Free Republic

Over the weekend, instead of reporting on the Puerto Rico relief efforts and how they were crippled by circumstance, the liberal media chose to champion the anti-Trump criticism from Democratic San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz. After President Trump pushed back against the criticism, the media sensed blood in the water and went all in. On Sunday’s Good Morning America, ABC Correspondent David Wright touted public outrage at the President, including one actor claiming Trump was going to Hell. Part way through his report highlighting anti-Trump criticism over his Puerto Rico response, Wright raised up the scathing tweet written by...

The reason for truck drivers not showing up? The Puerto Rican Teamsters Union, Frente Amplio, is refusing to move the product.

(Full Title)‘The T-shirt Shack has reopened!’ Where did San Juan’s mayor get that custom-printed ‘Help Us’ shirt anyway? As Twitchy reported Saturday morning, President Donald Trump in a series of tweets slammed the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, citing her “poor leadership ability.” Trump’s tweets raised quite a few questions, the least of which was not, “Should the president be tweeting like this right now?” Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz has been all over the media this weekend inspiring some questions of her own. During a press conference Friday, she said she was “mad as hell” about the relief effort,...

Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts, has the following comment: …They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed. “It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to...

The governor Ricardo Rossello has little experience. He’s 36 and never really held a job and never dealt with a budget. His entire administration is totally inexperienced and they have no clue how to handle a crisis of this magnitude.

Hackers linked to China electronically stole documents from a Washington law firm, Interpol and a Hong Kong bank that were then published online in a bid to discredit a dissident wanted by Beijing. FBI agents are conducting an investigation into the cyber attack earlier this month that penetrated information systems at the law firm Clark Hill, according to people familiar with the investigation. Private cyber investigators later traced the cyber attack to China and South Korea. The hacking and release of sensitive documents on Twitter mirrors the Russian intelligence operation to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in...

Former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is expected to be called to testify in the corruption trial of Sen. Robert Menendez, a source with knowledge of the situation told Fox News on Friday. Menendez is accused of accepting campaign donations, gifts and vacations from Florida ophthalmologist Dr. Salomon Melgen. In return, Menendez, D-N.J., allegedly used his Senate powers to lobby on behalf of Melgen’s business interests. Reid's name re-emerged weeks ago in the case, when prosecutors said the former congressional leader was “first enlisted” by Menendez in November 2011 to advocate for Melgen in the ongoing dispute the doctor had...

Sure enough, the Southern Poverty Law Center is based in the South. But is it impoverished? No way – in fact, it's sitting on millions of dollars. And does it provide legal assistance? Very little, if any. One out of three just doesn't cut it. By creating and posting a few years ago what it describes as a "hate map," the Alabama-based SPLC positioned itself prominently as a resource for those who find it convenient to ignore facts. No less than the FBI discovered that a bit too late. Most people may not know this, but at one time...

Question for the esteemed forum, and those in the conservative media: The Judiciary gets a pass for their ongoing misdeeds. It's clear the left has set it up so whatever they need to do they do it in court, at every level of the judiciary. They can't win in the arena of ideas, nor in the legislature (except with ongoing, reliable GOP help). The Court is their stronghold. Why hasn't the conservative media made this an ongoing feature? O'Reilly had Pinhead of the Day, and Rush has his updates, which I love. I'd like to see someone prominent highlight a...

The arguments between Hillel and Shammai: In their debates, one of them would render a decision and the other would argue against it, out of a desire to discover the truth, not out of cantankerousness or a wish to prevail over his fellow. That is why when he was right, the words of the person who disagreed, endured. An argument not for the sake of heaven was that of Korach and his company, for they came to undermine Moses, our master, may he rest in peace, and his position, out of envy and contentiousness and ambition for victory. Moses also...

The FBI’s investigation into college basketball corruption has already turned up several big names, including assistant coaches at prominent programs and apparel company representatives. The charges brought by federal prosecutors on Tuesday revolve around alleged bribery and fraud schemes. Here are the most important names and entities to know after the initial wave of charges and complaints. This will be updated as we learn more.

ick Pitino found the scandal he couldn’t survive. The Louisville coach, as well as athletic director Tom Jurich, was canned on Wednesday, according to multiple reports, one day after the corruption scandal that rocked the NCAA focused intently on Louisville. Pitino and Jurich met with Louisville officials Wednesday. According to WAVE-TV, Jurich was asked to fire Pitino and when he refused was fired himself. A news conference is scheduled for later Wednesday. The FBI investigated corruption and bribery in college sports, arresting assistants from four programs. Louisville was spotlighted by the investigation, which found a Cardinals recruit was funneled $100,000...

Multi-Billion Dollar Stadiums: The Seen vs. the Horrid Unseen By Allan Golombek September 27, 2017 In 1995, the Los Angeles Rams moved to St. Louis, extracting hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers to help build a new stadium. After 20 years in the Gateway City, the Rams moved right back where they came from – leaving the people of St. Louis and Missouri stuck with a $6 million a year tab to pay for an empty football field. American taxpayers spend billions of dollars a year to lure professional sports teams from one place to another in one of...

When Philadelphia police use civil asset forfeiture to seize millions in cash, cars, and homes every year, the money is put into secretive municipal bank accounts. Long-hidden documents reveal what happened to at least some of the money. It went for submachine guns, outboard motors and "tens of thousands in mysterious cash withdrawals over the past five years." Some $5 million is unnaccounted for, this investigation reckons. From Philadelphia Weekly: Attorneys at the Virginia-based nonprofit depict civil asset forfeiture as one of the greatest threats to property rights in the nation today. Under the Trump administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions...

The worst-kept secret in college basketball is how coaches, sneaker executives, sports agents, travel-team coaches and financial advisers, often through under-the-table payments, steer top high school talent first to NCAA programs and later to apparel brands and professional representation once they enter the NBA. Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York blew this shadowy world open in ways that have never before been seen, indicting 10 men, including active assistant basketball coaches at Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and USC, plus an executive for adidas, in a widespread case that is sure to rock college basketball to...

U.S. prosecutors unveiled charges against 10 coaches, managers, financial advisers and representatives of a sportswear company, accusing them of bribery, fraud and corruption in recruitment in college basketball. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Tuesday the charges followed a two-year investigation into criminal influence in NCAA basketball. Among those charged are four coaches, who are accused of steering players to advisers who had paid bribes to the coaches. The defendants include coaches at top U.S. college basketball programs, one agent, one financial adviser and a former referee. The coaches are Lamont Evans, an assistant at Oklahoma State University, Emanuel Richardson, an...

The FBI is charging 10 people, including four NCAA basketball coaches and representatives of a “major international sportswear company” with fraud and corruption, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. The assistant coaches involved are Chuck Person of Auburn, Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State, Emanuel Richardson of Arizona and Tony Bland of USC.

Roger Goodell is a transparent, pandering phony. Now he supports those selectively outraged players who refuse to stand during the national anthem. In 2015, Goodell’s NFL was revealed to have allowed teams take $5.4 million in Department of Defense money to perform patriotic pregame shows. Perhaps it’s time for all right-headed sports fans to take a knee during the anthem, to let both selectively outraged sides know they’re sick of it all, that the politicization of sports — the exploitation of sports to provide “a platform” — is driving them down and out.

Alger Hiss was a U.S. State Department official who was accused in 1948 of being a Soviet spy. Hiss's indictment stemmed from alleged espionage in the form of secret State Department documents spirited out of Foggy Bottom and into the hands of persons "not authorized to receive" them. "The Pumpkin Papers" consisted of sixty-five pages of retyped secret State Department documents, four pages in Hiss's own handwriting of copied State Department cables, and five rolls of developed and undeveloped 35mm film. Being charged under the Espionage Act was appropriate for those who obtained any information relating to the national defense...

...President Donald Trump has recommended a cut of some 30% to the State Department’s budget, which includes the funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and most of America’s investments in global health. Congress is unlikely to go along with such large cuts, but our best guess is that, by the time the dust settles, key foreign-aid programs will be scaled back. Even modest cuts would represent the reversal of a long-term trend of increasing U.S. support for foreign aid, and a similar mood of retrenchment has taken hold elsewhere. In the U.K., the world’s second-largest aid donor, there...