubbed from the Internet. Politico's Dylan Byers reported Tuesday this was done at the request of the White House: The AFP page for the story now links to a story titled "Senegal music star Youssou Ndour hits campaign trail," as does the Yahoo page. The Huffington Post page now links directly back to the Huffington Post homepage. The Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Australian stories now lead to 404 error pages,...

Since Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 there have been several major scandals in which his Administration has been involved, principally, Operation Fast and Furious the government sponsored sale of guns to small time gun sellers along our border with Mexico; the failed ‘Stimulus’ loan of multi-millions to Solyndra and LightSquared, two small businesses that were Obama preferred for loans. All three of these Obama Administration ventures were major failures involving scandalous behavior. ...Is the entire communications arm of our country becoming beholden to Obama and his scandal ridden administration peopled by socialist, communists who break our laws with impunity and...

Late last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took what is being called "the final step" towards implementing their illegal Net Neutrality regulations. You may recall, that back on December 21, the FCC bypassed government regulations and seized control of the Internet -- delivering what many believe is a knockout blow to one of the last, great free-market frontiers our nation and the world has ever seen. According to the organization Less Government, regardless of a multiple lawsuits, a move by the House of Representatives and a D.C. Circuit Court unanimously ruling that the FCC had no authority to take...

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has uncovered documents from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that indicate officials at the FCC colluded with the leftist Free Press organization to publicly push a new plan to regulate the Internet under the FCC’s so-called “net neutrality” program. Judicial Watch obtained the documents pursuant to a December 27, 2010, Freedom of Information Act request...

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality rules were made official on Friday morning, with their publication in the Federal Register. As already announced, they will go into effect on November 20. .... Consumer advocates were on the whole more positive. The non-partisan group Free Press, which champions universal access to communications, supported the rules while also voicing reservations about loopholes. " don't do enough to stop the phone and cable companies from dividing the internet into fast and slow lanes, and they fail to protect wireless users from discrimination that is already occurring in the marketplace...

Miller asked Obama to consider the plight of a hypothetical young, African-American in Chicago's South Side: Father gone, mother working 10 hours a day for "peanuts," there are no jobs and, "You won't even say, 'Look, I am going to help you,'" Miller said. "Emmett, that is not -- first of all, that is not what people are saying," Obama said, bristling. "What people are saying all across the country is we are hurting and we've been hurting for a long time. And the question is how can we make sure the economy is working for every single person." Obama...

U.S. prosecutors have sent News Corp. a letter seeking information about possible payments made by its U.K. tabloid newspapers to British policemen, according to people familiar with the matter. The letter of request, sent last week, is part of a Justice Department investigation, these people said, into whether the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a U.S. law t hat prohibits companies from bribing foreign officials. The fact the Justice Department chose to issue a "letter of request" rather than a criminal subpoena suggests the department has opted for a less confrontational approach to the matter, legal experts say....

FULL TITLE: O'Reilly Tells Ingraham NBC's Todd Worked for Lib Senator, 'His Wife Makes Living Working for Democratic Party' The story broken by NewsBusters last week involving Chuck Todd saying NBC's pollsters were "concerned" about President Obama's poll numbers has brought some scrutiny on the Peacock Network's chief White House correspondent. After radio's Laura Ingraham questioned Todd about this issue Thursday, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly brought her on his program Friday saying, "We did a little research on Mr. Todd...His wife makes a living working for the Democratic Party. There is a report that Chuck Todd actually worked for Senator...

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

As reported by the Blaze earlier today, CBS News's online store is selling seven different Obama-related items, but complementary Republican merchandise is suspiciously absent. The online store includes paperback and hardback copies of Obama's memoir, "Dreams From My Father," and five memorabilia books and DVDs of his campaign and election. When the Blaze looked into the matter, CBS News had even dedicated an entire tab of its store to the president. The category has since been removed, but searching "Obama" in the online store still returns all the merchandise. When the items are clicked on, though, shoppers are redirected to...

Chicago, August 11, 2011 – This week U.S. Senator Dick Durbin held a press conference with members of the mainstream media to talk about the downgrade crisis. But the Senator’s scripted storyline veered off-course when a conservative reporter – me – showed up to ask an embarrassing question. Namely, “Senator, you’ve blamed the tea party…but do you bear any responsibility for this downgrade crisis?” What, you didn’t hear about this incident in the media? For those of you that need more proof that journalism is dead, read on. … I went to Durbin’s press conference to set the record straight....

Former MSNBC host Cenk Uygur’s departure from the network earlier today was fairly quiet for a close-to-primetime host, and the network made it clear it was his choice to leave. It didn’t take long for the newly liberated Uygur to address his fans. In the end, he explained, it boils down to this: Cenk Uygur is a tiger, and MSNBC tried to cage him. “They offered, honestly, a lot of money,” Uygur explains in his message, where he also says the role would have been a smaller one– “contributor, etc.”– instead of the alternate program the MSNBC statement suggested. He...

Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks has been arrested in connection with an investigation into phone hacking and bribery. The 43-year-old was arrested by appointment by Operation Weeting police at a London police station. Met Police said she is currently still in custody. This is the 10th arrest made by police investigating hacking allegations by the News of the World newspaper. She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption allegations. The Operation Weeting team is conducting the current investigation into phone hacking.

The parent company of Fox News — News Corp. — paid the U.S. government $4.8 billion in taxes over the last four tax years (2007-2010). GE, which owned most of MSNBC until late last year, paid zero taxes in 2010.In fact, GE received a $3.2 billion welfare check from Uncle Sam.From Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston: (Reuters) — Readers, I apologize. The premise of my debut column for Reuters, on News Corp’s taxes, was wrong, 100 percent dead wrong.Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp did not get a $4.8 billion tax refund for the past four years, as I reported. Instead,...

"We'd prefer if you skip Fox please," a White House broadcast media staffer advised a Treasury Department public affairs secretary ahead of the interview. In other emails during the same time frame, deputy White House communications director Jennifer Psaki called Fox News anchor Bret Baier "a lunatic" and boasted that "I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby--just cause." In yet another email, another White House press officer wrote: "We've demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews …"

But I’ve learned, by participating in over a decade of specific media struggles, that when you are in the short-term and you are fighting to win, sometimes you make tactical alliances. You don’t sacrifice your principles and embrace someone else’s lame political agenda. If you want to win public credibility and advance a progressive media agenda that actually has a broad impact, this is what you do. That is how politics works. Most progressives understand this. But there is always going to be those who say: “here is a checklist of seven-hundred points that we think reflect the ideological foundations...

Should CNN be using President Obama's pollster as a paid contributor to its network? A Washington insider says dapper data guru Cornell Belcher represents a potential conflict of interest for the cable network, now that he's reportedly going to work for Obama's reelection effort. In February, CNN announced that Belcher - who did polling for the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2008, including Obama's presidential campaign - was joining its team of on-air political contributors.

A standoff between public interest groups and Verizon Wireless could determine whether many consumers can use their smartphone as a modem for a laptop or tablet — or whether they’ll have to pony up for an aircard or separate wireless plan instead. Consumer advocates say Verizon has violated its license agreement to operate over a valuable chunk of public airwaves known as the C-Block. According to (soros funded)Free Press and (soros funded)Public Knowledge, Verizon has asked Google to block third-party applications on Android phones that allow “tethering,” or using a smartphone to connect to the Internet on another device such...

The White House says an off-color remark about President Barack Obama by MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin was inappropriate. Halperin said during an appearance Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that he thought Obama "was a dick yesterday." The Time magazine editor at large was talking about Obama's performance at a White House news conference on Wednesday. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the comment was an inappropriate thing to say about any president.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitizer prize winning reporter who has worked for the Washington Post and Huffington Post, has revealed that he is an illegal alien in a coordinated media push with the New York Times and ABC News seeking amnesty for illegal aliens like him.Vargas also revealed that he breached White House security by using a fake ID, including when he covered a state dinner. And that a superior at the Washington Post knew and approved of his actions.Vargas made the revelations in an article he authored published in the upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine.Vargas writes that at...