Free Republic

Here’s a blast from the past. Remember Eason Jordan? Every conservative political blogger worth his/her salt knows and remembers who he is. Former CNN head Eason Jordan is the disgraced journalist who admitted in a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves” that he deliberately and intentionally whitewashed Saddam Hussein’s atrocities and regurgitated Hussein propaganda for a decade in exchange for access. Let me underscore that: In 2003, after the U.S.-led Coalition invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Jordan confessed that CNN had deliberately reported Baathist propaganda during the Saddam era...

President Barack Obama, hamstrung by budget cuts and a tight debt ceiling, is preparing a September jobs package with limited tools at his disposal to prime the economy and crank up employment. At a minimum, the president's plan will call on Congress to extend current payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits, spend money for new construction projects and offer incentives to businesses to hire more workers. But economists say that while that would eliminate some drag on the economy and maintain the status quo, it won't be enough to propel it to new heights.

My son LOVES the Military Channel and really loves WW2 history. It is pretty much "All Nazi All Of The Time" on there that I have noticed. I have found the distinct lack of any docs that show the evils of Mao, Stalin, and others. It's now become a joke.....and I have mentioned this to my child. WHY all 'Hitler' and no 'Stalin'? I'm SURE it has to do with who owns the channel, no doubt.

WASHINGTON — After reviewing computer files and documents seized at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, American intelligence analysts have concluded that the chief of Al Qaeda played a direct role for years in plotting terror attacks from his hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, United States officials said Thursday. The C.I.A. had Bin Laden’s compound under surveillance for months before American commandos killed him in an assault on Monday, watching and photographing residents and visitors from a rented house nearby, according to several officials briefed on the operation. -snip- With his whereabouts and activities a mystery in recent years,...

​Ah, it's been too long since we've had some good ol'-fashioned Rick Sanchez-brand inanity. On a hunch -- do we know our man or what? -- we checked the revision history of the Wikipedia page for Sanchez, the former WSVN-turned-CNN anchor who is currently unemployed after calling Jon Stewart a "bigot" and implying that Jews control the media. So this past February 7, a Wikipedia user named Rsanchez1381 changed the description of Sanchez's 1990 DUI accident, in which he struck a pedestrian outside Joe Robbie Stadium. The victim was paralyzed and died five years later. Sanchez's BAC was .15, above...

The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a Congressional inquiry. The government commission that investigated the financial crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. < snip > ..... Many of the findings have been widely described, but its synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony,...

My column today builds on Monday’s voter fraud round-up and spotlights left-wing efforts to demonize citizen election watchdogs. New developments since I filed the piece yesterday: Dingy Harry turns to election bribery. Guess who’s operating Las Vegas voting booths? Rhymes with S-E-I-U. Chicagoans are plagued by a botched vote-by-mail system. In Minnesota, charges are still rolling in from 2008 voter fraud cases. And, as I reported last night, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just undermined Arizona’s citizenship proof rules for voting — sabotaging efforts to ensure that only legal U.S. citizens vote in U.S. elections. The NYTimes and NPR...

Some background.1. The Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University has published science that was integral to the decision of the EU and the UK to immediately implement programs subsidizing the installation of green energy generation systems.2. Those subsidies amounted to approximately $50 billion U.S. dollars in 2008 alone.3. Organised crime has already moved to profit from these subsidies, which appear to lack adequate controls to prevent misuse.4. When the authorised leak of emails and documents resulted in the Climategate scandal of November 2009, it caused considerable havoc in stock market prices of green energy companies, especially when it was...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The wreckage of Wall Street's subprime mortgage machine was laid bare on Wednesday by a U.S. congressional panel that pointed the finger at Alan Greenspan for not stopping it from running out of control. The former Federal Reserve chairman -- once revered as the oracle of economic wisdom -- defended his legacy before the panel, which also heard a former Citigroup (C.N) executive say he had warned of the subprime danger. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission kicked off three days of hearings with a look at securitization of subprime mortgages, in which risky home loans were bundled...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Employees at the U.S. liberal grass-roots group ACORN who were caught on video giving tax advice to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute have been cleared of criminal wrongdoing, New York prosecutors said on Monday. The organization has been reeling since a YouTube video was disseminated last September showing ACORN workers giving advice on how to flout the law to two conservative activists who posed as a pimp and a prostitute. The U.S. Congress then voted by wide margins to prohibit the federal government from funding ACORN, and the U.S. Census Bureau ended...

Truth must trump spin by both ACORN and Obama advocates and critics for the subversive nature of ACORN and its sinister relationship with President Obama to become generally appreciated by the American people. That is essential to stop the implementation of the radical political agenda of ACORN. Showing the contemptible criminal tendencies of some ACORN employees was nice, but obviously did not suffice. It will be small solace for ACORN critics if ACORN is de-funded and dissolved, but its radical political agenda is implemented. That would be winning a battle, but losing the war. In October 2008 The New York...

Panel Absolves Climate Scientist By JOHN M. BRODER WASHINGTON — An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behavior undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said Wednesday. The scientist, Dr. Michael E. Mann, has been at the center of a roiling dispute arising from the unauthorized release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in England, home to one of the world’s premier climate research units. While the...

Pentagon Whitewash [Bill Bennett] There are devastating and important things happening in the news. Lest we forget, though: We are still in a war against Islamic Terrorism. And it still happens in America. November is not so far away that it deserves forgetting or whitewashing: An Arab terrorist named Nidal Hasan went to a health-care center, in a fort — at an Army base — in Texas, and opened fire killing 14 people while he shouted "Allahu Akbar." But you would not know this if you read the Pentagon Report on the massacre released Friday. Titled, "Protecting the Force: Lessons...

There are two basic problems with the grotesque non-report on the Islamist- terror massacre at Fort Hood (released by the Defense Department yesterday): * It's not about what happened at Fort Hood. * It avoids entirely the issue of why it happened. Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It's so inept, it doesn't even rise to cover-up level. "Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood" never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat "the alleged perpetrator," Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter...

The Office of Congressional Ethics has closed its investigation into Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) and their relationships to the lobbying firm PMA Group, and the OCE advised against a formal House ethics investigation, the lawmakers’ offices said Friday. George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said the OCE, which reviews potential rules violations and refers investigations to the House ethics committee, informed the Washington lawmaker on Dec. 2 that it had recommended the inquiry be dismissed. “In his case, there was never anything there,” Behan said. Murtha spokesman Matt Mazonkey and Moran spokeswoman Emily...

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has a justly earned reputation this decade for voter registration fraud, embezzlement and other illegal acts. Yet according to an eagerly-awaited internal assessment released yesterday, the radical nationwide nonprofit network's main, if not sole, problem is inadequate employee training and oversight. The audit, supervised by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, had been prompted by employees of ACORN offices in different cities caught in a video sting this summer giving advice on how to hide assets and falsify loan documents. The New Orleans-based "anti-poverty" organization and its defenders see vindication....

The authors of these research papers have been personally attacked by name and by innuendo, being called "deniers" and so forth. This is how The Universe of Lies operates. This is the left. Wherever you find it, Marxists, socialists, communists, liberals, progressives, this is how they do everything. I want you to think about something, ladies and gentlemen, as we go to the break. Let's take a walk down Tobacco Road, shall we? Another teachable moment. You remember Big Tobacco, don't you? What was it about Big Tobacco that got Big Tobacco in so much trouble with the leftists? Didn't...

WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist. But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., started having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia. The Associated Press, quoted federal law enforcement...

On Friday night’s Hardball, guest host Lawrence O’Donnell enthusiastically promoted HBO’s new, glowing Ted Kennedy documentary. He began by declaring "There‘s so much ground to cover. We don‘t have enough time for this. And I want to show the people out there, people under 60, who don‘t know the early Ted Kennedy, don‘t remember the early Ted Kennedy, I want to show what you have got in this movie." But O’Donnell’s interview completely left out the biggest scandal of "the early Ted Kennedy" – the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. This seemed especially odd as O’Donnell recounted with...

Stalin-era files raided By Charles Clover in Moscow Published: December 26 2008 19:36 | Last updated: December 26 2008 19:36 One hundred thousand witnesses to the terror of Joseph Stalin’s rule are stored on 12 computer hard disks compiled by Memorial, a Russian human rights group based in St Petersburg. Several terabytes of data include thousands of hours of audio histories, digital versions of faded photographs, video evidence of mass graves. With a few computer keystrokes, one could retrieve a faded denunciation written by a son against a father, or hear a ghostly voice reciting a forced confession or naming...

The inquiry into whether President-elect Barack Obama's staff had any inappropriate contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was bound to meet its pre-conceived conclusion. President-Elect Barack Obama's inquiry into "inappropriate contacts" between his staff and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich over his vacated U.S. Senate seat has the appearance of a closed loop -- the conclusion came before the inquiry. The conclusion was: there were no inappropriate contacts. The inquiry found: Imagine, no inappropriate contacts. The inquiry began on Dec. 11 and ended Dec. 15. That's right, it took all of four days. The Obama transition staff never explained what "inappropriate...

President-elect Obama's office announced Monday afternoon that he is deferring his report about contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich until next week, at the request of federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In a statement, Transition Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the review confirms that Obama had no contact with Blagojevich or his staff and that Obama's staff had no "inappropriate discussions" with the governor or his aides on selecting Obama's successor in the U.S. Senate. Obama had said Thursday: "What I want to do is to gather all the facts about any staff contacts that I might — may have —...

Chicago IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why. Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?” Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant...

State whistleblowers tried to curtail greedy lending—and were thwarted by the Bush Administration and the financial industry....

Stalin's mass murders were 'entirely rational' says new Russian textbook praising tyrant By Will Stewart Last updated at 1:10 AM on 03rd September 2008 Comments (0) Add to My Stories Ruthless: 20 million died as a result of Stalin's actions Stalin acted ‘entirely rationally’ in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a controversial new Russian teaching manual claims. Fifty-five years after the Soviet dictator died, the latest guide for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young said he did what he did to ensure the country’s modernisation. The manual, titled A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will...

There is so much evidence of Hillary Clinton’s corruption, you’d think even a reporter for a mainstream news outlet would have to stumble over enough to write or talk about it. But ever since her husband popped up on the national scene, the media has downplayed every scandal. Now, a new book on the Democratic presidential frontrunner examines why Hillary became a media darling before she even set foot in the White House. Media Research Center President Brent Bozell’s “Whitewash” details the media’s efforts to protect the Clintons again and again. The White House travel office mess, “Filegate” and so...

Americans need and deserve the whole Hillary story. From the moment Hillary Clinton walked onto the national stage, the media hailed her as a woman on the verge of history, a feminist trailblazer, a pioneer of women's liberation, like a female Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in Guccis. If her husband was elected president, she would be the first First Lady to have an "independent" career of her own. The many liberals and feminists now in the press corps could visualize one of their own as a White House spouse, chafing at the demand to glue on a plastic...

On This Day In History July 18, 1969: Incident on Chappaquiddick Island Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours. On the evening of July 18, 1969, while most Americans were home watching television reports on the progress of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, Kennedy and his cousin Joe Gargan were hosting a cookout and party...

Tony Snow is about to appear live on FOX & Friends on FOX News. The subject is Bush's push for immigration "reform".

Just saw this on National live Japanese TV a few minutes ago. Our mouths dropped open in partial disbelief, but also with a cynical sense of "well, there they go again".The Japanese Government announced tonight that they are instructing all Japanese textbook publishing companies who produce history books for school children, to specifically take out an reference to "Japanese Imperial Army forcing Okinawa civilians to commit mass suicide during the Okinawa Campaign". This, however, is a historic truth, and well documented by the American military forces and Japanese/Okinawan survivors and eyewitnesses. It is history. But now the current Japanese...

In 1932-33, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty reported from the Soviet Union that there was no Communist-induced famine in the Ukraine, indeed, that no one was dying of starvation there. In fact, between 4 and 7 million Ukrainians were starved to death by Stalin's regime. Though Duranty's name has since been synonymous with Westerners who hid the evil committed by enemies of the West and enemies of liberty, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his false reporting. An unwillingness to identify evil and a desire to hurt those who do confront it were not confined to Western fellow travelers...

The FBI is missing nearly a quarter of its files relating to investigations of recent leaks of classified information, according to a court filing the bureau made last week....

WASHINGTON – After 33 years of secrecy, the U.S. State Department has finally declassified a document admitting it knew the late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, plotted and supervised the murders of two U.S. diplomats in Sudan in 1973, a cover-up first exposed by WND in January 2001. The document, released earlier this year, with no fanfare, makes it clear the Khartoum operation "was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval" of Arafat, a frequent visitor to the White House throughout the 1990s who died in 2004. In the attack March 1, 1973,...

Five days after an elderly woman was killed in a gun battle that left three officers wounded, Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington said Sunday night his department will review its policy on "no knock" warrants and its use of confidential informants. Speaking for the first time since the Tuesday night shooting death of Kathryn Johnston at her home in northwest Atlanta, Pennington said his office "will turn over every stone to make sure we get to the reason why this tragic incident happened." Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington says the policy on 'no knock' warrants will be reviewed. Pennington provided...

LONDON (Reuters) - The Gay Police Association (GPA) has been reprimanded for an ad which implied Christians were responsible for a huge rise in violent attacks on homosexuals. The advert, placed in The Independent newspaper under the banner “in the name of the father” showed a Bible and a pool of blood. It was a one-off, used to back up the GPA’s claim that the association had recorded a 74 percent increase in homophobic incidents, where the sole or primary motivating factor was the religious belief of the perpetrator..... "The truth behind this rise in attacks is buried in the...

In all the hollering Bill Clinton started when he showed his roughneck followers how to fight dirty in his interview with Chris Wallace, there has been some conspicuous trifling with the facts by FOBs, friends of Bill, including one from his best friend — his wife — who already has a campaign chair for her presidential campaign when she hasn't even announced she is actually running. Look at a couple quotes, and you decide.

Under growing pressure from Democrats and aides to former President Bill Clinton, ABC is re-evaluating and in some cases re-editing crucial scenes in its new mini-series “The Path to 9/11” to soften its portrait of the Clinton administration’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, according to people involved in the project. Among the changes, ABC is altering one scene in which an actor playing Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, abruptly hangs up on a C.I.A. officer during a critical moment in a military operation, according to Thomas H. Kean, a consultant on the ABC project and co-chairman of...

The Belgian authorities have destroyed archives and records relating to the persecution and deportation of Jews in Belgium in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of this happened as recently as the late 1990s. This was revealed during hearings in the Belgian Senate last Spring. Though the Senate report dates from 4 May the Belgian press has not yet mentioned the affair. The Senate report says that “documents about the period 1930-1950 have been destroyed on a massive scale.” The systematic destructions of the records of police and judiciary from the 1930s and ’40s happened chiefly in Brussels and Wallonia, the...

About a month or so ago, I sent a facsimile to the office of the Senate Ethics Committee. This response was dated July 31, but must have been at my box within the last several days. The last time I had checked it was about five days ago. I tried to present some evidence regarding Hillary's role in the campaign finance fraud of 2000 that is the subject of our film, INDICTING HILLARY. I expressed the willingness of the man with all the knowledge and documents ---- THE DONOR, PETER PAUL ---- to come before the committee and testify. The...

It ran on the 12th of August in mid-afternoon. The program detailed the history of the Ku Klux Klan in every respect but one. This one manipulation tells you the purpose of those running the History Channel, and clearly proves the oft-made charge that said location on the television spectrum is when needed nothing more than a propaganda tool for the modern Democrat Party of America. When it is repeated, watch Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History with the following point in mind. During the first half listen for the political affiliations of Klan members in the North. In Indiana,...

RICHLAND -- Those who knew Naveed Haq said Saturday that to them he was an enigma, a puzzle that they wish they could have solved before his deadly rampage in a Seattle Jewish center. Stunned and saddened by the news, some of Haq's acquaintances recounted many of what they saw as the contradictions of his life. (snip) Yet Haq was frustrated at his lack of friends and female companionship.He told friends he felt alienated from his own family, in part because his career had disappointed his father and also because he had disavowed Islam last year, converting to Christianity. Haq...

Breaking news on the local news program. More later.

SAN FRANCISCO - University of California President Robert Dynes gets to keep his job, butthe Board of Regents pledged Thursday to watch him more closely after outrage about millions of dollars in overpayments to top administrators that prompted calls for his resignation. The regents met in closed session for much of Thursday morning, discussing the situation with Dynes, before announcing their decision to allow him to stay. They pledged to increase their oversight of UC pay practices and policies. Dynes has been under fire since last fall, when reports emerged saying that UC administrators withheld information from regents and the...

Officers Claim Brass Interfered in Investigation of Rep. Kennedy Incident Thursday, May 4; 4:16 pm By John McArdle, Roll Call Staff Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.).According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy’s car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

Officers Claim Brass Interfered in Investigation of Rep. Kennedy Incident... Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.). According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy's car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade at First and C streets Southeast.

High-ranking members of Bill Clinton's national security team have joined together to defeat Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon's House re-election bid this November - in what looks like retaliation for Weldon's efforts in exposing the Clinton administration's Able Danger scandal. In June 2005, Weldon went public with news that Clinton administration lawyers prevented the Defense Intelligence Agency's Able Danger group from blowing the whistle on two al-Qaida terrorists who would later pilot the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center. Though the media downplayed Weldon's bombshell, a number of high ranking Clinton officials apparently haven't forgotten - and they're pouring money...

Proving that he’s just as adept at stuffing an election candidate’s coffers as he is at stuffing his own socks, Sandy Berger hosted an "almost secret" Washington fund-raiser for a recently retired three-star vice admiral last night. Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr, as the Village People would say, is "In the Navy". And when you want to take an Able Danger Congressman Curt Weldon down, what better way than to send in the Navy? Berger, dubbed "Sandy Burglar" by radio meister Rush Limbaugh, gained notoriety for trying to stuff classified documents into his socks and other attire. The man, who...

Thursday, March 30, 2006 No rave crackdown coming Teen rules wouldn't have stopped tragedy, officials say By ANGELA GALLOWAY AND D. PARVAZ P-I REPORTERS Faced with the senselessness of last week's slaughter of six young people hours after an all-night, all-ages dance party, many parents want not only answers -- but also accountability. That has some in Seattle's "rave" scene worried about a government crackdown reminiscent of the controversial and now defunct "Teen Dance Ordinance." But it's more likely that the only new restrictions on raves here will be self-imposed -- with at least two events scheduled for this weekend...

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court. I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit....