Free Republic

Staring into the abyss of minority status in Congress, Republicans signaled dedication to pork barrel spending before recessing for midterm election campaigning. Behind closed doors, the GOP's King of Pork dressed down the party's leading foe of earmarks. In the open, the last bill passed before the election was filled with carefully hidden pork. In a caucus of Republican senators, 82-year-old, six-term Sen. Ted Stevens charged that freshman Sen. Tom Coburn's anti-pork crusade hurts the party. Stevens then removed from the final version of the Defense Department appropriations bill Coburn's "report card" requiring the Pentagon to grade earmarks. The House...

The publication of Hubris is filled with irony for David Corn, Washington editor of the left-wing Nation magazine. He was present at the creation of the Valerie Plame "scandal," which the enemies of George W. Bush hoped could bring down a president. Nobody was more responsible for bloating this episode. Yet Corn is coauthor of a book that has had the effect of killing the story. Thanks to Corn's intrepid coauthor, Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, Hubris definitively revealed then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as my source that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked for the CIA and suggested her...

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

CIA agent's naming led to giant hoax by Bush foes Fred Barnes September 15, 2006 THE rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now that there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly there was no smear campaign against former US ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticising President George W.Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country - by the media,...

WASHINGTON -- When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state's interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge. First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson. Second,...

This does get a little complicated. First, a holdover, liberal CIA employee, Valerie Plame, decided to undermine President Bush’s policies by pulling strings to get her like-minded husband, Joseph Wilson, sent to Niger to discredit the report from British intelligence that Saddam Hussein tried to purchase yellowcake for nuclear weapons development. (This British report was mentioned by Pres. Bush as one piece of intelligence we relied on in concluding that there was a significant risk of WMD in Iraq. The report turned out to be factual.)

A new book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe has enraged the Left and alarmed many conservatives. It exposes the machinations of a radical clique working at the highest levels of government and finance to undermine American power. That book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. It hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week in print. Here to tell us about The Shadow Partyis co-author Richard Poe, our esteemed colleague at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, where he serves as director of research. Mr....

.....Separating the men from the boysPosted: August 25, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern It was a shocking moment for me, and it took a few seconds for me to be sure I had heard him correctly. Had MSNBC's Tucker Carlson really belittled the argument that Islamic terrorists posed a growing threat to Western civilization as being "reprehensibly dumb"? I was on Carlson's bottom-ranked cable news show, and the once bow-tied anchor was lecturing me that my justifications for the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq was nothing more than "administration talking points." It was yet another in an incalculably...

I'm trying yet another format change this week.  I have left the background links on the entry for each guest for each show, like last week, but I've broken the Sunday shows out into separate posts to try to make each one more easy to read and discuss.  The Saturday shows will still be posted as one message, then I'll do the ping.  Please me know if this works.And I've put my (expanded) witty commentary here instead of in the ping...The most interesting guest this week should be Secretary Rice, who is on Fox, CBS and ABC, but she probably...

by Mark Finkelstein July 12, 2006 - 20:09 Was it Robert Novak who jolted aficionados of the vendetta-against-Joe-Wilson conspiracy theory, or was the message coming from . . . a Higher Authority? You be the judge, after having a look at the screen capture from this evening's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC. Yes, that's a lightning bolt. No, it wasn't photo-shopped - it's the real thing. The bolt hit while the panel was discussing the implications of the just-aired interview of Bob Novak by Brit Hume. Hume questioned Novak about his disclosure of Valerie Plame's employment by the...

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret. I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves. I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with...

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a 64-year-old ex-high school wrestling coach, ordinarily is not a shouter. But according to Capitol Hill sources, he engaged in a high-decibel rant last week when he met with Vice President Dick Cheney. The speaker was enraged by the sacking of his friend and former colleague, Porter Goss. Hastert was so vituperative that a private session with President Bush in the living quarters of the White House was scheduled immediately (although Hastert aides said the meeting had been planned previously). The speaker toned down his volume on the hallowed ground and did more listening than...

WASHINGTON -- Everybody in Washington's Republican political community was well aware that any changes George W. Bush made in his White House staff would not constitute a shake-up. What nobody expected was that Josh Bolten, in essence a professional bureaucrat, would be promoted to chief of staff. Yet, this selection becomes understandable as a confirmation of Karl Rove's supremacy in the White House.Rove holds the mundane titles of senior adviser to the president and deputy chief of staff, but scarcely anything happens in the Bush administration without his approval. Now he is more influential than ever. Andrew Card, the departing...

BUBBA AN AGENT FOR DUBAI? IS Bill Clinton serving as a lobbyist and public-rela tions guru to the government of Dubai? It sure looks like it. He's been paid a pretty penny by Dubai's rulers... The whole affair raises disclosure questions for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, too. While publicly opposing the port deal, she privately benefits from her husband's Dubai-related income. Published reports indicate that that Clinton has been directly advising top Dubai officials over the past two weeks on how to overcome negative public opinion and congressional resistance to the takeover of six U.S. ports by DP World ......

<p>While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World. Continues...</p>

My representative in the House is Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, IL, pictured below. Earlier today, Jan was probably at the Democratic Party of Evanston's slatemaking session. But rather pondering just who is the most qualified to gain the local party's endorsement for Cook County Water Reclamation District Commissioner, this Robert Novak column in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times probably dominated her thoughts. From that column: House Republicans, wounded by lobbyist scandals, have called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate more than 10 Democratic members headed by Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Nydia Velazquez of New York. Schakowsky's husband, consumer advocate Robert...

WASHINGTON -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had just finished a typically discursive floor speech shortly before the year-end adjournment when a very liberal member approached her second-in-command, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and whispered in his ear: "Steny, is it not time for a coup?" It obviously was not time to oust Pelosi and replace her with Hoyer. House Democrats do not get rid of their leaders with coups, as Republicans have during the last half-century. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction with Pelosi's performance is pervasive across the ideological spectrum. Her colleagues grumble that under her leadership, the party lacks focus and a...

CIA's Haq cover-up is part of a pattern November 1, 2001BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Unnamed CIA officials flat out lied when they told reporters that the first they had heard from Abdul Haq was his futile plea to be saved from the Taliban fighters who surrounded him and then murdered him last Friday. That fits the pattern of deceit, arrogance and ignorance that describes the U.S. role in the murder of the legendary Afghan commander. Actually, the Central Intelligence Agency had been in contact with Haq's representatives since last February. It was not a congenial liaison. The CIA's reaction ...

WASHINGTON -- On the evening of Dec. 22, Sen. John Warner, the Senate's Acting President Pro Tempore, declared: "In my capacity as the senior senator from Virginia, I ask unanimous consent that the chair now lay before the Senate the House message to accompany S.2167." The Virginia senator and the chair happened to be the same person, John Warner. All his colleagues had left to celebrate Christmas. Warner granted his own request, and the Senate adjourned after two minutes. Warner, a dignified 78, looked like a young boy playing imaginary football by throwing passes to himself. In 49 years of...

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Robert Novak, whose syndicated column sparked the CIA leak case and who stormed off a CNN set earlier this year, will join Fox News Channel as a contributor. Novak, 74, and the network mutually decided not to renew his contract the ends Dec. 31. Fox News Channel confirmed Friday that he would be a contributor to the network beginning in January. Once one of the most recognizable faces at CNN and one of the few conservative voices there, Novak had fallen out of favor with CNN brass in recent years with his style and the...