Free Republic

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...

The Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about a Fox News correspondent's conversations and visits as part of an investigation into a possible leak, The Washington Post reported Monday -- in the latest example of the government seizing records of journalists. The information follows the charge that the department secretly obtained two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a separate leak probe. In the case involving Fox News' James Rosen, a government adviser was accused of leaking information after a 2009 story was published online which said North Korea planned to respond to looming...

The United States is sending a force of 200 Marines supported by two aircraft to Italy as a precaution against unrest in Libya. The force would deploy in case of an attack similar to the one on the US consulate in Benghazi last year. On Wednesday Italy’s Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said that the Marines were being transferred to Sigonella air base in Sicily. "It is taking place in accordance with bilateral agreements," Bonino told a joint session of the House and Senate foreign commissions. "This is a reinforcement for the security of US personnel in Libya or for possible...

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,...

I did not think that the administration would be so haughty to go after the Associated Press and monitor their official and private communications, especially given that the source of most national security leaks par excellence was the Obama White House itself. The AP sat on a story until they were given a quiet administration go-ahead to publish the account—even as the administration desperately wanted to scoop them and high-five over the story of the Yemeni double agent 24 hours earlier than the AP. The administration went whole hog after two months of phone records to send a message to...

Madison — Requiring basic job training from able-bodied participants in the state's food stamp program would cause about half of them to drop out of the program — a total of tens of thousands of people statewide and 14,500 in just Milwaukee. The new projections come from the Legislature's nonpartisan budget office, which last week released its analysis of Gov. Scott Walker's plan to require 62,700 able-bodied adults without children in Wisconsin FoodShare to attend bare-bones job training. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau puts the total cost for that at $35.8 million over two years, including $16.8 million for state payers.The...

A detailed fact-check published Monday tore into an IRS official's claim that the agency's scrutiny of conservative groups started in response to an influx of nonprofit applications, showing the practice started well before the forms started flooding in.

The IRS routinely obtains information about how we earn a living, what investments we make, what we spend on ourselves and our families, and even what charitable and religious organizations we support. Starting next year, the IRS will be collecting personally identifiable health insurance information in order to ensure we are complying with Obamacare’s mandates.

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...

Under President Obama, “justice” is anything but blind. Neither is it deaf. In fact, based on recent revelations, it appears to be watching your every move and listening to your every word. Still, if you happen to be a federal employee, now it’s even listening for your silence. The only thing this Obama White House seems to generate is scandal. Well, here’s yet another to add to the growing list. In addition to the Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting of political dissenters and the illegal seizure of media phone records, whistleblowers within DOJ have contacted Liberty Counsel to express grave concerns...

Authorities last week made an agreement not to prosecute a Northwest D.C. man who used his unregistered handgun to kill a pit bull in order to stop it from mauling a child in his neighborhood. As part of the agreement, Benjamin Srigley, 39, was required to pay a $1,000 fine but will not have criminal charges filed against him for the three unregistered firearms and the ammunition that investigators found in his possession, said Ted Gest, a spokesman for the office of the attorney general.

A group against pornography has put Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in its cross hairs, placing him at the top of a list of national offenders at fault for furthering the X-rated industry. Morality in Media’s “Dirty Dozen List” posting on its website calls Mr. Holder the worst of its “top 12 facilitators of porn” in the entire nation. Why Mr. Holder? He closed the Justice Department's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, Morality in Media said. “Holder’s actions keep the porn industry thriving,” said Patrick A. Trueman, president of Morality in Media, in a Raw Story report. “He not only...

Over / under for appropriate / inappropriate: 27 Odds on “mistakes were made” 200-1 Benghazi Emails Directly Contradict White House Claims WH Live Stream

Move on to What? By Chris Stirewalt Published May 20, 2013 | FoxNews.com “Already, officials that would normally talk to us, and people we talk to in the normal course of newsgathering are already saying to us that they’re a little reluctant to talk to us. They fear that they will be monitored by the government…It’s not hypothetical, we’re actually seeing impact already.” -- Gary Pruitt, president of the Associated Press, on “Face the Nation.” How does an administration move on from scandals that are still unfolding? The answer: Not very effectively. President Obama and his team tried last week...

The White House is circling the wagons as one of the most feverish periods of President Obama’s tenure enters its second week. Obama and his aides have taken a more aggressive stance in recent days after fumbling their initial response to headline-grabbing scandals at different government agencies. The administration’s strategy is centered on a simple defense: “Our basic thrust is that nobody, here, did anything wrong,” an Obama administration official told The Hill. “That’s why none of this is going to stick.”Even though there is no evidence yet of wrongdoing in the White House, it does not mean that Obama...

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has reviewed the White House logs looking for a relationship between meetings listed there and the timeline found in the Inspector General’s report on the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups issued last Tuesday. Lord’s work represents yet another example of alternative media scooping a lazy or negligent establishment press. What Lord has found is that President Barack Obama met with the President of the National Treasury Employees Union Colleen Kelley, on March 31, 2010. The NTEU is “the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies.”...

Over the past month there has been a statistically improbable concurrence of events that can only be explained as a conspiracy to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE). Quantitative Easing is the term given to the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing 1,000 billion new dollars annually in order to finance the US budget deficit by purchasing US Treasury bonds and to keep the prices high of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big to fail” (BTBF) balance sheets by purchasing mortgage-backed derivatives. Without QE, interest rates would be much higher, and values on the...

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...

President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party. “For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal? Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun? The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts. March 31, 2010. According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the...

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.

The fateful question came from a tax lawyer, in a room filled with dozens of them. It came at the end of a Friday morning panel, on the second day of the American Bar Association tax section’s big annual meeting at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington D.C. The moderator had announced that it would be the panel’s last question. “Lois, a few months ago there were some concerns about the IRS’s review of 501(c)(4) organizations, of applications from tea party organizations,” Celia Roady, a veteran tax lawyer, asked Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’ tax-exempt organizations division, a few...

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...

“What do you expect when you target the President?” This is what an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent allegedly said to the head of a conservative organization that was being audited after calling for the impeachment of then-President Clinton. Recent revelations that IRS agents gave “special scrutiny” to organizations opposed to the current administration’s policies suggest that many in the IRS still believe harassing the President’s opponents is part of their job. As troubling as these recent reports are, it would be a grave mistake to think that IRS harassment of opponents of the incumbent President is a modern, or...

...new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner... The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged. “But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these...

The IRS abused its power in targeting conservatives for harassment and probably leaking information to liberal groups during the presidential election cycle. But the IRS’s actions crossed a line from merely corrupt into sinister when it grilled an Iowa pro-life group about its religious views. During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Friday, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., asked outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller about it. “Their question,” Schock said, “specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers.’ Would that be an inappropriate question...

The current abusive conduct by the IRS is breathtaking in its audacity. When you look at last Friday's testimony Acting Commisioner Steven Miller there is a clear disconnect -- the doesn't think anyone did anything illegal, unconstitutional, or even wrong. Apart from a stark posture of arrogance and negative body language, he represents a very large group of people we need to worry about. This guy is beyond zealotry -- he has gone straight to certainty that he is right, his actions are justified and he can't be touched. He's like Obama's buddy Bill Ayers -- I did it, I'm...

Jason Chaffetz raises the prospect. Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, says President Barack Obama may face impeachment over his administration’s response to the Benghazi attack. “They purposefully and willfully misled the American people, and that’s unacceptable,” Chaffetz tells me. “It’s part of a pattern of deception.” Behind the scenes, he says, House Republicans are frustrated by the White House’s evasiveness, and the calls for impeachment will likely increase.

Senator Lamar Alexander has been a thorn in Tennessee’s side since 1979. He is not a conservative Republican. In fact, truth be known, he has sided with Obama over 62% of the time. Right now he is acting as the bagman for his buddy, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, and his great desire to tax the internet and put more small businesses out-of-business. First though, let’s look at Lamar’s history. He has worked in the private sector for only short periods of time. Lamar was Born in Maryville, Tennessee, which is only 20 minutes from where I live. He is a...

The IRS scandal is becoming more insane by the minute.  After the testimony on Friday from the Inspector General and the now “retiring� acting IRS Commissioner, Steven Miller, things couldn’t be more convoluted.  First of all, Obama came out and said that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had “demanded the resignation� of Miller, when in fact, Miller was due to leave his post by June of this year.  So there was no “resigning� going on, and he will leave with all of his benefits intact.  Wow!  No accountability, no answers, no penalties. Next we find out that during the four year...

According to the latest Reason-Rupe poll: The president’s health care law is losing public support… Only 32 percent of Americans say they liked the health care law when it was passed and still like it today. Seven percent liked the law when it was passed, but like it less now. Meanwhile, 45 percent disliked the health care law when it was passed and still dislike it. Four percent of Americans say they disliked the law when it passed, but like it more now. These results are consistent with the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll, which has always reported a...

John Boehner is wondering who connected with the IRS caper might be going to jail. The disappointing answer is … probably no one. The targeting of political groups by the IRS is apparently not a crime, according to political lawyers from both parties. “I am not aware of any statute that prohibits IRS targeting of applicants,” said Republican lawyer Jan Baran, who served as general counsel to George H.W. Bush and the RNC. Other politically inclined lawyers agree. Essentially, there are three types of laws that might conceivably have been broken, as Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged in his testimony...

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

Remember the White House war on Fox News in 2009? By the fall of that year, it had collapsed from overreach; after attempting to block Fox from participating in pool coverage, the rest of the White House press corps revolted, forcing Anita Dunn and others into retreat. Apparently, the Obama administration found a way to wage that war by other means. The Washington Post reports that the Department of Justice spied on James Rosen, Fox’s Washington correspondent, in 2010: When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain...

President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll. But a CNN/ORC International survey released Sunday morning also indicates that congressional Republicans are not overplaying their hand when it comes to their reaction to the three controversies that have consumed the nation's capital over the past week and a half. And the poll finds that a majority of Americans take all three issues seriously. According to the survey, which was conducted Friday and Saturday, 53% of Americans say they approve of the...

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...

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley (in tan jacket) leads a protest earlier this month. About 250 Federal workers massed in Federal Plaza in Manhattan May 7 to protest the sequester cuts. (The Chief) This explains things… President Obama met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief Colleen Kelly in the White House the day before the agency targeted Tea Party. The Spectator reported: “For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?...

Let's begin by stating the obvious. If government were a business, and subject to economic realities and the consequences of its ignoring them, it would have been liquidated long ago -- its remaining assets of value would have been reclaimed by its creditors and shareholders (both of which are the American taxpayer), and its market share of consumers (also the American taxpayer, and those they are gracious enough to financially support) would be sought by other, more efficient businesses. But let's pretend for a moment that it is a business. And let's pretend that this business had engaged not only...

Dan Pfeiffer was so arrogant yesterday, he and other White House Staff Members need a dose of reality from "the Little People!" Does anyone have telephone numbers and eMail addresses for key White House Staffers? If so, please provide this information for our Free Republic Friends. Many Thanks. God bless You and God bless America!

Many commentators have wondered why the stock market has done so well during a period when the economy has been relatively weak. A common explanation has been that the Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates so low that investors have little choice but to buy stocks in hopes of returns that exceed inflation. There is some truth to that, but another reason is the gridlock on Capitol Hill. A poorly kept secret is that almost all laws are bad for business. Some regulation is necessary. Clear rules are beneficial to business. But changing regulations frequently is bad for business and...

The IRS scandal keeps getting closer and closer to the top of the White House food chain as Obama officials desperately try to spin their way out of mounting evidence and foul play. The Wall Street Journal is reporting President Obama's top attorney knew about the IRS targeting weeks ago before news broke, but of course, Obama still didn't know about it until he learned about it "from the news." The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House...

Government Overreach: The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of tax-exempt organizations when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare. As bad as the IRS scandal was, with the taxing body of government using its unequaled authority to intimidate and harass the president's political opposition to aid his re-election, it got worse with the news that the IRS official, Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and Government Entities Division from 2009 to 2012, is now serving as director of the IRS' Affordable Care Act division. Ingram was so...

Don’t stand down. Stand up and let the IRS know we won’t roll over. Tuesday. At your local IRS office. Be there. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft has details:PROTEST THE CORRUPTION – PROTEST THE CRIMINAL OBAMA IRS Thanks to Barack Obama the Tea Party is once again outraged and motivated. The Tea Party Patriots on behalf of Tea Party, Patriot groups, 9/12, liberty activists, and the American people, we are calling for anyone and everyone to protest the IRS’ complete abuse of power on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at noon local time.

The Internal Revenue Service is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that more than 60 million personal medical records were improperly seized by agents from the embattled agency. According to a story by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed healthcare provider in California is suing the IRS and 15 unnamed agents, alleging that they improperly seized some 60 million medical records of 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges on March 11, 2011.

Phoenix police are in a race against time in processing guns that the city purchased at recent gun buyback events. A new Arizona law that hasn't yet taken effect bars cities and counties from destroying guns turned over to police at buyback events and instead requires that the guns be resold. The Arizona Republic reports (http://bit.ly/19QbpVe) that Phoenix's program brought in 979 weapons in two sessions earlier this month and an additional 937 guns on Saturday. The law will go into effect 90 days after the legislative session ends, which could be any day. Police are already struggling to process...

History demonstrates that the descent into war is preceded with a justification, real or contrived. As with all tyrants, if a legitimate justification for the impending conflict is not forthcoming, the despot, in this case Obama, will simply make one up. And the way that this objective is reached is through the creation of a false flag event. Make no mistake about it, this is coming to America. In Part Two of this series, it was demonstrated the Federal Reserve needs to seize the Iranian oil fields in order to save the Petrodollar. This means we will be at war...