Free Republic

Seated at the Washington Gridiron dinner March 31, I was interrupted by a man crouching at my feet who was dressed Air Force formal with the four stars of a full general. It was CIA Director Michael Hayden, who complained to me profanely that my column had misrepresented him in the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Denying he favors Democrats, Gen. Hayden indicated to me he had not authorized Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman to say Mrs. Wilson had been a "covert" CIA employee, as he claimed Hayden did, but only that she was "undercover." Keeping busy at a Gridiron evening supposedly...

If, like most fair-minded people, you are having a good chuckle over the way Rush Limbaugh has turned the tables on the attempt by Senate Majority Leader Reid to smear Rush and then to focus the enormous power of the federal government on him to shut him up - think again. Rush may have won this battle, but it is the opening salvo in a war the left is starting in order to shut down conservative talk radio, which they fear like Dracula feared the sight of a cross.

Media: A manufactured flap over Rush Limbaugh has stirred talk of new "fairness doctrine" hearings in Congress. That's just what Media Matters, the flacks behind it, were after. Their agenda is worse than it looks. Media Matters, a left-wing nuisance group, recently sought headlines by distorting a Sept. 26 conversation between conservative radio commentator Limbaugh and a listener about a soldier who misrepresented his military record. Media Matters screamed that Limbaugh, whose record of supporting U.S. troops is long and real, was insulting anti-war soldiers as "phony." The claim was as silly as the one Media Matters made a week...

The imam of the Taipei Grand Mosque complained to Taiwan's foreign minister for sending him a greeting card for the Chinese New Year showing four pigs, a newspaper said on Saturday. After receiving the New Year card, Imam Ma Hsiao-chi pointed out to the Foreign Ministry that the card was offensive to Muslims, the Liberty Times reported. Muslims do not eat pork and regard pigs as unclean animals. But the ministry defended Foreign Minister Huang Chih-fang's sending out the greeting cards, which were printed because 2007 is the Year of Pig according to the Chinese lunar calendar. "Sending New Year...

Pillars of the Hate America Left, who have taken great pains to aid the enemy in every American military venture for 20 years, just returned {in January) from Iraq, where they delivered more than half-a-million dollars in aid to “the other side”– with the full knowledge and consent of left-wing Congressman Henry Waxman, D-CA. Waxman signed a letter allowing radical leftist Medea Benjamin and a dozen of her cohorts – some of whom had lost relatives in the Iraq War – to slip the $600,000 of cash and supplies into camps housing refugees from Fallujah, with less outside scrutiny of...

Cindy Sheehan, Tom Hayden, and the Hate America Left meet with pro-Ba'athist members of the Iraqi parliament to discuss “peace.” TO FIND PEOPLE WHO HATE AMERICA AS MUCH AS THEY DO, the Fifth Column Left had to go halfway around the world to meet with Iraqi political leaders who call terrorism “honorable national resistance” and say foreign jihadists “are guaranteed Paradise” – and at least one of whom has ties to militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. By the end of the trip, the American leftists would echo these sentiments. Somehow most of the media – occupied with interminable coverage of Hurricane...

Nary a week goes by without the New York Times editorializing for more government regulation of something or other. But the Grey Lady takes things to another level in its jeremiad of this morning: scolding the Chinese communists for insufficient regulation of their economy. Now it's true that a variety of defective Chinese products have made their way into international commerce, from, as the Times enumerates, toothpaste sweetened with an industrial solvent [NB: file photo, not of defective brands] to tainted antibiotics. But the spectacle of the New York Times calling on a communist government to do more to regulate...

Henry Waxman, the most dogged of congressional committee chairmen, has been described by the Republicans as 'the scariest man in Washington'. Since the Democrats took control of the House and Senate in January, he has been in overdrive, launching inquiries into issues ranging from global warming to White House emails, and the one that concerns the congressman most - Iraq. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, is the public face of the new Democrat-led Congress, but Mr Waxman is the embodiment of the pent-up release of Democratic energy, determined to harry George Bush in his last two years in office. The...

"U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will visit Damascus next week for talks with Syrian officials, a U.S. Embassy official said Friday, making her the highest-ranking American politician to come to Syria since relations began souring in 2003. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Pelosi would be leading a delegation of members of Congress and would arrive on Tuesday and leave Wednesday."

<p>ON CAPITOL HILL Valerie Wilson Testifies Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) chairs a House Oversight and Government Reform Ctme. hearing on the disclosure of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. The hearing will look into whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of Ms. Wilson.</p>

A new plan proposed in Congress would establish that every American is a "citizen-lobbyist" and force executive branch officials to record and publish all contacts with them, virtually eliminating the free exchange of ideas needed for democracy, according to critics. The "Executive Branch Reform Act," or H.R. 984, filed by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has been endorsed by the Committee of Government Oversight and Reform 20-0 and continues to advance in the U.S. House. Records show it would impose vast new requirements on executive branch officials to keep track of the names of citizens who contact them, and the subjects...

Chairman Henry A. Waxman announced a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee will receive testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, March 16. In addition, the Committee today sent a letter to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald commending him for his investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald before the...

ABC News' Tom Shine Reports: Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has announced that Valerie Plame Wilson will testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Friday, March 16th. Other witnesses are also expected to appear but their names have not yet been released.

The world could be coming to an end, but not to worry: "the Democrats are now in charge of Congress." That, in a nutshell, was NBC's message on global warming on this morning's "Today." Here's how Matt Lauer, apparently in the throes of a global-warming panic attack, kicked off the segment: "Now to a controversy in Washington over what literally could be the end of the world as we know it."View video here.The segment focused on allegations, made before a hearing chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman [D-CA] by the advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists, that the Bush...

In taking back control of the House, Democrats also are restoring the old names used for committees when they last headed them in 1994.Republicans swept into power in that year's midterm elections had created their own monikers for several committees. As part of the rules changes adopted this week, Democrats reclaimed the old names for several committee and created a new name for one other panel: • The Committee on Education and the Workforce was changed back to its pre-1995 name, Education and Labor. Tom Kiley, a spokesman for incoming chairman George Miller, D-Calif., said Miller "believed that the name...

House Democrats in the first weeks of the new Congress plan to establish a dedicated fund to promote renewable energy and conservation, using money from oil companies. That's only one legislative hit the oil industry is expected to take next year as a Congress run by Democrats is likely to show little sympathy to the cash-rich, high-profile business. Whether the issue is rolling tax breaks - some approved by Congress only 18 months ago - pushing for more use of ethanol and other biofuels instead of gasoline, or investigations into shortfalls in royalty payments to the government, oil industry lobbyists...

LOS ANGELES - The lawmaker poised to cause the Bush administration's biggest headaches when Democrats take control of Congress may just be a grocer's son from Watts who's hardly a household name off Capitol Hill. Rep. Henry Waxman has spent the last six years waging a guerrilla campaign against the White House and its corporate allies, launching searing investigations into everything from military contracts to Medicare prices from his perch on the Government Reform Committee. In January, Waxman becomes committee chairman - and thus the lead congressional hound of an administration many Democrats feel has blundered badly as it expanded...

Waxman set to probe areas of Bush gov't By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer 37 minutes ago The Democratic congressman who will investigate the Bush administration's running of the government says there are so many areas of possible wrongdoing, his biggest problem will be deciding which ones to pursue. There's the response to Hurricane Katrina, government contracting in Iraq and on homeland security, political interference in regulatory decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and allegations of war profiteering, Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., told the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. "I'm...

(AgapePress) - A Christian OB-GYN from Tennessee says Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman is the one who is misleading girls, not pregnancy resource centers. Waxman, a representative from California, serves on the House Government Reform Committee. He recently asked staff to check on pregnancy crisis centers, which received $24 million in federal aid between 2001 and 2004. The subsequent report claims that federally-funded, faith-based pregnancy centers give false information connecting abortions with breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness. Waxman claims research has shown abortion does not have severe, long-lasting psychological effects. Government organizations such as the Institute of Medicine and the...

WASHINGTON (AP) California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, at a press conference on legislation to curtail food warning labels, used an expletive to refer to one of the bill's sponsors. The remark was in reference to Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., whose bill would stop states from putting warning labels on food that are different from federal warnings. Lockyer read a quote from Rogers in which the congressman said a pregnant shopper in Michigan should see the same warning while buying peas as a pregnant shopper in California. ``What a dumbs---,'' Lockyer said. ``Sorry,'' he quickly added, to laughter from the room,...

Democrats have their own scandal brewing at the moment, but they are doing much better in covering it up than their Republican counterparts. At issue is the report by David Barrett, the last remaining U.S. independent counsel. Over ten years, Barrett has spent $21 million on the investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, who lied to FBI investigators about hush money paid to an ex-mistress. The reason the report and the investigation have taken so long is that allies to Cisneros and the legal team of former President Bill Clinton at the powerhouse Washington law firm of Williams and...

Waxman: New Bush Statement on Rove Conflicts with Executive Order By: Rep. Henry A. Waxman Published: July 18, 2005 at 12:22 Dear Mr. President: In June 2004, you said that you would fire anyone found to be involved in the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's identity as a covert CIA agent.1 Today, you significantly changed your position, stating that you would remove Karl Rove or other White House officials involved in the security breach only "if someone committed a crime."2 Your new standard is not consistent with your obligations to enforce Executive Order 12958, which governs the protection of national security...

Ousted Army Chief Blasts Bush Iraq Policy Tue Sep 2, 4:49 PM ET By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer WASHINGTON - Thomas E. White, forced to resign as Army secretary in May, has fired back in a book that describes the Bush administration's postwar effort in Iraq (news - web sites) as "anemic" and "totally inadequate." The book, which presents a blueprint for revitalizing Iraq, asserts that the administration underestimated the difficulty of putting that country back on its feet after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). "Clearly the view that the war to `liberate' Iraq would...

The Waxman Report on Sex Ed You can read the report here: http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20041201102153-50247.pdf Or the news article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26623-2004Dec1.html (FYI, linked be Drudge in Red despite the fact he supposedly only writes conservative things) I can't quite evaluate many of the claims because the course material is not available, but let's deal with a few things that I can. First, I'm sure the liberal pundits are going crazy saying "A Ha! This is why abstinence education won't work!". The study points out 2 of the 13 tentative courses are accurate. That's right, tentative. The report itself says these are the...

Champion for the unborn Posted: June 14, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com It was 1967. California state Sen. Tony Beilenson, a Democrat, along with legislators like Howard Berman and Henry Waxman, were pushing a bill to legalize abortion of unborn babies. The bill was promoted as a very restricted measure and Ronald Reagan signed it into law. Years later, Reagan lamented his role in legalizing abortion in California and became a solid champion promoting the culture of life. It was during Reagan's watch that the Republican Party drafted the party platform affirming the right to life. When Reagan...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, a relentless critic of Halliburton Corp. for its Iraq contracts, has accepted a $1,000 campaign gift from the donation arm of the company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney. The political action committee of energy services giant Halliburton gave the money last month and the California congressman will keep it, his spokeswoman Karen Lightfoot, said on Monday, without elaborating on the decision. Larry Noble, executive director of the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics, said the donation was "a little bit surprising" but may reflect the company's pragmatic approach to politics. "I don't...

The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says. The 40-page report, which was prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment. Advertisement On many topics, including global warming and sex education, the administration "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report said. "The...

My, my, my, the great Iraqi Gold Rush is on, and who should be there at the front of the line, right along with Halliburton and Bechtel, but our old friends at WorldCom -- perpetrator of the largest accounting fraud in American history. WorldCom, shortly to become MCI, has been given a contract worth $45 million in the short term to build a wireless phone network in Iraq. I learned via The Associated Press that Washington Technology, a trade newspaper that follows computing-related sales to the U.S. government, "found WorldCom jumped to eighth among all federal technology contractors in 2002,...

(CNSNews.com) - Two Democratic Members of Congress have criticized President George W. Bush for using the USS Abraham Lincoln as a platform to announce that the United States and its allies have prevailed over Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) questioned "the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech."~~ He was referring to the fact that Bush wore a flight suit as he arrived on the ship. "As I watched the president's fighter jet swoop down onto the deck of the aircraft...

Filed at 8:44 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Agriculture Department has failed to adequately answer questions about how the agency handled a recall of 19 million pounds of contaminated hamburger meat, four members of Congress said in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman. The four lawmakers -- Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; Mary Kaptur, D- Ohio; Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.; and Sen. Richard Durbin R-Ill. -- demanded in a letter Thursday that the agency explain why it failed to quickly recall the meat after initial tests showed it was contaminated with E. coli bacteria. They said Elsa Murano, the department's...

A sluggish investigation by the Agriculture Department into evidence that tainted meat had entered the marketplace exposed thousands of consumers to potentially deadly bacteria, possibly contributing to some illnesses, members of Congress said yesterday. Though federal law requires daily inspections, nearly 100 days elapsed from when ConAgra Beef began producing the questionable beef and last week, when the department announced the second-largest meat recall, Democrats in the House and Senate pointed out. "The long delay between contamination and recall is striking," the Democrats, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, wrote in a...

Democrat Tries to Boot TV Cameraman From House Hearing By Jeff Johnson CNSNews.com Congressional Bureau Chief April 19, 2002Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - California Democratic Congresssman Henry Waxman tried unsuccessfully Thursday to have an accredited TV news photographer thrown out of a House subcommittee hearing. The hearing focused on whether to limit liability lawsuits against gun makers and Waxman, who favors gun control, insisted the cameraman was videotaping on behalf of the National Rifle Association. The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection was hearing testimony on the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (H.R. 2037), a bill designed...