Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Newly released emails show that, contrary to White House claims, a major donor to President Barack Obama pushed for a loan to a solar energy company that later went bankrupt. The donor, George Kaiser, pushed White House and Energy Department officials for a second loan for Solyndra Inc. last year, after the California company had already received a $528 million loan in 2009, the emails show.</p>

A Kansas judge ordered some of the 107 charges filed against Planned Parenthood for engaging in illegal abortions and covering up those cases thanks to the destruction of records that took place during the Sebelius administration.The case with 107 charges against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri came about when former state attorney general Phill Kline brought the charges after obtaining evidence in patient records showing Planned Parenthood committed illegal late-term abortions and then manufactured documents to cover up their crimes. The charges allege the abortion business potentially engaged in illegal abortions and violated state record-keeping laws. Kline, as the...

I think that I may have stumbled onto a very large problem. I am working with a guy that says that he was a Marine and I am 99% sure that he isn't. He has got a really great story going and he has fooled a lot of people. I need a place to go to so that I can prove that he isn't a marine. I can already proove several of his other stories are fabrications but this is the key. I have read online that is a rather big problem, especially for the Corps and the Seals. Can...

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...

There are so many curious aspects to the Gunwalker scandal. There are well over a thousand smoking guns still out there, somewhere. All of which prove that the ATF “lost control” of Operation Fast and Furious. But there is no single piece of evidence that answers the fundamental question about Uncle Sam’s gun running black bag job: why? What was the point of allowing bad guys to buy guns? The ATF claims they were going after the “big fish” controlling the U.S. gun stores-to-Mexican drug cartel weapons trade. That hardly seems likely—as there were no big fish to be gotten....

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...

The awful launch week for the over-hyped, expected bestseller The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, by controversial author Joe McGinniss, just got worse. Much worse. After a week of universally scathing pans from the reflexively anti-Palin establishment media, McGinniss now faces the fight of his literary life: the accusation that he seems to have knowingly submitted a book to his publisher, Crown/Random House, that was filled with unproved “tawdry gossip” and rumors that lacked “factual evidence.”

Has new research disproven the theoretical models of anthropogenic global warming?  A new study by a European nuclear research group appears to show that the actual prime cause of temperature shifts in the Earth’s climate isn’t carbon dioxide at all, or even the broader range of “greenhouse gases,” but the large ball of fire in the center of the solar system.  Not that this study from CERN has attracted much attention in the media, at least not in the US — but at least Nature reported the results and the implications: It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‘cosmic rays’ from...

It looks like there will be a new group of individuals who lose out under the General Motors bankruptcy process. GM has decided not to take responsibility for defects in Chevy Impalas that predated its bankruptcy filing. Consumeraffairs.com reports that GM has asked a court to dismiss claims relating to faulty suspensions in more than 400,000 Chevys produced for model years 2007 and 2008. GM claims that it is not their problem, since they are "New" GM and the cars were built by "Old" GM.When the Obama Administration made a plan for GM's bankruptcy process, taxpayers and GM vehicle...

Further: 'I will work hard to protect entitlements... the only problem with the Reid Senate is that we didn't keep a fillibuster-proof majority... " Yeah. The Super Committee is gonna work. /S

On June 9, 2011, an Executive Order established the White House Rural Council with 25 executive branch departments including Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, National Drug Control, Environmental Quality, Labor, Commerce, Interior, EPA, Housing, Health, Education to name just a few. The order covers 16% of the American population who lives in rural counties because they “supply our food, fiber, and energy, safeguard our natural resources, and are essential in the development of science and innovation.” “Strong, sustainable rural communities are essential in winning the future and ensuring American competitiveness in the years ahead.” What kind of future are we supposed...

Get ready for the Mother Of All Hypocrisies. It's coming your way on the 22nd of May, courtesy of the leftist media. This will be the day after the world is predicted to end, by a religious sect that was trained by the network news mob. Once the world doesn't end, the sect followers will shrug their shoulders and pretend that nothing remarkable occurred and that old news is simply tiresome. The media, of course, will make a great show of rolling their eyes for the cameras and belittling those who would make a practice of profiting from false alarms...

U.S. Congressman Dan Boren issued the following statement regarding President Obama’s letter today requesting Congressional leaders eliminate tax provisions that are absolutely critical for domestic oil and gas production for thousands of independent producers across the nation. “President Obama is completely uninformed about the oil and gas industry. The industry is not made up of just major companies. It is made up of small independent firms like those in Oklahoma that produce a vast majority of our domestic production. For every CEO of a major company, there are literally thousands of blue collar jobs that are affected by his administration's...

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “This brings to light the importance of disclosure. The only reason someone like Geller was able to find this out was because of the FEC’s disclosure of donations, something the Chamber of Commerce refuses to do.” Hey Josh, the Chamber is private; the FEC is government. Go see my follow-up piece featured at Big Government on the White House response to Obama's foreign campaign contributions. Huge thanks to the indispensible help of Atlas readers Laura and Cathy, great Americans. Obama’s Campaign Contribution Records Scrubbed Clean by Pamela Geller I appeared on David Asman’s show...

In only the last several years, you have no doubt heard more about the unemployment rate than you want to for the rest of your life. The talking heads and pundits tell you that it peaked out at 10.2 percent back in October of 2009. They attempt to convince you that this followed from the low rate at the beginning of the Great Recession of 4.4% in March of 2007. The official statistics tell you that it rose to 6.2% in August of 2008, 8.1% by February of 2009, 9.4% only three months afterward, and then reaching the previously mentioned...

A trade publication is reporting this afternoon that President Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress. "The White House told Sen. John Kerry's office that the president plans to assume revenue from the controversial climate policy approach. Kerry aides said they had assurances the revenue won't be designated for issues unrelated to energy policy and combating climate change. "Obama last year proposed in his fiscal 2010 budget that a cap-and-trade program would raise some $650...

Six months after Barack Obama's inauguration, a persistent and noisy legion of doubters won't let go of an already debunked claim — that he is actually a foreign-born, illegal president. Mainstream Republicans who want the issue to go away are having a tough time stamping it out as the so-called "birthers" resurface, with assists from talk show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN's Lou Dobbs. Passions among the birthers run so high that Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., was booed by his own constituents at a recent town hall meeting for saying Obama "is a citizen of the United States." He was...

John McCain committed a malicious misrepresentation in the last presidential debate when he claimed that ACORN, the liberal activist group, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." As ACORN acknowledges, it has collected voter registration forms with bogus signatures. But even when they aren't winnowed out by election officials, transparently invalid registrations don't lead to fraudulent voting. Even the most lax poll worker wouldn't allow "Mickey Mouse" or "John Q. Public" to cast a ballot.

WASHINGTON - Lawmakers took the first step Thursday on a bipartisan global warming bill that would impose mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases from power plants, industrial facilities and transportation. ADVERTISEMENT Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., pushed the legislation out of his global warming subcommittee by a 4-3 vote, agreeing to a number of changes aimed primarily at garnering the needed majority to advance it. The bill calls for setting limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are emitted from power plants, refineries, factories and motor fuels. Polluters could exceed the limits by buying credits from companies whose emissions are...

In the wake of the CBS "60 Minutes" revelation of documents purported by Dan Rather to verify that George W. Bush did not uphold his obligations to the Texas National Guard in the early '70's, ABCNews.com has posted a story questioning the authenticity of those very same documents. Nevermind for a moment that the release of additional documents by the White House verifies that George W. Bush scored in excess of the number of "points" required of an honorable discharge for the six years of service to which he had committed in the National Guard, in fewer than those six...