Free Republic

Only weeks after the White House made headlines with a directive urging prosecutors to get tougher on corporate crime, the Obama administration has moved to protect a convicted financial firm from punishment. The bank, Credit Suisse, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to President Barack Obama’s political campaigns. It also employs the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm with family connections to the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. In 2014, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to criminal charges for operating “an illegal cross-border banking business that knowingly and willfully aided and assisted thousands of U.S. clients in opening and...

Two Yemeni detainees held at the controversial US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been transferred to Ghana. The Pentagon said Khalid al-Dhuby had been approved for release since 2006 and Mahmoud Omar Bin Atef since 2009. Both have been held for more than a decade and have never been charged. Ghana has given permission for the men to stay for two years subject to security clearances, Foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh said. The West African nation has not previously taken any Guantanamo prisoners. .... According to military records, Mahmoud Omar Bin Atef is a Yemeni citizen born in Saudi...

Millions of fake pills from China, some with no active ingredients and others with the wrong contents, have been uncovered and confiscated by customs officers in France. ... “Drug research in China has fallen under a cloud since 2006 because 13 of the top 20 global drug makers have set up research and development centers in China. Yes, it’s cheaper to do research there, but, as one auditor said, ‘with cheaper research comes greater risk,’” she wrote. ... There also are whole factories in China with up to 15,000 people employed for the purpose of counterfeiting products.

According to an inside source, the military collaborations between Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the Gaddafi government date back to 2006.In an interview today on the Al Arabyia news network, an informed source within the Revolutionary Guards Corps revealed that Iran has several military bases in Libya. The source, who requested anonymity due to his sensitive position within the Guards, elaborated further that the Iranian military bases are located mostly along Libya’s borders with the African countries of Chad and Niger. From there, he said, the Guards actively smuggle arms and supply logistical assistance to rebellious groups in the African countries.According...

A New York Times reporter will be subpoenaed to answer questions ahead of an upcoming trial of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information, though a Tuesday hearing indicated there is much confusion about what the journalist may be asked to reveal. Prosecutors say they will not ask James Risen if ex-CIA man Jeffrey Sterling was his anonymous source for part of the 2006 book “State Of War” that detailed a botched CIA effort to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. However, they do want to know if the two had a prior, on-the-record source relationship. Risen’s lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg,...

AMMAN, Jordan — Just after nightfall Feb. 3, a warrant arrived at the city’s main women’s prison for the execution of Sajida al-Rishawi. The instructions had come from King Abdullah II himself, then in Washington on a state visit, and were transmitted from his private plane to the royal court in Jordan’s capital. A clerk relayed the message to the Interior Ministry and then to the prisons department, where it caused a stir. State executions are complicated affairs requiring many steps, yet the king’s wishes were explicit: The woman would face the gallows before the sun rose the next day.

The Obama administration has announced the United States will join the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, another openly anti-Israel organization. The group was created in 2006 to find ways to bridge the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies – a goal wholeheartedly embraced by President Barack Obama, who has redirected American foreign policy in pursuit of the same goal. The White House announcement stated that the move is intended to realize Obama's “vision of active U.S. engagement with other nations and international organizations,” a goal sometimes pursued, noted National Review Online columnist Brett D. Schaefer last Thursday, “even when...

Days after Hillary Clinton finally acknowledged that using a private email server while secretary of State was “a mistake,” a super-PAC supporting her says it was actually the responsible, safe approach to data security. While the Democratic presidential nominee's notorious server doesn’t appear to have been hacked, the federal government definitely was, Correct the Record said in a report out Friday. “The U.S. government has been hacked on numerous occasions, compromising even the most sensitive of information,” Correct the Record said. “Anyone who attempts to argue that the contents of Hillary Clinton’s email would have been more secure on a...

Homaidan al-Turki was convicted in 2006 on charges related to having an underage slave whom he sexually molested. Al-Turki resided in Colorado and his now serving out his prison sentence in that state. Since his conviction, there has been a very strong effort from Saudi Arabia to have him released. ... A judge has now ruled that al-Turki isn’t going anywhere (that is if you don’t count his being moved from a State Correctional facility to a federal one). ... al-Turki has never really been completely cleared in the murder of Executive Director for Colorado’s Department of Corrections. Clements was...

A North Korean freighter, MV-Omranili, which was on its way to Iran 'found itself' in Indian waters after an 'engine failure' and has been detained in Mumbai. The Coast Guard, the Bombay Port Trust, the Indian Navy and the Mumbai Customs have formed separate teams to inspect the freighter and find out if it is carrying any arms or ammunition and the reason behind its voyage to Iran. Coming close on the heels of the nuclear tests conducted by North Korea recently, the ?straying? of the vessel into Indian waters and its subsequent detention assumes significance. Speaking on condition of...

A South African company in the spotlight for paying $100,000 in speaking fees to White House adviser David Plouffe is also in business with a Liberian official under U.N. sanctions for his ties to convicted war criminal and former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. That's among the latest details to emerge on the connections involving MTN Group, a subsidiary of which paid President Obama's former campaign manager for engagements in late 2010, shortly before he joined the White House. The ties to Liberia's bloody Taylor era center on Benoni Urey, who was commissioner of maritime affairs in Liberia during Taylor's reign....

Let all decent human beings this day remember Werner Foerster, a New Jersey state trooper slain in 1973 - for tonight there will be a nauseating gathering to celebrate (yes, celebrate) the armed prison break that freed one of Foerster's convicted killers. An organization that should know better, the big public employee union SEIU Local 1199, has opened an auditorium at its headquarters to a group that lionizes fugitive Joanne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, as a heroine whose "liberation" from prison 27 years ago it considers a bright moment in American history. Sponsors of the Hands Off Assata Campaign include...

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll:...

The security situation in the Mediterranean will continue to deteriorate to the point where we can expect Islamist raids on European islands, a recently retired Royal Navy Admiral has told Breitbart London. [snip] Rear Admiral Chris Parry CBE, the straight-talking former Director General of the Ministry of Defence Development, Concepts, and Doctrine Centre, ... made the comments in an interview this week as European nations gathered to discuss the sudden migrant crisis gripping the Mediterranean. THE THREAT OF ISLAM Parry, who warned in a government paper in 1990 that Islam would replace Communism as the main threat against the West...

Let's collaboratively build a timeline of this disaster, starting with when these agencies were formed, tracking the legislation that was not only passed, but proposed, and quotes from who supported and opposed it. PLEASE INCLUDE URLs so we can link to sources. Here's a start. 1938 Fannie Mae, or the Federal National Mortgage Association, was founded in 1938. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode12/usc_sup_01_12_10_13_20_III.html 1954 1954 Charter Act 1968 1968 Charter Act 1970 Freddie Mac, or the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, was established in 1970 1989 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 1990, James A. Johnson went to work for Fannie...

Mongolia's former communists met yesterday to discuss who should become the next prime minister after the central Asian country was thrown into disarray with the ouster of reform-minded Tsakhia Elbegdorj. About 250 members of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) gathered in central Ulan Bator to choose a candidate to lead the impoverished, landlocked nation, a party official said. "They will discuss whom to nominate as the next prime minister," the official said, a leading member of the party's youth organization. He said the talks began shortly before 4pm. The most likely choice was MPRP chairman Miyegombo Enkhbold, a former...

The US Air Force confirmed that the 20-year-old Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13 (DMSP-F13) suffered a "catastrophic event". It shattered into 43 pieces following a sudden temperature spike which triggered the loss of its altitude control. The event happened on 3 February but the incident has only just came to light following questions from website Space News.

he Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials. The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets...

n the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate. To whom it may concern: I am writing this letter to inform you of my reasons for premeditating and attempting to murder citizens and residents of the United States of America on Friday, March 3, 2006 in the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina by running them over with my automobile and stabbing them with a knife if the opportunities are presented to me by Allah. I did intend to use a handgun to murder the citizens and residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina but the process of receiving a permit...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD: An audiotape said to be of Saddam Hussein's deputy said his group will keep fighting until the last foreign soldier withdraws from Iraq, saying the Americans are being defeated. The audiotape purportedly from Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri was obtained by The Associated Press in Baghdad on Sunday. It was impossible to determine its authenticity, but several Iraqis familiar with al-Douri's voice said they believed it from his. It was also unclear when the audiotape was made but the comments referred to Saddam as a "martyr." He was hanged Dec. 30 for his role in the deaths of more...