Free Republic

Chris Hayes discusses the United States considering military action in Syria with former Congressman Tom Perriello, Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now!" and Eli Lake, senior national security correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

Two spectacular al Qaeda prison breaks in Iraq, freeing over 500 of its members in two separate prisons simultaneously this week, demonstrate the group is back with a vengeance. Al Qaeda’s Iraq branch is also the moving force behind the jihadist success in Syria. The resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq has sobering implications for what is likely to follow the drawdown of NATO forces in Afghanistan for the al Qaeda mother ship in Pakistan. The double jailbreaks at Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons were massive attacks. Suicide bombers, teams of attackers using mortars and small arms, and two dozen...

Yessir, Mr. Issa. We'll get right on that investigation lickety-split. Too bad we won't have our report for you until after the November election. Josh Rogin: "I appreciate that you and your committee are deeply interested in finding out what happened leading up to and during the attacks in Benghazi, and are looking for ways to prevent it from happening again. I share that commitment," Clinton wrote in the letter, obtained by The Cable. "Nobody will hold this department more accountable than we hold ourselves -- we served with Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods." Clinton said...

10.31 pm. Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama's meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.....

There is more to the story of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula than what we are told by the media. Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin, a Palestinian Muslim from Beit Sahour in the Palestinian district of Bethlehem. To prove my claim, I revealed Eiad Salameh long before this whole fiasco erupted—in 2008 and the first real reportage of Eiad and Nakoula was revealed on September 14th, 2012. Now do I have your attention? The narrative that circulates the media fails to answer crucial...

There is more to the story of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula than what we are told by the media. Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin, a Palestinian Muslim from Beit Sahour in the Palestinian district of Bethlehem. To prove my claim, I revealed Eiad Salameh long before this whole fiasco erupted—in 2008 and the first real reportage of Eiad and Nakoula was revealed on September 14th, 2012. Now do I have your attention? The narrative that circulates the media fails to answer crucial...

<p>The other day, Newsweek had a cover story about Mitt Romney's "Wimp Factor."</p>

After some of the recent Obama-loving/Romney-bashing Newsweek covers, the one hitting newsstands Monday is guaranteed to turn some heads. Under the picture of our dear leader are the words, "Hit the Road, Barack: Why We Need a New Leader." The article is written by Niall Ferguson, a British historian and economist that backed John McCain in 2008. After an introduction, Ferguson made his case: In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed...

Niall Ferguson Has Been Wrong On Economics Joe Weisenthal Aug. 19, 2012, 6:44 PM Niall Ferguson has a huge piece in The Daily Beast saying Obama needs to get fired titled: "Hit The Road, Barack."It's basically an ell-encompassing takedown of Obama's record on the economy (it still sucks), the deficit (it's getting bigger) and America's standing in the world (The Mideast has not gotten safer). It even hits Obama for stuff like this, which seems totally inevitable at some point, regardless of who is President.Newsweek Anyway, as you read Niall Ferguson, it's worth noting that he has been wrong on...

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.” Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization. Yet the...

Let's reward good behavior. Newsweek is apparently desperate to survive. We plan on buying this issue off the shelf. Might they get the message????

When chess grand champion and Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov showed up Friday at the sentencing of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, he didn’t expect to spend the next five hours in the custody of the Moscow police, recovering from a severe beating. Now, he says, after being punched in the genitals, thrown in a van and beaten by several police, Kasparov says the police have accused him of biting one of them—an allegation he denies. “They act like animals and they accuse me of biting them,” Kasparov told the Daily Beast in his first interview since being arrested. “Can...

The 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia has emerged as the world's most powerful crime group due to its obscene profits from the cocaine trade in Europe, and it further has become entrenched in Australia, Canada and the United States with surprisingly little push back from law enforcement in those countries. Indeed, Nicola Gratteri, a top anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy warns that "this mafia is quickly spreading in the United States, particularly in Florida and New York" as reported by Beatrice Borromeo for The Daily Beast: Gratteri's latest operations have led to the sentencing of 34 'Ndrangheta members and have uncovered a...

This column originally appeared in THE DAILY BEAST. In looking ahead toward the November election, Republican strategists should take proactive steps to avoid a damaging, dangerous conclusion to the presidential race and to prevent the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama. The problem stems from the lopsided margins President Obama will surely pile up in a few uncontested states with big populations, including California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, will prevail by comparable margins in only relatively small states: Utah, Idaho, the...

Of all the players anticipating fallout from the forthcoming union of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, staffers for Newsweek's website may have the most to lose — namely, their jobs. As the two money-losing news organizations meld into one, each party to the merger is eying possible redundant operations to cut. And Newsweek Daily Beast Co. seemed early on to have its sights set on Newsweek.com, which trumps the Web-only Daily Beast in traffic but not in buzz. Indeed, less than 24 hours after the merger was announced last Friday, Nov. 12, Daily Beast CEO Stephen Colvin had already suggested...

Newsweek and The Daily Beast will announce tomorrow morning that the two publications will merge, a source close to the deal tells The Observer. It will be a 50-50 merger of the two companies. The editorial staffs will combine under the editorship of Tina Brown, who will again run a high-profile glossy.

It sounds like the start of a bad joke: Barry Diller, Tina Brown and Sidney Harman walk into a (coffee) bar… …And walk out with a Frankenstein merger of their unprofitable media ventures. News-and-culture website Daily Beast and Newsweek magazine, which the 92-year-old Harman took off the Washington Post Co.’s hands this summer, are merging into a joint venture called Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Brown writes in a Daily Beast post that the three of them — the media-and-Internet mogul, the diva editor and the nonagenarian stereo magnate, respectively – agreed over a mug of coffee to mash together their...

There apparently isn’t room for two sites at the Newsweek Daily Beast Company. The new joint venture will kill off Newsweek.com, even though its audience is larger than the Beast’s. Newsweek.com, the offshoot of a 77-year-old brand, has 3.8 million monthly unique visitors to the two-year-old Beast’s 1.5 million, according to Compete.com. The Beast is the survivor, said Stephen Colvin, the company’s new CEO, “Because the Daily Beast is a very credible and successful news and opinion Web site. And with great vitality and distinct voice.”

Tina Brown is expected to address her staff at The Daily Beast this morning about its merger with Newsweek, which was confirmed late Thursday.... ...The merger follows a protracted search by Harman for a new editor-in-chief of Newsweek, which he officially purchased in early October for $1, while agreeing to take on the magazine's mountain of debt.... ...Under the terms of the deal, Newsweek and The Daily Beast will become a 50-50 joint venture called The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, owned equally by Harman and IAC. The nuances of how the editorial operation will function are still unclear, but Brown...

Majority of Republicans: Obama is a Muslim A new national Louis Harris poll finds that a majority of Republicans believe that President Obama is a Muslim, while 45 percent agree with the so-called "Birthers" that the president was "not born in the United States." The poll of 2,230 Americans, taken during last weekend's health care showdown in the House of Representatives, shows how successful Obama's opponents have been in demonizing the 44th president. Full results are expected tomorrow, but preliminary findings were released in The Daily Beast by John Avlon, whose book "Wingnuts" details the hyper-partisanship that has swept America...