Free Republic

In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base. “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s...

Critical infrastructure operators in the U.S. continue to face a hailstorm of hacks. Federal documents obtained by USA Today through a FOIA request revealed that hackers infiltrated the Department of Energy's computer system over 150 times between 2010 and 2014. As the department overseeing the country's power grid and nuclear weapons stockpile, the Energy Department is an attractive target for overseas cyber spies seeking to uncover vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is warning critical infrastructure providers of a malicious spear-phishing campaign in which hackers use bogus emails to infiltrate users' networks. The campaign has targeted government facilities and...

The Republican Party will continue to lose presidential elections if it comes across as mean-spirited and unwelcoming toward people of color, Donald Trump tells Newsmax. Whether intended or not, comments and policies of Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates during this election were seen by Hispanics and Asians as hostile to them, Trump says. “Republicans didn’t have anything going for them with respect to Latinos and with respect to Asians,” the billionaire developer says. “The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited about it,” Trump...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Shortly after announcing his official candidacy, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has emerged as rank-and-file Republicans' current favorite for their party's 2012 presidential nomination. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationwide say they are most likely to support Perry, with Mitt Romney next, at 17%.

My Facebook account reminded me that exactly 4 years ago today I created and posted this in the midst of Anthony Weiner's FIRST sexting scandal (the second came when he ran for mayor two years later). I don't often laugh at my own work, but this did and still does make me laugh.

Dr. Leon R. Kass, the Addie Clark Harding Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago and former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics under former President George W. Bush, has written a report entitled “The Meaning of Life – In the Laboratory”. Kass discusses the morality surrounding the US government’s funding of “research on human embryonic stem cells, cells derived from early embryos produced by in vitro fertilization in assisted-reproduction clinics.” According to the report, the use of human embryos is justified by the advancements of science which demands that...

Sen. John McCain is right. Code Pink protesters are low-life scum as he called them Thursday morning when the group disrupted a Senate hearing to protest former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khamenei, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban. These are some of the terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism Code Pink has given political, financial and/or material aid to since the group’s founding in late 2002. All that time Code Pink has also worked with and funded the Democratic Party,...

For years Americans' right to privacy, as granted by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has come under threat as the country's surveillance systems have grown. After intelligence leaks by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, however, the NSA's domestic dragnet is finally getting the attention that many people feel it deserves.

MADISON, Wis. – Democrat Milwaukee County prosecutors tapped the email and text communications of conservative activists as part of a five-year probe aimed at bringing down Republican Gov. Scott Walker, affidavits reviewed by Wisconsin Watchdog reveal. One target of the spying operation told Wisconsin Watchdog the methods used to keep tabs on Wisconsin residents were like those of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program. “It was actually worse because (Milwaukee County prosecutors) were taking the body of emails and looking at actual data,” said the source, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from the prosecutors....

Congress released nearly 200 pages of newly uncovered emails involving former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, raising questions Monday about whether the Obama administration and the Democratic presidential candidate herself were truthful when they said they turned over all of her email communications on Benghazi. Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the select House committee looking into the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, demanded the State Department say whether it has the emails — a way of testing whether the administration withheld them against the wishes of the committee, or whether Mrs. Clinton never turned them over in the first...

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John O’Donnell did something absolutely amazing on Saturday, when he chose to acquit white Cleveland cop Michael Brelo of manslaughter in the 2012 killing of two lawbreakers who sent police on a 22-mile car chase. “Brelo’s entire use of deadly force was a constitutionally reasonable response to an objectionably reasonably perceived threat of great bodily harm,” the judge announced. He added, “I will not sacrifice him to the public frustrated by historical mistreatment at the hands of other officers.” What occurred in 2012 was that a couple, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, were driving past...

Global Warming? The Pope is Wrong April 27, 2015 Alan Caruba My thoughts regarding the Pope are rooted in my knowledge of the long record of lies, false predictions, and claims by various environmentalists over the years. When the Vatican announced it would hold a conference on April 28 called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development”, I wondered why the Vatican is not holding a conference to organize the protection of Christians—particularly in the Middle East—against the wholesale genocide that is occurring. The Pope is not alone in this. There appears to...

An appeals court today reversed a lower court’s decision compelling YouTube to remove the controversial film Innocence of Muslims, saying that such an act was a violation of the First Amendment. The film, a 13-minute “trailer” created by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in 2012, sparked outrage among the Muslim community for its depiction of the prophet Muhammad as a pedophile and a murderer, and for a time was thought to be the cause of the attacks against the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya. The initial lawsuit had been filed by Cindy Lee Garcia, one of the actresses in the film, who...

Full title.....Gold Mine: Hillary Clinton’s Brother Granted Super-Rare Mining Permit from Haiti After State Dept. Sent Country Billions Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, sat on the board of a self-described mining company that in 2012 received one of only two “gold exploitation permits” from the Haitian government—the first issued in over 50 years. The tiny North Carolina company, VCS Mining, also included on its board Bill Clinton’s co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. The Rodham gold mine revelation is just one of dozens featured in a forthcoming bombshell investigative book by...

Editor’s Note: This story first appeared in the Wall Street Journal. We reprint in part here. Hillary Clinton’s State Department was part of a panel that approved the sale of one of America’s largest uranium mines at the same time a foundation controlled by the seller’s chairman was making donations to a Clinton family charity, records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show.The $610 million sale of 51% of Uranium One to a unit of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear agency, was approved in 2010 by a U.S. federal committee that assesses the security implications of foreign investments. The State Department, which...

Witness John Hill saw the whole thing unfold. He was working nearby when he had a feeling something was about to happen. He went to his car to grab his camera and before he knew it, the 100 slope next to the freight train started fail! “I saw the hill start to go. It went down and hit the first car and it tipped over, then more cars kept tipping over. It was crazy how loud it was and how slow it all happened,” he said. There had been “activity” on the rain saturated slope earlier in the day which...

At an event in Cleveland on Wednesday, President Obama endorsed a system of mandatory voting, a policy that would penalize eligible voters who don't make it to the polls on Election Day. The idea is not universally embraced, though it has significantly boosted turnout in Australia, where it's in place. It's very easy to see why Obama likes the idea. He spoke longingly of increased turnout during the 50th anniversary ceremony in Selma, Ala., earlier this month. There's value in getting more people involved in the democratic process that doesn't tie directly to the success of his party, but it's...

During Barack Obama's recent State of the Union speech, he told America he had no more campaigns to run. But it seems that statement flies in the face of reports that an organization known as “One Voice” has brought in what has been called a "five-man Obama team" to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Included in that five-man team is Jeremy Bird, the national field director for Obama's 2012 campaign, Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of the Independent Media Review and Analysis, said Monday, citing a report at Haaretz. That group, Dr. Lerner added, will run the anti-Netanyahu effort out...

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - The United States will have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a political transition in Syria and is exploring ways to pressure him into agreeing to talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS News in an interview. Washington has long insisted that Assad must be replaced through a negotiated, political transition, but the rise of a common enemy, hardline militant group Islamic State, appears to have slightly softened the West's stance towards him. In the interview broadcast on Sunday, Kerry did not repeat the standard U.S. line that Assad had lost...

Maybe more than at any point in her life, even during her 2008 bid for the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s past and associations are coming under intense scrutiny in mainstream press outlets. From her potentially unsecure, private email account to the Clinton Foundation’s suspect fundraising methods, Clinton’s past is apparently anything but unimpeachable. One positive thing you can say for sure about the secretary is that she takes care of her friends. Apparently, former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) wife and longtime Clinton confidant Huma Abedin was especially well cared for. According to a New York Times...