Free Republic

“With all due respect, Senator, I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss [this issue],” Holder replied during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing when Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., asked if the executive branch was conducting surveillance that would give “unique leverage” over lawmakers. Kirk replied that “the correct answer would be no, we stayed within our lane, and we did not spy on Members of Congress.” Holder assured Kirk that “there is no intention to do anything of that nature — that is, to spy on Members of Congress or to spy on the Supreme Court.”

The IRS has notified congressional staff that top officials in the agency’s Affordable Care Act implementation team were recently placed on administrative leave for potential improprieties, according to a congressional source. The agency told lawmakers that Fred Schindler, who is Sarah Hall Ingram’s deputy, and another staffer in the division were put on leave. The move is the result of gifts the staffers allegedly received — including $1,100 in free food and other items — while attending a 2010 health care conference. The IRS didn’t immediately comment. The agency is surrounded in scandal after acknowledging last month that it wrongly...

FBI confirms it has agents executing a search warrant at the California Capitol, “taking evidence respective to an ongoing investigation”

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- A Nevada powerbroker who headed a billion-dollar real estate company and pulled the strings of state politics as a prominent lobbyist for more than a decade was convicted Wednesday of making illegal campaign contributions to U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. Harvey Whittemore, 59, could face up to 15 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after a federal jury returned guilty verdicts on three counts tied to nearly $150,000 illegally funneled to Reid's re-election campaign in 2007. Later in the day, U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks declared a mistrial on a count of...

The secretary’s ridiculous talk of $4 billion in private investment for the Palestinians demonstrates that the path out of our conflict is not going to be cleared by Washington n Sunday afternoon, at the World Economic Forum conference on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, a group of Israeli and Palestinian businesspeople unveiled an initiative designed to spur progress to an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. Hundreds of company bosses were signed up to the “Breaking the Impasse” project, reported its two trailblazers — the Midas of Israeli high-tech, Yossi Vardi, and the Palestinian oil-, gas- and much more besides-billionaire, Munib...

<p>WHITE MARSH, Md. (AP) -- A cargo train derailed Tuesday in a Baltimore suburb and an explosion could be heard for miles, collapsing nearby buildings and setting them on fire, officials and witnesses said.</p>

<p>Fire officials say a CSX freight train crashed into a trash truck near Baltimore, causing an explosion that rattled homes at least a half-mile away and collapsed nearby buildings, setting them on fire.</p>

It’s not a stretch to suggest that Americans are over medicated. In 2011 doctors across the nation wrote an astounding four billion medical prescriptions, amounting to an average of 13 prescriptions for every man, woman and child in the United States. In the next few weeks the American Psychiatric Associations is releasing their updated fifth version their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); the so-called ‘bible’ of psychiatric diagnoses. The new manual promises to take mental illness and the use of prescription drugs to a whole new level. You may not be considered “crazy” or “mentally ill” today,...

UK: Muslims screaming "Allahu akbar" behead British soldier with machete on public street In the face of appeasement and denial everywhere in the West, the jihad grows more brazen. Here is the feed from the BBC: 1753: Senior aides to Mayor of London Boris Johnson describe the Woolwich killing as a 'sickening deluded deranged act of violence', says the BBC's Robin Brant. 1744: Senior Whitehall sources have told the BBC that the Woolwich attackers are thought to have tried to film their attack whilst shouting "Allahu Akbar" - God is Great, says political editor Nick Robinson. The men were said...

Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies, agreed to forfeit his right to an appeal and will get life in prison.

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story. ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

Syria will "give Hizbullah everything" in recognition of its support and will follow the terrorist group's model of "resistance" against Israel, a Lebanese newspaper on Thursday quoted President Bashar al-Assad as saying. --snip-- Assad was quoted as saying Syria could "easily" respond to Israeli air strikes by "firing a few rockets at Israel."

Three taken into custody believed to be college students who helped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev cover up for the bombing after the fatal blasts Boston police say there is no threat to public safety Boston police announced on Wednesday that three new suspects were arrested in connection to the marathon bombing and they are thought to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's roommates who helped him cover his tracks after the fatal blasts.  The Boston Police Department were the first ones to report the arrest over their Twitter feed, and The Boston Globe claimed that the three people in custody were college students and the...

Republicans want to limit the number of bullets federal agencies can purchase so American gun owners can buy more.

<p>BOSTON (CBSNewYork/AP) – The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings acknowledged to the FBI his role in the attacks but did so before he was advised of his constitutional right to keep quiet and seek a lawyer, U.S. officials said Wednesday.</p>

Slipped through her fingers: Big sis admits DHS knew Boston jihadist traveled to Russia in 2012.- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stunned a Senate panel when she admitted that her agency knew of alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's trip to Russia last year even though his name was misspelled on a travel document, as she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on sweeping immigration amnesty legislation. The admission that her department was aware of Tsarnaev's six-month trip to Dagestan - a hotbed of radical Islamic activity - surprised two 'Gang of Eight' senators, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY),...

A man taken hostage by the alleged Boston bombers after he was car jacked was able to escape after they stopped to buy cans of Red Bull at a gas station, MailOnline can reveal. The carjacking victim, whose name has not been revealed, has told authorities that being Chinese almost certainly saved his life, saying that the brothers told him they would not kill him because he was 'not American.' The victim was able to jump out of the car and flee while Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, looked to buy cans of the energy drink and chocolate bars. From interviews with...

Terror never rests, even on the placid train trip between New York and Toronto. With the help of the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Canadian law enforcement officials announced Monday that they had stopped an Al Qaeda-linked plot to derail a New York-to-Toronto Amtrak passenger train, and have arrested two suspects in Montreal and Toronto. Police charged Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser with "terrorism related offenses," officials said at a news conference Monday afternoon. The men were observed gathering information on trains in the Toronto area, officials said, which they planned to attack. The charges against the...

Law-enforcement officials trying to understand what happened in Boston are looking into whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had taken a turn toward radical Islam. Among the things they are examining: a six-month trip he took last year to Dagestan, a republic in Russia's south, bordering Chechnya. A close examination of the Tsarnaev family shows that, over the past five years or so, the personal lives of the family members slipped into turmoil, according to interviews with the parents, relatives and friends. The upheaval in the household was driven, at least in part, by a growing interest in religion by both Tamerlan and...

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is suing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and six other lawmakers, charging that they mishandled the Ethics investigation that led to his public censure in late 2010. In a complaint filed Monday in federal court in Washington D.C., Rangel claims the Ethics Committee that investigated his alleged wrongdoing are guilty of "numerous flagrant, knowing and intentional violations" of his due process rights. House members who approved his censure were "knowingly deceived" by the committee leaders – including then-Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and ranking member Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) – into thinking that the probe "had been conducted in...