Free Republic

May 12, 2013 Darrell Issa: House Oversight Committee to depose Pickering and Mullen over Benghazi Twitchy Staff Darrell Issa reports that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which he chairs, will depose Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen over Benghazi....

Someone stopped by searching for “gun use in self defense.” They did not find it where they were sent, because firing a gun in self defense is not the same thing as crimes prevented by a gun. Since most crimes prevented by the presence or the possible presence of a gun are only known to the perpetrator, the place to start is with criminals. Who are hard to pin down unless they are already in prison. From the standpoint of an inmate being surveyed on how often he, or sometimes she, committed a crime, how they selected victims and so...

WESLACO - Rio Grande Valley police departments no longer will have direct access to their counterparts on the south side of the border. The Mexican government said it will limit the information it shares with U.S. law enforcement agencies. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration said all information will be disseminated through the ministry of interior in Mexico City. The announcement is a 180-degree turn from the open dialogue both nations had on law enforcement. The change likely will delay investigations Valley lawmen said. "It'll still trickle down to us. It might be a little slower, but we'll still get...

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) accused U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack of knowing that women and minority farmers fraudulently claimed discrimination to receive taxpayer-funded settlements, and they knowingly initiated more programs to facilitate more of these payments. "It is my sense they know what they are doing," King said on "Breitbart News Sunday" on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125. "That's a heavy statement, but they knew what they were doing. They knew these were fraudulent claims." King said as he "watched the actions of the USDA" under Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and the Justice Department under Attorney...

Not a single word in the 844-page "Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act" introduced by Senator Marco Rubio and the "Gang of Eight" addresses the controversial practice of "birthright citizenship." Birthright citizenship is the common description given to the automatic grant of U.S. citizenship to babies born in the U.S. regardless of the citizenship status of the parents. Many experts agree with the verdict of law professor Lino Graglia -- that the practice generates "perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry." The failure of Congress to confront the subject is nothing new. The "four pillars" of the...

If you're like me, your college alumni association floods your inbox with email invitations to contribute, often adding invites to football games and lectures by famous alums or popular professors. Except for the moment when an appeal made directly by an administrator turned out to be a multi-page swoon over Obama, most of these imprecations are politically content-free and were designed to play on my nostalgic memories of a college as it once was, not as it is today. Both my husband and I are very grateful to our university. Without scholarships neither of us would have had an opportunity...

We know what liberals with power over other people think their job is...so this is pretty self explanatory...

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, might make it a political trifecta for the Clinton dynasty. The former first daughter who currently works as a "special correspondent" with NBC, told that station in an interview on Monday that if she feels at some point in her life that she could make an impact on America, she would consider running for political office. "Right now, I'm grateful to live in a city and a state and a country where I strongly support my mayor, my governor, my president and my senators...

<p>The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has posted mug shots of 35 educators booked for allegedly colluding to raise standardized test scores.</p> <p>A 73-year-old principal, a middle school secretary, elementary school teachers, and other school workers are accused of being behind the nation's biggest cheating scandal.</p>

Inspired by this post at Newsbusters. The joke is not new by any means, but it's really remarkable that a major pop culture figure like Jay Leno was willing to use it.

On Tuesday night The Denver Post editorial board hosts a public forum on gun legislation at the national level. U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Ed Perlmutter, State Sen. Kevin Lundberg, and Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith are among the scheduled panelists. During the question and answer period a concerned Denver citizen asked Democratic Representative DeGette how he was supposed to defend himself under the new Colorado gun laws. DeGette smirked and mocked the senior citizen saying, “The good news for you, you live in Denver. The Denver PD would be there within minutes. (laughing) You’d probably be dead anyway.” Really?...

Before it has even gone into effect the gun-control law championed by Governor Andrew Cuomo has run into insurmountable problems. Under the law it is illegal for anyone in the state to have a weapon with a magazine that holds more than seven bullets. Aside from converting the majority of the state’s gun owners into criminals virtually overnight, hardly any seven bullet magazines are available. Rather than admit this law is infeasible, Cuomo is pressing the legislature to amend it to allow larger magazines, but forbid anyone from loading more than seven bullets in them. Skeptics wondering how law enforcement...

The civil rights group ColorOfChange would like to see Cops put behind bars. ColorOfChange has asked Fox not to renew its unscripted law-enforcement show and is calling upon advertisers to withdraw support, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively. On Wednesday morning, the group is sending supporters an email in which it asks them to sign a petition to that effect. "Although marketed as unbiased, Cops actually offers a highly filtered version of crime and the criminal justice system — a 'reality' where the police are always competent, crime-solving heroes and where the bad boys always get caught," the email reads...

The top U.S. immigration enforcement official acknowledged Thursday that the Obama administration has in fact released thousands of illegal immigrants from local jails over the last month despite prior claims that the release was only in the hundreds. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, said the agency released a total of 2,228 illegal immigrants from local jails "throughout the country" between Feb. 9 and March 1 for "solely budgetary reasons." For the first time, he explained the kinds of detainees that were sprung from local jails -- he said they included detainees held...

According to a Colorado Bureau of Investigations report obtained by Media Trackers, State Representative Rhonda Fields (D-Aurora) was arrested in 1976 on a charge of larceny and again in 1991 on a charge of shoplifting. Despite her own criminal record, Rep. Fields has sought to limit the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. An apparent mugshot of Fields was posted to the Magpul Industries Facebook page by a private user after legislation to limit gun magazine capacity, which was cosponsored by Fields, drove the company to announce that it was closing its doors in Colorado and moving out of state....

Four girls went "gallon smashing" at the Shaw's in Salem in Monday. How do you rate this in the annals of stupid teen pranks? (with video--which was not filmed at that market) In an evolutionary sense, we owe a lot to the adolescents of the species. The unnecessary risks they take helped our ancestors learn important lessons — like which plants were poisonous. But Monday in Salem there was an example of juvenile behavior for which I'm hard pressed to see the advantage. "Gallon smashing" is, well, just take a look at the YouTube video attached to this post. People...

'We’re going to continue to do that…  for the foreseeable future' Most of you know the story by now: Obama first tried to blame a pending (fictional) sequester apocalypse on the Republicans -even though the sequester mechanism/legislation was entirely the President's own invention, and he signed it. Those who dared point-out the actual truth were threatened, attacked, mocked, and denigrated. So Dear Leader tells us the automatic budget cuts are now bad, and he insists on replacing half the cuts with revenue in the form of NEW TAXES. The GOP astoundingly grew a pair -at least temporarily- and told him to go pound sand. ...

Detroit for the fourth year in a row, is ranked as the "most dangerous city" in America according to Forbes online. The statistics indicate that Detroit suffered about 2,137 acts of violent crime per 100,000 residents. However, when we rank the extraordinary crime levels for each of these 'dangerous' cities, we noticed a startling trend in our quick research, and we weren't the only ones who noticed it, apparently. You see, each of these cities has one commonality being that each is also led by a Democrat Mayor, and these days you know what Democrat actually means.... "Liberal." Indeed, if...

WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, the Associated Press has learned. The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the “few hundred” illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process.

On Tuesday morning, the Democrats launched an independent group called Battleground Texas, which is capable of making the Lone Star state a battleground by 2016 and a lean-Democrat state by 2024, effectively breaking the back of the national GOP and blocking a Republican path to the White House. Yes — that Texas: The state that has not elected a single statewide Democratic official in 10 years, with Republicans going 100-0; the state that has had an entirely Republican government since 2002, with current super majorities in the legislature; and the state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since Jimmy...