Free Republic

The bloated federal agency charged with feeding the poor—and eradiating “food insecurity” in the U.S.—blew nearly $7 billion to provide “ineligible recipients” with the welfare benefit and there appears to be no end in sight to the fleecing. In fact, the agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has for years violated a measure known as the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (IPERA) that requires agencies to conduct annual risk assessments to identify programs that make “significant improper payments” of $10 million or more. Not only has the USDA violated IPERA in the last four years, it also refuses...

Madison— Days before three state Supreme Court justices skipped ceremonies to admit new lawyers to the bar, Justice N. Patrick Crooks accused newly elected Chief Justice Patience Roggensack of breaking court rules by threatening to throw him off a case without any authority. Crooks and another justice also contended Roggensack had violated court rules by scheduling a conference to discuss three cases without the permission of all seven justices, emails between the justices show. The exchanges are the latest sign of turmoil on a court that has drawn national attention for infighting. Their disputes have been on public display in...

ATLANTA — An Atlanta man held a would-be carjacker at gunpoint until police arrived and arrested the suspect, according to police.

It's Memorial Day, and the forecast is for renewed mocking and derision regarding man-made climate change from the know-nothing, science-averse wing of the Republican Party. President Barack Obama's warning—issued during his commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremonies Wednesday—that climate change represents a national security threat seems certain to provoke that kind of stormy reaction.[SNIP]Among the Republicans running for president, climate change denial is the current mode of thinking for most....it's hard to see anyone in the crowd calling for military preparedness. Mostly, the candidates appear interested in sidestepping the topic (albeit in a disapproving manner)..The result...

A Georgia man says he has no regrets after he turned the tables on a would-be carjacker and held him on the ground at gunpoint until police arrived. Hashim Fannin said he was pulling into a parking spot at the Family Dollar in northwest Atlanta earlier this month when Edgar Horn, 61, slid into the passenger seat after Mr. Fannin’s doors automatically unlocked, a local ABC affiliate reported. “He told me, ‘You know what this is,’ ” Mr. Fannin recalled. Thats’ when he pulled out his gun on the suspect. “I asked him to get out the car, probably not...

Everything about the Clintons, both Hillary and Bubba, is a lie, including (to steal a memorable line from the author Mary McCarthy) the “a,” the “and,” and the “the.” Neither Bubba nor Hillary know how to tell the truth, but both of them are masters at spinning the lie. The dump of some of Hillary’s official emails this week reveals just how she operated as the secretary of State, employing an old courtier to help her deceive and distort the facts about her role in hanging an American ambassador out to die in Benghazi. Mrs. Clinton not only set up...

ATLANTA — An East Point man held a would-be carjacker at gunpoint until police arrived and arrested the suspect, according to Atlanta police. -snip- “You were not trying to rob me,” Fannin said to the man on cellphone video of the incident. “Do you just get into random people's cars ... you thought I was your friend … you thought I was your friend ... so you woke up stupid this morning?”

The State Department has released 296 emails from Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, in the first batch of emails to be made public. The emails, just a fraction of what the department has in its custody, show internal communications before and after the Benghazi terror attack in 2012. One email to Clinton, regarding one of then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's TV appearances the Sunday after the attack, appeared to praise her for reflecting their "view" that the attack started "spontaneously." Despite this email,other guidance has emerged showing Clinton and others were warned shortly after the attack that it may...

The night a U.S. ambassador was killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, Hillary Clinton sent a message three senior State Department officials. The recepients were Jake Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff to then-Secretary of State Clinton, Cheryl Mills, an adviser to Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and Counselor and Chief of Staff to the Secretary, and Victoria Jane Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

This summer will be busy for the Obama administration’s energy and environmental regulators, with numerous high-profile rule releases planned. Between June and August, regulators hope to fill out the Obama administration’s agenda with major rules on greenhouse gases, the oil and natural gas sectors, coal production, and other policy priorities, according to a rule-making schedule released by the White House late Thursday. The administration’s main climate change rule from the Environmental Protection Agency, which would slash greenhouse gases in the power sector by 30 percent, is due out in August. That aligns with the timeline EPA officials, including Administrator Gina...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Barack Obama is negotiating with 11 other nations seeks to eliminate both tariff and nontariff trade barriers with these countries, according to the Congressional Research Service. One of those countries is Vietnam, which the State Department says maintains a Communist regime. In 2014, the U.S. ran a $24,858,700,000 trade deficit with Vietnam, according to U.S. government trade data published by the Census Bureau. U.S. producers sold $5,724,900,000 in goods to purchasers in Vietnam. At the same time, producers in Vietnam sold $30,583,600,000 in goods to purchasers in the United States. Documents related to the TPP...

The Obama administration has never described the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) as a “ragtag” group, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on Thursday, after describing the fall of Ramadi to the jihadist group as a “serious setback” but also saying that any conflict will have “ebbs and flows.” During a press briefing days after ISIS seized Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, Harf sparred with an Arab reporter over ISIS’ advances, differing with him over how much territory it now controls, how the administration views the group, and the relative strategies of ISIS and the U.S.

The Islamic State (Isis) group has released a new issue of its slick propaganda magazine Dabiq, featuring articles justifying the enslavement of Yazidi girls and condemning conspiracy theorists, as well as a report by British hostage John Cantlie. The publication also featured an article suggesting that the terror group is losing militants to conspiracy theories. Titled Conspiracy Theory Shirk (Sin) the piece implies that some fighters have grown delusional because of conjectures saying that IS is a puppet in the hands of western intelligence agencies. "If the mujahedeen liberated territory occupied by the kuffar [infidels], they would say that the...

Attorney General Loretta Lynch believes the United States will be “less safe” if Congress doesn’t reauthorize the Patriot Act. Speaking to “CBS This Morning,” Lynch expressed concerns about not allowing the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone records. “My biggest fear … is that we will lose important eyes on people who have made it clear … that their mission is to harm American people here and abroad,” Lynch said She continued, “I think that we run the risk … of essentially being less safe. I think that we lose important tools. I think that we...

The setting aside of critical habitat for the endangered jaguar in New Mexico was an “unlawful, arbitrary and capricious” action by federal authorities and needs to be overturned, a new lawsuit says. ... In March 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service set aside nearly 1,200 square miles along the U.S.-Mexico border as habitat essential for the conservation of the jaguar. Federal officials acknowledged last year when they made the designation that no female jaguars or breeding had been documented in the U.S. in more than 50 years. ... Reed Hopper, another attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, said the federal...

When Western radicals who support terrorists and rogue states meet their demise, it’s only sometime after they lose their lives for the cause when we learn about their background and motivations. Such was the case with Rachel Corrie and Kayla Mueller, who were praised by the US media for being dedicated lovers of peace and tranquility for the poor and downtrodden in the Middle East. It was only through the new media we later learned about their radical, anti-US and Israel activities at home and abroad.

After the repeated destruction of memorials to Michael Brown, the Brown family and the town of Ferguson have agreed on a more permanent structure. In September 2014, the makeshift memorial to Brown, which was in the middle of the street, was set on fire and destroyed, writes CBS News. Rebuilt, it was again destroyed, this time intentionally by a vehicle the day after Christmas Then a memorial tree was planted in April, only to be cut down one day later Now, the most recent memorial to Brown has been removed by officials, with the items put in storage, reports Fox...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — As first lady in the final year of the Clinton administration, Hillary Rodham Clinton endorsed a White House plan to give tax breaks to private foundations and wealthy charity donors at the same time the William J. Clinton Foundation was soliciting donations for her husband's presidential library, recently released Clinton-era documents show. ... White House documents in the Clinton Library reviewed by The Associated Press show Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton were kept apprised about a tax reduction package that would have benefited donors, including those to his presidential library, by reducing their tax burden....

The U.S. Department of the Interior should do all it can to keep open the Colowyo coal mine in northwest Colorado, U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton and Sen. Cory Gardner, both Colorado Republicans, said in a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. ... Colowyo Mine employs 220 people in Moffat and Rio Blanco counties and has a payroll of about $20 million, Tipton wrote to Jewell, asking that Interior react quickly to a federal court ruling that could force closure of the mine. “The adverse effects of shutting down this mine go beyond the jobs at the mine that would be...

The Senate narrowly advanced a bill that would give President Obama the ???fast-track??? authority to negotiate trade deals with foreign partners. Sixty votes were needed to move forward with the measure, and the Senate voted 62 to 38 in favor of invoking cloture -- setting up a vote on final passage for this week before the Senate leaves for Memorial Day recess.