Free Republic

On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a one-paragraph order in Little Sisters of the Poor et al v. Sebeluis et al. It told the Sisters that for the case to continue with no enforcement of the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, they need only to inform the government in writing "that they are non-profit organizations that hold themselves out as religious and have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services." That's easy, because that's what they are, and that's their position. As a result, the government has been "enjoined from enforcing against the applicants the challenged provisions of the...

The Big Conversation The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza has put a different frame on the Wendy Davis storyline from this week — focusing less on the immediate implications of Trailergate and more on what this means for Davis' attempts to position herself for elections to come. Cillizza's main point is that Davis had to run this year for governor in order to take advantage of the national prominence afforded her from last summer's filibuster. Running this year makes sure she is in the mix in the next couple of election cycles, when Democrats are hoping to run stronger because of...

Driving the Republican jihad was a claim, first reported in October 2012 by Fox News, that CIA personnel had wanted to respond more quickly to the Benghazi attack but were ordered to "stand down," perhaps by political higher-ups. Although this claim was promptly rebutted by CIA officials, it was repeated by Fox at least 85 times, according to a review by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters. This barrage fueled Republican charges that the Democrats were engaging in a cover-up.

What is good for the goose isn’t good for the gander. Helena Andrews at the Washington Post has this reckless column about Andrew Breitbart and Shirley Sherrod.In it, Andrews falsely states that Breitbart “published a doctored video” of Sherrod’s racist confession at an NAACP convention. In fact, Breitbart published all that had been given to him, including the portion of the video where Sherrod is redeemed by confessing that she should not have been making decisions on the basis of race. Breitbart also published the portion where Sherrod admits making adverse decisions toward a white farmer because of his...

The Washington Post wants you to know First Lady Michelle Obama is “more than meets the eye.” To celebrate Mrs. Obama’s upcoming 50th birthday, the publication printed a glowing feature about her in its Express newspaper. The piece lists a few “Myths” about the First Lady, debunking each one with important “explanations.” Here’s just a couple: Myth: She is a food tyrant of Bloombergian intolerance. “Her focus on the nation’s eating habits has led to complaints that she wants to deprive Americans of dessert. But Obama repeatedly expresses her belief in moderation, talks about her affection for French fries and...

The political network spearheaded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch has expanded into a far-reaching operation of unrivaled complexity, built around a maze of groups that cloaks its donors, according to an analysis of new tax returns and other documents. The filings show that the network of politically active nonprofit groups backed by the Kochs and fellow donors in the 2012 elections financially outpaced other independent groups on the right and, on its own, matched the long-established national coalition of labor unions that serves as one of the biggest sources of support for Democrats. A spokesman for Koch Industries...

Ezra Klein, an analyst, columnist and television commentator who runs The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, is making plans to leave the newspaper after failing to win support for a new website he wanted to create within the company, according to four people with knowledge of the negotiations. Mr. Klein, who quickly ascended into the ranks of the Washington media establishment with a multiplatform blend of policy nuance and number-crunching on Wonkblog, approached Katharine Weymouth, the Post’s publisher, in recent weeks, the people said. After consultation with the newspaper’s editor, Marty Baron, according to one of the people, he put forward a...

As new owner Jeff Bezos begins his tenure as the head man for the Washington Post, Wonkblog editor Ezra Klein is reportedly making plans to exit the paper after being denied funding for a pet project. Klein built a media presence on the Internet, newspapers, and TV as a "wonk" at a young age. Now, he apparently wants to expand his reach in the media with an extensive new website that he wanted the Washington Post to fund.

On the “Free For All” page in Saturday’s Washington Post devoted to letters to the editor, three locals smacked the Post for failing to note the 72nd anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks on December 7. None of the letters as printed made the point that the Post has “flooded the zone” with lots of coverage and special sections this year for the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington and then the JFK assassination. So what about the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 2011? What did that draw? No zone-flooding. No special sections. No articles in...

Happy talk, keep talking happy talk, Talk about things you'd like to do, You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream, How you gonna have a dream come true?  ---"Happy Talk" from "South Pacific." Carrie Budoff Brown was bubbling over with joy about a supposed Obamacare "surge" in her Politico article. Yes, supposedly massive new Obamacare numbers were suddenly showing up in the past few days. But what did they really mean? Fortunately for those praying for Obamacare success, Brown did not burst that joy bubble until well into the article with crucial caveats to the "surge"...

In The Washington Post, Jonathan Zimmerman, a history professor from NYU, has written an article claiming that all of America’s problems would be soloved–GET THIS–if only we would allow Barack Obama to run for a third term! He wants to amend the Constitution and abolish presidential term limits. Zimmerman writes that Obama–whose approval rating is at an all time low of 37%–would be much more effective at governing if he could stand for re-election in 2016 because then he’d be less likely to “ignore” the will of the American people. “It’s time to put that power back where it belongs,”...

The White House had to defend its rollout of the President's signature health care legislation Saturday after two scathing reports that allege missteps, miscommunication and lack of leadership sank the launch of Obamacare's online exchanges. The New York Times and the Washington Post each reported on a meeting between contractor CGI Federal and government employees at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in late August. CGI won the main contract to build the Obamacare website, and CMS, the branch of the Department of Health and Human Services that was overseeing the launch, was growing worried the site was riddled...

As the White House flails to defend President Barack Obama’s discredited pledge about keeping your old insurance even under Obamacare, it’s not just Republicans pointing out that the administration has being less than honest when explaining what it really meant. On Thursday, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker gave Obama and White House press secretary Jay Carney three out of four “Pinocchios” for blaming the insurance companies, rather than the new health care law, for the growing number of cancellation letters. On Wednesday, the Pulitzer-winning PolitiFact website gave Obama its highest ranking for dishonesty, “Pants on Fire,” for his tortured defense...

After spending much of the last few years trying to placate a growing universe of outside groups demanding complete fealty to conservative principles, the Republican establishment is showing signs of being mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore. Consider this report from Politico’s Manu Raju about a meeting of Senate Republicans on Wednesday: Extending an olive branch to GOP senators, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is privately making it clear he won’t engage in the Senate Conservatives Fund’s hardball tactics to defeat his colleagues in their primary races. At a closed-door lunch meeting of Senate Republicans Wednesday, the...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Obama administration says “Don’t believe what you’ve heard” from the following news sources On October 25, 2013, regarding the various criticisms of Obamacare, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius said:“Don’t believe what you’ve heard.”In other words, the Obama administration says we shouldn’t believe the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, Politico, the Wall St. Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes, the BBC, Huffington Post, the Nation, Mother Jones, or New Republic.

Investor Warren Buffett says he didn’t buy the Washington Post because he didn't want it to be a burden on his company or family. His Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate has purchased dozens of other newspapers since 2011. And Berkshire was the largest Washington Post Co. shareholder before the newspaper was sold to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for $250 million. But Buffett told Fortune magazine he only briefly considered buying the Post because he didn’t want to saddle Berkshire’s next CEO or his children with a metro newspaper. …

Early last year, the Erdogan government blew the cover of up to 10 Israel agents in Iran who had been meeting inside Turkey with their Mossad case officers. This story was published in The Washington Post, by David Ignatius, who has excellent connections in the US capital, Thursday, Oct. 17 – the day after a two-day conference in Geneva between six world powers with Iran on its nuclear program. A chorus of Western powers led by the US hailed the event as “substantive” and “forward-looking.” But on the quiet, the WP story was directed against Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu...

The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty is trying to help the Republicans on the front page of Friday’s paper. It's not labeled "Analysis," but "Politics Debrief." The alliance between the “agreeable” GOP and the media is getting more transparent. “What will it take to save the Republicans from the self-destructive impulses of the tea party movement? That the government shutdown was a political disaster for the party that engineered it is widely acknowledged, except by the most ardent tea partyers.” Soaking a handkerchief full of crocodile tears, Tumulty insists “very bellicose” junior conservatives will have to be quashed: And that near-unanimity...

It’s telling that a new report on the Obama administration’s dealings with journalists comes from the Committee to Protect Journalists — an organization that normally focuses on press freedoms abroad. President Obama’s White House has been so extraordinarily unfriendly toward investigative journalism — not just unfriendly, but an outright enemy — that CPJ had to look inward this time, examining the loss of freedoms of the press in our own country rather than pointing out problems in some Third World backwater. And the report, by Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, found that the administration...

As investment in alternative energy rebounded in 2011, U.S. wind and solar companies found stiff new competition — Chinese firms dominating the green industries that American officials looked to for growth. Supporting those Chinese companies was a surprising patron: the World Bank, a Washington-based development agency whose steady counsel and financing have helped China challenge U.S. economic dominance, and in this case may have cost the United States jobs. Sometimes criticized as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, the bank’s 30-year engagement in China may actually tell an opposite tale — of an institution that helped lay the foundation for...