Free Republic

ALBANY, NY, June 17, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A controversial provision that would have struck down late-term abortion restrictions in New York state has died in the state senate. The measure, which would have radically expanded abortion-on-demand for reasons of “health,� among other changes, was the tenth point of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Women's Equality Act. However, just after midnight last night, the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) introduced the other nine planks – and others of its own creation – while ignoring the abortion language. Governor Cuomo struck out at the IDC during a public radio interview on Monday, vowing a bruising...

Conservative activists are planning to storm Capitol Hill on Wednesday for what they are predicting will be “the largest Tea Party protest since 2010.” The protest — drawing tea partiers like TV host Glenn Beck and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — is in response to the Internal Revenue Service’s recent admission that it has been specifically targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny. The gathering on the West Lawn of the Capitol is being called the “Audit the IRS” Rally. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/18/the-largest-tea-party-protest-since-2010-is-tomorrow/#ixzz2WaxhEEBG

Pew: Every TV News Outlet Had Coverage Supportive of Same-Sex Marriage By Alex Weprin on June 17, 2013 11:28 AM A new survey from Pew’s Project For Excellence in Journalism examines the coverage of gay marriage among the media. The big takeaway: almost every outlet presented more supportive statements in favor of gay marriage than opposing statements against gay marriage, including every TV news outlet. Pew looked at every segment on gay marriage from March 18-May 12, and classified every statement made on the issue as being supportive of gay marriage, opposed to gay marriage or neutral. As a whole,...

To think it only took the world's most (in)famous whistleblower to get the NSA to disclose that it had heroically managed to prevent terrorist attacks involving the New York Stock Exchange (we supposed they refer to the Manhattan-based TV studio and not the actual exchange where the servers are now housed in Mahwah, NJ) and the NY Subway. Because whereas there was a time in the past when the various US secret services would scurry at the opportunity to disclose their expertise to the general public, now it is a false negative that is supposed to disprove a positive (pervasive...

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) made the following remarks on immigration reform at a press conference earlier today: “Listen, I think this immigration issue’s been kicked around this town now for 15 years. That’s why I said the day after the election it was time for Congress to do its work. “ I’m increasingly concerned that the White House and Senate Democrats …would rather have this as an issue in the 2014 election, rather than to resolve it. It was the president who said that he wanted a robust vote coming out of the Senate to help move this process...

US to open direct Taliban talks The US is to open direct peace talks with the Taliban, senior White House officials have announced. The first meeting is due to take place in the coming days in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban have just opened their first official overseas office. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government is also sending a delegation to Qatar to talk to the Taliban. The announcement came on the day Nato handed over security for the whole of Afghanistan to government forces. US officials said prisoner exchanges would be one topic for discussion with the Taliban,...

A second staffer for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) disparaged American workers during an interview with Ryan Lizza, a partial transcript of the interview the New Yorker reporter released Monday afternoon shows. Originally, it appeared as though only one anonymous Rubio “aide” disparaged American workers and only did so in the context of speaking about low-skilled jobs in the U.S. However, the Lizza interview transcript shows two aides referenced low-skilled and high-skilled American workers. Lizza asked the two staffers to respond to this statement: “Well their argument is, what, that they have American workers for these jobs, they don’t need this...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday announced his intention to file another amendment to the so-called “gang of eight” immigration bill that is facing tough opposition from some GOP lawmakers. “I’ll file amendment to immigration bill that permits states to require ID before registering voters & close this hole in [federal] statutory law,” Cruz wrote via his official Twitter account. I'll file amendment to immigration bill that permits states to require ID before registering voters & close this hole in fed statutory law. Ted Cruz to Introduce Voter ID Requirement Amendment in Immigration Billabout 10 hours ago via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite Ted...

Something perverse happened after the Supreme CourtÂ’s decision today invalidating citizenship-verification requirements in Arizona for registrants who use the federal voter registration form. The Left knows they lost most of the battle, but are still claiming victory. ThatÂ’s what they do. Election-integrity proponents and the states are saying they lost, but donÂ’t realize they really won. The Left wins even when they lose, and conservatives are often bewildered and outfoxed in the election-process game. Earlier today, I called the decision a nothingburger. After re-reading the case and reflecting a bit more, itÂ’s clear that the decision was a disaster for...

Were you targeted by the IRS for your political beliefs? Did you receive extra scrutiny for promoting limited government, the constitution, and fiscal responsibility? If not, will you be next? What: Audit the IRS Rally When: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 from Noon – 2pm Where: West Lawn of the US Capitol Join us on Wednesday, June 19th at 12pm on the West Lawn of the US Capitol as we come together to rally against the IRS. It’s time that Washington sees first-hand just how outraged the American people are by these discriminatory acts.

Eventually, the College Board will hand over its student data to research organizations like SDP, with restrictions on sharing information; but Coleman was not clear on how this would happen. However, Coleman made it abundantly clear he will concentrate on data mining our schoolchildren's proclivities. So, how does intrusion into children's privacy through more accumulation of data support Coleman's stated goals of making students career and college ready? Now that many states have awakened to the deficiencies in Common Core and are even moving to defund them, Republican governors who bought Coleman's spiel three years ago need to redeem themselves...

The immigration bill the Senate began debating this month will create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the US.The immigration bill will create a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country. Mother Jones reported: Pointing to a section of the bill that mandates a CIS “photo tool” database to enhance E-Verify checks (PDF), Wired last month ominously warned that it “would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the US” through the collection of state-issued photo IDs....

Sarah Palin pushed back against Jeb Bush’s argument that decreased fertility rates in the United States meant that immigration reform was necessary. “I say this as someone who’s kind of fertile herself,” the mother of five told attendees at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference today. “I don’t think that’s where we want to go in deciding how will we incentivize the hard-working responsible families who want to . . . follow the law and become Americans versus those whose very first act on our soil is to break the law. “ During his speech at the...

Anyone who doubts that the Republican Party can attract black voters needs only look south to Louisiana. At a conference held in Baton Rouge at the end of May, called @Large and aimed to attract black conservatives, black Democrat Elbert Guillary, a member of the state legislature, announced that he was switching party and becoming a Republican. Less than two weeks later, just up the road in Central City, Louisiana, black Democrat city councilman Ralph Washington – who attended this same @Large conference, made the same announcement – he’s becoming a Republican. It’s really not such a mystery. The mystery...

Arizona may not require documentary proof of citizenship from prospective voters, the Supreme Court ruled in a 7-to-2 decision on Monday. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, No. 12-71, said a federal law requiring states to “accept and use” a federal form displaced an Arizona law. The federal law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, allows voters to register using a federal form that asks, “Are you a citizen of the United States?” Prospective voters must check a box for yes or no, and they must sign the form, swearing...

Edward Snowden, America's most wanted whistle-blower, participated in a live online chat with the Guardian newspaper on Monday. "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," Snowden wrote. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

According to new details leaked to The Guardian (UK) by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, American and British intelligence directed snooping efforts against internet and phone data from foreign officials at the G20 in 2009. According to the documents, which were created by the NSA and handed over to the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s phone calls were bugged, and emails and calls from other delegates’ phones were monitored as well. Fake internet cafes were created to grab keystrokes from attendees. Forty-five analysts were given round-the-clock updates on who was calling whom at the summit. The...

AFP - Saudi Arabia plans to supply the Syrian opposition with anti-aircraft missiles to counter President Bashar al-Assad's air force, German news weekly Der Spiegel reported Sunday. The article, citing a classified report received by the German foreign intelligence service and the German government last week, said Riyadh was looking at sending European-made Mistral-class MANPADS, or man-portable air-defence systems. Der Spiegel noted the shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles can target low-flying aircraft including helicopters and had given mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan a decisive edge against Soviet troops in the 1980s. Saudi Arabia is a key supporter of the Syrian rebels and has...

Sen. Marco Rubio was dismissive Sunday of some conservatives' concerns that Democrats are taking advantage of him to help pass an immigration bill. "Immigration reform is something that all Americans recognize has to be done," the Florida Republican said on ABC's "This Week," after being pressed on whether Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is "playing him," as commentator Ann Coulter has claimed. "I don't focus a lot on public polling, but if you look at these public polls, it's clear the vast majority of Americans understand that what we have in place in this country is de facto amnesty, a broken...

Damascus lashes out at Egyptian president, Muslim Brotherhood after Morsi severs ties with Bashar Assad's regime. Syria on Sunday harshly criticized Cairo's decision to sever diplomatic relations with Damascus, accusing Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of joining a US and Israel-led conspiracy against Syria. Morsi said he had cut all diplomatic ties with Damascus on Saturday and called for a no-fly zone over Syria, pitching the most populous Arab state firmly against President Bashar Assad. Syria's official SANA news agency quoted a government source as saying that Morsi was implementing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has called for jihad...

<p>George Orwell was right. He was just 30 years early.</p> <p>In its April cover story, Wired has an exclusive report on the NSA's Utah Data Center, which is a must read for anyone who believes any privacy is still a possibility in the United States: "A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks.... Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.�... The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013." In other words, in just over 1 year, virtually anything one communicates through any traceable medium, or any record of one's existence in the electronic medium, which these days is everything, will unofficially be property of the US government to deal with as it sees fit.</p>

In April 8th grade student Jared Marcum was SUSPENDED and ARRESTED for wearing a NRA T-shirt to school. Local law enforcement officials confirmed Jared Marcum was arrested over the T-shirt. It was offensive. WOWK 13 Charleston, Huntington WV News, Weather, Sports Now it looks like Jared could face up to a year in jail. Guns Save Lives reported: According to a report by WTRF the prosecuting attorney is moving forward with that charge and a judge is allowing the case to move forward. Fourteen year old Jared Marcum could face up to a $500 fine and up to a year...

-- 56 percent of voters believe Obama did not try to rescue the doomed garrison in Benghazi, Libya because he didn’t want to risk his re-election. -- 62 percent agree that Obama’s NSA phone surveillance constitutes “an unacceptable and alarming invasion of privacy rights.” -- 63 percent believe that Obama’s Justice Department seized reporter’s records for political reasons, compared to 29 percent who take the administration’s national security argument to be true. -- 68 percent believe that the White House isn’t telling the truth about the targeting of the president’s political enemies by the IRS. Just 24 percent believe the...

The United States said on Saturday it would keep F-16 fighters and Patriot missiles in Jordan at Amman's request, and Russia bristled at the possibility they could be used to enforce a no-fly zone inside Syria. Washington, which has long called for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, pledged military support to Syrian rebels this week, citing what it said was the Syrian military's use of chemical weapons - an allegation Damascus has denied. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved a Jordanian request for American F-16s and Patriot missiles to remain in the Western-backed kingdom after a joint military exercise...

Moderate Candidate Wins Iran's Presidential Vote By FARNAZ FASSIHI BEIRUT—Hassan Rohani, the candidate backed by the opposition and reformist political factions, was declared the winner in Iran's presidential vote, giving a decisive victory to Iranians calling for change. Iran's interior minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, said at a press conference Saturday in Tehran that Mr. Rohani had obtained more than 50% of more than 36 million votes cast in Friday's election. Supporters of moderate candidate Hassan Rohani took to the streets to celebrate after he was declared winner of Iran's presidential election. Photo: Associated Press. Conservative candidates did poorly in vote...

Police Scotland officers attend the scene at Prestwick. Picture: Colin Sturgeon Published on 15/06/2013 15:09 AN EgyptAir plane from Cairo to New York has landed at Glasgow Prestwick Airport after being diverted. • EgyptAir flight from Cairo to New York lands in Glasgow Prestwick Airport • Reports suggest plane was escored by typhoon fighter jets before landing The Boeing 777 - which was travelling to JFK International Airport - touched down at 2.30pm. Air traffic control at the airport confirmed that action was taken following “a problem”, and that standard procedure had been followed. Unconfirmed reports said that typhoon fighter...

More details of a massacre in Homs late last month have emerged following the global outcry of a massacre in Deir el-Zour yesterday. The massacre, carried out by Free Syrian Army militants reportedly targeted men, women and children in the Christian village of al-Duwayr/Douar close to the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. The incident received little media attention, having occurred at the same time as thousands of Syrian troops converged on the insurgent-occupied town of al-Qusayr. According to sources, around 350 heavily armed militants entered the village, broke into homes and assembled residents in the main square...

President Barack Obama's trip to Africa later this month could be one of the most expensive of his tenure, costing the government as much as $100 million. According to a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post, hundreds of Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania, which the first family will visit from June 26 to July 3. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency. In addition, military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who helped draft the immigration reform bill currently being discussed in the Senate, says he will walk away from the negotiations if it includes a controversial amendment to provide immigration benefits for gay couples. "If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I'm done," said Rubio during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show on Thursday. "I'm off it, and I've said that repeatedly. I don't think that's going to happen and it shouldn't happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it...

Republicans considering running for president over the past six years have been delivering red meat to the base at conservative confabs. But Jeb Bush Friday did not fit the mold. The former Florida governor, mulling a 2016 bid, followed the retiring firebrand Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) at the Faith and Freedom Coalition. But while Bachmann and the other speakers here, including Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) -- the 2012 vice-presidential nominee -- treaded familiar turf by railing against government and President Barack Obama, Bush didn’t go there. “I won’t be pointing out the failures of the Obama administration,” Bush said to...

Complete Headline: Thousands Of Firms Trade Confidential Data With The US Government In Exchange For Classified Intelligence The rabbit hole just got deeper. A whole lot deeper. On Sunday we predicated that "there's one reason why the administration, James Clapper and the NSA should just keep their mouths shut as the PRISM-gate fallout escalates: with every incremental attempt to refute some previously unknown facet of the US Big Brother state, a new piece of previously unleaked information from the same intelligence organization now scrambling for damage control, emerges and exposes the brand new narrative as yet another lie, forcing even...

(CNSNews.com) – The IRS is looking to hire a “diversity and inclusion” specialist, with a minimum salary of $123,758 a year. The opening for a full-time “Supervisory Diversity and Inclusion Specialist” at the agency’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C. was announced on June 11 and is open until June 24. The Diversity Specialist will “serve as a change agent to provide strategies, solutions, training, tools, resources and thought leadership on diversity and foster inclusion” across the workplace and “build internal awareness” for diversity and inclusion throughout the agency. Among the day-to-day job duties: Hear and resolve complaints from employees; "effect...

A WTHR-TV Indianapolis investigative report exposes a fraudulent scheme wherein the IRS is sending $4.2 billion per year to illegal immigrants as an "additional child tax credit" for children who don't even live in the U.S. Further, the IRS and Congress have been ignoring the scheme for years. The Inspector General's office has repeatedly identified the problem in audit after audit. The IG, Russell George says, "The magnitude of the problem has grown exponentially," but the IRS is doing nothing to stop it. "It's so easy it's ridiculous," the tax preparer whistleblower who exposed the fraud admits. Names are simply...

Why is it necessary to legalize the roughly 11 million currently-illegal immigrants in the U.S. before newly enhanced border security and internal enforcement measures are in place? Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Senate’s Gang of Eight, says part of the reason is that the federal government can’t afford to secure the border on its own and needs financial help from the immigrants themselves, in the form of fines paid when they are legalized. Rubio made the statement during a radio interview after he voted against an amendment from Republican Sen. Charles Grassley that would have put off...

Until now, I thought Democrats were being overly defensive as they circled the wagons around the White House, assuring everyone who would listen that the president obviously wasn't involved. Who in Congress had overtly pointed the finger at the president? Enter Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) who figured out away to insinuate White House involvement in the IRS targeting scandal and needle the president about the NSA spy scandal at the same time. Stockman sent a letter to Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on Tuesday, asking him to subpoena all NSA records of phone calls...

U.S. Military Plan to Arm Rebels Includes No-Fly Zone in Syria WASHINGTON—A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials. Asked by the White House to develop options for Syria, military planners have said that creating an area to train and equip rebel forces would require keeping Syrian aircraft well away from the Jordanian border. To do that, the military envisages creating a no-fly zone stretching up to 25 miles into...

Now is our chance to change the political field of battle; the recent revelations regarding the IRS's political targeting and the NSA's domestic spying have engendered a healthy distrust of the now feral Federal Government. - We have the opportunity not only to stop this thing dead in its tracks, but make support for it legally actionable at the federal and State level. Here's how: The governors of the Several States have a lot of unused power, commonly set forth in their respective state's constitution is the power to declare a state of invasion. If two or more States...

Ms. Palin became a national celebrity after her unsuccessful 2008 vice presidential turned into a media career as a paid Fox News contributor from January 2010 to January of this year. The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Ms. Palin wouldn't be renewing her contract with the cable news networking, citing a person familiar with the matter. "I've had several conversations with Governor Palin in the past few weeks about her rejoining Fox News as a contributor," Mr. Ailes said Thursday. "I have great confidence in her and am pleased that she will once again add her commentary to...

Politico rips into Obama's cratering trust deficit today and makes a crucial admission that much of the media has been dancing around since the revelations hit last week about the NSA's seizing of phone records and the PRISM program. Politico describes Obama's moves as a "secret program that dragnets most phone records and much of the Internet." The very same media that doesn't want to admit what Obama is doing is the very same media that spent years savaging President George W. Bush for doing much less. But to admit Their Precious One is Bush on steroids is probably a...

The Affordable Care Act is So Unaffordable, Members of Congress and Their Aides are Quitting Because They Can't Afford It! BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, this is truly outrageous. There's a headline in The Politico today: "Obamacare? We Were Just Leaving..." And when I saw the headline, I thought it was gonna be an article about how Democrats are afraid of losing their seats because of all the skyrocketing costs of health premiums and all the other negatives associated with Obamacare. But that's not what this story is about. What this story's about is congressmen worried about themselves. In...

I'm not going to present every poll on this topic but some commenters were grumpy about the results of the Pew and CBS polls and I wanted to throw them a bone. If you’re waiting for a backlash, your wait might be over. First, Gallup:And, hot on its heels, Fox News:Now for the eeyorish caveats. First, in a separate question, Gallup finds that of the 53 percent who disapprove of the program, 21 percent say that there are circumstances under which this sort of data-mining would be appropriate. They’re not hard opponents, in other words, just opponents at this particular...

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that human genes isolated from the body can’t be patented, a victory for doctors and patients who argued that such patents interfere with scientific research and the practice of medicine. The court was handing down one of its most significant rulings in the age of molecular medicine, deciding who may own the fundamental building blocks of life. The case involved Myriad Genetics Inc., which holds patents related to two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, that can indicate whether a woman has a heightened risk of developing breast cancer or ovarian cancer. Justice Clarence...

Erik Nielson, writing at the Huffington Post, says that President Obama deceived many who supported him during his first presidential campaign, including hip-hop artists. He says that Obama's policies haven’t helped the minorities who elected him to office. There was something remarkable about seeing rappers pledge their support to a mainstream presidential candidate, especially given the history of antipathy between national politicians and hip hop. And, of course, there was something equally remarkable about watching a future president embrace hip hop culture. Indeed, whereas politicians on both sides of the aisle had made a political tradition out of demonizing hip...

Grassley's amendment was dead on arrival in the Judiciary Committee and it was dead on arrival on the floor of the Senate today. Why? Because it did the one thing Republican border hawks Must Not Do as part of this grand, glorious compromise on immigration: It demanded that the border be effectively secured before any form of legalization, including first-stage probationary legalization, is granted to illegals. That would be a true enforcement “trigger� for amnesty, something that would warrant a second look at the bill. But of course, Democrats will never, ever agree to it; they have no more faith...

President Obama and his family will be going to Africa later this month. But the trip won't be cheap; it's expected to cost American taxpayers $60 to $100 million, according to the (The Washington Post) "When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-Saharan Africa later this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances. Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case...

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized. Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of...

Sarah Palin rejoining FOXNEWS as contributor, DRUDGE has learned, announcement expected this afternoon... Developing...

...At this point, the 2014 Colorado governor's race is too close to call, with 42 percent for Democratic Gov. Hickenlooper and 41 percent for former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, a possible Republican challenger. In other possible matchups, Hickenlooper gets 42 percent to 40 percent for Secretary of State Scott Gessler, and gets 43 percent to 37 percent for State Sen. Greg Brophy.

WASHINGTON — The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The Post reveals. The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers. ... “Department intakes of new . . . officers since the hiring surge a decade ago have reportedly been flawed, with ‘mitigation’ of troubling histories including criminal matters,” according to a December 2012 memo...

Edward Snowden has been called a “traitor” and accused of “treason” for his leaks of some of the nation’s top secrets. But is there a case for the T-words? Treason is a crime so old that it’s the only one specifically defined in the U.S. Constitution, but legal experts suggest it’s a charge that Snowden will most likely never face. And “traitor” seems to fit better in the world of Benedict Arnold and dueling pistols than in today’s sea of electronic surveillance and top secret security clearances. Constitutionally, treason is defined as “whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies...