Free Republic

...Remember on Friday how one of President Obama's efforts to get people to trust the government more concerning the NSA's surveillance efforts was to create an "outside" and "independent" board to review it all?... ...Except, that was Friday. Today is Monday. And, on Monday we learn that "outside" and "independent" actually means setup by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper--the same guy who has already admitted to lying to Congress about the program, and has received no punishment for doing so. This is independent? From this we're supposed to expect real oversight?!? This is from the letter sent to Clapper:...

President Obama tells comedian Jay Leno that "We don’t have a domestic spying program." He made the comment during a taping of Leno's TV show. Obama also says the U.S. is not overreacting by closing some U.S. embassies for a week. The president tells Leno, "The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately." And the president says of Russia's Putin, "There are times when they slip back into Cold War thinking and Cold War mentality. What I continually say to them and to President Putin, that’s...

Politico’s Dylan Byers, in a piece for his buddies in the MSM, declares that conservative criticism of the mainstream media is overblown. Byers writes: So often conservative media, like conservative media criticism, can't be taken seriously because it overplays its hand. Like someone who shouts "thief!" the second his keys go missing, much of the conservative echo-chamber has a hyper-aggressive penchant to see conspiracy where they'd do better to see questions in need of answers. As a general rule -- albeit with plenty of exceptions -- there is a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach among those who fashion themselves as "anti-MSM," which can...

WASHINGTON — Despite the Republican strategy of passing piecemeal immigration reform, Sen. John McCain predicted today that comprehensive legislation can pass the GOP-controlled House. “I think this fall is very important,” McCain said at a forum hosted by AFL-CIO and the Economic Policy Institute. “Let’s say we enact it, comprehensive immigration reform — I don’t think it gains a single Hispanic voter, but what it does, it puts us on a playing field where we can compete for the Hispanic voter,” McCain told PBS’ Gwen Ifill. “If we don’t do that, frankly, I don’t see — I see further polarization...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) signaled Tuesday that the dramatic boost in border-security in the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill could be one of the provisions that may be changed in a potential House-Senate compromise. During an immigration forum hosted by the AFL-CIO Tuesday, McCain – a key Senate Gang of Eight negotiator – said while a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s undocumented immigrants is a “fundamental element” of the bill, the “rest of it could be adjusted.” He singled out the border security parts as an example. “We don’t need 20,000 additional border patrol agents,” McCain said Tuesday. “But what...

The polarizing racial and legal debate over George Zimmerman's acquittal in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Florida has been turned into a national political issue that's not going away anytime soon. President Obama's made sure of that in his public plea to the nation Friday to "do some soul-searching" over what led to the killing of this 17-year-old and whether we can "learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction." I've been one of Obama's persistent policy critics from the beginning of his presidency. But I have to say I found his measured,...

LEFTIST PLANT INFILTRATES HOUSTON PRO-ZIMMERMAN RALLY– Liberal Media runs with it A photo from the Houston pro-Zimmerman counter-rally of the NBPP anti-Zimmerman rally picked up by the AP shows a woman holding a sign that read, “Racist & Proud.” That looked incongruent with the other reports from the pro-Zimmerman side. The Houston Chronicle identified her as Renee Vaughan: One woman in the Zimmerman group held a sign that said, “We’re racist & proud.” Austin resident Renee Vaughan echoed the sign’s ugly sentiments by yelling, “We’re racist. We’re proud. We’re better because we’re white,” at the Martin group as they passed,...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, fighting to crush a two-year-old uprising against four decades of rule by him and his late father, said on Wednesday the upheaval in Egypt was a defeat for political Islam. "Whoever brings religion to use in politics or in favor of one group at the expense of another will fall anywhere in the world," Assad was quoted as telling the official Thawra newspaper, according to an official Facebook page.

Would I vote for Rubio? I can’t imagine ever doing so in a Republican presidential primary or a Senate primary where there is a credible alternative. (The general election is an entirely different matter). My opposition isn’t based solely on Rubio’s immigration stance, although this is by far the most consequential issue he has handled during his three years in Washington, so that it’s reasonable for those of us who strongly oppose his amnesty legislation to vote against him on this basis alone. The other big problem is trust. Just three years ago, Rubio ran for the Senate as an...

Biden: 'President and I' Saved Economy by Breitbart News 30 Jun 2013, 9:50 AM PDT post a comment On Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden spoke at a major Virginia fundraiser, pushing himself as a possible 2016 presidential contender. “With virtually zero support from the Republicans, the president and I have moved the country from the worst recession since the Great Depression to 38 months of private-sector growth,” said Biden. Biden then launched an assault on Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general, whom he said was “at odds with the value set of Virginians.” He said that the...

He actually said this...Also, I don't want to be a smart ass, but the Berlin Wall wasn't all that militarized when it fell.......Hmm...Maybe he is telling the truth after all!

In a Spanish-language interview Sunday with the network Univision, Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform group, made his strongest statement yet that legalization of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants must happen before any new border security or internal enforcement measures are in place, and will in no way be conditional on any security requirements. “Let’s be clear,” Rubio said. “Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization...

House Judiciary panel launches official probe into whether Holder lied By Jonathan Easley - 05/29/13 11:02 AM ET The top two Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have initiated an investigation into whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his May 15 testimony on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) surveillance of reporters. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the chairman of the subcommittee on investigations, sent a letter to Holder on Wednesday detailing specific aspects of his testimony that they say conflicts with subsequent media reports about Holder’s involvement in the surveillance of James Rosen,...

NOTE: Full title of article is, "In rare public Q-and-A with reporters, Obama denies knowing Benghazi terror-attack survivors have been forbidden from talking to Congress" ---------------------------------------------------- At least four career officials have hired lawyers as they prepare to share sensitive information with CongressWould-be State Department whistle-blowers claim harassment, intimidationObama: I'm not familiar with this notion that anybody's been blocked from testifying' President Barack Obama said during a rare public session answering reporters' questions that he was unaware of any efforts to prevent survivors of the 2012 Benghazi, Libya terror attack from testifying before Congress about what they experienced. 'I'm not...

President Obama gave the Senate a scolding in the Rose Garden this afternoon, declaring today’s defeat of the Manchin-Toomey background check amendment “a pretty shameful day for Washington.” He blamed “politics” for the failure of the legislation and, while standing alongside Gabby Giffords and tearful Newtown families, dismissed charges that he had used people as props for “emotional blackmail.”

(CNSNews.com) – While the Obama administration will not comment on the murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, charged in Philadelphia for the murder of seven born babies and one woman, President Barack Obama said when he was a state legislator in Illinois that no laws are needed to protect babies born alive after a botched abortion.

At a fundraiser last night in San Francisco, President Barack Obama said that the Newtown killer gunned down 20 children using a "fully automatic weapon." From the official transcript, provided by the White House: Now, over the next couple of months, we’ve got a couple of issues: gun control. (Applause.) I just came from Denver, where the issue of gun violence is something that has haunted families for way too long, and it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make...

Vice President Joe Biden incorrectly stated early today that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been "shot and mortally wounded":

White House economic adviser Gene Sperling admits that, yes, in fact, the sequestration was President Obama's plan: White House economic adviser Gene Sperling admits that, yes, in fact, the sequestration was President Obama's plan: "We put forth the design of" the sequestration, Sperling finally admits after a long back-and-forth.

Rep. Maxine Waters of California was roundly mocked and even became a trending topic on Twitter on Thursday after a video of her claiming erroneously that the automatic budget sequester, which becomes effective tonight, will cost America 170 million jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, America currently has fewer than 135 million working people. Reporting information that allegedly came from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, Congresswoman Waters warned ominously of the catastrophic number of job losses that would hit America once the budget sequester becomes law. "We don't need to be having something like sequestration...