Free Republic

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been subjected to an intense amount of media and public scrutiny since she was named as John McCain’s vice presidential pick one week ago. Many of the attacks have come in the form of unconfirmed reports on the Internet. Among them: 1) Palin “Joined a Secessionist Political Party” The Charge: Unsubstantiated Internet reports insisted Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which critics call a secessionist political movement and supporters say is dedicated to seeking greater state control over federal lands across Alaska.The Facts: Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982....

Google it. They're really saying that garbage. I guess Jesus also promoted abortions too. These people are demented.

A year ago, the Ramsey County sheriff's office began looking closely at a group called the Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee. What it found, according to an 18-page search warrant application and affidavit, led to weekend raids on two Minneapolis homes and a temporary St. Paul office for the self-described anarchist group. According to the document, investigation learned: The self-described anarchist group — whose main goal was to "crash" the Republican National Convention," according to its Web site — traveled to or communicated with affinity groups in 67 cities to recruit members and raise money. Group members discussed the possibility...

September 2, 2008, 10:32 pm Alaska Party Official Says Palin Was Not a Member By The New York Times The chairwoman of an Alaskan political party that advocates a vote on the state’s secession from the union said Tuesday that she had been mistaken when she said Gov. Sarah Palin was a member of the group. A front-page story in The New York Times on Tuesday and articles in other news media reported that Ms. Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990’s. The information in the Times article was based on a...

ST. PAUL -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live. After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation -- "SP" -- Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix...

Journalism died in 2008, according to talk show host Sean Hannity. I beg to disagree on two counts. First, the mainstream media is dead, not the alternative media. Second, the corpse of the mainstream media is now rotting, so that its putrid emanations are obvious to everyone. Perhaps it became most obvious when the mainstream media attempted to pull a coup d'etat by brainwashing the American voter into the blind acceptance of an untested, untried, political novice, if not a political toddler, a radical, socialist, extremist who is clearly not fit on many counts to be commander in chief and...

Democrats use a fake Republican from Grant County to introduce Barack Obama You may remember Barney Smith from Fairmount, Indiana. He spoke at the Democrat National Convention Thursday night and was one of the people who introduced Barack Obama. He will be remembered for the line "I want a president who cares more about Barney Smith than they do about Smith Barney." A great well-written line that many people remember. On Thursday night in Denver, when he introduced Barack Obama, he claimed to be a "lifelong" Republican. But it looks like the Democrats lied about his affiliation, or at minimum...

In New York, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered the release of eight more grand jury transcripts from the famous 1951 spy case that led to the conviction of the husband and wife pro-Soviet spy team of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Reuters reports this story as if there is some cloud of doubt still hanging over the Rosenberg's conviction despite that their guilt is no longer debatable. Yet here is Reuters giving cover to those who stubbornly wish to cast doubt on the U.S. prosecution of the Rosenbergs. It also gives Reuters and U.S. detractors the opportunity once again...

These hagiographic pictures are displayed in Denver during the DNC featuring the One.

The Obama campaign has gone on the offensive against a multi-million dollar ad campaign by the American Issues Project, a conservative group tying the Democratic candidate to Bill Ayers, a one-time leader of the Weather Underground. This new ad from the Obama campaign asks why John McCain is "talking about the '60s" -- a direct message that he's ignoring current problems and a subtext that he's stuck in the past. And because this is a campaign finance issue, there's also action on the legal front. Obama's lawyer Robert Bauer has done what lawyers do -- dispatch letters, both to the...

The Berkeley-based nonprofit Free History Project has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a right-wing political group which used footage from one of the project’s documentaries in a new ad that tries to tie Barack Obama to 1960s-era radical William Ayers. The letter demands that all broadcasts of the American Issues Project ad, now running in Michigan and Ohio, be halted as a violation of copyright law. San Francisco attorney John Keker wrote the ad’s producers have “willfully violated the Free History Project’s intellectual property rights,” and demanded that they “immediately remove the advertisement from any television, cable network, or other...

DHP Review: Religulous Posted by Dirty Harry on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 While more entertaining and better paced, director Larry Charles‘ Religulous can’t help but remind of Morgan Spurlock’s dreadful Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?, especially at the end where both films are undone by their attempts to close on serious points the preceding 90 minutes of antics simply can’t sustain. It’s surprising Charles let this one get away from him. After all, he also directed Borat, and one of the few saving graces of that humiliation-fest was that it never lost sight of the fact that...

This is the Apocalypse of St. Bill the Stoned. Though funny, smart and often profane, Religulous doesn't want to send you out of the theater with a smile on your lips. The final moments of the film aren't laugh out loud funny, but a parade of images of death and destruction. This, Bill Maher says, is what humanity is in for if it doesn't get rid of the nuerological disorder that is religion. You probably know my bias going into this film. I believe that religion is not just irrational but anti-rational, a Bronze Age worldview that should have been...

Over the past few years, perhaps no film controversy has inspired more outrage from conservatives than the Walt Disney Company’s handling of the ambitious 2006 miniseries “The Path to 9/11.” In the wake of Michael Moore’s 2004 anti-Bush documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the 2003 CBS biopic “The Reagans,” the Disney censorship fiasco has been a frequent bone of contention on right-wing blogs, AM talk radio and other media outlets. In addition to making cuts in its ABC-TV telefilm after complaints from political forces, the company also shelved plans for a subsequent DVD release. --snip-- Now the imbroglio has been revived...

Two known Democratic supporters are outraged at their own party after being solicited to buy tickets to Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field next Thursday, CBS4 reports. The seats were distributed for free to the general public. One source directed CBS4 to an unpublicized part of the Obama campaign's Web site where Democratic supporters, reportedly with deep pockets, could buy tickets for $1,000 each. The source told CBS4 he was solicited three times to buy the tickets through the Web site. One source said it was unethical and being kept secret from the public. CBS4 was able to find...

It’s absolutely amazing how quickly a lie turns into a fact. After the Saddleback debate, McCain was accused of inventing a story about a prison guard in the Hanoi Hilton who treated him well and made the sign of the cross in the dirt. The story was instantly attributed to Solzhenitsyn, who – it was claimed – told a similar story in “The Gulag Archipelago.” Except no one bothered to check if the story actually appeared in any of Solzhenitsyn’s books. It turns out that the answer was “no.” So now we have a Left Wing web site admitting that...

A Christian publication already cleared by the Canadian Human Rights Commission on claims its reporting on issues involving homosexuality stem from "bigotry, discrimination and hate" will have to defend itself – again – from the same charges. Officials with Catholic Insight have confirmed homosexual activist Rob Wells, whose earlier allegations against the publication were rejected, has appealed to the Federal Court in Canada. "On Aug. 12, Toronto-based Catholic Insight and its editor Father Alphonse de Valk received notification that Wells had filed an appeal … with the Federal Court of Canada. Wells is requesting that the appeal be heard in...

I'd like to welcome the Obama media and supporters who are visiting FreeRepublic.com thanks to the publication by the Obama campaign of Unfit for Publication.FreeRepublic.com is the most popular conservative news analysis and activism site on the web. It is the third most popular political website overall according to Hitwise.com. Not bad considering FreeRepublic.com has no advertising budget, relies solely on donations and is not promoted in the media like the two more popular sites on Hitwise: Huffington Post and Politico.FreeRepublic.com has been around for twelve years and, along with the Drudge Report, has helped revolutionize politics on the Internet.Over...

I like to pick up old textbooks from the 1950s and 1960s at yard sales. They are less politically correct. I recently bought a set of children's encylopedias published in 1966. The entry on "communism" was so devastating that I couldn't help chuckling -- I can't imagine it being published today in a reference work. If anyone is interested, I can type in a few paragraphs from the article on communism. All of it is still true.

A Detroit Emergency Medical Technician’s union grievance hearing abruptly ended this morning because his attorney refused to stop tape recording the proceeding. The hearing was to address the firing of Detroit EMT Doug Bayer, who is suing the City of Detroit, Fire Department Commissioner Tyrone Scott, and other supervisors. Bayer accuses the department of terminating him because he spoke to the media and the Michigan State Police about what he says he knows about the alleged Manoogian Mansion party.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 Obama creates the illusion of Republicans for Obama: scrapes barrel with 2 unknown GOP discards & a NY lib with dodgy friends Democrats for McCain including many of the millions who form part of the Just Say No Deal/ PUMA/ and NoBama coalitions are providing a solid block of support for John McCain. Not to be outdone Obama today, with great media fanfare, announced his Republicans for Obama group. This is another desperate attempt to reassure Democrat super-delegates that Obama is commanding broad support across the country, especially from Republicans who Obama argues would never rally...

I wonder is there the slimmest of chance to see millions of exalted young people passionately marching for peace in Georgia… It shouldn't be too much of an effort. All they have to do is brush the dust off from the "not in our name", "no blood for oil", "war is not the answer", etc placards, paste Vladimir Putin’s and Dmitri Medvedev’s faces over Bush’s or Blair’s on the "worst ever", "mass murderer" and "real terrorist" placards and voila! ready to march for peace. Preferably in millions, preferably in Moscow, to ram the message through to Putin and Medvedev. I...

I remember back a few years seeing Free Tibet bumper stickers on progressive Saabs and hippie VWs. Tibet is still in China's clutches, Russia is busy slapping around it's former vassal states, but the world is focused on the supposed crimes of George Bush. I can understand the argument that we never should have invaded Iraq, although I think that point is now moot. I can also understand those who think war is wrong and who insist that might doesn't make right. What I can't understand is those on the left who criminalize the Iraq invasion but see nothing wrong...

AP's approach: 'Better to get it right even if we couldn't get it first' WASHINGTON - Reporters don't like being beaten on a major political story, especially by a supermarket tabloid. And being beaten up over not reporting one is even less appealing. But a sexual affair can have just two people who know the truth. Without witnesses, documents, photographs or some form of irrefutable evidence pointing to the truth, news organizations will not endanger their own integrity. That made it difficult to prove — and to print — the rumors that John Edwards had cheated on his seriously ill...

Judicial Watch Launches Investigation of Effort to Intimidate Conservatives Threat Letters by Liberal Group May Violate Ku Klux Klan Act (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it is launching an investigation into a nationwide effort by a liberal activist group to intimidate supporters of Republican and conservative causes. According the August 8 edition of The New York Times, Accountable America, a liberal group, plans to send a letter “to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions…The warning letter is...

Actually, I don't think the right has played as dirty as this. A Times article by Michael Luo this morning unveils a new netroots enterprise, Accountable America, the unabashed purpose of which is to terrify conservatives from giving campaign money to Republican causes and Republican candidates. It's actually ingenuous. You get a list of past Republican donors and send each of them one, two, many e-mails with the explicit warning that contributing to conservative campaigns may be dangerous to the donor's health. Or, as Luo puts it, "The warning letter is intended as a first step, alerting donors who might...

Nearly 10,000 of the biggest donors to Republican candidates and causes across the country will probably receive a foreboding “warning” letter in the mail next week. The letter is an opening shot across the bow from an unusual new outside political group on the left that is poised to engage in hardball tactics to prevent similar groups on the right from getting off the ground this fall. Led by Tom Matzzie, a liberal political operative who has been involved with some prominent left-wing efforts in recent years, the newly formed nonprofit group, Accountable America, is planning to confront donors to...

At least 139 to over 200 negative reviews of radical democrat/socialist Nancy Pelosi`s book,Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters have been deleted. Compare that with anyone of Ann Coulter`s books, say,Godless: The Church of Liberalism which has not been purged of about 308 negative reviews. Or The Obama Nation by Jerome R Corsi with it`s 32 negative reviews out of a total of 84. The radical left clearly cannot tolerate dissent, open forum debates and free speech. This identical tactic is used by the Youtube account holders BarackObamadotcom, the offical YT account of B.Hussein Obama. Screen shot of...

The merchant stops the little boy as he is leaving the store and asks him what he’s got in his bulging pocket. “Nothing,” the tyke says, shifting from one foot to the other and staring at the floor. “Did you walk through the candy department?” the storekeeper asks after watching the boy looking around in the candy department. “No.” “Did you pay for everything you picked up in the store today, son,” the shop owner asks. “Yes.” “Can I see what you have in your pockets?” “No.” That’s the image that flashed across my mind when I heard that Barack...

July 31, 2008 Where in the World is Obama's Missing Thesis? Ed Lasky Barack Obama wrote his senior thesis at Columbia University on Soviet nuclear disarmament. Inquiring people have sought a copy of this thesis to no avail. Columbia says it cannot be found; Barack Obama says he lost it. How likely is that a person so impressed with himself that he writes an autobiography just a few years later would "lose" his senior thesis? After all, a Presidential Library must be filled. And as Jim Geraghty at National Review and others have noted there are a lot of blank...

Well, they got her.Debra Bartoshevich, the duly elected Democratic Party delegate for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin who vowed undying loyalty to the former first lady, has been dumped by the state party and barred from attending the Democratic National Convention in Denver next month.According to the Associated Press, the state party's administrative committee has officially whacked Bartoshevich from the 92-member delegation.(snip)"No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her," Bartoshevich told a local journalist. "That's by Susan B. Anthony."

For those of you who don't keep up with the conservative blogosphere, one of the memes they've been trying to push for the past couple of weeks is this: Barack Obama may give a good prepared speech, but his dirty little secret is that he's actually an empty suit who's totally at sea without a teleprompter. Today, for example, Andy McCarthy, offers up this snippet from an Obama press conference in Jerusalem: Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way...

The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money. Even the Associated Press — no bastion of conservatism — has considered, at least superficially, the media's favoritism for Barack Obama. It's time to revisit media bias. True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is...

The politicos' mutual stalking has reached unprecedented new levels this year: At least one side has started to spider the other's campaign website to track that campaign pages' precise word changes up to an hourly basis. John McCain's campaign published a side-by-side comparison of Barack Obama's Iraq War policy web pages on Tuesday using a new automated online tracking service called Versionista. The service, which launched two months ago, allows users to track and cache changes to specific web pages up to an hourly basis, depending on the level of filtering requested, says Peter Bray, its creator in Portland, Oregon....

Pelosi says House Judiciary may hold hearings on Kucinich impeachment resolution Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said this morning that the House Judiciary Committee may hold hearings on an impeachment resolution offered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). Kucinich is expected to offer a "privileged resolution" this afternoon calling on the House to look at whether President Bush should be removed from office for lying to Congress and the American public when he sought congressional approval back in 2002 for taking military action to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

At least one of the photographs released today by Iran and published by an unquestioning Western media has been Photoshopped:

Grilled cheese, World War II and fiduciary have one thing in common: if you “Google” them, each prompts a Wikipedia entry as the No. 1 result. Wikipedia is all too convenient, but of what value is it? What good is a stockpile of information if it’s unreliable and often incorrect, as many have said Wikipedia is? Since its launch in 2001, the “The Free Encyclopedia” has grown exponentially, offering a definition (or more) for almost every topic. Last spring the resource reached the 10 million article mark over a spectrum of 20 different languages in its attempt to “summarize all...

Barack Obama has published an enemies list and conspiracy web on his presidential campaign website, Fight the Smears.The site lists conservative activists David Bossie, Floyd Brown, Bob Perry, Craig Shirley, Bruce Hawkins and James Lacy.The Obama campaign posted an accompanying graphic that lays out a web of connections between the conservatives, groups they represent and their efforts opposing liberals, including "Swift Boat", "Clinton Impeachment" and "Willie Horton Ad".The text never connects any of those listed to 'smears' against Obama, but instead lists their politcal sins such as working with the Minutemen, Ann Coulter, Gary Aldrich, donating to the Swift Boat...

Who read Free Republic? Apparently the U.S. Secret Service does!This past weekend, I posted an article alerting the Secret Service that members of the terrorist supporting group Code Pink were using fake presses to gain access to events headlined by Secret Service protectees like presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (AZ).This morning, McCain spoke at the LULAC convention in Washington, D.C. Usually when he speaks at an event in D.C., McCain can expect to have his speech disrupted by Code Pink activists who rush the stage and heckle him from the audience and the press section.That didn't happen today....

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama rejected charges on Tuesday that he has shifted positions on Iraq and other issues as part of a move to the center now that he is his party's nominee. As he positions himself for the battle against Republican John McCain, the Illinois senator abandoned a vow to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement, did not oppose a Supreme Court decision striking down Washington's gun ban and said he would support expanding the government's wiretap authority. Most recently, he signaled more flexibility on his pledge to quickly pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, telling reporters...

July 08, 2008, 6:00 a.m. WikipropagandaSpinning green. By Lawrence Solomon Ever wonder how Al Gore, the United Nations, and company continue to get away with their claim of a “scientific consensus� confirming their doomsday view of global warming? Look no farther than Wikipedia for a stunning example of how the global-warming propaganda machine works. As you (or your kids) probably know, Wikipedia is now the most widely used and influential reference source on the Internet and therefore in the world, with more than 50 million unique visitors a month. In theory Wikipedia is a “people’s encyclopedia� written and edited...

Media: Four years ago this week, we noted how negative coverage of the Iraq War had become. But that was when things weren't going well. This is now, when things are going much better. So coverage must be much more positive, right? (with asterisks indicating page-toppers): • June 11: "Going to War Not Worth It, More Voters Say"* "NATO Not Expected to Send Force to Iraq" • June 13: "Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go"* "Insurgents and Islam Now Rulers of Fallujah" • June 14: "At Least 20 Killed in Baghdad (Car) Bombings" • June 15: "Iraq's Foreign Contractors in...

Honoring the Red Army of Josef Stalin Posted at 3:12pm on Jun. 30, 2008 Democrat Congressman Tim Mahoney (FL-16): Honoring Those Who Defended the Soviet Union By Jeff Emanuel Tim Mahoney, freshman Democrat Congressman from Florida, really, really loves the troops. Remember last March, when he responded to questions about whether or not the 'surge' in Iraq would work by famously saying "So what"? Well, forget it -- Tim Mahoney loves the troops, and don't you dare think otherwise.He loves them so much that he wants every person in his district to know how much he loves, and honors, the...

Succumbing to an avalanche of criticism, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has apparently decided to back away from its trial balloon of a new presidential seal. Newsmax’s lead story Monday morning reported on Obama’s new version of the presidential seal, but a campaign spokesman now says it won’t be used again. “That was a one-time thing for a one-time event,” Robert Gibbs asserted to CNN about the rather intricately designed seal that made its debut last Friday. The new seal was unveiled on Obama's podium when he spoke to a group of Democratic governors. The Obama seal did include the American...

Last week, the campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama announced that it had established a “war room” to battle rumors spread on the Internet and amplified by other media reporting. Obama supporters will use a website titled “Fight the Smears” to identify allegedly untrue statements about their candidate and provide evidence in an effort to refute them. That sounds like a good public relations strategy, but the implementation will ultimately have a negative impact on Obama. The campaign employs the Media Matters for America model for dealing with so-called “smears.” In fact, Obama’s war room uses the George...

John McCain has called off a fundraiser at the home of a Texas oilman who joked about rape during a 1990 gubernatorial run in the state. The Texan, Republican Clayton Williams, made the joke during his failed campaign against Democrat Ann Richards. Williams compared rape to the weather, saying, "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it." He also compared Richards to the cattle on his ranch, saying he would "head her and hoof her and drag her through the dirt." Williams' comments made national news at the time and remain easy to find...

The messianic Obama mag cover is becoming funny. How many more can you all add?

Here's an interesting exercise: do you see anything wrong with this statement from the NY Times? Mr. Wright, however, emerged from retirement in April and spoke at the National Press Club, offering deeper and broader criticism of the United States and using mocking language. Among other things, he opined that the United States government may have had a hand in creating the AIDS epidemic. Beldar does: This paragraph is one of the most egregious examples I've ever seen of lying by omission. What made Wright's comment so outrageous was not his suggestion that the government "had a hand in creating...

Which is it Barack? Are you a moron or a liar? Or both? On Monday you claimed your Uncle (not further identified) help liberate Auschwitz. Since it was the Soviets who liberated Auschwitz, that left people wondering who your communist uncle was? So your campaign scrambled to get out the word–No, he meant his great uncle and he meant Buchenwald rather than Auschwitz. There, that settled it. So I have one question–how in the hell did your uncle get to Buchenwald. Was he in a row boat? Looks like Great Uncle Charlie was in the Navy. Service records for Charles...