Free Republic

There is less than one month to go before the June 10th primary and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has just received yet another censure from South Carolina Republicans. According to Conservative Fifty: “On Monday evening the Charleston County GOP, one of the largest and most active county GOP groups in South Carolina, passed a censure resolution against Graham by a vote of 39-32. Charleston becomes the 9th county GOP to censure Graham since August. Other counties to censure Graham are Lexington, Pickens, Anderson, Laurens, Orangeburg, Greenville, Fairfield, and Chesterfield. All of the 9 censure measures have cited similar points where...

University of South Carolina Upstate officials announced $450,000 in changes and cuts to programs Tuesday to save money, including closing its Center for Women's and Gender Studies. The cuts are effective July 1, with the bulk of the savings coming from moving some faculty and staff from 12-month positions to 9- or 11-month positions, officials said. The announcement came the same day the state Senate approved a budget amendment requiring USC Upstate to spend $17,000 to teach the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers - the same amount of money the college spent on the gay-themed...

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCIV) -- A Cross High School teacher has been charged with sexual battery of three students. Berkeley County Sheriff's Office officials said 29-year-old Ellen Lindsay Niemiec, of Summerville, turner herself in at the sheriff's office Thursday afternoon. Officials said that there are three student victims leading to two felony and one misdemeanor charges because of their ages. The sheriff's office said the misconduct had been going on for several weeks. Niemiec is married with three children, according to her attorney David Aylor. Mike Bosnak, who is an attorney representing all three victims, said some of the inappropriate...

Republican Sen. Tim Scott doesn’t vote according to the color of his skin, Assistant Democratic Leader Rep. James Clyburn complained in a Thursday Washington Post article.“If you call progress electing a person with the pigmentation that he has, who votes against the interest and aspirations of 95 percent of the black people in South Carolina, then I guess that’s progress,” he told the Post.Clyburn’s argument was featured in a generally favorable article about Scott’s practice of briefly working alongside his constituents in South Carolina without revealing his identity.The comment from Clyburn, age 73, stands in contrast to a comment from...

Bloomberg writer Francis Wilkinson recently wrote a piece claiming that Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina--an African American--only became a senator because Republicans "lowered the bar" for his appointment. He also claimed that Scott’s candidacy serves as a "shield" for racist Tea Party members to hide behind. In an article that is more invective than analysis, Wilkinson essentially called Senator Scott a do-nothing senator. He said Scott acted like a "shield" for racist, Confederate flag-waving Tea Party members who need someone to replace Herman Cain as the favorite candidate behind whom they can hide their racism. Wilkinson made these...

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the tea party Republican tapped to lead the new committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks, made a telling slip Wednesday morning in describing his mission. Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.” A trial? And the Obama administration is the defense? So much for that “serious investigation” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised; his new chairman intends to play prosecutor, proving the administration’s guilt...

House Speaker John Boehner would not say Thursday if the House GOP’s campaign arm should stop including the Benghazi attacks in fundraising appeals. Asked three times whether the National Republican Congressional Committee should be fundraising based on what they call Democratic obstruction of the Benghazi investigation, Boehner answered only: “Our focus is on getting the answers to those families who lost their loved ones. Period.” An NRCC email sent Wednesday morning included a link to “become a Benghazi watchdog” – which led to a page where supporters can donate cash. A separate website called “BenghaziWatchdogs.com” still contains a link encouraging...

..... As veterans from all aspects of Special Operations, we have no doubt that there’s a lot more to what happened in Benghazi than President Obama and his Administration are letting on. From the very beginning, he has attempted to mislead and outright lied to the American people about why the attack on September 11th, 2012 happened, how it happened, and what our government did or did not do to save the lives of our patriots abroad,” former Navy SEAL Captain Larry Bailey wrote in a statement to Breitbart News. The representatives from the retired military community want “a full...

<p>The mainstream, media is still trying to figure out how they are going to push back against the recently-announced House Select Committee that will investigate Benghazi.</p> <p>With polls showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Obama engaged in a cover-up and want the investigations to continue, our media -- that from the beginning have fought to protect Obama, Hillary, and to ensure the truth is never known -- are in a tough spot.</p>

House Speaker John Boehner explained to reporters Wednesday morning that he considers the select committee's investigation into the terrorist attacks in Benghazi a very serious matter. “This is all about getting to the truth. This is not going to be a sideshow. This is not going to be a circus. This is a serious investigation,” Boehner said. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has demanded that, for the sake of fairness, the committee be evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

The truth can be dangerous. Some extremists will go to great lengths to keep the truth from coming out, even if that means threatening harm to United States Congressman Trey Gowdy. Remember, it is Trey Gowdy who will be leading the House Select Committee into what really happened in Benghazi. Liberals fear that Gowdy, a highly successful prosecutor, will uncover the truth. That is exactly why threats of harm have been made against Congressman Gowdy. Liberals want the truth to remain hidden so they can protect Obama and Hillary Clinton from facing the consequences of their actions. POLITICO reports: The...

Partisan political advantage, gained at the real or potential life-threatening expense of American personnel undertaking high-risk assignments, was the deep moral issue driving prosecutors in the 2005 Valerie Plame name exposure scandal. An even more disturbing and exploitative example of high-level Washington political operatives exposing low-level American field personnel to greater physical risk is the moral issue at the core of the on-going Benghazi scandal. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said national security concerns drove his pursuit of Bush Administration officials involved in exposing Plame's status as a covert CIA agent. For Fitzgerald, Plame's precise operational status at the time her...

Brief press conference from last year when Trey Gowdy indicted the media for their failure in covering the Benghazi attack. Worth a watch. BTW, out of curiosity ... how many of us are motivated to post our complaints about the media here on FR or complain in conversations with others about the feckless media, yet never write letters* or emails or make phone calls to the media to call them out for abrogation of journalistic duty? Can we help stir up some sense of responsibility to inform the public if we constantly nudge them? *Personally, I think a letter is...

Just when you thought the Democrats’ callousness couldn’t get any worse, a Mississippi congressional candidate reaches a new low. Trish Causey, running for the Democrat nomination in MS-4, thought making a “National Masturbation Month” joke about murdered diplomats and Navy Seals was a good campaign move.

NEW YORK, May 7, 2014 — The announcement of a select committee to investigate Benghazi has liberals panicked. The walls are closing in as the truth slowly comes out. Top Obama assistant Ben Rhodes was recently caught advising Democrats on how to blame Benghazi on an internet video rather than a policy failure. Covering President Obama’s hindquarters weeks before his reelection took precedence over the truth. With dogged prosecutor Congressman Trey Gowdy leading the select committee, Democrats are expected to get meaner, nastier and more defiant in an attempt to discredit the committee and save Obama and Hillary Clinton. The...

House Democrats are still weighing their options about whether to participate in a special probe into the deadly 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, party leaders said Wednesday. Following a closed-door meeting of the Democratic Caucus Wednesday morning, the leaders said they're awaiting Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) response to requested changes to the panel before they'll decide whether to participate. "We'll wait for a written response from the Speaker's office, and we in the leadership, in consultation with our members, will make a decision going forward as to how we'll deal with this," said Rep. Joe...

The U.S. Capitol Police are investigating threatening emails against Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican recently tapped to lead a special panel probing the Benghazi terrorist attacks. The investigation comes after POLITICO reporters and journalists at other outlets received two emails on Tuesday warning that Gowdy would be harmed because of his role in investigating the 2012 attacks.

Good luck with that. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi faces pressure from all sides in regard to the newly-launched select committee to investigate Benghazi. Participating would legitimize the results, while boycotting it might open up Democrats to attacks on their concern for diplomatic personnel abroad, four of whom were killed in the attack on September 11, 2012, and leave administration officials no way to set the narrative through the friendly questioning of Democrats on the panel during public hearings. Pelosi hedged in the direction of participation by demanding an equal number of seats on the committee:

Capitol Hill police are investigating emailed threats to Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina congressman tabbed to head a special panel to probe the White House’s response to the Benghazi terrorist attacks. Politico reporters and journalists at other news outlets say they’ve received at least two emails that threaten harm to Mr. Gowdy due directly to his leading role on the panel. Capitol Police refused to comment on the actual threats, except to say that “an active, open investigation” has been launched, Politico reported.

Late yesterday House Speaker John Boehner announced the new Benghazi select committee will include seven Republicans and five Democrats. Because Republicans are the majority party in the House, they have also been appointed the majority on the committee. Before the partisan count was announced, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi demanded the committee be split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, despite giving very little attention to Republicans during her time as Speaker in the majority. Now, even after being denied the same number of seats as Republicans on the panel because Democrats are in the minority, Pelosi is again asking for more...