Free Republic

6 days before tax day liberal Christmas in 2013 Lois Lerner was emailing with one of her fellow cronies and warning them to be careful, “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails”.

The so-called “chatter” about a terror plot that led the Obama administration to close 22 U.S. embassies and consulates Sunday across the Muslim world goes beyond anything heard before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Fox News sources. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, of Georgia, said Sunday the so-called “chatter” detected by U.S. intelligence agencies that led the Obama administration to order the closures and issue a global travel warning to Americans is "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11." [snip] A Mideast diplomat says al-Zawahiri “pressuring” Al Qaeda in the Arabian...

This month’s announcement from Party City that it’s closing more than 40 stores as it grapples with new challenges, including diminishing helium supplies, likely came as unwelcome news to customers who count on the store for their balloon and event planning needs. But for scientists like Mark Elsesser, the announcement was something of a relief, inflating hopes that the public, and the government, might start paying closer attention. “When it comes to helium, we’re at a tipping point,” said Elsesser, who is the associate director of government affairs at the American Physical Society, a nonprofit association of physicists. “Party City...

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff is connected to a Ukrainian arms dealer. Is this why he’s willing to lie in front of the nation when accusing President Trump of crimes? Adam Schiff is arguably the biggest liar in Congress…. ever. He now leads the House Intelligence Committee and this past week oversaw the Intel Committee where he attempted to align President Trump with some ‘trumped’ up allegations concerning his phone call with the President of the Ukraine. Schiff lied in his opening remarks and claimed numerous falsehoods about the President’s call in spite of the transcript being provided the day before.

Leaked funding documents reveal an effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election far more expansively than has been previously reported. The billionaire and convicted felon moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud, and to integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats. These Soros-funded efforts moved through dozens of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) charities and involved the active compliance with civil rights groups, government...

A company whose president is “best friends” with Chelsea Clinton received more than $11 million in contracts over the last decade from a highly secretive Department of Defense think tank, but to date, the group lacks official federal approval to handle classified materials, according to sensitive documents TheDCNF was allowed to review.Jacqueline Newmyer, the president of a company called the Long Term Strategy Group, has over the last 10 years received numerous Defense Department contracts from a secretive think tank called Office of Net Assessment.The Office of Net Assessment is so sensitive, the specialized think tank is housed in the Office...

The Independent, 2000: Snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries … Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community … According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit...

Book includes how Steele was commissioned to write dossier Robert Reich: Trump is an international mobster The former journalists Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch are to publish a book on Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia, including an account of how they commissioned the British ex-spy Christopher Steele to write his dossier on the future president. Crime in Progress: The Secret History of the Trump-Russia Investigation will be published in December by Penguin Random House in the US and UK. Simpson and Fritsch founded the Washington intelligence firm Fusion GPS. In summer 2015, it began investigating Trump and Moscow. It hired...

A nearly insignificant reference on the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council’s webpage, under the heading of Washington Watch No. 4, reads this way: “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire — Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.” Hmm. Well that’s interesting. Particularly since the Democrats have been busily working to impeach President Donald Trump over supposed nefarious Ukraine wheelings and dealings. Particularly since a couple of Republican senators, as The Washington Times previously reported, have requested the Justice Department to investigate whether or not Ukrainian officials tried to undermine Trump’s presidential campaign —...

In February 2017, the Washington Post’s Miller had the lead byline on a story based on leaks of Trump’s conversations with Australia’s prime minister and Mexico’s president. Six months later, the Post published the entire transcripts of both conversations in another Miller story. It was through such national security correspondents that anti-Trump sources -- intelligence officials -- pushed leaks of classified information and other tidbits intended to damage Trump into the media. There it merged with other anti-Trump currents in nearly every corner of the press, where it blossomed into Russiagate. After a nearly two-year investigation, the special counsel found...

Serhiy Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP who leaked evidence of Paul Manafort’s systematic corruption to The New York Times, kicking off the latest round of Trump-Russia scandals, is a former investigative journalist famed for his pedantic and forensic habits in parliament. . .Leshchenko and some of his journalist reformer friends, such as Mustafa Nayem, were brought into Ukraine’s parliament by President Petro Poroshenko on his winning parliamentary slate in 2014 as a way of showcasing his reformist credentials. Leshchenko has since become a fierce critic of Poroshenko, whose parliamentary faction he has never left. . .[Q:] Let’s return to Paul Manafort....

The Senate Finance Committee is probing the Obama administration’s 2015 decision to approve the sale of a U.S. company with insight into “military applications” to the Chinese government and an investment firm run by former Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son, Hunter Biden. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee’s chairman, sent a letter to the Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Thursday requesting documents relating to the sale of Henniges, a Michigan-based automotive company, to Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) and Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). The latter was formed in 2013 by a merger between a subsidiary of the Bank...

American whistle-blower Edward Snowden said Beijing’s use of technology to control its citizens and electronically track US targets prompted him to investigate and then expose Washington’s mass surveillance programme. In his book "Permanent Record," published on Wednesday, the former US spy agency contractor who now lives in exile in Russia, detailed how he fled to Hong Kong and then Moscow after creating one of the most serious security breaches in American history. Snowden, who was a technician subcontracted to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency for seven years, said he began to have suspicions about secret post-September...

Ulrich Klopfer who faces charges that he delayed reporting an abortion on a 13-year-old girl in South Bend, Indiana, may be able to avoid jail time if he does this one little thing. Indiana law requires reports on abortions done on unborn babies of girls younger than 14 to be submitted within three days. Further endangering a teen who had already been victimized by statutory rape, Klopfer submitted the report six months after the abortion, according to state records. Klopfer potentially faces a fine of $1,000 and 180 days in jail if convicted of the Class B misdemeanor. But the...

Court documents recently filed by the government further rock the credibility of Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller because they show that as FBI Director Mueller he worked to cover up the connection between a Florida Saudi family and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The documents reveal that Mueller was likely involved in publicly releasing deceptive official agency statements about a secret investigation of the Saudis, who lived in Sarasota, with ties to the hijackers. A Florida journalism nonprofit uncovered the existence of the secret FBI investigation that was also kept from Congress. Under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI tried to discredit the...

Independent journalist Matt Kennard has published a number of documents starkly revealing the degree to which The Guardian has been compromised by British security services, and the impact this relationship has on its reporting of key issues. The newspaper has long sought to present itself - to readers and advertisers alike - as Britain’s foremost ‘anti-establishment’ outlet, and took a leading role in reporting on the mass WikiLeaks cable dump in 2010, and the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, garnering widespread praise and several prestigious journalism awards in the process. In the latter case, the The Guardian’s dissident credentials were...

Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s friend, former partner and alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, was reportedly “very close” to Bill Clinton, who recently went on the record through a spokesman to say he “knows nothing” about Epstein’s crimes. A Politico report from Sunday about the Maxwell-Clinton connection cited a number of anonymous individuals. One of those said to be familiar with the situation claimed that the British socialite Maxwell was not only “incredibly close” to Chelsea Clinton, but also “had her own relationship with Bill Clinton and was very close to him”: Maxwell first grew close with the Clintons after Bill Clinton...

The FBI is asking for help finding leads on a Rio Grande Valley Marine kidnapped at gunpoint in Mexico, the agency said Monday. Armando Torres III, 25, crossed over the Progreso International Bridge on May 14 to visit his father on a ranch near Los Indios, according to an agency news release. There, investigators believe armed intruders took Torres, his father Armando Torres II and uncle Salvador Torres shortly after they arrived. The younger Torres’ sister Cristina Torres, 24, who lives in Virginia, said she got a call from her cousin minutes after the gunmen raced away. “She saw a...

In the early days of the Trump administration, a memo of uncertain origin circulated at the highest levels of the White House laying out a conspiracy theory about "coordinated attacks" on President Trump's foreign policy agenda from a group of former Obama administration officials, according to a memo obtained by The New Yorker's Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow. The memo, which "reads like a U.S. military-intelligence officer's analysis of a foreign-insurgent network," they wrote, posited that "the communications infrastructure ... used to sell ObamaCare and the Iran Deal to the public ('Echo Chamber') has been shifted from the White House...

Just over a year ago, French President Emmanuel Macron came to the United States to import two different species to Washington. One was a French oak tree and the other was a crackdown on free speech. Ironically, soon after the tree was planted, officials quickly dug it up to send it to quarantine. However, the more dangerous species was his acorn of speech controls, a proposal that resulted in rapturous applause from our clueless politicians. Ultimately, the tree died and the acorn has not fared much better. While our politicians may applaud Macron like village idiots, most Americans are hardcore...