Free Republic

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice shut down an attempt to force the Internal Revenue Service to search for Lois Lerner’s missing emails at off-site storage facilities. The IRS never looked for Lerner’s backup email tapes at the West Virginia storage facility where they were being housed. Treasury deputy inspector general Timothy Camus told Congress that the IRS never asked IT professionals at the New Martinsville, W.V. storage site for the backup tapes. Camus only found the backup tape for Lerner’s missing 2011 emails about two weeks ago. But the Obama administration knew that emails were stored at off-site facilities,...

A task force appointed by President Barack Obama to reform policing in the U.S. is recommending that the Department of Justice scrap an FBI database that gathers and maintains information on certain “immigration violators.” The recommendation, handed down by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing in an interim report on Monday, pertains to FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. NCIC is used by local law enforcement officers during traffic stops and other encounters with the public. The database, developed in 1967, allows officers to find out if the individuals are wanted for crimes in other jurisdictions. An...

RUSH: By the way, folks, just as I predicted, a bunch of liberals, a bunch of leftists have started learning what is in net neutrality, and they are unhappy. The Wall Street Journal has a headline: "Liberals Mugged by Obamanet -- Buyer's remorse is already setting in for Google and other 'net neutrality' proponents." You know what the one thing that none of these people ever figured on? None of them, none of these leftists ever dreamed Obama would do what they have now discovered is part of net neutrality. That is: The Regime is going to regulate content. They...

The White House said Monday that President Obama believes a ban on bullets commonly used with the AR-15 rifle will save police officers’ lives. “We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and women in law enforcement, and believe that this process is valuable for that reason alone,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is accepting public comment on an administration proposal to ban .223 M855 “green tip” ammunition most often used with AR-15 rifles. House lawmakers from both parties, as well as sportsmen and some law enforcement...

The latest example of cellphone video vindicating someone from false charges is a doozy. It comes from Washington Parish, La., and WWL TV. One of the worst days of Douglas Dendinger’s life began with him handing an envelope to a police officer. In order to help out his family and earn a quick $50, Dendinger agreed to act as a process server, giving a brutality lawsuit filed by his nephew to Chad Cassard as the former Bogalusa police officer exited the Washington Parish Courthouse. The handoff went smoothly, but Dendinger said the reaction from Cassard, and a group of officers...

The first time the Affordable Care Act came before the Supreme Court, its constitutional foundation under attack, John G. Roberts Jr. was its unlikely savior. In a spectacular display of spot-welding, the chief justice joined fellow conservatives on some points and brought liberals on board for others. Roberts was the only member of the court to endorse the entire jerry-rigged thing, and even he made sure to distance himself from the substance of the law. (“It is,” he wrote, “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”) Still, his efforts rescued President Obama’s signature...

**SNIP** March 22: Jeanne Bishop will discuss her new book, "Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace With My Sister's Killer," with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. 4 p.m., Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., semcoop.com, 773-752-4381

Harry Reid swaps shades for frosted lenses as Nancy Pelosi dons dark sunglasses in solidarity with her bruised colleague Comedy on Capitol Hill - the intentional kind, anyway - is pretty rare. But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi got chuckles Thursday when she started a news conference by donning dark glasses, a teasingly sympathetic gesture to the man standing next to her, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. 'I brought my glasses to be like Harry, but he switched on me,' Pelosi said, removing her shades.

In an exit interview, the attorney general says his critics may be partly driven by race.

The new, improved Hillary Clinton gave a speech that was treated as if it was the official opening of the Hillary for President campaign. The speech was in northern California at an event called The Lead On Conference for Women in Silicon Valley. According to the Washington Post, she was paid about $300,000 for the appearance. Unlike many of my compatriots, I do not have a problem with Secretary Clinton knocking down $300,000 for a speech. I was not in the running to give remarks at the Lead On Conference for Women in Silicon Valley and, assuming the LOCWSV raised...

The District of Columbia defied threats from Congress and moved forward Thursday with legalizing possession of marijuana after a voter-approved initiative. Despite last-minute maneuvers by Republican leaders in Congress and threats that city leaders could face prison time, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city was implementing marijuana legalization as approved by voters. The new law took effect at 12:01 a.m. Bowser, a Democrat, said the city's plans haven't changed despite a letter from two leading House Republicans warning of repercussions if the city moves forward with legalization. "This is a major milestone on the road to ending marijuana prohibition...

Two powerful House Republicans late Tuesday warned D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser not to move forward with legalizing marijuana in the nation’s capital and they warned of stiff federal retribution if the city’s chief executive did not yield. The letter came on the same day that Bowser declared that a voter-approved measure to legalize pot would become law in the city at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday and the letter set the stage for a dramatic final 24 hours before that deadline. “If you decide to move forward tomorrow with the legalization of marijuana in the District, you will be doing...

EXCLUSIVE: A senior State Department official in charge of federal counterterrorism programs was arrested Tuesday afternoon for allegedly soliciting sex from a minor, Fox News has learned. Fairfax County Police officials say Daniel Rosen was arrested by a county detective about noon at his Washington, D.C. home after he allegedly sought to arrange sex with a minor. The detective, a female officer working in the county's Child Exploitation Unit, had been posing as the minor in online exchanges with Rosen, police said. ·

For years, rape kits piled up in Houston. Thousands and thousands of swaps, running back almost 30 years, sat untested. Victims heard nothing. Perpetrators went on with their lives and, in some cases, committed further crimes. Eventually, there were nearly 6,700 kits waiting to be processed.

An epidemic of federal employees watching pornography on government computers during work hours has gotten so out of control that legislation has been introduced in Congress to contain the embarrassing crisis. Porn has for years been part of the job at some government agencies and in fact a number of federal audits have long documented the enraging details of how our tax dollars are being wasted. Judicial Watch has also reported on this for years, especially the porn crisis at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency charged with policing the nation’s financial industry. While the economy crumbled, the...

Evidence from more than 6,600 rape kits that went untested for years in Houston have turned up 850 hits in the FBI's nationwide database of DNA profiles, marking a major step in the city's $6 million effort to address the backlog, officials announced Monday.

muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard he went to an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless. Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law. ~snip~ After his arrest, he told a psychologist that he did not know having sex with a 13-year-old was against the law. The court heard he found it was illegal only when he was informed by...

Back in december, I posted that everyone's favorite Baathist flunkie / child molester Scott Ritter was released from Jail (and is gainfully employed courtesy of the Huffington Post), but it seems that Scott hasn't fulfilled the requirements of his sentence. He has to register as a sex offender but I dont see his entry in New York's database, or Pennsylvania's (where the crime took place). http://www.pameganslaw.state.pa.us/ http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/nsor/ I know the first time Ritter got caught proposition a child in the internet was back in 2001 but the prosecutor let him off with an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal and sealed...

[Editor's note: The original copy of this article incorrectly identified Rep. Ellison as a Democrat from Wisconsin. The oversight has been corrected, and a formal apology has been sent to the people of Wisconsin.]Forget about the Tuesday following the first Monday of November… Let’s just run an online poll for future public elections. Maybe we can set up a phone bank, kinda like PBS donation drives, for people without access to the internet. Heck, let’s just do a show of hands: Hillary or Jeb for 2016?Okay, that might be a slight over-simplification of what Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) was suggesting, but...

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber submitted his resignation on Friday, just one month into his record fourth term in office. Kitzhaber's fate was all but sealed Thursday, after Secretary of State Kate Brown issued a statement describing his behavior, accurately, as "bizarre," top Democrats called on him to step down, and several of his closest advisers resigned.