Free Republic

On The Daily Show, President Obama blamed Republicans for the IRS scandal: “You’ve got this back office, and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well, it turned out, no, Congress had passed a crummy law that didn’t give people guidance in terms of what it was they were trying to do. They did it poorly and stupidly. The truth of the matter is that there was not some big conspiracy there. They were trying to sort out these conflicting demands. You don’t want all this money pouring through non-for- profits, but you also want to make sure everybody is being...

"I think the word 'freedom' came out of my mouth because I saw it in front of me. I saw the freedom that we were looking for. And every person was sharing it, and so that word came out." - Richie Havens, Rolling Stone interview The state Supreme Court announced Thursday a four to two decision to end the "second John Doe," the coordinated secret investigation, political in nature, into the issue-advocacy activities of Wisconsin conservatives. July 16, 2015, should be commemorated in Wisconsin as holiday celebrating the return of the First Amendment. It is a long-established practice of so-called...

As we all remember, the media completely freaked out after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in favor of free speech. Taking aim primarily at the right-leaning Koch Brothers, the media posed as defenders of democracy against the corrupting influence of outside money in politics. As usual, the facts prove that the media are big fat liars. Although legions of left-wing corporations like NBC News, Politico, MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, The Washington Post, LA Times, NPR, PBS, Univision, Comedy Central, MTV, HBO, and ESPN spend billions of dollars pushing a political agenda 24/7, the left-wing media want a...

Wednesday on “The Stephanie Miller Show,” former President Jimmy Carter said because of the “stupid” Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, America has become a “plutocracy.” Carter said, “The basic structure of our moral values of the framework of our democracy has gone down the drain in the last twenty years or so and it’s now become pretty much a plutocracy where money determines who will be the Democratic and Republican nominees. Money determines who will win election for Congress or for the U.S. Senate or for the governorship And the massive infusion of money that has come...

Welcome to the age of vanity politics and campaigns-for-hire. What would our founders make of this nightmare? Four qualities have distinguished republican government from ancient Athens forward: the sovereignty of the people; a sense of the common good; government dedicated to the commonwealth; and resistance to corruption. Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt. From Plato and Aristotle forward, corruption was meant to describe actions and decisions that put a narrow, special, or personal interest ahead of the interest of the public or commonwealth. Corruption did not have to stoop to...

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Citizens United chief David Bossie says the Fox News poll released on Wednesday reinforces results his organization obtained in a survey of its own. The Fox poll shows Donald Trump in second place among 2016 Republican presidential contenders, and Bossie calls that a clear sign that “the conservative movement that makes up the Republican party voter base is desperately looking for leadership.” The stunning new Fox News poll shows Jeb Bush in the lead with the support of 15 percent of likely Republican primary voters, but Trump is right behind him in second...

And you thought Sidney Blumenthal was shady. Few people have heard of Cody Shearer, the unsanctioned diplomat, private eye, and Clinton flunky whose name surfaced in connection with the so-called intelligence reports Sidney Blumenthal was channeling to Hillary Clinton during her time at the State Department. But this shadowy fixture of the Clinton machine was everywhere in the 1990s — including war-torn Bosnia, where he became the subject of a State Department investigation after he represented himself as an agent of the U.S. government and took cash from a genocidal warlord. Now evidence suggests Shearer, working with his partner Blumenthal,...

Unbelievable: SHADY Nigerian official gave MILLIONS to Clinton Foundation while Hillary COVERED for BOKO HARAM The Hillary scandals are getting so bad that it really does seem like we’re making them up, but we’re not. The latest is an attempt to solve the mystery behind why the government was so late to designating Boko Haram a “terrorist organization.” Unbelievably, it might have to do with a million dollar donor to the Clinton Foundation and his possible terrorist ties: A conservative group is suing the State Department in an effort to find out whether the agency’s refusal to place Boko Haram...

At least one small slice of the American public looks forward to the non-stop, sleazy political advertisements set to inundate viewers during the 2016 elections: media executives and their investors. Peter Liguori, the chief executive of Tribune Company, said earlier this month that the next presidential campaign presents “enormous opportunity” for advertising sales. Speaking at a conference hosted by J.P. Morgan Chase, Liguori, whose company owns television stations, referenced Super PAC spending as a key factor for why he thinks Tribune Co. political advertising revenue will rocket from $115 million in 2012 to about $200 million for the 2016 campaign...

Fifty years ago, African-Americans were denied the right to vote. Now the vast majority of Americans are being denied the rightful value of their vote.In November 1963, Evelyn Butts, a seamstress and mother of three from Norfolk, Virginia,
filed the first lawsuit in federal court challenging her state’s $1.50 poll tax. Annie Harper, a retired domestic worker from Fairfax County, filed a companion suit five months later. In March 1966, the Supreme Court overruled two previous decisions and overturned Virginia’s poll tax, stating that economic status could not be an obstacle to casting a ballot. “Fee payments or wealth, like race,...

According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton told a group of her fundraisers that she will have a litmus test for her nominees to the Supreme Court (if she should win the presidency): they will have to agree with her that the 2010 Citizens United ruling must be overturned.  In that ruling the Supreme Court held that corporations have First Amendment rights to engage in political speech and to spend money on such speech.  In making her pledge, Mrs. Clinton follows Bernie Sanders, who is also running for president.If Republican critics of Mrs. Clinton wanted to be demagogues about it,...

With each election come innovations in ways that the very rich donate and the candidates collect and spend increasingly large amounts of money on campaigns. And with each decision on campaign financing the current Supreme Court’s conservative majority, with Chief Justice John Roberts in the lead, removes some restrictions on money in politics. We are now at the point where, practically speaking, there are no limits on how much money an individual, a corporation, or a labor union can give to a candidate for federal office (though the unions can hardly compete). Today a presidential candidate has to have two...

When I return to Washington for my arraignment in federal court this week, it will be by car, not gyrocopter. My flying days are over, perhaps forever. Accepting responsibility for my actions means I accept their consequences, which I always took seriously. As my freedom rests in the court’s hands, my hope is that Americans will understand why I took the risk to deliver them a message: We the people must pay attention to democracy. Everyone is entitled to an opinion about my flight over the Mall last month, but I did not commit this peaceful protest thoughtlessly. The most...

Congressional Democrats are pressuring President Barack Obama's FCC to require super PACs and other secretive groups that buy political advertisements to disclose their major funders in those ads. Along with consumer advocates and a former FCC commissioner, some Democrats contend that the agency doesn't need congressional authorization to force super PAC donors to reveal their identities. But it's unclear whether the agency's top dog will have the appetite to act in the face of stiff Republican opposition. Last week, House Democrats introduced the Keeping Our Campaigns Honest (KOCH) act, a not-so-subtle jab at the billionaire Koch brothers, whose political network...

The IRS documents released by the government watchdog group on April 9 revealed that the senator, along with Senator Carl Levin, pressured the agency to go after political nonprofits – which turned out to be overwhelmingly conservative non-profits.. A May 1, 2013, email exchange between Lois Lerner and other top IRS staffers revealed that 11 days prior to Lerner’s admission in a ABA meeting that the IRS had “inappropriately” targeted conservative groups, she met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen....

WASHINGTON (WJLA) -- A small helicopter has landed on the Capitol's West Front in D.C. and the pilot was taken into custody. The Capitol building and the White House are currently under lockdown. More details to come...

Every-time some schmuck seminar caller calls into a conservative talk show whining about "Citizens United" and whines about how ' Businesses and Corporations are not "people" and shouldn't be able to contribute to political campaigns.' I really want to tell the moron that neither are Unions by their twisted criteria and that if they want to remove that right of Businesses to have a say in politics they should also remove the rights unions have in political contributions as well.

Ted Cruz backers have ushered in a new era for super PACs. Supporters of the Texas Republican presidential candidate made a bombshell announcement this week — that a network of four affiliated super PACs will have raised an eye-popping $31 million by the end of the week. The disclosure, coming within weeks of Cruz launching his campaign for president, has sent deep ripples through the political fundraising world. The idea of not one, but multiple, affiliated super PACs ostensibly working together to haul in donations for the same presidential candidate is unprecedented, campaign finance experts say. Veteran fundraisers point out...

Hillary’s ride to 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue just got bumpier. A judge on Friday ordered the State Department to turn over passenger manifests to Citizens United as a result of a FOIA request that State had ignored. The quick ruling appears to show that judges patience for stonewalling by the Obama administration has reached it’s limit and they no longer feel like giving them the benefit of a doubt. Those manifests could bury Hillary 2016 before it even starts. There seems to be a connection between donors to the Clinton Foundation and contracts from foreign countries receiving favorable treatment from the...

A federal judge on Friday ruled on behalf of Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, in its lawsuit against the State Department for documents related to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure there. Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the State Department to produce passenger manifests from 47 overseas trips that Mrs. Clinton made as secretary of state. Citizens United requested the manifests last July through a Freedom of Information Act Request.