Free Republic

Political consultant/wife of state GOP political director working to defeat incumbent conservative GOP legislators while working out of office in GOP HQs. Posed as an official representative of the Tennessee Republican Party to reporter covering the delegate controversy. RTP has learned that party officials Brent Leatherwood and Walker Ferrell were repeatedly warned about the appearance and ethics of contracting with Ferrell’s wife. That arrangement on its face was highly questionable, but exploded into the public view when it was learned she was also under contract to defeat several Republican officeholders. This unethical “backdoor” attempt to circumvent party by-laws was exposed...

Jacki Talks With Dr. Grantham About How ISIS Oil Has Made Its Way To the USA

Long-time Democratic insider, and current CNN political correspondent, Bob Beckel predicted that "Hillary will be elected president even if she's in jail on election day. The American people don't care about emails or computer security. Their expectations are that those they elect to lead them will rise above a literal compliance with the law in order to more effectively wield the power that is necessary to govern the nation." Beckel discounted the possibility that Clinton's legal troubles would pose any impediments to her assumption of the presidency. "I'd say that by winning in November she will have been effectively 'pardoned'...

Pro-Kasich MS GOP threatens Trump/Cruz convention attendees with “badge or guns” Pro-Kasich? They support John Kasich?A couple of years ago I had the benefit in honor of campaigning with Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel in the state of Mississippi as he was trying to get elected to the Senate and knock off Sen. Thad Cochran . He was met by the Republican state GOP supported by the National Republican Senate Committee (by the way, Sen. Ted Cruz was vice chairman at the time) who used liberal racist fear tactics to defeat him. NOTE: Cruz didn’t participate in this particular strategy by...

New documents obtained by Judicial Watch raise questions about the role of Clinton Inc. in the Benghazi debacle, particularly the involvement of Bill Clinton and longtime Clinton hatchet man Sidney Blumenthal. Mrs. Clinton, seeking to ease concerns about her ties to the Clintons’ powerful political machine, famously pledged as secretary of state-designate not to “participate personally and substantially” in matters relating to the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Initiative. We now know that promise was swiftly broken. Blumenthal—a man so hated by the Obama White House that it banned the State Department from hiring him—was secretly put on Mrs....

NASHVILLE, Tennessee–Controversy is threatening to bring an early end to the regime of thirty-year-old Ryan Haynes, who was named chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party in April 2015. More than two dozen Republican members of the Tennessee House of Representatives signed an April 18 letter to Haynes demanding the immediate termination of his political director, Walker Ferrell, on the grounds that his wife, Taylor Ferrell, a paid consultant of the Tennessee Republican Party, is also being paid to defeat a number of incumbent Republican members of the House in primary challenges. The latest problem comes less than a month after...

GOP State Party officials caught in a huge conflict-of-interest. 27 GOP legislators call Haynes and staff on the carpet for “unethical” behavior. Wife of state GOP political director paid to defeat incumbent Republican officeholders. In the Pantheon of Dumb Political Operatives, these people deserve a special place of honor. Instead of us here at RTP rehashing today’s events, we provide our loyal readers (both of ‘em) the actual letter, delivered of course by (more than) one of our Merry Band of Tipsters. Letter 1 letter 2 Whew! There is already major fallout over this, what with everyone scurrying to cover...

SEC members say GOP executive director making “veiled threats” against signers of letter. Brietbart News posts major national story on the controversy. The fallout over the crass conflicts-of-interest and “insider trading” by the ethically challenged state GOP staff and leadership is only just beginning. Baghdad Brent After over one-third of the House GOP caucus sent a scathing letter to Chairman Ryan Haynes about the corrupt arrangement between the party’s political director and his political consultant wife, the immediate knee-jerk response came from the state party’s executive director, “Baghdad Brent” Leatherwood, who said that Haynes “would in no way allow his...

State Party Chair begs Legislators to take their name off letter. RTP says waverers and others may be begging to sign back ON to the letter once they hear about new revelations. GOP state party chairman Ryan Haynes, instead of spending his time correcting the sordid scandal enveloping state party headquarters, has decided to attack the messengers. In the meantime, we offer a friendly caution to those wavering legislators and others who have rushed to defend Haynes: RTP has been tracking down accusations of other misdeeds and questionable arrangements that will likely make letter-deniers pleading to get their signatures back...

The State Department doled out $13 million in grants for longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, according to federal records. The grants were provided in 18 separate transactions from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Bangladesh-based Grameen bank, according to a Sunday evening report from the Daily Caller News Foundation, for which Yunus served as a founding board member. Groups associated with Yunus through business relationships received an additional $11 million. Yunus oversaw the distribution of microcredit loans to impoverished borrowers for the bank for over 30 years....

A group of former agents has written a letter to FBI Director Comey saying the “future of the bureau” hinges on what happens in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The letter from a group of retired agents in Long Island compares the Clinton email scandal to another famous FBI case known as ABSCAM. ABSCAM involved public corruption of politicians who were filmed taking bribes from a fictitious front company. Fox News published the letter over the weekend. It reads: Dear Director Comey,The Long Island Chapter of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, hereinafter called the Chapter, would...

As if local veterans enduring endless waits for government benefits don't have enough to worry about, now there's this: Officials are investigating whether documents were inappropriately shredded at the Department of Veterans Affairs center in Philadelphia, which processes benefits claims from the Lehigh Valley. If a veteran's paperwork is shredded instead of added to a claim file, that could result in disability or pension benefits' being denied or delayed. The Philadelphia office and nine others were inspected without warning last month by the VA inspector general's office. The checks occurred because the inspector general discovered a claims center in Los...

The bad news has been snowballing for Bill de Blasio, what with the emergence of a federal probe involving, among other things, top cops in Brooklyn accepting diamonds, trips and more from two big donors to various appendages of his political operation and what’s now four separate investigations into a city-aided flip, again involving a wired backer of the mayor, of a Lower East Side nursing home for AIDS patients into luxury condos. I wrote last Sunday that “after this week, I’m losing faith that de Blasio’s horse trading is paying off for the city.” And it appears I’m not...

Her mixing of official work with Yunus and others is reportedly the focus of a FBI public corruption investigation, according to the report.The Daily Caller News Foundation says its investigation revealed that the tax funds were given to Yunus through 18 separate USAID award transactions listed by the federal contracting site USAspending.gov.Yunus is a long-time friend of Clinton, and was managing director of the Grameen Bank before Bangladesh Bank forced him to leave office on the grounds that he had crossed the official age limit.He had challenged his dismissal in the Supreme Court but lost and has been at loggerheads...

Supporters of the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff took a commanding lead in a ballot in the lower house of Congress on Sunday that could hasten the end of 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule in Latin America's biggest economy. With 272 votes cast, 210 members of Congress had voted in favor of Rousseff's impeachment and 62 voted against or abstained. The Datafolha polling group projected Rousseff's defeat. Rousseff's opponents needs votes from 342 of the 513 members of the chamber to send her for trial in the Senate on charges of manipulating budgetary accounts to support her...

Illinois' 859 local school districts consume nearly two-thirds of the $27 billion in local property taxes collected across the state each year. Illinois has nearly 7,000 units of local government. That’s the highest count of any state in the nation, and the runner-up is not even close. One of those units of government is the Naperville Township Road District, where seven employees maintain less than 20 miles of road at a cost of $116,000 per mile. City officials have said they could maintain the same distance at half the cost, and have moved to take over the road district’s duties...

Judicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest Defending the First Amendment against the Obama IRS Only 3 U.S. Airports Require Employee Security Checks JW Gets Props in The Wall Street JournalJudicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest With a notorious Democrat in the White House, it bears repeating that there are corrupt politicians in both the Republican and Democrat parties. The “corruption caucus” in the political world is both bipartisan and growing. True to our non-partisan educational mission, we...

KOLKATA, India — When Sonali Mehrotra realized that a hulking overpass would come within arm’s length of her third-floor balcony, she took refuge in black humor, telling relatives to look at the bright side: Instead of lugging suitcases up the stairs when they came to visit, they could toss them into a bedroom as they drove in from the airport. Anyway, work on the overpass occurred so sporadically — generally, when elections were coming — that a project originally promised in 18 months was unfinished after seven years. At this rate, she joked, the project might not be completed in...

There is a truism simply stated that the three most important factors in real estate are location, location, location. Maybe it is time to apply this axiom to government, specifically at the federal level. Technology has now reached the point that it is no longer necessary for a congressman or senator to reside in or near Washington, D.C., in order to carry out his constitutional duties. Imagine how much more difficult it would be for lobbyists to bribe the majority of the 435 members of the House of Representatives or the 100 senators if they had to make a circuit...

Bernie Sanders reportedly earned just over $200,000 in 2014. That same year, Hillary Clinton, Sanders's top Democratic rival, gave about 45 paid speeches, many of which paid her more in a single hour than Sanders made the entire year.