Free Republic

There has been a lot of chatter about the blockbuster report at the Daily Caller revealing the extent to which the self-proclaimed “media watchdog” outfit Media Matters for America is joined at the hip with the White House. Many are shocked at just how much Obama is seemingly programming the media with the supposedly independent Media Matters acting as its pipeline to the Old Media. Shockingly, Daily Caller notes that MMFA is even holding teleconference briefings with members of Obama’s administration and the subsequent salting of the results of those meetings among the Old Media’s coverage seems to be a...

A note from Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson: Please take the time to read this very important story written by a courageous Egyptian liberal intellectual about the Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood lobbies in Washington and the Obama Administration's secret collaboration with these pro-terrorist, anti-Western, anti-women, anti-American and anti-Semitic organizations. This is one of the most important articles I have read in years. It was just revealed two days ago that FBI Director Mueller secretly met on February 8 at FBI headquarters with a coalition of groups including various Islamist and militant Arabic groups who in the past...

The Obama administration is weighing options for sharp new cuts to the U.S. nuclear force, including a reduction of up to 80 percent in the number of deployed weapons, The Associated Press has learned.

A retired U.S. lieutenant general who made comments some consider disparaging to Islam withdrew Monday from speaking at a West Point prayer breakfast after a progressive veterans’ advocacy group — VoteVets.org — along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asked the Army chief of staff to rescind the invitation.Last week The Blaze reported VoteVets.org told Gen. Raymond Odierno in a letter that allowing retired Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin to speak at West Point next week would be anathema to Army values and disrespectful to Muslim cadets. According to the Associate Press, late Monday afternoon, West Point issued a...

In what promises to be an enormous document dump, I have received the first in a series of DOJ bundles in response to my FOIA request filed close to a year ago. Specifically, I asked for "records relating to the meeting of the 'Monthly Outreach Meeting' with Muslim and Arab groups at the Civil Rights Division. Specifically, include lists of attendees at each monthly meeting, the agenda of each meeting and any minutes or summary prepared subsequent to each meeting. Please also specifically note the meetings at which the Attorney General of the United States attended." The principal impact of...

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday for talks with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, and other senior defense and intelligence officials. The visit comes as the United States attempts to coordinate with Israel on the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities, and to determine Israel's intentions with regard to a possible attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Indian media is reporting that Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi is serving as a key mediator in secret talks between the U.S. and the Taliban. According to an article in The Hindu: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Doha-based Islamist scholar who once called on his followers to back jihadist groups in Jammu and Kashmir, has emerged as a key mediator in secret talks between the U.S. and the Taliban, government sources have told The Hindu. In 2009, Mr. al-Qaradawi had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, asserting that “the Kashmiris were properly fighting jihad against the Indian army.” The jihad was...

While Western diplomats wring their hands over trivial insults to Islam, a slow-motion genocide of Christians has been unfolding in the Muslim world. The latest attack occurred on Christmas day in Nigeria, where the terrorist sect Boko Haram bombed two Catholic churches in the towns of Abuja and Jos, killing at least 39 worshipers. This same group killed 32 Christians last Christmas Eve. In this year alone, Boko Haram has murdered 491 people. The killings in Nigeria are just one example of continuous violent attacks on Christians and their churches. Yet our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been nearly...

Communist China is this month celebrating its tenth anniversary of joining the World Trade Organization. The subtitle ought to be China's tenth anniversary of cheating the United States. The globalists talked us into supporting this cozy trade relationship with China by getting U.S. manufacturers and farmers to salivate at the prospect of gaining access to the world's biggest market. China, on the other hand, joined the WTO to implement its plan to grow into an economic superpower the same way the United States became powerful in our pre-New Deal century, i.e., by protecting local industries and financing our government with...

Iran exhibited the top-secret US stealth drone RQ-170 Sentinel captured on Sunday, Dec. 4. Its almost perfect condition confirmed Tehran's claim that the UAV was downed by a cyber attack, meaning it was not shot down but brought in undamaged by an electronic warfare ambush. This is a major debacle for the stealth technology the US uses in its warplanes and the drone technology developed by the US and Israel.

The Obama administration says a meeting in Washington next week seeks to make progress in combating religious intolerance, but critics say the U.S. is pandering to an ideological agenda aimed at restricting speech critical of Islam. According to the State Department the aim is to find ways to combat religious hate without compromising freedom of expression. Detractors are skeptical that this can be done, and they suspect that free speech will end up the loser. Among those criticizing the event are GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the Traditional Values Coalition, and scholars at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom....

Every year I check both Yahoo and Google to see if they will acknowledge Pearl Harbor Day. As usual, nothing.

Joe Biden makes surprise visit to Iraq Vice President Joe Biden is in Iraq. The surprise visit will focus on charting a new relationship between the two countries after all American forces have left.

The 1979 book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, by East Asia scholar Ezra Vogel, stoked fears that the United States was about to be outcompeted by the land of the rising sun. And why not? The U.S. had just suffered through a decade of stagflation and was about to enter what was then the worst recession since the Great Depression. By the late 1980s, the case seemed ironclad. "I don't mean to be an alarmist, but I get the uneasy feeling that America is history," wrote Robert Kuttner, then the economics correspondent for The New Republic, in the...

Industrial Policy: Not only do taxpayers subsidize failing green energy here, they may soon be on the hook for a Department of Energy loan to a firm owned by a Russian billionaire. Just say nyet. When a foreign firm wants to build a facility in the U.S. that hires American workers and pays American taxes, we welcome it. We'd prefer they do it with their own money, not rely on this administration's failed industrial policy to provide them with a huge taxpayer-backed loan — especially when it's owned by a billionaire who doesn't need the help. The administration's latest green...

The global dominant narrative about China is wrong, claims Gordon Chang. Don't expect it to be the 'pocketbook of last resort' that will rescue world markets from their current malaise. And don't expect its remarkable economic growth to continue. In fact, expect a "hard landing" for China - and soon. Forbes.com columnist and international lawyer Gordon Chang has spent much of his time since the early 1980s working and living in China. His primary knowledge of the country and his relationships there give him a superior understanding to how its economy is actually faring than many analysts based in the...

"These thieves are grasping for any metal they can get their hands on," said Fort Lauderdale Detective Travis Mandell, adding that manhole covers have also been taken. "At this point they are probably looking for any scrap they can sell and have realized sewer grates are a viable option." He said his department has assigned a detective to investigate scrap yards and try to locate the stolen property. "It really disgusts me that these criminals can live with themselves after they place the safety of the public in jeopardy, all for pennies on the dollar," said Mandell. "There seems to...

<p>Today, millions of smart, hard working Americans are flipping burgers, waiting tables or working dead end retail jobs not because they want to, but because they have no other options. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 14 million Americans are currently unemployed and another 9.3 million Americans are currently "underemployed".</p>

The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com. The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The siren's wail at the historic Metropole Hotel sent American folk singer Joan Baez and other guests scampering across a garden and into an underground bunker. Even through five feet of concrete, they could still hear the roar of American bombs raining on parts of Hanoi. [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. manufacturers are failing to fill thousands of vacant jobs, surprising when 14 million people are searching for work. Technology giant Siemens Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany's Siemens AG , has over 3,000 jobs open all over the country. More than half require science, technology, engineering and math-related skills. Other companies report job vacancies that range from six to 200, with some positions open for at least nine months. Manufacturing is hurt by a dearth of skilled workers. "What we have been saying for quite a while is that even though there is a high unemployment...

Most states have laws on their books that make it illegal to spread statements about a bank in order to undermine confidence in the bank. They do this for the very good reason that when a run on a bank starts through rumor or innuendo and the bank goes belly up- and it happens very quickly- it costs taxpayers money, it costs shareholders money and it costs society as a whole. The rule, in other words, is to be very careful about what you say about banks. Banks live by these rules and so do regulators. In fact, when a...

Economy: After years of dithering and bowing to protectionists, President Obama finally submitted three pending free-trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia to Congress for a vote. Let the U.S. economy recover. The president's decision marks the first bright economic move he has made to boost the nation's ailing economy. Dropping tariffs, opening markets and equalizing investment terms are a proven way to boost economic growth. Contrary to all the nonsense about outsourcing and giant sucking sounds, the real impact of free trade is new freedom and opportunity. The pacts are now on their way to a vote in...

It was just a matter of time before history once again repeats itself. I am referring to the joint press conference held by Senator Jeff Sessions, R. Atlanta, and Senator Charles Schumer, D. New York. Since the President's jobs program is a non-starter for both Republicans and Democrats it was only logical that both parties needed something to not only show the electorate that jobs were paramount but also to show that both parties could and would be bi-partisan. Who to make the whipping boy for both parties? None other than China. Then, with the blessing of Senator Harry Reed,...

A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable shows that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain promised to help Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi obtain U.S. military hardware in 2009. The cable, released by the open information group WikiLeaks, reveals the pledge came at meeting that was attended by other prominent members of Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).In the meeting, Muatassim Qadhafi, the Libyan leader’s fifth son and national security adviser, requested U.S. assistance in obtaining military supplies, both lethal and non-lethal. The cable indicates that McCain was the dominant voice among the congressional delegation in a...

LIVING AMONG US, we have many Muslims who are undoubtedly as innocent of terrorism, political subversion, and Islamic supremacism as we are. But we have a problem, don't we? These innocent fellow countrymen — and the terrorists, subversives, and supremacists — all call themselves "Muslims." Many non-Muslims explain the situation to themselves that "there are extremists in every religion" and let it go at that. But those of us who have studied Islamic doctrine and Islamic history have discovered that "letting it go at that" would be a big mistake. And of course, those who simply look at the news...

You’re Gonna Need MORE Than Gold… By Simon Black 08/22/11 Everyday more and more people are waking up to the idea that they MUST own gold if they want to protect their assets from an out of control government. Owning gold is a great first step, but as history tells us, responsible people can and should do more before it’s too late… History paints a bleak picture of the decline of Rome. Once warring consuls Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian were finished duking it out with each other in 31 BC, any semblance of the original Roman republic was gone forever....

Secrecy Made Them Prey of Muslim Terrorism Up until now, I have managed to control my revolt against the massacre perpetrated against our 22 men from the foremost elite military unit, whose training requires no less than three and a half years of to be a Navy SEAL in addition to another two years of training and deployments to even be considered to SEAL Team Six. THIS is a team trained to target the planners of terror attacks. These are our men who actually are saving countless lives of potential victims. SEAL Team Six are saviors in the face of...

Here and in Europe, the financial meltdown exposes the hollowness of our elites. We are witnessing a widespread crisis of faith in our progressive guardians of the last 30 years. These are the blue-chip, university-certified elite, employed by universities, government, and big-money private foundations and financial-services companies. The best recent examples are sorts like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Robert Rubin, Steven Chu, and Timothy Geithner. Politicians like John Kerry, John Edwards, and Al Gore all share certain common characteristics of this Western technocracy: proper legal or academic credentials, ample service in elected or appointed government office,...

China’s own system is jammed with rotten debt held in off-balance sheet state enterprises. Its countryside is littered with eerie, empty ghost towns. And Moody’s Investors Service says last month that China’s local debt was understated by hundreds of billions of dollars. Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/08/07/chinas-debt-problem-worse-than-portugal-1014895568/#ixzz1UTHEy1aW

To anyone familiar with Muslim doctrine, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo's actions—from refusing to deploy to Afghanistan lest he kill fellow Muslims, to plotting a terror attack to kill fellow Americans—make perfect sense and accord especially well with Islam's dichotomous doctrine of wala wa bara, often translated as "loyalty and enmity." Where there is loyalty for Muslims, disloyalty for non-Muslims is never far away Built atop numerous Koran verses and backed by Sharia, wala requires Muslims to be loyal to fellow Muslims, and explains why Abdo refused to deploy to Muslin nations. While loyalty may appear admirable, its flipside, bara, requires...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two senators and former presidential candidates say Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating speaks to the need for more bipartisan compromise — but they also say the blame lay with the other party.

Polls indicating that the Republican Party is moving further to the right are leaving a large faction of moderate Republicans feeling disenchanted with the party’s conservative drift, reports The Boston Globe. In 2010, some of the GOP’s most outspoken leaders helped propel Republican candidates into power in the House. The tea party movement was influential in securing this takeover. But Gallup poll findings to be released Friday indicate that the GOP’s conservative shift is isolating its moderate wing, the Globe reported. Self-described moderates made up almost one-third of the Republican Party just 10 years ago. Now, that fraction has dropped...

Rather than raising the debt limit, Congress should recognize the federal government has reached debt saturation and therefore stop incurring new debt! Federal revenues for 2012 likely will amount to about $2.2 trillion, an amount roughly equal to the 2004 federal budget. To balance the 2012 budget, Congress simply needs to adopt 2004 spending levels. Was the federal government really too small just 8 years ago? But Washington has a serious spending addiction-- and in spite of all the talk about spending cuts, there are none contained in today’s legislation. According to the non-partisan CATO Institute, this bill merely commits...

House to vote on debt ceiling Bill 6:15pm-6:30pm EDT

China’s ongoing difficulties with the protection of intellectual property took a bizarre turn last week, as international news sources discovered a major distributor of fake Apple products. While knock-off electronics being sold in China is hardly news, what makes this incident unique is the way in which the fraud artists went about selling them: they created an entire imitation Apple Store. The Property Rights Alliance has detailed China’s ongoing problems in our annual Intellectual Property Rights Index. The fake Apple store included the signature logo, décor, and uniforms for employees. Indeed, even many employees of the business thought that they...

White House operative heading 'birther' smear campaign? Former Fannie Mae chief allegedly manages 100-strong attack team from Pennsylvania Ave NEW YORK – A top Democrat, apparently operating with the full approval and cooperation of the president, has been directing a team of up to 100 who are paid to publish disinformation on a wide variety of websites to discredit "birthers," according to anti-Obama researchers. The radical supporters of the president, known as Obama robots, or "OBOTs" for short, have confirmed their White House-appointed ring leader is Democratic Party operative James A. Johnson, the former chairman of Fannie Mae. Initially, the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and a startling number of Republican senators lauded a bipartisan deficit-reduction plan Tuesday that includes $1 trillion in higher taxes, raising hopes of a last-minute compromise to repair the nation's finances while averting a government default. Wall Street saluted as well. Obama said he hoped congressional leaders would "start talking turkey" as soon as Wednesday along the lines of the Senate "Gang of Six" proposal, which quickly overshadowed a no-tax-increase alternative that conservatives spent Tuesday pushing toward an evening vote in the House. .....

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), a leading conservative on Capitol Hill, tells National Review Online that Senate GOP brass have bungled the debt-limit negotiations. Republican senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, is part of the problem, DeMint says. Instead of enabling conservatives to propose their solutions early on, McConnell made them wait until the Biden debt-reduction talks collapsed, leaving little time to rally behind counterproposals. DeMint wishes that McConnell had encouraged conservatives to engage the public months ago. As Republicans sat on their hands, the chances for the best possible outcome decreased, DeMint feels. “McConnell was convinced that...

Kincaid Conference: Traitors, Spies and Terrorists Exposed; Eric Holder Resign NOW! Cliff Kincaid of America’s Survival sponsored another incredible forum, June 28, 2011, at the National Press Club. The forum discussed communists, terrorists and Cuban agents of influence working within our borders, and demanded the removal of Attorney General Eric Holder. Kincaid’s panel fell short of calling Holder an outright traitor, but conference attendees would have a difficult time concluding otherwise, given the wealth of detail presented on Holder’s assistance to convicted terrorists both within our jails and in other countries beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. As usual,...

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. The radical Marxist-progressives (communists) took control of the democrat party some time ago. They’ve only become more emboldened with the election of Barack Obama, who was raised as a communist from birth. With their new found leader, Barack Obama, the Socialist Party of America felt secure enough to announce the names of 70 democrats in Congress that belong to their caucus. This was recently posted on Scribd.com:

John McCain has found a new talking point: the growing division within the Republican Party over the nation’s military forays abroad. He referred again to the split up in a panel on Afghanistan yesterday in Washington at the Institute for the Study of War, just a week after telling ABC’s Christiane Amanpour that “there’s always been an isolationist strain in the Republican Party, that Pat Buchanan wing.” But yesterday he introduced a few new terms. Now the tension within the party is between “the Eisenhower Republicans and the Taft Republicans, the internationalists and the isolationists.” Forget that Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell...

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are working together to expand the U.S.' role in the Arab Spring, according to The Washington Post. Kerry and McCain traveled to Egypt last weekend with eight Fortune 500 executives to explore how the U.S. can expand economic investment in that country after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. They envision similar plans across the Middle East in the aftermath of the Middle East revolts that would be similar to the U.S.' “Marshall Plan,” in which the U.S. invested billions of dollars in war-torn European nations after World War II.

Cairo (CNN) -- U.S. Sens. John McCain and John Kerry focused on the U.S. and Egyptian economies during a trip to Egypt Saturday and Sunday. Their stop in Cairo was part of a broader trip to promote U.S. economic ties in the region. "As America continues to struggle with its economic recovery, we face no more urgent priority than to expand our trade and investment in the world," McCain said in a Sunday statement. (snip) McCain reiterated, in a speech at the plant, America's willingness to provide Egypt with political and financial assistance during the country's transitional phase. "The American...

During the Spanish Civil War and, later, during World War II, there was a great deal of talk about fifth columnists. It was a reference to traitors, to those people in one's own country who provided propaganda or even more overt assistance to the enemy. It does not, but might just as well, refer to the columnists for the New York Times. I have no idea why the term has been retired. In the days of the big war, there were only a minority of German, Italian and Japanese-Americans, who were disloyal to the U.S., whereas today, motion picture and...

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Thursday the survival of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's regime could spell the end of NATO. “Logically you can exact that if he [Gadhafi] outlasts NATO, the Arab spring is over,” said Graham. "…He will take it out on his people, I think it will affect the price of oil and would be the end of NATO because NATO taking on Gadhafi and losing -- its going to be very hard for that organization to go off to another war and be taken seriously.” Speaking on the Senate floor, Graham and...

On Sunday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) had a stark message for the GOP candidates on ABC's This Week: "We cannot move into [becoming] an isolationist party. We cannot repeat the lessons of the 1930's when the United States stood by while bad things happened in the world." Senator McCain is correct that American's should not withdraw from the world in response to the active internationalism of recent years. Fortunately, conservatives do not need to choose between intervening everywhere and walling ourselves off from the world economically, politically, and militarily. If we look to first principles, the proper foreign policy is...

Listen to the pledge of allegiance that runs alongside the patriotic images, and later to the one that overlays video of previous U.S. Open winners: (VIDEO)

The term “isolationist” is much like the word “racist” in that it has become almost useless due to its overuse. For example, if the Left rightly considers Ku Klux Klan members racist—but also members of the Tea Party who merely criticize President Obama “racist”—such a glaring logical disparity cries out for a reassessment of terminology. A word that can mean anything can quickly become meaningless—and it also becomes a great rhetorical weapon in a political environment that substitutes smears for thoughtful debate. Such was the case at the Wall Street Journal last week which published an editorial entitled: “The Kucinich...

Watch it and weep HERE.