Right-Wing News

As a journalist, I am not supposed to admit this, but: I sympathize with the Obama administration’s frustration over national security leaks. After a spate of leaks last year — notably, The Associated Press’ reporting that national security officials foiled an underwear bomb 2.0 attempt last May — Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein joined Republicans to denounce the Beltway’s proclivity for leaking classified information. “This has to stop,” quoth DiFi. “When people say they don’t want to work with the United States because they can’t trust us to keep ...

So, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups (or, more precisely, groups displaying a bit too much gusto for limited government) was far more widespread than its initial apology would have led Americans to imagine. Yes, it is disturbing — a dangerous abuse of power, no doubt. What’s more disturbing — or should be, at least — is the fact that the IRS has the capacity to undermine free speech in the first place. Despite President Barack Obama’s assurances, there are no safeguards that can be put into place to ...

The story of the coming demise of Chinatown bus lines in New York City is a tale of multiple failures in both government and the media and shows that both have a bias against entrepreneurs that kills new, start up ideas with unfair regulations, faux public advocacy, and dismal reporting. A “Chinatown buss” was a new idea in the late 90s pioneered by Chinese immigrants in the Big Apple. These were private buses that cruised the streets looking for fares like cabs do, picking customers up at curbside, not having fixed ...

Hearing rumors that the billionaire, libertarian Koch brothers might buy the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. City Council sprung into action. Three members proposed a motion to oppose the sale of the Times to any owner seeking to turn “L.A.’s metropolitan daily into an ideological mouthpiece.” Cue the laugh track. UCLA professor Tim Groseclose wrote “Left Turns: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” Of 20 major news outlets, he found 18 were left-wing. Only two tilted to the right — The Washington Times and “Fox News Special Report.” Groseclose ...

It was the pictures and riveting testimony that convinced a Philadelphia jury that abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was guilty of murdering three infants born alive following botched late-term abortions and also guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of Karnamaya Mongar, who overdosed on Demerol during an abortion at Gosnell’s clinic. How ironic that the Gosnell decision was delivered the day after Mother’s Day. The two-month trial has reignited the abortion debate. But while many states have managed to impose some restrictions on abortion clinics and establish informed consent laws and in some cases ...

What do the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal have in common? They were both about winning elections, under false pretenses. Winning elections, after all, is something Barack Obama is good at. He obviously loves campaigning and delivering grand orations to enormous adoring crowds. He loves it so much that he flew off to Las Vegas to campaign the day after the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in 33 years. What actually happened in Benghazi was out of sync with the Obama campaign line. Osama bin Laden was dead. Al-Qaida was on ...

Square payment services is one of those new payment applications that merchants can put on a smart phone and, along with the plug-in hardware, is used like a credit card swipe machine to accept payments made by their customers. This month, however, Square has changed its user policy and is now prohibiting merchants from using the service to sell anything firearm related. The new user agreement has altered its “Your Square Account” section to add a new category for things that Square won’t allow its service to be used for. The ...

In Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton as a moral reformer. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change transparency to Washington. Five years later, those vows are in shambles. True, the murder of four Americans in Benghazi has become a mess of partisan bickering. But the disturbing facts now transcend politics. The Obama administration — the president himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney — all at various ...

Our monstrously overgrown federal government produces so many scandals, not even top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi’s right hand flunky can keep them all straight: At Rep. Steny Hoyer’s weekly meeting with reporters on Tuesday, the Maryland Democrat was asked if he was concerned about the DOJ seizing phone records from Associated Press journalists working in the House press gallery in the Capitol building. His response: “The IRS activity was inappropriate, inconsistent with our policies and practices as a country, very concerning, needs to be reviewed carefully [quack quack quack…]” Eventually Hoyer grasped that the ...

The Republican National Convention isn’t pulling any punches on the Associated Press scandal. The RNC Chairman, Reince Priebus, is calling on Eric Holder to resign. Today, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to resign after the revelation that he allowed the Justice Department to monitor Associated Press reporters’ phone conversations in a direct violation of the First Amendment: “Freedom of the press is an essential right in a free society. The First Amendment doesn’t request the federal government to respect it; it demands it. Attorney General ...

Billy Graham is a good and decent man. He’s also one of the most beloved Christians in the United States. Unfortunately, he’s also an opponent of the Obama Administration,which may have made him a target for the IRS. Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010. With the IRS admitting it gave extra scrutiny to conservative political organizations, Graham says ...

Over at Ace Of Spades, DrewM provided a handy dandy Obama scandal scorecard, for which I opined in the comments that of all the scandals, the most dangerous for Obama is the Associated Press phone records one. There are certainly ones which are worse overall, but, if the AP turns on Obama, or at least decides that they are no longer going to be his lapdogs and will report the news and investigate the Obama admin, this could turn very bad for Obama. And we could see other media outlets ...

I interviewed Mary Eberstadt last week on her new book, How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization. Here’s the slightly edited transcript of our interview. One of the core ideas of your book is that declines in Christianity and the disintegration of the American family are strongly connected. Can you talk about that, especially in light of the fact that birth rate/religion don’t always seem to be tightly connected in every circumstance? …In Western Europe you now have historically low rates of church attendance and religious affiliations ...

A hundred years ago, anyone who might have predicted in 1913 the monumental, man-made catastrophes that would occur in the rest of the 20th century would have been considered warped, if not completely mentally deranged. Who would have believed that the continent of Europe, which had not had a major war in nearly a hundred years since Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, would set off two World Wars that were incomparably worse than any wars before, anywhere in the world? Who would have believed that an authoritarian and militaristic regime in Germany, ...

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents nearly 30 Tea Party organizations nationwide against an assault by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), called today’s apology by the IRS a “significant victory for free speech and freedom of association.” The ACLJ began representing Tea Party groups after the IRS launched an effort to intimidate Tea Party organizations by demanding information that is outside the scope of legitimate inquiry and violated the First Amendment. The IRS demanded that groups reveal the internal workings of their organizations – including the identification of ...

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents nearly 30 Tea Party organizations nationwide sent the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a letter demanding that it grant tax-exempt status immediately to 10 Tea Party groups which have been targeted for additional review. Of the 27 Tea Party groups represented by the ACLJ, 15 have been granted tax-exempt status and today’s demand letter addresses the status of the 10 organizations that are pending. The ACLJ demands that the IRS respond by Friday, May 17th or face possible legal action. “This is one of ...