Free Republic

The Democratic Party is moving faster and more aggressively than in previous election years to dig up unflattering details about Republican challengers. In House races from New Jersey to Ohio to California, Democratic operatives are seizing on evidence of GOP candidates' unpaid income taxes, property tax breaks and ties to financial firms that received taxpayer bailout money. In recent weeks, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has circulated information to local reporters about Republican candidates in close races. Among the claims: -- That Jim Renacci of Ohio once owed nearly $1.4 million in unpaid state taxes. -- That David Harmer of...

The Democratic National Committee is seeking “Macaca” moments. The party today is opening a website, www.accountabilityproject.com, designed to recruit and display embarrassing audio and video of Republican candidates, as well as information about their schedules and copies of their mailers. Campaigns have long made videotapes of each other, using “trackers” who follow the opposition from event to event. It was a young tracker who shot the video footage of then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) that wound up sinking his campaign. The DNC hopes campaigns and journalists will use the footage in ads and news coverage. The site targets both 2010 candidates...

There are glimmers of hope for Democrats battling to retain control of Congress in this fall's elections, with the party holding a slender edge in public trust for shepherding the economy and small gains in those saying their finances are healthy, according to a new poll. The reeling economy remains the American public's top concern, according to an Associated Press-GfK Poll conducted earlier this month, making public attitudes about it crucial for both parties' hopes in November. The good news for Democrats: By a slim margin (47% to 42%), people trust them more than Republicans to guide the economy. And...

The photo with the knife was published in a Turkish newspaper. They are also accused of hiding the soldier's (or a soldier's) blood by cropping it out of a photo. Both photos below.

When used correctly Photoshop has the ability to make people appear thinner and more beautiful, as well as the power to give millions an inferiority complex. It seems every image in every magazine has been Photoshopped these days, and this has led to what must be amateurs being let loose on images that are going to print... 20 Worst Photoshop Mistakes15 More Worst Photoshop Mistakes

Is the Obama Administration preparing the ground for a Ministry of Truthiness? The President's latest wide-ranging speech at Hampton University made a halt at a very strange outpost, before moving on to education. Obama, it seems, is vexed by the idea of conspiracy theories. Apparently people aren't thinking the right thoughts. Obama's internet Yoda, Professor Cass Sunstein*, is also besotted with the idea. Two years ago, Sunstein proposed what you might call an 'active government solution' to conspiracies. The best way to counter conspiracy theories, Sunstein and co-author Adrian Vermeule argued, is with the "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups". This...

Farewell to the Tea Party. It was fun while it lasted. It certainly got a lot of undue media attention. But it died a premature, yet welcome, death. Ironically, what killed the Tea Party was not opposition from either the Republican or Democratic Party. The Tea Party committed suicide, rendered irrelevant by a succession of current events. The central premise of Tea Party loyalists, after all, was that they were anti-government. You know the drill: All government is bad. Taxes are bad. Government bureaucrats are bad. Then, unfortunately for them, just as they were gaining traction, tea baggers ran into...

Santa Barbara is about as far from Greenville, S.C., as you can get in the continental United States, but Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) cares more about principle than geography. He is leading a conservative insurgency across America. Speaking at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's annual retreat here late last month, DeMint told the faithful that if they want to return to the principles of limited government, they need to elect people who believe in limited government: "I came into the Senate with 55 Republicans, George W. Bush in the White House and large majorities of Republicans in the House, and...

Bill Brady, the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois, paid no federal income tax in 2009. In recent weeks, I've written a couple of columns about reports that nearly half the people in the United States will not pay federal income tax for 2009. In part, that's the result of new tax credits aimed at stimulating the economy. Still, as someone who paid the tax, it bothers me that some people don't. Especially people wealthier than I am. When that wealthier person happens to be a political candidate complaining about high taxes, well, it seems sort of wrong. Brady reported...

In his 1956 story, published in Fantastic Universe Magazine, science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick) envisioned a dystopian future in which murders were prevented before they happened. Three mutant humans, known as “precogs,” see the murders in the future and warn the police. The police then arrive in SWAT Teams and take-away the bewildered “pre-murderer,” thus stopping the murder in question and creating a changed timeline (the film 2002 version of the story changes many of the original’s details). Yet in another example of life imitating fiction, the U.S. Congress and President Obama are running full-bore to force “precrime...

A Dark Kristallnacht of the Soul Tired of the left's over-the-top hyperventilating about the tea party being the Second Coming of Hitler?  Michael Moynihan puts this historically ignorant liberal lunacy in perspective in his excellent Reason Magazine article,  Red America White Power Reichskristallnacht—often called the "Night of Broken Glass" [...]  "Apart from the 267 synagogues destroyed and the 7,500 businessees vandalized, some ninety one Jews had been killed all over Germany and hundreds more had committed suicide or died as a result of mistreatment in the camps." Would you be surprised to learn that a similar spasm of violence...

Timothy McVeigh, executed in 2001 for the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing that killed 168 people, coldly declined to express remorse for his actions in a set of interview tapes aired for the first time Monday night on MSNBC.

Why is Fox pushing so hard this AM to marginalize dissenting Americans? Hemmer/MacCullum pushing the OK City Bombing. Over the past 15 years I only remember blips about memorial ceremonies. Same with 9-11 memorial services. Now all of a sudden the msm is trying to propagandize the dissent of Today with the Islamofascist terrorist and the McVeigh bombing. Everyone involved with the TPM should voice their outrage at the obvious attempt to slander the TPM.

Recalling ’95 Bombing, Clinton Sees Parallels By CARL HULSE WASHINGTON — With the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing approaching, former President Bill Clinton on Thursday drew parallels between the antigovernment tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today, saying government critics must be mindful that angry words can stir violent actions. In advance of a symposium on Friday about the attack on the Oklahoma City federal building and its current relevance, Mr. Clinton, who was in his first term at the time of the bombing, warned that attempts to incite opposition by demonizing the...

Reprising his role from 1995, Bill Clinton is exploiting the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing to attack critics of big government for inciting violence, and in the process, he directly singled out comments from Michele Bachmann.... Clinton pointed to remarks like those made Thursday by Representative Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican, who when speaking at a Tea Party rally in Washington characterized the Obama administration and Democratic Congress as “the gangster government.” “They are not gangsters,” Mr. Clinton said. “They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do.” Clinton's comments to the New York...

Democrats, including Rep. Betty McCollum, launched into an assault on incivility Tuesday, saying incendiary words from members of Congress were inflaming tensions that could provoke another incident of Oklahoma City-style domestic terrorism."When Members of Congress compare health-care legislation to ‘government tyranny,’ ‘socialism,’ or ‘totalitarianism’ — in the hopes of scoring political points — it's like pouring gas on the fire of extremism," McCollum said. McCollum's St. Paul office was one of a few that received an envelope containing gasoline-soaked tatters of an American flag and a letter that called her things not fit for print in this or any publication....

...Beaverton Middle School teacher Jason Levin's group wants to infiltrate the Tea Party to discredit the organization. But since Levin's name has been associated with the "Crash the Tea Party" Web site, he has been harassed by people who say they belong to that group. Levin told KATU-TV that his phone has been ringing around the clock and his answering machine is recording threats...

Just as the healthcare drama in the capitol reaches a grand finale, congressional officials are warning employees to avoid the DRUDGE REPORT! The Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works issued an urgent email late Monday claiming the DRUDGE REPORT is 'responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.' The committee ordered hill staff: 'Try to avoid' the DRUDGE REPORT 'for now'. On Monday DRUDGE served over 29 million pages with NOT ONE email complaint received about 'pop ups', or the site serving 'viruses'. The site was seen 149,967 times since March 1st from users at senate.gov and...

This investigation into the remote spying allegedly being conducted against students at Lower Merion represents an attempt to find proof of spying and a look into the toolchain used to accomplish spying. Taking a look at the LMSD Staff List, Mike Perbix is listed as a Network Tech at LMSD. Mr. Perbix has a large online web forum footprint as well as a personal blog, and a lot of his posts, attributed to his role at Lower Merion, provide insight into the tools, methods, and capabilities deployed against students at LMSD. Of the three network techs employed at LMSD, Mr....

President Barack Obama’s top advisers are quietly laying the groundwork for the 2012 reelection campaign, which is likely to be run out of Chicago and managed by White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, according to Democrats familiar with the discussions.But the sources said Obama has given every sign of planning to run again, and wants the next campaign to resemble the highly successful 2008 effort. David Axelrod, White House senior adviser, may leave the West Wing to rejoin his family in Chicago and reprise his role as Obama’s muse, overseeing the campaign’s tone, themes, messages and advertising, the...