Free Republic

Now that the president has lost the “Morning Joe” crowd, ObamaCare may be in even deeper political trouble than we thought. Mark Halperin, the “Game Change” coauthor and a regular on Joe’s show, called the rollout “unacceptable” and added that “the secrecy is unacceptable,” accusing the administration of withholding information about how many people have signed up. His fellow panelist, liberal commentator Mike Barnicle, ratcheted up from there: “They’re lying about it now,” he said. “They’re not depriving us of information, they are outright lying.” On “CBS This Morning,” the network’s political director, John Dickerson, calls the rollout “a total...

Along with NBC's David Gregory and Chuck Todd, you can now add CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin to the list of journalists (and NBC journalists) floating the idea that one of their own, The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, has done something illegal in reference to his work with NSA leaker Edward Snowden: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvpXztqqzCcMy personal suggestion to Gregory, Todd, and Sorkin is that before they throw these kinds of baseless accusations around, they might want to clean up their own backyard. With their selectively edited videos and audio, NBC News is currently a hotbed of journalistic malpractice unlike anything I have ever seen...

FOX News Channel (FNC) has hired veteran media reporter Howard Kurtz, announced Michael Clemente, Executive Vice President of News for the network. He will begin in this new role on July 1st.

This DOE project explores a variety of strategies designed to curb America’s greenhouse gas emissions up to 80 percent by about 2050. Arguably the most controversial of those reports covers the “effects of the built environment on transportation.” To put it plainly, the “built environment” report lays out strategies the federal government can use to force development away from suburbs and into cities, supposedly for the sake of reducing carbon dioxide emissions given off by all those suburban commuters. The Obama administration wants to force so-called smart growth policies on the country: get out of your car, stay out of...

Paul Kurtz, who sought to debunk psychics, astrologers and anything related to the paranormal, has died. He was 86. The secular humanist philosopher died Saturday at his home in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst. His death was announced Monday by the Center for Inquiry, which he founded. His family isn't releasing the cause. Kurtz founded the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, which advocates relying on science and reason to examine everything from alien sightings to homeopathic remedies. He also was a well-known voice for the idea that decisions and behavior should be guided by science and...

The Associated Press published an article on the reasons for the demise of the print of edition of Newsweek but skipped any mention of the former editor of that magazine, Jon Meacham, who was instumental in ensuring its failure. It's the equivalent of publishing an article on the reasons why the Titanic sunk in which the word "iceberg" does not appear. What Meacham did to destroy Newsweek was so absurd that he really deserves a plaque in the Bad Business Decisions Hall of Fame. Am I exaggerating? Here is Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post explaining the business "genius" of...

People at home may remember Barack Obama and Mitt Romney circling each other like wary gladiators. Folks online are wallowing in Romney saying that as governor he wanted "binders of women." But on television Wednesday, most of the talk about the second presidential debate centered on the flareup over Libya—which is exactly the way the Republicans want it. By attacking moderator Candy Crowley for inserting herself into the middle of that argument, the Romney camp is diverting attention from the fact that an energized Obama often dictated the terms of the argument and frequently put their man on the defensive....

On his CNN program Reliable Sources, the one that allegedly analyzes the news business and its performance, Howard Kurtz spent 15 seconds on what he called a "stunning verdict" on the American people's distrust of the "objective" press. "I want to put up a chart," Kurtz announced on his way to a commercial break. "New Gallup poll showing distrust in the media. Look at that line, 46 percent back in 1997 had little or no confidence in the mass media. It's now up to 60 percent. It's a stunning verdict against our news business." That's it? Kurtz wanted to move...

Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Party’s Chicago chapter read as follows: Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party. Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 lists Obama as a member, with January 11, 1996, indicated as the date he joined.

Burn Down the Suburbs? Not exactly, but Obama is already working to get rid of them. By Stanley KurtzEditor’s Note: This article is adapted from Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, by Stanley Kurtz, from Sentinel HC. President Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. With suburban voters set to be the swing constituency of the 2012 election, the administration’s plans for this segment of the electorate deserve scrutiny. Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools,...

On his Sunday show “Reliable Sources,” CNN host and Daily Beast Washington bureau chief Howard Kurtz made it clear that he disapproved of The Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro’s attempt to ask President Barack Obama a question during his immigration announcement on Friday. However, he then asked guest Matt Lewis, also a contributor to The Daily Caller, to react to Munro’s attempt, asking if he would have done the same thing. That led to the following exchange between Lewis and Kurtz. Transcript as follows: KURTZ: All right. Matt, he’s your colleague at The Daily Caller. But a lot of conservatives...

Barack Obama was, in fact, a member of the socialist New Party in the 1990s and sought its endorsement for the Illinois senate--contrary to the misrepresentations of Obama's presidential campaign in 2008, and in spite of the efforts of Politico's Ben Smith to quash the story. Stanley Kurtz, author of Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism (2010), has released new "smoking gun" evidence at National Review Online. It is evidence that the mainstream media can no longer ignore--and Obama can no longer deny. When the story of Obama's association with the New Party first broke in...

CNN's show "Reliable Sources" with host Howard Kurtz seems to try and come off as an unbiased balance look at the media.

It was...a pure Roger Ailes production—and the latest sign that the Fox News chairman is quietly repositioning America’s dominant cable-news channel. Hours before last week’s presidential debate in Orlando, Ailes’s anchors sat in a cavernous back room, hunched over laptops, and plotted how to trap the candidates. Chris Wallace said he would aim squarely at Rick Perry’s weakness: “How do you feel about being criticized by some of your rivals as being too soft on illegal immigration? Then I go to Rick Santorum: is Perry too soft?” “That’s going to get some fireworks going,” said managing editor Bill Sammon, grinning....

...But there was never anything silly, nor light-hearted, nor casual, about Barack Obama's efforts to keep the public's eyes from the basic facts of his life, from birth to his candidacy for president. On the contrary, this opacity is a deliberate policy. Why? The presumptive answer, absent testimony from those involved, is to ensure that real facts interfere as little as possible with the image and narrative that he and his associates have carefully crafted for him. Distinguishing between reality and that narrative would require above all a skeptical attitude, sure to be characterized by Democrats and the media in...

The deafening roar of nothingness emerging from the Sarah Palin email trove points up the media’s hypocritical lack of interest in Barack Obama’s pre-presidential record. Just as Palin’s emails were released, Slate’s David Weigel pointed out that Barack Obama’s State Senate records are not available. Weigel quotes Obama’s statement to the effect that he didn’t have the staff or financial resources to preserve office paperwork. As a result, Obama claims, his State Senate records may have been thrown out.

Our guest today is Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing editor for National Review Online. He has also written for National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Policy Review, and Commentary. He is the author of the new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. See Part 1 of the interview below:

HAWAII GROUND REPORT: Could Hawaiian Governor Neil Abercrombie not be as incompetent and foolish as he appears, but orchestrating a deliberate birth certificate recovery dead end to cover his own papakole? UPDATED: Mystery solved! Reason Obama will not release birth certificate is because his name is legally written “Barry Soetoro” on it Here’s an interesting Ground Report from Hawaii that contains an ingenious theory about Hawaiian Governor Neil Abercrombie’s bizarre backtrack on releasing Obama’s birth certificate. Remember, Abercrombie promised that once he was elected Governor he would prove Obama’s birth certificate existed because he would march down to the Hall...

Howard Kurtz has quite a correction today! It seems that Howie mistakenly believed he was interviewing a Congressman, when in fact he was speaking to the Congressman's spokesperson. Weirder: Kurtz waited more than a month to correct the story. [Updated] In late November, Kurtz wrote a story in The Daily Beast about "tough-talking" Republican Rep. Darrell Issa. The story was based on what Kurtz thought was a phone interview with Issa. But it turns out that, no, Kurtz had actually been speaking to Issa's spokesman, Kurt Bardella, the entire time. Hate when that happens! Today, Kurtz writes: On Nov. 29,...

In a nearly eight-minute video, Sarah Palin says “journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence.” Howard Kurtz on her un-presidential move.The talk in political circles has been that Sarah Palin had a rare opportunity in the wake of the Tucson tragedy to reach out beyond her base and recalibrate her image beyond that of a gun-toting mama grizzly.After all, the strategists said, there was some sympathy for her—beyond the Palin-haters—for being tied to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, even if she had erred with her “reload” talk and...