Free Republic

An illegal alien brutally murdered Laura Wilkerson's 18-year-old son in Texas, tied his body up, and then doused him with gasoline before burning him. Wilkerson recalled the harrowing details on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, yet her story has gone unheard in the broader press. Maria Espinoza, the director of the Remembrance project that memorializes Americans who were killed by illegal immigrants, told host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon that such crimes "happen every day" in America, even in states far from the border. But the mainstream media, Espinoza said, often do not...

Leadership: President Obama's approval numbers are now hitting record lows, yet his critics are often written off as simple-minded "Obama haters." It doesn't wash. The problem is a pattern of presidential lawlessness. Last time we checked, the Constitution requires the president to "faithfully execute the law." That's no editorial opinion, but Article 2, Section 3, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "(The President) shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Our founders conceived and established in that document three co-equal branches of government to preserve our individual liberty and restrain the unlimited power of government....

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. was sentenced to two and a half years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to scheming to spend $750,000 in campaign funds on TV's, restaurant dinners, an expensive watch and other costly personal items. His wife received a sentence of one year.</p>

Fourteen people in need of kidney and liver transplants, along with family and friends, have been on a weeklong hunger strike, demanding a spot on a transplant waiting list, which they say they've been denied. The men and women protested Monday outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital, some taking long breaks for dialysis. They said they've been denied a spot on the list because of their illegal residency in the country.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to let California delay the release of thousands of inmates from state prisons to relieve crowding. In June, a lower court ordered California to release about 10,000 inmates — nearly 8 percent of all state prisoners — by the end of the year to improve to improve medical and mental health treatment. Gov. Jerry Brown last month asked the Supreme Court to delay the order, arguing that it would jeopardize public safety. Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, strongly dissented with the high court's 6-3 one-sentence order Friday, predicting a wave of...

Gloria Steinem, Jesse Jackson, Bonnie Raitt and Jay Leno have joined prison hunger strikers in calling for an end to California's use of solitary confinement to control prison gang violence. The civil rights crusaders, singer and late-night comedian are among those who signed a letter sent Monday to Gov. Jerry Brown. The letter calls isolation units "extensions of the same inhumanity practiced at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay." The letter to Brown, to be followed by a demonstration Tuesday at the Capitol, was arranged by the National Religion Campaign Against Torture and local supporters of the prison protesters. The organization,...

Patrol agents say they have detained an illegal alien who's racked up 37 criminal convictions in the United States. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-border-patrol-deporting-illegal-alien-37-criminal-convictions-usa#sthash.PH4jCEOd.dpuf

Chicago police are going to hand deliver letters to people suspected of committing or being victims of gun crimes in an effort to stem violence in the city, according to a new report. Starting Friday, a district commander will be delivering letters warning certain targets in that district not to commit violent crimes, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The pilot program is targeting individuals off a “heat list” developed by a Yale professor, who studied murders on Chicago’s West Side between 2005 and 2010 and found a small network of people was responsible for more than 70 percent of the killings,...

Men acting as security for the Trayvon Martin rally in Miami, Florida today accosted Miami Herald reporter David Smiley and confiscated his notebook.The incident took place as Martin's father Tracy was leaving the rally and entered a vehicle. The security accused the reporter of writing down the license plate of the vehicle.Smiley reported the incident on Twitter along with photographs:Tracy Martin gets into black aescalare as Wilson speaks, surrounded by bodyguards. Crowd chants "Stay Strong." pic.twitter.com/24ZEjmOKTfCurry's people, after snatching my notes and accusing me of writing down Martin's tag # ... Stay classy pic.twitter.com/lchrUfltwlFellow Herald report Marc Caputo described the...

Officials in Long Beach, California are warning residents about a potential “bash mob” possibly planned for Friday afternoon. Bash mobs are unruly crowds that group together to race through streets committing petty crimes such as assault and property damage, reports CBS LA. One of these mobs happened in downtown Long Beach on July 9, and investigators discovered another one planned for 2 p.m. today, July 19. “The Long Beach Police Department takes this issue very seriously and will be prepared to arrest anyone whose intent is to commit criminal acts,” Long Beach Police Sgt. Aaron Eaton said. “We will continue...

It seems we are destined to have immigration reform at the forefront of the political discussion in America. What we should be doing is enforcing our current immigration laws, but that doesn't seem to be in the works. Many of our politicians believe we need a massive piece of legislation to overhaul the entire system. President Obama believes he can use executive orders to rewrite the way the system works. Consequently, he has already ordered DREAMER status to be given to any illegal immigrant claiming to be brought to America when they were a child. According to Chris Cane, President...

The door opened Monday for tens of thousands of nonviolent felons in Virginia to regain the right to vote, with state officials outlining steps each will have to take to recapture their basic civil rights. Gov. Bob McDonnell has said up to 100,000 disenfranchised felons ultimately could be added to the voter rolls, serve on a jury or hold political office.“For past offenders, our goal is to grant civil rights back to as many as possible,” McDonnell said in a statement. “This is the right thing to do for all Virginians to help make the commonwealth a safer and better...

Dallas Independent School District Police Chief Craig Miller announced that his district will not be participating in a new program permitting school employees to be deputized and trained to assist in providing security. “If schools are concerned about deterring armed assailants they should be hiring more police, not arming the teachers,” Miller asserted. “The notion that part-time amateurs could substitute for full-time professionals disrespects our profession. The use of deadly force ought to be restricted to fully qualified police officers.” The new law is predicated on the belief that attackers would be dissuaded by the fear that a widespread possession...

Secret courts. Secret emails. Phone surveillance. Drones. The list of cloak-and-dagger tactics employed by the Obama administration -- and those that preceded it -- keeps growing, as NSA leaker Ed Snowden feeds classified materials to the media and other reports show the extent of the U.S. government's more opaque dealings. The latest was a report by The Associated Press that said the administration had military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Usama bin Laden’s hideout transferred to the CIA, where they would be harder to uncover by the press and public. If this were any other administration, perhaps the...

Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) in a Thursday radio interview revealed he is exploring the potential options that would allow Congress to file civil or criminal charges against members of the Obama administration and even President Barack Obama himself. Citing the Obama administration’s delay in the implementation of the employer mandate found in “Obamacare,” Marino told radio host David Madeira that the president continues to show a disregard for the law. He also argued Attorney General Eric Holder is never going to hold the Obama administration accountable. “If the chief law enforcer of the country [Holder] will not enforce the law,”...

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has no plans to resign following disclosures to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he misled Congress on widespread National Security Agency electronic surveillance of Americans. “DNI Clapper explained his response in the letter to Chairman [Dianne] Feinstein [(D., Calif.)] and apologized for the misunderstanding,” said Michael Birmingham, spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Clapper “values the decades-long stellar relationship he has with Congress and remains focused on leading the intelligence community,” Birmingham told the Free Beacon in a statement Monday.

Exclusive: Ted Nugent blasts 'Fedzilla' for enabling populace to remain 'lazy and dumb' Now that the American Medical Association (AMA) has wrongfully labeled obesity as a disease, the AMA may as well categorize as such our most troubling, chronic, widespread and debilitating self-inflicted ailment of choice: stupidity. What once was one of America’s most respected medical institutions, the AMA has been afflicted with the stupid disease and has torpedoed its reputation with a single decision. Don’t be surprised if next week the AMA recommends we drink eight ounces of warm hotdog water each day to improve our health. Smart Americans...

While it took a “Freedom of Information Act” filing to learn that the Department of Homeland Security has ceased doing background checks on illegal aliens applying for “special status” under President Obama's “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” Executive Order, Secretary Janet Napolitano says “it's no big deal.” “Truthfully speaking, there just isn't enough time for us to check the thousands of applications we have received,” Napolitano admitted. “With all the other stuff on our plate we had to figure out what to let slip through the cracks. It was our assessment that screening immigrants for criminal records was something we...

The EEOC ignored that judicial thrashing and pressed on. Last April, the agency unveiled its "Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions," declaring that "criminal record exclusions have a disparate impact based on race and national origin."

In 1963, the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King said it was his hope that black Americans would no longer be judged on their color of their skin, but on the content of their character. Fifty years later, the Obama administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says King got it wrong. The EEOC launched two lawsuits against private companies this week over their use of criminal background checks, claiming that in rejecting applicants with proven criminal records, they somehow discriminated against minorities under a disparate impact clause in their guidelines. Aside from the inherent and insulting racism in that presumption...