Free Republic

With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama's snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal. Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May -- while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill -- that "one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals." Conveniently, he defines scandal as a "widespread elite perception of wrongdoing." So as long as left-wing Ivy League...

Much ado has been made about recent media reports describing Occupy Oakland as a cross between Lord of the Flies and Animal House. The leftist magazine Mother Jones was furious about the negative coverage, deeming it "The Right-Wing Media Assault on Occupy Oakland," and attempting to debunk the bad press. But Big Journalism lashed back with an article entitled MotherJones: Truth To Unflattering Reports On OWS. Out of curiosity, I decided to check out the scene for myself to settle the matter. Pics at link: http://zombietime.com/occupy_oakland_10-22-2011/

Herman Cain isn’t as laughable as I originally affronted. He has been making the media rounds and impressing a few people along the way, even earning himself a flock of supporters. After a recent Fox News presidential debate, a focus group overwhelmingly declared the black Republican and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza victorious. So now that Cain has proven his candidacy as one to be take notice of (but can you blame us for brushing him off at first? Most of president Obama’s would-be contenders were just laughable.), it is only natural that the serious smears of campaign season would...

Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania are pushing a scheme that, if GOPers in other states follow their lead, could cause President Barack Obama to lose the 2012 election—not because of the vote count, but because of new rules. That's not all: There's no legal way for Democrats to stop them. The problem for Obama, and the opportunity for Republicans, is the electoral college. Every political junkie knows that the presidential election isn't a truly national contest; it's a state-by-state fight, and each state is worth a number of electoral votes equal to the size of the state's congressional delegation. (The...

One of the few Congress Critters I still have respect for is the junior Senator from my home state of Florida, Marco Rubio. Senator Rubio is the only one who seems to understand a basic truth--- The Regime doesn't need taxpayers to pay more, it needs more people paying taxes. (Why can't this guy be the Senate Minority Leader instead of that has-been Rectal Itch McConnell ? Another rant for another time.) Hmmm....where can we find more taxpayers ? In order to pay taxes, an individual or group must have an income. There are no jobs out there. Chairman Obama's...

The military establishment, it appears, is willing to drag congressional Republicans kicking and screaming into the post-Don't Ask, Don't Tell era. The US Navy has authorized its chaplains to perform same-sex marriages on military bases in states that legally recognize such unions. That news came in a memo from the service's head chaplain (PDF), dated April 13: Consistent with the tenets of his or her religious organization, a chaplain may officiate a same-sex, civil marriage: if it is conducted in accordance with a state that permits same-sex marriage or union; and if that chaplain is, according to the applicable state...

There is a mentality among artists which I have always found puzzling. While poor, unknown, and ineffective, they are considered “authentic.” However, as soon as they strike it big, start to make money, and meet with success, they become reviled as “sell outs.” A similar dynamic threatens to undermine the Tea Party movement. To some among its ranks, the term “grassroots” seems to demand perpetual lowliness. Once a grassroots activist or organization begins to mature, build coalitions, and meet with success, they are suddenly “part of the problem.” Such was the narrative of an “investigation” by Mother Jones of Tea...

There is a mentality among artists which I have always found puzzling. While poor, unknown, and ineffective, they are considered "authentic." However, as soon as they strike it big, start to make money, and meet with success, they become reviled as "sell outs." A similar dynamic threatens to undermine the Tea Party movement. To some among its ranks, the term "grassroots" seems to demand perpetual lowliness. Once a grassroots activist or organization begins to mature, build coalitions, and meet with success, they are suddenly "part of the problem." Such is the narrative of an ongoing "investigation" by Mother Jones of...

At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday—about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in Tucson—Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn't answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: "Hey man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later." That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney first heard about the Tucson massacre, he...

At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday—about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in Tucson—Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn't answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: "Hey man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later." That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney first heard about the Tucson massacre, he...

<p>NewsletterShare Close this Share Box154 Comments | Post Comment.Wed Dec. 1, 2010 2:47 PM PST In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.</p>

It was an eyebrow-raising revelation and certainly an original image: Beck cradling the actual words of the first president. But would the persnickety gatekeepers of the nation's historical legacy at the National Archives allow some talk show bombthrower to put his mitts on a rare (and fragile) artifact? The answer, it turns out, is no way. Beck was not telling the truth....his fib stands in stark contrast to the point of the rally, which was all about restoring the principles of courage and honor that the nation was founded upon. In fact, one of Beck’s only prescriptions for fixing...

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –...

In the run-up to this week's Conservative Political Action Conference, right-wing Christian groups were incensed when they learned that the annual gathering of conservative activists would be co-sponsored by a gay Republican organization called GOProud. A collection of powerful social conservative groups threatened to derail the entire event with a boycott—and lost. The boycott attempt was led by Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy organization founded by the late Jerry Falwell. After hearing that GOProud would be an official CPAC co-sponsor and would host a booth in the conference's main exhibit hall, Barber wrote in an emai to...

In the wake of the devastating earthquake, American eyes are again turned toward Haiti—something that only seems to happen when yet another disaster strikes, and never during the daily chaos and misery that plague the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. I’ve spent a good deal of time in Haiti, reporting first on the repression under the Duvaliers, then on the rise of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's popular movement, and then on the 1991 military coup that brought him down. I was there during the period of the 1994 military intervention that restored Aristede to power. US interest in the country seemed...

A guide to the abbreviations, acronyms, and obscure programs that make up the $14 trillion federal bailout of Wall Street The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets. To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see our chart here. Below, a guide...

Why some environmentalists believe the president has the power to sidestep the Senate and commit the US to a global pact. In 1997, in the Japanese city of Kyoto, the Clinton administration agreed to a groundbreaking treaty to combat global warming. And that's when the trouble started. The Senate had unanimously refused to approve the Kyoto Protocol, and in the end the Clinton administration didn't even submit it for a vote in the upper chamber. This made the US both the world's biggest polluter and, ultimately, the only industrialized nation to reject the accord. Now, as world leaders attempt to...

VICTORVILLE, Calif.—Ever since it became clear that Barack Obama would be our next president, there's been an unprecedented run on guns 'n ammo in America. Partly this is fueled by fears, some justified some not, that Obama will outlaw a broad range of assault weapons; partly it's fueled by socioeconomic factors, racism and right-wing hate. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in Victorville, a desert exurb of Los Angeles that boomed faster with the subprime craze than just about any city in the country and fell harder when it all collapsed. Today, guns and ammo are in short supply...

For years I have refrained from writing about 9/11 conspiracy theory. But Van Jones' resignation as top green jobs adviser in the Obama administration has compelled me to pick up this battering ram once again. In my PoliticsDaily.com column, I've (partly) blamed 9/11 conspiracy theorists for the downfall of Jones. Not that he's not accountable for his own behavior, but the perpetuators of the 9/11 nonsense launched a virus in left circles, and Jones was not savvy enough to keep clear of it. As I huffed: As far as I can tell, the only thing the so-called 9/11 Truth movement...

Around the corner from our office are a couple of antique stores that sell what I can only describe as the world's worst kitsch. A specialty is giant garden statuary of prepubescent children doing idyllic things that no kid has done since 1897, like playing leap-frog or fishin' with a branch. I figured the stores, which are always packed to the rafters, were some kind of money-laundering front. Now I know better. They were supplying Michael Jackson. If you have a few minutes, go check out the auction catalogs for Jackson's Neverland Ranch. The King of Pop, in desperate need...

What starts with "f," ends with "k," and means "screw your workers"? That's right—401(k). ___ Fees have always been one of the built-in scams of mutual funds, which charge investors for managing, operating, and even marketing and advertising the fund. On average, the fees add up to 1.5 percent of the value of an account, but they can run as high as 3.5 percent a year. This means that a fund showing a 7 percent gross return has a net return to investors of 3.5 percent after taking into account the 3.5 percent fee. Congress, of course, has known about...

The administration defends lenders that allegedly bilked minority customers. What gives? ___ A number of big national banks stand accused of systematically bilking black and Latino borrowers. And the administration of our first black president is siding with the banks. At the end of April, the Obama administration will go before the US Supreme Court to argue that those banks—including bailout recipients Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase—should be allowed to duck a state investigation into their lending practices. If that sounds like the politics of the past, it is. The Obama administration has opted to maintain...

How Big Finance is trying to keep the Senate banking chairman's imperiled political career afloat. __ As Senator Chris Dodd fights for his political career, the embattled chairman of the powerful Senate banking committee is receiving his own economic rescue package from the finance industry. According to the five-term senator's latest campaign disclosures, filed earlier this week, the financial sector is flooding Dodd's campaign war chest with donations in advance of what is expected to be a tough reelection bout.

Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency? Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) think so. On Wednesday they introduced a bill to establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor—an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. That broad power is rattling some civil libertarians.

Thirty-three years after Mother Jones began as a nonprofit magazine, co-editor Monika Bauerlein jokes that "we're so out of date, we're hip." She was referring to renewed interest in the San Francisco magazine's business model. As major daily newspapers, like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, cease publication and others, like The Chronicle, plan extensive layoffs to cope with dwindling revenue, many in the news publishing world are exploring the nonprofit model. But switching from a profit to nonprofit model isn't easy - at least on the mass-market scale of many publications. Two Yale scholars recently estimated that it would take a $5...

Weeks ago, I obsessed on a political point: would President Barack Obama mobilize his millions of voters to apply political pressure on Washington to pass his policy initiatives. At that time, the stimulus package was the top item on his agenda, and the White House was not doing much to activate the Obama millions to boost support for the legislation in Congress. As the stimulus fight proceeded, Organizing for America, the spin-off of the Obama presidential campaign, did zap out an email to its list of 13 million and asked those supporters to hold house parties to discuss the recovery...

A former Wall Street Journal writer dissects why business reporters bought the bull—and missed the biggest story on their beat. for casual readers of business coverage—that is, most of us—the past 18 months have been a crash course in things we never knew existed but that, we are told, have already done us all irreparable harm. Not only are the problems catastrophic, goes the somewhat frustrating message, but it is already too late to do anything about them—other, that is, than pay for them. In looking back on how we got here, the business press assumes a tone of rueful...

Here's the latest reason to hate credit card companies: Shop at Wal-Mart, obviously a sign of financial distress, and your credit limit gets lowered. Hallelujah! This is from American Express, which has now decided to hunker down and simply lie about their habit of doing this. Compare and contrast the following news accounts. When Kevin Johnson returned from his honeymoon last year he got a letter from Amex saying, “Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express.” Here's what they told the Atlanta Journal Constitution about this...

Washington Dispatch: Addressing the Federalist Society, the top Senate Republican went light on the red meat—except when it came to judges. Having narrowly survived his reelection campaign, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was in an expansive mood Thursday morning. Back to work in Washington, he spoke at the annual convention of the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative legal organization. Acknowledging his recent close shave, McConnell elicited some laughs from the friendly crowd by noting that in campaign ads, Democrats had called him the biggest impediment to progress since Antonin Scalia, who also happens to be one of the group's...

This paper examines the nature of military advantage by exploring the character of major hegemonic powers in history and seeks to gain a better understanding of what drives US military advantage; where US vulnerabilities may lie; and how the US should think about maintaining its military advantage in the future.Case studies of Macedonia under Alexander the Great, Imperial Rome, the Mongols, and Napoleonic France compose the core of the analysis as they illustrate important themes that remain relevant to the US' position today.The case studies focus on two key questions:What were the sources of military advantage in history?What made military...

DC Comics has just announced that it's sending its characters into the most terrifying parallel universe yet: the American political system. At a comic-con last week, the publisher's executive editor talked about its upcoming "DC Decisions" series, in which members of the DC universe will declare their partisan affiliations. "Everyone’s talking politics; it’s an elections year, and we’re going to try to see how the characters of our universe react to that," he said, which I think means that his writers have completely run out of material. So now that superheroes are going to start meddling in domestic politics, which...

Washington Dispatch: The Iraq general's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was predictable: progress is real, we must stay the course. But committee Democrats missed an opportunity to undercut the White House story. By David Corn April 8, 2008 As General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and pitched a story of success in Iraq, a news update flashed on the television screen: Sadr threatens to end cease-fire. Meaning that civil war between the Shiite-dominated government of Baghdad and the Shiite movement led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr could...

One morning last August in San Francisco, six women in pink sweaters marched up a hilly boulevard towing pink roller bags full of shoes. They unzipped the bags in front of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's house, dumped the shoes on her lawn, and went on to arrange loafers, pumps, and pink glittery sandals like hawkers at a yard sale. Anchoring their display was a pair of combat boots, placed on Pelosi's doorstep. The boots, like the other shoes, had been pulled from a dead body in Iraq—the body of Casey Sheehan, in fact, whose mother, Cindy, is running as an Independent...

On a hot August afternoon at the Prince William County Fair in northern Virginia, Greg Letiecq tried to make eye contact with passersby gorging themselves on funnel cakes and cotton candy. Standing before a booth draped with American flags and "Help Save Manassas" signs, Letiecq was enjoying a kind of local celebrity. The Washington Post had recently run a front-page story on how his blog, Black Velvet Bruce Li, had become the "most influential local blog in Virginia." (A previous incarnation, Black Velvet Bruce Lee, was taken down in the wake of a slander suit.) Several days earlier, former Virginia...

When former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson got the redacted manuscript of her draft memoir back from the CIA Publications Review Board (PRB) earlier this year, her book publisher realized it had a problem. "We were looking at a manuscript where 20 percent of the author's story was deemed classified by her former employer [even though] much of the information was probably in the public domain," explains an editor at the publishing house, Simon & Schuster. "So the challenge was, if Valerie can't tell her own story because she is bound by her agreement, then how is this story going...

Now that he has his moment in the political spotlight, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee does not want his days at the pulpit to be scrutinized. As Huckabee has surged to the front of the Republican pack in Iowa, his religious views have drawn media and voter attention. After all, Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, has been campaigning as a "Christian leader." But he has vacillated on how far to interject faith into politics. At an early debate, he indicated he does not believe in evolution, but at a more recent debate, when he was asked by Wolf Blitzer if...

For 15 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill. Is she triangulating—or living her faith? It was an elegant example of the Clinton style, a rhetorical maneuver subtle, bold, and banal all at once. During a Democratic candidate forum in June, hosted by the liberal evangelical group Sojourners, Hillary Clinton fielded a softball query about Bill's infidelity: How had her faith gotten her through the Lewinsky scandal? After a glancing shot at Republican "pharisees," Clinton explained that, of course, her "very serious" grounding in faith had helped...

when he leaves his tidy apartment in an ocean-side city somewhere in America, Aaron turns on the radio to a light rock station. "For the cat," he explains, "so she won't get lonely." He's short and balding and dressed mostly in black, and right before I turn on the recorder, he asks me for the dozenth time to guarantee that I won't reveal his name or anything else that might identify him. "I don't want to be a target for gay activists," he says as we head out into the misty day. "Harassment like that I just don't need." Aaron...

Lebanon has recently opened a museum commemorating last summer's "divine victory" over Israel. Mother Jones reported from the town of Aita al Shaab, where the war was won and almost everything else was lost. ___ By the third week of august, Beirut's trendy Gemmayzeh Cafe was once more full of revelers. It was the first time live music had been back since the war, and as the beers were poured and narghiles lit, an oud player finished tuning his instrument and began strumming. "God be with you, oh steadfast south," he wailed in a low voice, and the crowd of...

For Kiley Miller and John Rzeczycki, owners of 160 acres of wild desert outside Moab, Utah, Easter brings jeeps. Hummers, too, and modified pickups, and stripped-down rock crawlers—by the tens of thousands they descend on Moab for the annual Easter Jeep Safari, one of the nation's largest off-road-vehicle events. The jeeps whine through gears on a windswept uplift named Black Ridge near the couple's property, leaving a spoor of beer cans and brake fluid. Once, a group of jeepers left a message on one of the Private Property signs Miller and Rzeczyckihad put up—a noose, as carefully knotted as a...

After crashing the gate of the political establishment, bloggers are looking more like the next gatekeepers. __ Last June, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, former soldier, one-time Reagan Republican, and proprietor of the wildly successful liberal blog Daily Kos, sent an email to an invitation-only listserv known as Townhouse. Consisting of some 300 liberal bloggers, journalists, activists, and consultants, the list was an outgrowth of weekly strategy sessions held at a D.C. bar—a forum for brainstorming on issues and tactics, and a means of creating a "unified message," as Moulitsas later put it. Its members were bound by one main rule: Nothing...

f you believe the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, the conservative wing of the blogosphere, or any number of right-wing commentators, the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame has amounted to a non-scandal, a conspiracy theory drummed up for political ends by the left. This owes to the recent disclosure in Newsweek that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the initial and primary source for the now infamous column by Robert Novak that touched off the controversy. Plugging “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,” a soon-to-be-released book co-authored by Newsweek's...

Krissy Keefer's chances of unseating the House Minority Leader are essentially nil, but her quixotic run in San Francisco has tapped into real liberal disillusion -- on Iraq above all.On a recent Sunday in Washington Square Park, in the heart of ultra-liberal San Francisco, Krissy Keefer roamed among the knots of people seated on the grass with the ease of a practiced socialite mingling with old friends. Balancing a to-go coffee cup in one hand, the 60-something dancer with an unruly mane of long, dark, gray-streaked hair would sidle up to elderly couples and young parents, offer them one of...

Liberal Air America radio host Mike Malloy had his show abruptly “terminated” on Wednesday, allegedly for financial reasons. The network is failing but there could be another factor behind the Malloy debacle. There is still fallout from Malloy’s recent decision to turn over two-and-a-half hours of his three hour show to a former associate of ex-con Lyndon LaRouche, a perennial candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination who campaigns against what he views as British and Zionist control of the U.S. political system. The LaRouche organization is frequently labeled as a cult. The former high-level LaRouche associate, Webster Griffin Tarpley, was...

Somalia today is very much like Afghanistan was in 1996. In the wake of years of civil war, chaotic rule by warlords, and the death and displacement of countless Muslims, a ragtag Islamic militia has moved in to take control of much of Somalia. After running off some prominent warlords from their entrenched strongholds, the Islamic militia has sought to establish and expand its writ and has threatened to dislodge an internationally backed transitional government made up of veteran warlords with limited authority. Businessmen, clan leaders, and the general public, having tired of seemingly interminable factional violence and lawlessness, have...

Voters have been losing their taste for the war on drugs lately; in the past few years, states from Arizona and Alaska to California and Hawaii have moved toward making marijuana, in particular, a low priority for law enforcement, with first-offense possession cases often dismissed with small-time fines and medical-marijuana measures on the books in several states. But the initiative voters in Nevada will be considering this fall goes much further: The “tax and regulate” measure, whose supporters got it on the ballot by collecting 86,000 signatures, would allow anyone over 21 to possess up to one ounce for personal...

Jimmy Carter is without doubt one of the most active and influential ex-presidents in American history. After leaving office, he established the nonprofit Carter Center, tasked with advancing human rights around the world. Through his and the center’s work, Carter has helped monitor more than 60 democratic elections, worked with governments in sub-Saharan Africa to develop sustainable agriculture, negotiated for peaceful conflict resolution in various countries, and worked to eradicate diseases such as Guinea worm and river blindness. For these and other efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Carter–whose presidency was highlighted by achievements in international...

Normally, there’s a modest stream of public opinion data on the immigration issue, much of it confusing. Now, suddenly, there’s a great deal of data on this issue . . . and it’s still confusing. Time to try to sort it out. Here are some basic findings on the issue that may help in interpreting the current political debate. 1.The public believes immigration is a serious problem and levels of concern appear to be growing. For example, in the most recent Time magazine poll, 68 percent said illegal immigration was a very or extremely serious problem and, in a just-released...

In the madrasas and on the streets of Pakistan, students learn to hate in the name of love, and whoever has a gun is a warlord. ___ Around Pakistan’s Independence Day, last August 14, billboards sprang up on roundabouts in the city of Karachi offering three different Kentucky Fried Chicken meals. Against the green and white flag of Pakistan, they bore the words “A free nation free to choose.” That morning in the Abdul Baqi madrasa, or religious seminary, 350 students were gathered for a special Independence Day assembly. Fifteen-year-old Rafi Udin spoke to the rows of boys, all wearing...

Ike was president. Washington was desperate for Arab allies. Enter an Islamist ideologue with an invitation to the White House and a plan for global jihad. ___ In the fall of 1953, the Oval Office was the stage for a peculiar encounter between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and a young Middle-Eastern firebrand. In the muted black-and-white photograph recording the event, the grandfatherly, balding Ike, then 62, stands gray-suited, erect, his elbows bent and his fists clenched as if to add muscle to some forceful point. To his left is an olive-skinned Egyptian in a dark suit with a neatly trimmed...