Free Republic

Marion Barry served four terms as D.C.'s mayor and 16 years on the D.C. Council before his death in 2014 An 8-foot statue of former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was unveiled Saturday, giving the "Mayor for Life" a permanent legacy outside the seat of the city government. The statue depicts Barry with is hand held high, waving to anyone passing by. Thousands Mourn Barry, DC's 'Mayor for Life' Marion Barry Jr. served four terms as the District's mayor and also served 16 years on the city council. He was serving on the D.C. council when he died in November 2014....

DEVELOPING: NBC News staff at White House ordered to shelter in place as security incident unfolds - NBCNews.com

Nancy Pelosi is about to lose some progressive friends after deciding to endorse Rep. Dan Lipinski in his re-election bid in Illinois's 3rd congressional district. Lipinski, you see, is one of the very few conservative Democrats left. He has a record of opposing abortion, gay rights and Obamacare. Asked at her weekly press conference Thursday if she supports him, Pelosi replied, "Yes, I do." It is an endorsement even the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has refused to offer. Other Democrats have gone one step further, endorsing his primary challenger, Marie Newman. “This is not a rubber-stamp party,” Pelosi told The...

A planned rally against mass shootings can’t be held on the Mall later this month because it conflicts with what’s described in a National Park Service permit application as a “talent show.” A permit application filed last week by survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school massacre indicated the “March For Our Lives” rally will be on March 24, with up to 500,000 attendees expected. Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the Park Service, said organizers proposed holding the event on the Mall but were looking to move the rally to another location after the request conflicted with a film crew’s permit....

“We got China wrong. Now what?” ran the headline over the column in the Washington Post. “Remember how American engagement with China was going to make that Communist backwater more like the democratic, capitalist West?” asked Charles Lane in his opening sentence. America’s elites believed that economic engagement and the opening of U.S. markets would cause the People’s Republic to coexist benignly with its neighbors and the West. We deluded ourselves. It did not happen. Xi Jinping just changed China’s constitution to allow him to be dictator for life. He continues to thieve intellectual property from U.S. companies and to...

The federal government closed Friday morning due to high wind and resulting issues like power outages and fear of accidents, the Office of Personnel Management stated. The powerful storm barreling toward the Northeast resulted in cooler temperatures and wind gusts over 60 MPH, classifying it as an extreme storm in the Washington, D.C., area. Commuter trains Virginia Railway Express and the Maryland Rail Commuter were canceled, and the Metro was running slower during the above-ground sections. Most area schools were closed, as is the D.C. government, but federal employees who are approved for telework may work from home, GovExec reports....

Fewer high school seniors in the District are expected to receive a diploma in June than the year before, a sharp reversal for a school system that had celebrated a 20-point increase in its graduate rate since 2011. Data released Thursday by D.C. Public Schools show that 42 percent of seniors attending traditional public schools are on track to graduate, while 19 percent are considered “moderately off-track,” meaning they could still earn enough credits to earn a diploma. The likely drop in the graduation rate is the latest fallout from an investigation that cast doubt on the validity of diplomas...

RUSH: Now you gotta hear this. It’s Bob Woodward — of Woodward and Bernstein fame — and Bernstein himself worms his way into this sound bite. This is on Anderson Cooper 119 last night on CNN. He says to Woodward, “Nixon had a chief of staff who was a general,” that’d be Alexander Haig, “who was relatively new in the administration just like John Kelly. Any similarities here,” Bob, old buddy, old pal? WOODWARD: Haig told us. BERNSTEIN: Mmm! WOODWARD: It was astonishing, the interview. He said he was so worried about Nixon, that Nixon might take his life —...

<>FBI agents apprehended Hina Alvi at an airport in 2017 <>She was suspected of hacking Congress and is the wife of Imran Awan <>Awan and his family members allegedly logged into servers of congressmen for whom they did not work In March 2017, FBI agents were tailing House of Representatives IT aides suspected of hacking Congress, and apprehended one at the airport trying to make a hasty exit to Pakistan. She refused to speak with them, and a search revealed that she was carrying an apparently illegal amount of cash. The FBI allowed Hina Alvi, wife of Imran Awan, to...

On Friday, former Washington D.C. Transit Police Officer Nicholas Young was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to provide material support to ISIS.In July 2016, Young purchased gift cards and sent their code numbers to someone that he believed had joined ISIS in Syria. According to the Justice Department, Young hoped that ISIS would use the money from the gift cards to pay for secure communications between ISIS officials and potential foreign recruits. As it turned out, Young’s ISIS friend in Syria was actually an FBI informant who was part of a six-year long intelligence operation to nab the...

While the three-year spike in violent crime in Baltimore draws most of the attention, business owners across the city have suffered a similar increase in commercial robberies. Such crime has risen 88 percent in the last five years, from 560 commercial robberies in 2013 to more than 1,000 last year. Business owners are also complaining of threats outside their stores: drug dealing, intimidation, stabbings and shootings. They’re fighting back with security measures — guards, surveillance cameras, door buzzer systems — moving out of the city or, in some cases, shutting down altogether. “Our members are very concerned,” said Cailey Locklair...

BREAKING: An individual driving a passenger vehicle struck a security barrier near the White House at 17th & E. UPDATE: The female driver of the vehicle was immediately apprehended by Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers.

In a long, rambling February 20, 2018, speech before the UN Security Council, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas fed fables to his audience — and continued to attack Israel’s legitimacy. The speech marked the third time in two months that Abbas has publicly distorted history, and shifted blame for the lack of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And once again, Abbas had a key ally: An uncritical press, seemingly determined to present the Palestinian leader in the best possible light. In his opening remarks before the Security Council, Abbas claimed that Palestinians “are the descendants of the Canaanites...

<p>After enduring days of online vilification, Florida school shooting survivor David Hogg said he bears no grudge against the social media companies whose platforms surfaced and circulated false allegations that he was a “crisis actor” merely playing the part of a grieving student. “It’s abuse, and it’s bad press for me,” said Hogg, 17, in a phone interview Thursday morning. But, he added, “it gets our names out there.”</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The body of evangelist Billy Graham will lie in honor under the U.S. Capitol rotunda next week as Congress pays tribute to a clergyman who counseled presidents and preached the Gospel to millions worldwide, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday. Graham, who died at his home near Asheville, North Carolina, on Wednesday at age 99, will arrive at the white-domed Capitol on Feb. 28 and lie in honor there until the following day, Ryan said in a statement. “Members of the public and Capitol Hill community are invited to pay their respects to the late reverend...

Of the making of Washington movies, there is no end. Kohelet said this in Ecclesiastes, I think. Or maybe it was Gene Shalit on the Today Show. It’s a truism in any case. Steven Spielberg’s latest entry in the genre, The Post, is for many Washingtonians the most powerful example in the long line. When the movie opened here in late December, there were reports of audiences cheering lustily and even dissolving in tears at the movie’s end, as if they were watching a speech by President Obama. The local paper ran news articles about it, along with numberless feature...

A few miles down the road from Israel’s gated embassy, the Palestinian envoy to Washington sits in his office wrestling with a unique diplomatic dilemma: how to advance his people’s cause when relations with the United States are so distant that he hasn’t even spoken to the White House in months. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has written off President Donald Trump, cursing him and declaring him an illegitimate broker for peace. Trump has reacted angrily, threatening to cut off all U.S. aid and dismissing Palestinian claims that he blew up any semblance of impartiality by declaring Jerusalem to be Israel’s...

In 2012 the DNC denounced Jesus Christ three times during their convention. Until today that stood as one of the most alarming public representations of how the Democrats hate Christianity. The Washington Post just took that hatred one step further…. (image of WAPO's shameful "analysis) I cannot even begin to fathom the level of institutional evil and hatred it would take for this story to work its way through the editorial process of a national American publication and not encounter anyone who would stop them in their tracks. Seriously, no words. Just unreal.

Brian Butcher, a history teacher at Ballou High School, sat in the bleachers of the school's brand-new football field last June watching 164 seniors receive diplomas. It was a clear, warm night and he was surrounded by screaming family and friends snapping photos and cheering. It was a triumphant moment for the students: For the first time, every graduate had applied and been accepted to college. The school is located in one of Washington, D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods and has struggled academically for years with a low graduation rate. For months, the school received national media attention, including from NPR, celebrating...

D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Antwan Wilson resigned Tuesday following revelations that his daughter was improperly transferred from one of the district's top-performing public high schools to another — which had a waitlist of more than 600 students. The move violated a policy that Wilson himself established last summer restricting the ability of the chancellor to grant such transfers for the children of public officials. The policy came as a result of revelations that former Chancellor Kaya Henderson had placed the children of certain officials in popular and high-performing schools. "After listening to many community members and families and stakeholders, it...