Free Republic

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has been pushing hard to overhaul of the country's broken campaign finance system. "We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccounted money out of it, once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment," Clinton said during one of her first official speeches in Iowa last month. Clinton's campaign finance rhetoric appears to be aimed at super-PACs, the quasi-independent organizations that bolster campaigns by buying ads. But when it comes to the major funders behind her own presidential campaign, the Democratic front-runner has yet to answer questions about how...

DES MOINES — A mere 240 people live in the rural northeast Iowa town of Kensett, so when more than 300 crowded into the community center on Saturday night to hear Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, many driving 50 miles, the cellphones of Democratic leaders statewide began to buzz. Kurt Meyer, the county party chairman who organized the event, sent a text message to Troy Price, the Iowa political director for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Price called back immediately. “Objects in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear,” Mr. Meyer said he had told Mr. Price about Mr. Sanders....

WHAT THIS country needs, says Bernie Sanders, is less deodorant. The 73-year-old senator from Vermont, now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, told CNBC's John Harwood in an interview on Tuesday that because American consumers can choose from so many brands of personal-care products, kids are going to bed with empty bellies. "You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country," Sanders lamented. He didn't explain exactly howthe profusion of toiletries and athletic footwear leads to childhood hunger, but for the only self-described socialist...

Dan Joseph at our MRCTV website reports that Mother Jones dropped a little bomb on the Bernie Sanders campaign: an essay that Sanders wrote in February 1972 about the “typical” rape fantasies of men and women. In an article entitled "Man -- And Woman," published in an alternative newspaper called the Vermont Freeman, Sanders spun his theories: "A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy," wrote Sanders. "A woman on her knees. A woman tied up. A woman abused." Sanders didn't specify as to how he had gained such a deep understanding of the male psyche. In terms of...

On Saturday, Chuck C. Johnson invited his Twitter followers to send some money his way so that he could focus on his latest project: “taking out” the civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson. Johnson is a 26-year-old California man who has been described as “Twitter’s most infamous right-wing troll” (Mother Jones), a “digital Darth Vader” (Politico), “your least favorite person” (the Washington Post), and “mood slime” (the New York Times). He is best known for outing the subject at the center of the discredited Rolling Stone UVA story, publishing the home addresses of New York Times Ferguson reporters Julie Bosman and...

Mother Jones is so upset that Ted Cruz  hired a consultant who’s capable of winning elections, the magazine smeared him by invoking a Missouri-based controversy even it admits he hasn’t genuinely been linked to. The magazine waited until deep in the second paragraph to point that out. It was no surprise on Monday when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) formally announced his presidential bid. By last summer, he was making key hires for his campaign crew. And this included recruiting a controversial Missouri-based political operative named Jeff Roe, who is known for his ruthless, bare-knuckled style and who has recently been...

In the case of a man wrongfully sentenced to death, Ted Cruz once argued the criminal-justice system couldn't be trusted regarding capital punishment. In December, when a mentally ill Texas man convicted of murder was poised to be executed—and a number of prominent conservatives were calling to postpone the killing—Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declined to criticize the pending execution. "I trust the criminal-justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the accused, and to administer justice to violent criminals," Cruz declared. This was not shocking. As a politician and public officeholder, he has long supported capital punishment. While running...

In one of the dumbest articles ever to see the light of day, Mother Jones has declared that eating three meals a day is "racist." The piece, titled "Why You Should Stop Eating Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner," was written by Kiera Butler, a senior editor, and was published yesterday. How is eating food racist? Butler explains that white Europeans brought the tradition of eating three meals a day with them to the "New World." "When European settlers got to America, they also imported their meal habits," Butler writes, "a light meal—maybe cold mush and radishes—in the morning, a heavier, cooked...

... The basic charge - that O'Reilly exaggerated his record covering war - is true. It all started with this article [link at URL] by David Corn and Daniel Schulman published in Mother Jones on Thursday, in which they detailed how on many occasions over the years, O'Reilly has characterized himself as a veteran of war reporting. Among the quotes they cited are times when O'Reilly said things like "I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands," and "having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands War, I know that life-and-death...

Hugh Hewitt grills David Corn of Mother Jones on his claim that then-CBS News correspondent Bill O'Reilly exaggerated the capacity of his involvement in covering the Falklands War. DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: As Joe Walsh said, do the show, go play it straight, he’ll play fair. But you’re asking me questions you didn’t ask Bill O’Reilly. HUGH HEWITT, HOST: If you… DC: So you know, I’m given you one more… HH: Here’s Eric Engberg… DC: If you want to talk about the article or not, Hugh, because I’ve got better things to do than help you fill time on the...

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly responded again Friday to allegations made by "Mother Jones" that he lied about his coverage of the Falklands conflict in 1982. Thursday night, shortly after the allegations were published, O'Reilly came out blasting, calling David Corn, one of the authors of the piece, a "pig" in an interview with The Sun. Friday in his "Talking Points" memo, which was to be broadcast at 8 p.m. during his show, O'Reilly quoted from internal CBS memos that he says he found last night, which back his version of the coverage he provided for the network 33 years...

After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn't "half as responsible as the men who forged the nation." He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other "distortions" by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O'Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own...

Abortion supporters in the media like Mother Jones are telling pro-abortion folks to brace themselves for 2015 – and with good reason. In 2014, 73 abortion clinics closed their doors. New abortion laws enacted over the last few years, including ultrasound laws, hospital admitting privileges, and limits on how late into pregnancy abortions can occur, have shuttered clinics and saved countless lives. In addition, Republicans won 11 legislative chambers held by Democrats in 2014 – and that has abortion advocates scared of what’s to come in 2015. Mother Jones is predicting that the abortion battle will “get a lot uglier,”...

Bilderbergers, the Iraq invasion, Alex Jones—the GOP senator has routinely flirted with America's paranoid fringe.This past summer, Rand Paul, the libertarian senator from Kentucky and a potential 2016 presidential wannabe, was the GOP's It Girl. The New York Times Magazine splashed his mug on the cover and asked, "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?" It noted that Paul possessed a "supple mind" and was a "preternaturally confident speaker." Washington Post political prognosticator Chris Cillizza pronounced Paul the "most interesting voice in the GOP right now," and Politico gave him the No. 1 spot on its list of the 50 "most...

Campaigning for the Senate in 2012, former Harvard law professor cum left-wing populist Elizabeth Warren touched down in North Carolina and told voters, “The game is rigged.” She was more right than she knew. As it turns out, North Carolina’s Democratic senator was doing some of the rigging. Now, Kay Hagan’s political future may depend on how voters react to the story. Hagan’s vote for the 2009 stimulus, coupled with revelations that the legislation resulted in taxpayer funding for her family’s businesses, has emerged as an October surprise in a race hitherto marked by her unexpected resilience in a difficult...

Mother Jones does love found footage, doesn't it? The progressive mag's airing of Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comments at a fundraiser definitely hurt the former Massachusetts governor in his attempt to boot President Obama in 2012. Now Mojo is back with the vid above, which the mag must hope will discombobulate Republicans and help put the brakes on a libertarian-leaning senator whose anti-war and anti-NSA stances draw long looks from disaffected liberals and lefties."Rand Paul: Jimmy Carter was better on the budget than Ronald Reagan" is how the vid begins. It shows the Kentucky senator in a variety of settings...

It was inevitable. Rookie Michael Sam, heralded as the first openly gay player in the National Football League, was released Saturday by the St. Louis Rams, prompting the liberal blog Mother Jones to run what amounted to a photo of the player, along with a provocative, almost juvenile headline. The post, “Michael Sam, Who Is Better At Football Than You Will Ever Be At Anything, Has Been Cut By the Rams,” offered no perspective whatsoever. In fact, other than the headline, there were no words. When Sam was first drafted, it was clear that if he were to eventually be...

In his rush to flame-broil Burger King as an unpatriotic fast-food joint looking to skip out on paying its taxes to Uncle Sam, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews sought to enlist the famously pro-free market, pro-capitalism Wall Street Journal. The only problem is his claim is 100 percent Grade A baloney. "The Wall Street Journal lead editorial today came out against it.... The lead editorial today, surprisingly, attacked this tax scheme," Matthews insisted to guest David Corn of the leftist Mother Jones magazine. In point of fact, the Journal editorial board slammed not corporate "inversion" schemes but the current U.S. tax code, which...

Brat has called for slashing Social Security, Medicare, and education spending and says "rich" nations don't have to fear climate change. When tea party challenger David Brat sent Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House majority leader, to the ash heap on Tuesday night, vanquishing the incumbent by more than 10 points in the primary race, the politerati were stunned. Political journalists scrambled to answer a question: who is this guy? The political pros knew that Brat had mounted a campaign largely based on two issues: bashing Cantor on immigration (that is, excoriating the congressman, who was quite hesitant about immigration...

Ramesh and Reason’s Nick Gillespie have been going back and forth over Rand Paul’s claim (from a number of years ago) that Jimmy Carter was a more fiscally conservative president than Ronald Reagan. Mother Jones collected a series of appearances over the years in which the Kentuckian argues that Reagan’s budget performance, compared with Carter’s, is evidence Republicans don’t really mean it when they claim the mantle of fiscal conservatism. Gillespie argues that Reagan’s deficits means he wasn’t a fiscal conservative, while Ramesh argues (and Nick seems to agree to some extent) that probably a better measure is rate of increases in spending...