Free Republic

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward warned on Wednesday that there are people from the Obama administration who could be facing criminal charges for unmasking the names of Trump transition team members from surveillance of foreign officials. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said earlier that he had briefed Trump on new information, unrelated to an investigation into Russian activities, that suggested that several members of Trump's transition team and perhaps Trump himself had their identities "unmasked" after their communications were intercepted by U.S. intelligence officials. The revelation is notable because identities of Americans are generally supposed to remain...

Undercover FBI agents posed as documentary filmmakers for a production titled "America Reloaded" to draw statements from the men who rushed to support rancher Cliven Bundy in his 2014 stand against the federal government......

If you perked up at news this week that President Trump's approval rating had dipped to 37 percent, according to figures tracked by Gallup, you should un-perk. The truth is, whether Trump is in the 30s or 40s — or even 20s or 50s — simply doesn't matter much. For those of us between the ages of 25 and 100 years old, this is going to take some getting used to. We are accustomed to believing that a president needs to be popular to see his agenda become law. Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush used their political...

Actor Shia LaBeouf is taking his controversial anti-President Trump art installation across the pond, claiming America isn’t “safe enough” for his work. The “He Will Not Divide Us” webcam exhibit has been adopted by the Liverpool-based Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, the group said Tuesday.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said on Wednesday that the Senate parliamentarian has told him that it may be possible for Republicans to push harder on repealing Obamacare's regulations than the current House bill, which contradicts the assertion by House leadership that the legislation goes after Obamacare as aggressively as possible under Senate rules. "What I understood her to be saying is that there's no reason why an Obamacare repeal bill necessarily could not have provisions repealing the health insurance regulations," Lee said in an interview with the Washington Examiner, relating a conversation with parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough about reconciliation he had...

Maryland Democrats this week took a major step to becoming a "sanctuary state," drawing outrage from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and concerns it would protect an 18-year-old illegal charged with raping a 14-year-old girl in a school bathroom last week. The Democratically-controlled House of Delegates voted 83-55 to OK the Maryland Law Enforcement and Trust Act. Generally, it would bar state and local law enforcement from helping federal immigration officials seeking illegals, including requests to detain inmates for deportation.

CARSON CITY, Nev. - Nevada lawmakers are ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment exactly 45 years after Congress first submitted it to the states. State senators gave final approval Wednesday for Nevada to sign on to the effort set in motion by women's suffragists. The move brings the nation two states shy -- but decades past deadline -- of amending the U.S. Constitution to plainly state women and men are equal under the law. Opponents argue it could disrupt family and military culture, and possibly lead to unfettered abortion access and funding. The amendment required approval from 38 states to take...

Go Ahead...You Own It I had an "interesting" debate on Twitter last night with someone who is involved in the health insurance game in some way and apparently has cancer patients as clients. He is a strong shill for (supporter of) the "Obamacare Repeal/Replace" process by his own admission. The debate was plenty fun and decent right up until I pointed out that on the math the Federal Government spent $1,417 billion last fiscal year on Medicare and Medicaid, up from $380 billion in 1998, which incidentally was 37% of all federal spending last year -- and it's accelerating at...

"..Obama would not have needed a warrant to authorize surveillance on Trump. Obama was the president and as such enjoyed authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to order surveillance on any person in America, without suspicion, probable cause or a warrant... National Security Agency has 24/7 access to the mainframe computers of all telecom providers and all computer service providers and to all digital traffic carried by fiber optics in the U.S... Obama needed only to ask the NSA for a transcript of Trump’s telephone conversations to be prepared from the digital versions that the NSA already possessed..NSA would...

Has there ever been this level of resistance/interference by a prior administration to the incoming in U.S. history? Haven't we always prided ourselves on our smooth and peaceful transitions of power from one elected administration/party to the next? If we didn't know better and understand that this cannot happen in America, the level of organized and criminal interference and obstruction against the duly elected President Trump being put up by former President Obama himself and his new socialist organization, the entire democrat party, the GOP establishment, the entrenched holdovers throughout government, the liberal activist judges and the liberal media might...

International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates 20,484 migrants have arrived in Europe by sea since the beginning of 2017, with numbers likely to explode as the continent heads into spring. These totals do not include 3,312 migrants picked up off Libya on the 19th of March who are currently en route to Italy, according to the text of the IOM’s report. Including these migrants puts the number of Italian arrivals well ahead of the total for the first three months of 2015 (10,165) and the first three months of 2016 (18,777) – and March 2017 has over a week

History moves in cycles. The plague of political correctness and assaults on free speech that erupted in the 1980s and were beaten back in the 1990s have returned with a vengeance. In the United States, the universities as well as the mainstream media are currently patrolled by well-meaning but ruthless thought police, as dogmatic in their views as agents of the Spanish Inquisition. We are plunged once again into an ethical chaos where intolerance masquerades as tolerance and where individual liberty is crushed by the tyranny of the group. The premier principles of my new book, Free Women, Free Men,...

ormer Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) says FBI Director James Comey is “tainted” by ties to the Clinton Foundation. “The swamp runs deep,” she wrote on Facebook. "Where are congressional ‘investigators’ on this conflict of interest issue?” “Why aren’t dots more clearly connected by those in authority, those privy to information that we peasants are not?” the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee asked. "Why is tainted Comey still part of Team Trump? How long does he get to ride the train?” Comey on Monday confirmed the FBI is probing Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including possible collusion between now-President...

Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky was unrestrained in his praise for President Trump: Opening for him at a rally on Monday, Mr. Bevin, a conservative Republican, echoed Mr. Trump’s “America First” slogan and only gently noted the nagging divisions in their party. “We now have a president and a Congress that are united in party, and yet we still have disagreements among us,” Mr. Bevin said, insisting, “This is healthy and good.” In private, Mr. Bevin has been blunter about the party’s disagreements. Just days before appearing with Mr. Trump in Louisville, he joined a conference call with the president’s...

The lawyer who founded Judicial Watch and later Freedom Watch, Larry Klayman, has sent a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, asking him to look at a whistleblower’s evidence of “systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, again including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly.” That spying was done, Klayman’s letter contends, by the FBI. It’s become a major issue following President Trump’s assertion that he and Trump Tower were spied upon by the federal government, and the...

Not only did Nevadans in all but one county (and most sheriffs) not support the Bloomberg measure, it was written so poorly the FBI said there was no way they could legally cooperate. So why is a police union representing members who took oaths to support the Constitution demanding enforcement?

Back in 2003 Iyman Faris was convicted of a rather scatterbrained plot to take down the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting the structure’s support cables. He was planning to do this in collusion with Al Qaeda as part of a possible second wave of attacks against the United States. He was given a rather lengthy jail term but he’s due to be released in December 2020. So what happens then? He’s a naturalized citizen of Pakistani birth, but the Justice Department is now looking to change that situation by stripping him of said citizenship and ejecting him from the country....

Good Morning/Afternoon, MEGAWELCOMETrumpHumpDayDITTOS From Biggirl!

The National Rifle Association spent a record amount to support Donald Trump's winning presidential campaign — upward of $30 million. While this investment looks wise now, recall that not long ago it was the height of insanity. Trump's campaign seemed doomed — but the NRA doubled down on its risky bet anyway, which threatened to marginalize it and undermine it politically. I believe this bet testifies to the NRA's desperation. This sounds odd, I realize, when you consider how the gun lobby is racking up legislative victories — expanding "campus carry" and permitless concealed-carry gun laws at the state level,...

Donald Trump on Monday is scheduled to meet with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, architect of Obamacare, as the president fights to replace the healthcare package with his own plan. The president's meeting with Emanuel is also expected to include Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and House Speaker Paul Ryan.... It marks the third time since the November election that Emanuel has met with Trump to discuss healthcare policy, the Post reported. In addition, he has discussed health issues with several of Trump's top advisers.....