Free Republic

I've tried my level damndest to ignore the latest Richard Cohen column controversy, because life is short and Cohen will stumble into another racial contretemps within six weeks or so. And I don't like the idea of a columnist being Mau-Mau'd out of a job because he's a casual bigot. The smarmy-sounding Fred Hiatt defense—that Cohen "isn’t afraid to take on subjects where culture and politics and emotion overlap"—isn't entirely wrong. Past-their-prime white guys have opinions, too. No, the problem with Cohen's column was that he made an assertion about an entire class of people being racist, and did no...

On Piers Morgan Live Tuesday, guest Bill Maher openly admitted Obama “lied” about Americans keeping their insurance plans, but insisted that he had to because of unified Republican opposition—and the increasingly “stupider” American public. Morgan trotted Maher on for a number of political issues, including the Obamacare meltdown and the most recent episode in the NSA scandal saga. Morgan opened by asking Maher if the scandal-failure-filled week was “any worse than it’s always been?” Maher said, in essence, yes: Well, I think the country in general is on a decline. Rather than citing the failure of the administration though, Maher’s explained he believes...

Senate Democrats on Tuesday closed ranks behind Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, declaring she should keep her job despite problems plaguing the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges. Democrats sought to deflect criticism by Republicans who have called for Sebelius’s ouster over what even Democrats acknowledge has been a botched rollout of the landmark law. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, praised the implementation of ObamaCare for proceeding smoothly compared to other massive federal programs. “If you compare it to all kinds of other programs of large magnitude, it’s actually ahead of schedule,...

Gone is yesterday’s equivocating defense on the millions of distributed insurance cancellations currently shattering the great ObamaCare myth that was “If you like your plan, you can keep it.” After Valerie Jarrett‘s… er… “creative” contribution to the discussion last night, Carney was much more prepared for the question at today’s White House briefing with a more shrewdly crafted offensive strategy — because as we’re all well aware by now, unintentional concessions (don’t even think about apologies, not gonna’ happen) rarely last long in this administration before giving way to well-rehearsed, righteously indignant spin-doctoring. (Be sure to check out Sebelius’s planned...

The liberal claim that Republicans are engaging in a perpetual “war on women” seems to have taken a new turn on MSNBC. No longer does the term “war on women” apply only to access to abortion but now encompasses voting rights as well. Appearing on MSNBC on October 29, liberal MSNBC host Thomas Roberts claimed that Republicans are trying to restrict a woman’s access to the ballot box. This comes one week after fill-in host Michael Eric Dyson made a similar complaint on The Ed Show. [See video after jump.]  MSNBC's Roberts: Republicans Want To Stop Women From Voting Speaking...

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) removed a Facebook post Monday that alleged a House GOP leader told President Obama “I cannot even stand to look at you” at a private meeting. Durbin said he did not immediately take down the post after it was proven false last week because he wanted to leave it in the proper context. "If I'd have raced to take it off, [the media] would have done that story too: `Durbin races to take this off.' I wanted to put into context how I got into this situation," he told the Associated Press. After Durbin...

In an e-mail to supporters yesterday (and on his Tumblr), filter-deficient Florida congressman Alan Grayson, as is his wont, suggested that the t in tea party stands for a burning cross. As to his assertion that the tea party is actually "no more popular than the Klan," 26 percent of Americans support the tea party according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, and we couldn't find any polls measuring support for the KKK but ... it's probably lower than that. Grayson does not offer a source for the claim in his e-mail. Instead, it was hyperlinked to a campaign-donations...

The Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Center, Shadi Hamid, tweets out about the Egyptian media depicting Obama as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Newspaper also claims that son of Muslim Brotherhood leader threatened Obama with release of “papers” revealing his MB membership.

UPDATE: 8/23/13 1:00PM PDT Its seems there’s blunders to go around. The Washington Post now says they “misquoted” Gore. Given his penchant for saying and doing dumb things in the past related to his views on climate, color me “skeptical”, especially when he makes ugly comparisons about people like he did below. It may be more of a case of some deal was worked out behind the scenes to salvage Gore’s waning credibility. I suppose we’ll never know, but I have asked WaPo to put the relevant audio of the tape recorded session online so we can verify that Gore...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Beyonce called in a concert for a moment of silence for Trayvon Martin, rapper Young Jeezy released a song in Martin’s memory and Russell Simmons called for peace after George Zimmerman was acquitted by a Florida jury in the death of the teenager.</p>

The latest evidence that climate change is already causing massive damage Extreme weather patterns spawned by global warming are a serious threat to the nation's energy infrastructure, according to a new report from the Department of Energy, and their destructive effects are already being felt nationwide. "Increasing temperatures, decreasing water availability, more intense storm events, and sea level rise will each independently, and in some cases in combination, affect the ability of the United States to produce and transmit electricity from fossil, nuclear, and existing and emerging renewable energy sources," the report states. In the most striking example, the report...

President Obama angrily blasted climate change skeptics during his energy policy speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, saying he lacked "patience for anyone who denies that this problem is real."

False complaints of sexual abuse in the military are rising at a faster rate than overall reports of sexual assault, a trend that could harm combat readiness, analysts say. Virtually all media attention on a Pentagon report last week focused on an increase in service members’ claims of sexual abuse in an anonymous survey, but unmentioned were statistics showing that a significant percentage of such actually investigated cases were baseless. From 2009 to 2012, the number of sexual abuse reports rose from 3,244 to 3,374 — a 4 percent increase.

The cat is finally out of the bag. A blogger for the liberal Huffington Post has finally admitted that liberal mainstream media outlets made a conscious decision to ignore the Kermit Gosnell abortion-murder trial. In a HuffPost Live segment today on the issue, host Marc Lamont Hill admitted what many pro-life advocates have been thinking: “For what it’s worth, I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, I do think there’s a direct connection...

Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian cleric Abu Islam, which aired on Al-Omma TV (via the Internet) on Feburary 13, 2013. Egyptian cleric Abu Islam: I swear to God the Almighty – and believe me, I am not lying – that the Church worship originated in the worship of the penis. I swear to God. This is documented in dozens of pictures. Let me tell you something – it's indecent, but true. Take a look at a picture of Jesus, and you'll see a penis, right here. Or is it on this side? Oh, it's on the right...

Twitchy.com has been all over the story of NBC’s latest… I was about to say “latest ethical lapse,” but that would imply they have any ethics to begin with. Let’s just call it the latest example of NBC lying so egregiously, even a few other liberal media outlets are calling them out on it. Twitchy deserves our thanks for catching the lie and presenting the truth. And now the cover-up begins at NBC. Erik Wemple at WaPo has the latest: MSNBC is reviewing its portrayal of the testimony of Neil Heslin, the father of a Sandy Hook victim, at a...

Guest post by Dr. Tim BallIn a comment on the WUWT article about the abject failure of UKMO weather forecasts, “Slingo Pretends She Knows Why It’s Been So Wet!”, Doug Huffman wrote, “Each forecast must be accompanied by the appropriate retro-cast record of previous casts” (January 6, 2013 at 7:06 am). I pointed out years ago that Environment Canada (EC) publishes such information. They expose a similar horrendous story of absolute failure. This likely indicates why it is not done by others, but provides adequate justification for significantly reducing the role of the agency.Both EC and UKMO predictions fail. The...

Remember how the DUs trashed Mark Levin's books at Amazon? Well, here is our chance. Some English prof named Michael Austin wrote a scatterbrained hit piece that is full of cheap shots directed at the Tea Party, Mark Levin, Hannity, etc. To do this, he took teaspoons from various works of our Framers, mixed them up with some Howard Zinn, and baked them with social justice gravy at high heat. Wanna see how the left corrupts our college kids? Here it is.

A hunting buddy of mine emailed me from the waiting room of his doctor’s office in Columbus, Ga., a few days after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was cringing in embarrassment as an old redneck spewed racially divisive rhetoric in front of African-American patients. Then my friend’s embarrassment turned to astonishment as that same redneck (almost certainly a gun owner, given the region and his demographic profile) said, “I never cared much for Obama, but that speech he gave about those little kids—I give him an A for that. He’s gonna try and get more gun control,...

The stalling of Illinois’ gay-marriage push—at least for now—shows the difficulty of approving legislation to legalize it, even with a nudge from the home-state president, steadily rising support in the polls and national momentum from the November elections. Democrats control both chambers of the General Assembly and the governor’s office in the solidly blue state. Yet the margin of support Senate Democrats were able to pull together for a bill last week was so thin that a death in one lawmaker’s family and another senator’s extended trip to Israel were enough to push the issue into the next legislative session....