Free Republic

In the wake of an unusual trading pattern after the Federal Reserve's decision to continue economic stimulus last week, Fed officials have contacted certain news organizations to discuss rules and procedures for the central bank's advance release of sensitive information, CNBC has learned. On Sept. 18, the Federal Reserve shocked the financial world with its decision not to scale back its level of support to the economy as most market participants expected. Financial markets reacted at the speed of light, pushing stocks dramatically higher in just moments. But it looks like the speed of light just wasn't fast enough for...

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) pulled out a Sharpie marker and wrote in big block letters at the bottom of a letter: ”THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. THE FBI MUST COMPLY WITH THE LAW.” The letter was addressed to FBI Director James Comey: Wolf was referring to the FBI’s violation of the ban on cooperation with the unindicted co-conspirator terrorist organization CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), according to a just-released DOJ Inspector General report. CAIR was determined to be related to the web of terrorist financing during the Holy Land Foundation trials in Dallas, a trial which resulted in guilty verdicts. Afterwards,...

Chairman Bernanke: “We could raise interest rates in 15 minutes if we have to. So there really is no problem with raising rates, tightening monetary policy, slowing the economy, reducing inflation at the appropriate time. Now that time is not now.”Scott Pelley, CBS 60 Minutes: “You have what degree of confidence in your ability to control this?” “100%.”* * *No doubt that exchange of 2010 will go down as the most famous of Mr. Bernanke’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve. It is the context in which to savor — if that is the word — the news...

While reading from the teleprompter in front of the Business Roundtable headquarters in Washington DC, President Obama suggested that raising the National Debt Limit would not increase the Nation’s Debt. Well – actually – he didn’t suggest that. . . He simply said it: "Now, this debt ceiling -- I just want to remind people in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” Um. . . Ok. I mean, well, it has increased our debt every other time it’s been raised. . ....

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted conservative groups who used “anti-Obama” rhetoric in their literature, according to internal IRS documents from 2011.Washington-based IRS lawyers sent the scandal-ridden agency’s Cincinnati office a “political advocacy case list” on November 16, 2011 listing 162 groups to be scrutinized. More than 80 percent of those groups were conservative organizations.Five different groups were specifically included on the list by virtue of the “anti-Obama” rhetoric in their print or online literature. The IRS noted that the group Patriots of Charleston had “negative Obama commentary” on its website.“We did not endorse candidates,” a Patriots of Charleston spokesperson...

Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status. Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event. “We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he hopes the White House will act within a week to address the growing concerns that labor unions have over the new health care law. … Unions want members to be eligible for the same federal subsidies available to low-income workers in the new health exchanges. …

This is the first consecutive monthly drop in 14 months and the largest miss vs expectations on record. Printing at 76.8 (against an expectation of 82.0), this is the lowest in 5 months and points to the picture we have been painting of a consumer increasingly affected by rising rates and soaring gas prices amid stagnant incomes. As Citi notes below, this is the exact same pattern we have seen play out in the last 2 cycles and suggest significant downside risk to US equities. The economic outlook sub-index collapsed to its lowest since January. Biggest miss on the headline...

At the same time the IRS harassed Republican nonprofit groups during the 2012 political campaign, it selectively advised black churches and other Democrat nonprofits on how far they can go in campaigning for President Obama and other Democrats. This raw exercise in political favoritism has not been reported in the context of the still-smoldering IRS scandal, in which the agency in 2012 audited big GOP donors and blocked Tea Party groups trying to obtain tax-exempt status as part of what House investigators suspect was an effort to re-elect the president. But that same year, top officials with both the IRS...

A recent audit report by the inspector general for the Social Security Administration found that Obama’s IRS was reluctant to penalize any employers who consistently used Social Security numbers that did not match the names. Thus refusing any efforts to stop identity fraud from ”unauthorized noncitizens” using Social Security numbers that in 80% of the cases belonged to legal citizens. Defund the IRS. Flashback video reports here and here: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)CNSNews.com reports the following: An audit report published this month by the inspector general for the Social Security Administration says that the Internal Revenue Service’s reluctance to penalize employers who consistently...

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, former lawyer and Department of Justice whistleblower J. Christian Adams, explained how the agency charged with upholding the rule of law in America is behaving in disturbing ways.

A Texas-based watchdog known as True the Vote is staying one step ahead of Florida’s elections officials. The organization has identified 173 cases of alleged interstate voter fraud, or double voting, in Florida and Maryland, the group announced Monday. Each case represents a single person voting in both states during the same federal election cycle, dating to 2006. “The 173 cases does not mean 173 illegal votes,” said Logan Churchwell, communications director for True the Vote, a nonpartisan voters’ rights and election integrity group. “It means at least double that.” The group used updated 2012 voting data to cross-reference Florida...

A federal judge says the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of personal email accounts may have been aimed at skirting public disclosure requirements.

President Obama’s bewildering response to the mounting Internal Revenue Service scandal has been to simply deny there is a scandal, dismissively labeling it “phony.” He seems confident that in a moral version of rock-paper-scissors, denial always beats accusation, irrespective of the freight of evidence behind it. This has been the top-down strategy for partisan Democrats from the beginning. As head of the exempt organizations unit in Washington, Lois Lerner casually insisted any wrongdoing was fully attributable to a few “line people in Cincinnati” who were “not so fine.” Now we’ve learned from the testimony of IRS lawyer Carter Hull that...

Full title: NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor It seems that every day brings a new revelation about the scope of the NSA’s heretofore secret warrantless mass surveillance programs. And as we learn more, the picture becomes increasingly alarming. Last week we discovered that the NSA shares information with a division of the Drug Enforcement Agency called the Special Operations Division (SOD). The DEA uses the information in drug investigations. But it also gives NSA data out to other agencies – in particular, the Internal Revenue...

In their efforts to promote the re-election of Barack Obama, our nation's premier law enforcement agencies presented false data to the American public about a "crackdown" on mortgage fraud. Fox News reports: The Justice Department and FBI have quietly acknowledged they grossly overstated the scope of a mortgage fraud crackdown, which the administration heralded with much fanfare a few weeks before last year's presidential election. According to a memo circulated by the FBI and a correction posted online by the Justice Department, the number of defendants, the number of victims and the size of the losses are, in reality, a...

Why is the Obama Administration buying Russian 7.62×39 ammo among others not used in US forces weapons? By Fred Brownbill on July 27, 2013 in Constitution Legal Watch Save America Foundation campaign to save the 2nd amendment Writer: Kit Daniels The U.S. Army is now looking to stockpile nearly 3,000,000 live rounds of Soviet-era Russian ammo popular with civilian shooters. A U.S. Army solicitation posted July 18 on the Federal Business Opportunities web site asks for “non-standard” ammunition from vendors which includes: - 2,550,000 rounds of 7.62x39mm ball ammo - 575,000 blank rounds of 7.62x39mm ammo and - 425,000 rounds...

On August 12, Joe DiGenova, attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told Washington D.C.'s WMAL that one of the reasons people have remained tight-lipped about Benghazi is because 400 U.S. missiles were "diverted to Libya" and ended up being stolen and falling into "the hands of some very ugly people." DiGenova represents Benghazi whistleblower Mark Thompson. He told WMAL that he "does not know whether [the missiles] were at the annex, but it is clear the annex was somehow involved in the distribution of those missiles." He claimed his information "comes from a former intelligence official who stayed in...

A new video shows Lois Lerner talking about the pressure being brought to bear on the IRS to halt GOP money going into the 2010 election: Newly uncovered video shows Lois Lerner discussing the political pressure that swirled around the IRS in 2010. Lerner says "everyone" was "screaming at" the IRS to stop the flood of money pouring into the 2010 elections through 501(c)(4) groups as a result of Citizens United. Lerner spoke to a small group at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy on October 19, 2010, just two weeks before the wave election that brought the Tea Party...

America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver. Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased. Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer....