Free Republic

Howie thread for the second part of the month starting with his Fri 5/17/13 column, actually; reminder that Howie is nationwide on Tue as he again fills in for Mark Levin (6-9 pm ET though 7-10 on WRKO)

Finally, we get the note in the boat — a month late. Do you how much media effort has been devoted to unearthing what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apparently thought was his last will and testament? But somehow, the cops held it tight until yesterday. Unconfirmed stories have circulated that in Dave Henneberry’s backyard in Watertown that Friday evening, the feds went so far as to check out the cellphones of the local cops, to make sure no one had snapped a photo of the note in the boat. No big surprises in the note. The Joker said his brother Speedbump was...

Investigators have gathered 'mounting evidence' that suggest the Boston bomber brothers could have been involved in a grisly unsolved triple murder in 2011, it has emerged. Officials told ABC News that forensic evidence could tie Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the killings of Brendan Mess, Raphael Teken and Erik Weissman, who were found with their throats slit and marijuana dumped over their dead bodies in a Waltham, Massachusetts house. The Tsarnaevs knew the men as Tamerlan trained in boxing and martial arts with Brendan Mass. However, officials said more DNA testing is required before bringing an indictment against the surviving...

DOSWELL, Va. — Officials in the county where the remains of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev have been buried say they were stunned to learn of the burial and they are looking into whether the law was followed in the process. “I’m sure that if no laws were broken ... there’s nothing we can do,” said Floyd Thomas, chairman of the board of supervisors of Caroline County. “What we would do is make sure that all of the laws regarding this particular burial were adhered to. If they were not, then I believe we would have to look at...

Report: Boston terror suspects linked to triple homicide in 2011 By Jonathan Easley - 05/10/13 01:05 PM ET Authorities have “mounting evidence” based on “forensic hits” that the two brothers believed responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing were possibly involved in a gruesome, unsolved 2011 triple homicide, ABC News reported on Friday. According to the report, which cites anonymous law enforcement officials close to the investigation, experts have matched some forensic evidence from the crime scene back to the brothers. Cellphone records also indicate the brothers were in the area when the murders took place. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are...

The message to the parents of the Boston bombing suspects was clear and unmistakable: “pack and go.” And soon after the phone call from the Chechen authorities Tuesday, a car carrying government officials arrived to accompany the couple out of the republic. The deportation followed a speech by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, in which he referred to the Tsarnaev brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar as “the worst devils.” “I will never defend them, never say a word in their support,” Kadyrov told a local television station Monday.

Boston and Massachusetts law enforcement officials confirmed Thursday that federal agents left them in the dark on the growing warning signs about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the run-up to the Boston Marathon bombing. Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, in testimony on Capitol Hill, said his officers on a joint terrorism task force were never told about an explicit warning from the Russian government or about Tsarnaev's travel to the Chechnya region last year. Davis said he would have liked to have known about that activity, and that it "absolutely" would have merited a second look at Tsarnaev.

WASHINGTON -- Five days before two bombs tore through crowds at the Boston Marathon, an intelligence report identified the finish line of the race as an "area of increased vulnerability" and warned Boston police that extremists may use "small scale bombings" to attack spectators and runners at the event. The 18-page report was written by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, a command center funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security that helps disseminate intelligence information to local police and first responders. The "joint special event assessment" is dated April 10. It notes that at the time there was...

May 9, 2013 Were the 13 Immigration and Nationality Act "reforms" authored by Barney Frank between 1981 and 2001 responsible for the Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveling back and forth between Dagastan and the US with a legal visa even after the Russian Government had informed the FBI and the CIA about his radical Islamist background? This question is particularly relevant now that it has become all too apparent that foreign terrorists with legal visas are still inside the United States even after 9/11. Frank's 1989 amendment prevented our customs and embassy officials from doing their jobs and denying...

Police officers in Russia forced three men in a Muslim cafe to cut their beards at gunpoint, it has been claimed. During an inspection of a Muslim cafe in the Russian city of Surgut police officers apparently threatened some visitors with automatic weapons and with a lighter. One of the men claims an officer held a lighter to his chin and told him 'cut it off or I will burn it off'. The incident allegedly took place on March 3 in the cafe located near a mosque as the men were eating after evening prayers. One of the men said...

Worcester Police Chief Gary J. Gemme — bleeding $10,000 a day in detail costs to protect the funeral home holding accused terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body and out of prospects to find a burial plot — today issued a desperate plea to state and federal officials to bail his city out of the macabre melodrama.

Federal education officials today told UMass Dartmouth they cannot release academic and financial records of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, according to a letter received by the Herald. "From the limited information you provided, it appears that the academic and financial records that have been requested would be protected by FERPA, and that the University may not release them without the consent of the student," wrote Dale King, director of the Family Policy Compliance Office for the U.S. Department of Education.

The way the nation met 33-year-old MBTA Transit Police officer Richard Donohue was — like much of the conflicting information from that night of mayhem in Watertown, Massachusetts — violent, fast, and scary: He was exchanging fire with the Tsarnaev brothers, the story went, and he took a gun shot to his right thigh from the Boston bombing suspects — an injury that would see Donohue lose all of his own blood, sever three blood vessels, send him into cardiac arrest, and almost die. Now comes a more complete picture, with more eyewitnesses telling a new story, that Donohue was probably shot...

Lawyers for Robel Phillipos, the Cambridge native accused of covering up for marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, painted him as a “frightened and confused” teen who didn’t mean to lie to investigators in a bid to convince a judge he should be released with a GPS monitor. “This case is about a frightened and confused 19-year-old who was subjected to intense questioning and interrogation, without the benefit of counsel, and in the context of one of the worst attacks against the nation,” said Phillipos’ lawyers, Derege B. Demissie and Susan B. Church, in court papers filed yesterday, later adding, “Mr....

Complete Headline: Al Qaeda magazine found on laptop of bomber's widow: Suspicion over FBI Tsarnaev's wife grows after radical Islamist files found along with traces of explosive residue throughout her homeFederal officials investigating the Boston bombings have discovered radical Islamist materials on a computer belonging to the widow of the deceased suspect, it has been revealed. Katherine Russell, 24, has repeatedly claimed through her attorney that she knew nothing about the deadly April 15 bombings allegedly set off by her late husband, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar. However, the discovery of al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine on Russell’s computer,...

As the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings continues, one of the more clouded aspects is the tale of “Misha,” a mysterious US-based Islamist who has been accused by members of the Tsarnaev family of radicalizing Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two alleged bombers. “It started in 2009. And it started right there, in Cambridge,” Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told CNN after the attacks. “This person just took his brain. He just brainwashed him completely.” These accusations set off a frenzied search for what some reports have called an Islamic Svengali, and over the past few days, the FBI...

Canadian jihadi under interrogation told Russians about Tamerlan Tsarnaev; they then told FBI (full title) Epic failure. Obama scrubbed our counter terror materials and manuals of jihad, so what would you expect to happen? Even in the wake of the blood and carnage, Eric Holder is admonishing Jews to be tolerant of Islam and warning of "anti-Muslim backlash." That's his takeaway. Canadian jihadi under interrogation told Russians about Tamerlan Tsarnaev; they then told FBI Jihadwatch And the FBI did nothing to stop the Boston Marathon jihad bombing. They received the warning but did nothing, because it had to do with...

BOSTON (AP) — Every time the widow of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev leaves her parents' house, federal agents watching the residence follow her in unmarked vehicles. Federal authorities are placing intense pressure on what they know to be the inner circle of the two bombing suspects, arresting three college buddies of surviving brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and keeping Tamerlan's 24-year-old widow, Katherine Russell, in the public eye with their open surveillance and leaks to media about investigators' focus on her. Legal experts say it's part of their quest not just to determine whether Russell and the friends are culpable...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLjJlXASwOg This is an excerpt from a longer presentation by Center for Security Policy senior fellow Stephen Coughlin. In it, he explains doctrinal and historical background for the recent jihadist attack in Boston. Beginning with media reports willfully confused about the motivations of the Chechen Mulsim Tsarnaev brothers, Coughlin deconstructs the lineage of the 'individual jihad' vs 'jihad by bands' or secret, foreign-controlled cells.

A slain Canadian jihadi gave Russian counter-terrorism agents the tip that put alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev on their radar two years ago, Bay State U.S. Rep. William R. Keating confirmed yesterday — raising questions about whether Tsarnaev’s direct link to the known militant was ever passed on to the FBI or local authorities. Keating told the Herald yesterday his staff in Russia has learned William Plotnikov, while under interrogation in the militant hotbed of Dagestan, named Tsarnaev as a fellow extremist. “That’s when the Russian government started looking at Tamerlan and he showed up on a jihadist website,”...