Free Republic

A group of veteran security experts and former White House officials has been selected to conduct a full review of U.S. surveillance programs and other secret government efforts disclosed over recent months, ABC News has learned. The recent acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell, will be among what President Obama called a “high-level group of outside experts” scrutinizing the controversial programs. Joining Morell on the panel will be former White House officials Richard Clarke, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire. An announcement is expected Thursday, a source with knowledge of the matter told ABC News’ Jon Karl....

If the apple supposedly doesn’t fall far from the tree, Trayvon Martin’s father Tracy has been pruning his tree of his past to make sure his son’s image isn’t tarnished by it. Photos have emerged of Tracy Martin after his son’s death in which there is a tattoo on the side of his neck with an undefinable word; a later photo shows that tattoo was erased, replaced by a tattoo with two hands clasped in prayer. Other photos show Martin alternatively posing with a group that brandished the Crips gang finger signs or stood with a different group in front...

New evidence reveals the Obama administration’s version of the events that took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was based on a tissue of lies. The Weekly Standard’s Steven Hayes has obtained a timeline and a series of emails revealing the self-serving efforts made by administration officials, who heavily edited CIA talking points about the attack that cost four Americans, including ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, their lives. Also revealed is who made the changes and why they made them. The revelations are part of a report published by the five Republican Committee chairmen that has been largely dismissed...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

Islamofascism: To hear the president and his media stenographers, Egypt´s new leader is a "practical" guy who´s surprisingly Westernized. He loves our movies and even the "ERA." Such positive reviews provide Mohammed Morsi a fig leaf of secularism and legitimacy. But they cannot hide his dark Islamist heart. Time magazine does its best, however, in an "exclusive interview" with Morsi. It lets him filibuster, uninterrupted, about his alleged support for America´s once-proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women, claiming that´s what his Muslim Brotherhood party stands for, too. Sharing more details from the interview on MSNBC,

PHOENIX—Two men have been sentenced to several years behind bars for their roles in a gun smuggling ring that was part of the U.S. government's Operation Fast and Furious. The U.S. Justice Department says Jacob Anthony Montelongo was sentenced Monday in Phoenix to nearly 3 1/2 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and dealing guns without a license. Sean Christopher Steward received a nine-year sentence for conspiracy and lying. During the Fast and Furious operation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents hoped to track illegally obtained weapons to high-level arms traffickers, but authorities lost track...

WASHINGTON—A House panel said Wednesday it believes federal courts have the authority to decide a dispute in which Attorney General Eric Holder is refusing to provide Congress with Justice Department documents about a botched criminal investigation into gun-trafficking on the Southwest border. In a 65-page filing about Operation Fast and Furious, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said federal courts have routinely reviewed the validity of congressional inquiries. The lawyers for the House said Holder's contention that courts cannot adjudicate political disputes would permanently shut the courthouse doors to virtually all disputes between the executive and legislative branches. In...

A report in the free newspaper Metro raised questions in Sweden about Ikea's commitment to gender equality, and the company released a statement expressing 'regret' over the issue. Ikea is under fire for deleting images of women from the Saudi version of its furniture catalogue. Pictured are the Swedish, left, and Saudi, right, versions of the Ikea catalogue. STOCKHOLM (AP) — Ikea is being criticized for deleting images of women from the Saudi version of its furniture catalogue, a move the company says it regrets. Comparing the Swedish and Saudi versions of the catalogue, free newspaper Metro on Monday showed...

At 7 p.m. on Sunday, Univision says it’ll air a blockbuster investigation detailing the impact of the deeply flawed gunrunning investigation, which operated between Oct. 2009 and January 2011. The Spanish-language channel says the “Aqui y Ahora” program will expose the true deadly toll of a covert program where US officials allowed over 2,000 high-powered rifles to “walk” into the hands of violent Mexican cartels. Expecting American interest, Univision will caption the program in English.

Scandal: The report our attorney general used to justify withholding evidence of who was responsible for the administration program that led to the deaths of two U.S. agents is out. It delivers more scapegoats than answers. The release by the Department of Justice's inspector general of a 400-page report on the administration's gun-walking operation, Fast and Furious, is no big surprise. As Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee, Fast and Furious represented a "pattern of serious failures" by various agencies. But he let the buck stop short of where it belongs...

Arizona Republican Rep. Ben Quayle told The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder gave him false testimony under oath about Operation Fast and Furious wiretap application documents during a June 7 House Judiciary Committee hearing. Quayle said the Department of Justice’s inspector general report proves that Holder lied to him while under oath during the hearing. “I saw earlier that Holder is basically doing a victory dance and that he thinks this [inspector general] report exonerates him and there was no dishonesty with Congress — that’s just a blatant lie,” Quayle said in a phone interview. “I mean, he...

Article For Immediate Release September 19, 2012 IG Report on Fast and Furious Released Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which has jurisdiction over the Justice Department, made the following comment after the Inspector General for the Justice Department released its long awaited report on Operation Fast and Furious.  Grassley first began investigating alleged gunwalking in January 2011 after whistleblowers came forward to alert Congress about gunwalking in Arizona.  The Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder initially denied gunwalking occurred. “At first glance, the Inspector General’s report reaffirms virtually everything that Congressman...

An internal Justice Department investigation into the Operation Fast and Furious scandal recommends discipline for 14 officials, but found no evidence that the department’s top leaders knew about the gun-walking aspect of the operation when it was underway. The long-awaited report from Justice’s Inspector General finds misconduct or poor judgment on the part of officials at DOJ headquarters, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives headquarters in Washington and field office in Arizona, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona. However, the investigators found Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t know about the operation until after the scandal emerged in...

“For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights, health care, Social Security, workers’ rights, and women’s rights.” — from a history of the Democratic Party, on DNC Web site. A number of readers asked about this brief (20 paragraphs or so) history of the Democratic party, especially the first sentence. It certainly appears to ignore the party’s long and troubled history with race, literally leaping from the “200 years” phrase to 1920, when the women’s suffrage amendment was enacted. The Web history mentions the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson in helping pass the 19th...

Americans are getting informed about the dangers Islamists pose to civilized societies -- stealth infiltration of Sharia (Islamic "law") into our legal/social system, "honor" killings, homicide bombings, support for terrorism... There are too many apologists for Islamist outrages amongst our university academe, primary and secondary educators, media elite, government officials, etc. But the blogsphere, activist organizations, and concerned citizens have learned about Islam, and are fighting back against political correctness gone mad (though we still have a long way to go). Thanks to the efforts of the Florida Family Association, The Learning Channel has pulled its shameless whitewash of Islam,...

March 3, 2012 Attn: Governor Deal, SOS Brian Kemp, State Atty. Gen. Sam Olens Re: Ballot fraud and criminal cover-up Dear sirs, The facts are now in, having been uncovered and disclosed by AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio at his March 1 press conference, and they speak to criminal activity I have been warning you about since before any of you took office. I am but one man in a State of millions but this man will not stop until justice prevails. Your minions, Judges Michael Malihi and Cynthia Wright have now done your bidding and paved the way for the...

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.