Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Accused Chinatown gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow has refused to sign on to a protective order that will allow defense attorneys to receive evidence from federal prosecutors, including audio recordings and video surveillance, from a five-year undercover investigation that led to his arrest, and the arrest of 26 others in March. Attorneys for the federal government on Thursday filed a motion to compel Chow to cooperate, noting that nearly all the other defendants have signed on, and only one other defendant has not signed because of a likely substitution of counsel in the near future. According...

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan consulted the White House before directing agency personnel to sift through a walled-off computer drive being used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to construct its investigation of the agency’s torture program, according to a recently released report by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General. The Inspector General’s report, which was completed in July but only released by the agency on Wednesday, reveals that Brennan spoke with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough before ordering CIA employees to “use whatever means necessary” to determine how certain sensitive internal documents had wound up in...

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed at a federal court hearing Thursday that the unwieldy criminal case against suspended state Sen. Leland Yee, Chinatown association leader Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow and 27 others should be split up before trial. **SNIP** The hearing before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer came two weeks after the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California filed a new indictment in the case, adding violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against Yee and his former fundraiser, Keith Jackson. Yee is accused of conducting a criminal enterprise with Jackson, who allegedly solicited bribes and...

An undercover FBI agent gave campaign donations to an unnamed Bay Area politician during a yearslong undercover investigation into a Chinatown gang and alleged political corruption that culminated in the arrests of state Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow earlier this year. This is according to the latest filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the federal case against the two men and about 20 others. Besides indicating that a politician other than Yee allegedly took money from undercover FBI agents in exchange for favors, the filing further lays out the relationship between former school board member and...

Many leftist politicians who want to strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights say their position is based on concern for the safety of citizens. Somehow, they contend, forcing law-abiding gun-owners to give up their weapons will result in street gangs following suit. According to a recently unsealed affidavit, however, one state senator in California allegedly wanted to curtail gun rights for everyone except violent gangsters. State Sen. Leland Yee, the court documents state, was the subject of an FBI raid that led to his arrest Wednesday along with 25 other individuals. Among those arrested was Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow,...

**SNIP** The San Francisco Democrat was a fairly high-profile member of the California Legislature, but not a flamboyant one or one who was the subject of gossip and rumor. And that’s probably why the news in March landed with such a bombshell, when the 66-year old former psychologist was arrested and charged with not only corruption, but also with allegedly participating in a scheme to smuggle illegal weapons into the United States. The irony was impossible to miss: gun trafficking charges against a Democrat who made a name for himself as a fierce advocate of gun control, a politician who...

December 20, 2014 Diane Feinstein, the Iron Maiden By Deana Chadwell Language, that contract that we make with the members of our society, holds our society together; without it we can accomplish nothing. Nor can we function without the protection of good and selfless people who step forward to face the evil that always threatens successful nations. Diane Feinstein’s release of the enhanced interrogation technique documents is, on both national and linguistic fronts, an act of treason. To attack the language by which we carry on our national dialogue and the methods we use to protect our right to have...

A new poll from the Pew Research Center is the first to gauge reactions to last week's big CIA report on "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- what agency critics call torture. And the reaction is pretty muted. The poll shows people says 51-29 percent than the CIA's methods were justified and 56-28 percent that the information gleaned helped prevent terror attacks.

With the release of Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein’s report on the CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation program, a forty million dollar joke has been perpetrated on the American people, curtesy of the California senator. As U.S. military bases and diplomatic facilities around the world are placed on high alert for possible attacks by Muslims further inflamed by the declassified details of the report, the costs of Senator Feinstein’s ‘knock knock joke’ will continue to spiral upwards as we’re forced to ramp up additional security precautions to address the threat. Millions more will be spent, and unfortunately lives will probably be lost so...

There are those who conduct themselves with a clear penchant for humility, pragmatism, and those so-called leaders who yell "fire" in church because it’s the only way they can be saved. Mrs. Feinstein, I have neither the stomach nor the inclination to aid your vindictive campaign to politically exploit and berate our intelligence community, those patriots who tirelessly toil to protect ignorant and ungrateful hypocrites like yourself, so I instead would like to embark on a brief history lesson. Do you recall, Senator, when your accomplice and savior, Barack Obama, “spiked the football” and referenced (knighted) himself for the umpteenth...

Who were those guys on Morning Joe today—two Feinstein staffers? Nope, they were Mark Halperin and Jeremy Peters, making like Dem aides in defending the report on the CIA that Dem Senator Diane Feinstein released yesterday. Halperin, head of Bloomberg Politics, had the chutzpah to claim that the report was not "political." Peters of the New York Times then chimed in to claim that in releasing the report the Senate conducted itself in a "sober" way. View the video here.

Whenever I’m asked about gun control and “assault weapons,” my first instinct is to steer people to the scholarly work of John Lott or the practical analysis of Larry Correia.Unfortunately, some politicians in Washington haven’t gotten the message.Here are excerpts from an article in the Pacific Standard, starting with a claim from Senator Feinstein that gun control works. In the 10 years since the federal assault weapons ban expired, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has kept trying to renew the law, which she authored. In a press release this month honoring the 20th anniversary of the ban, she wrote, “The evidence...

When liberal Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and the conservative former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich agree on something, attention should be paid. Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last Friday that the U.S. must confront the jihadists who call themselves the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL). "It takes an army to defeat an army," she said, adding, "I believe that we either confront ISIL now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future." In an article first published on CNN.com, Gingrich noted there is now "an...

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman’s searing criticism of Former Montana Governor Schweitzer’s ridiculously sexist comments inspired some pretty damning headlines yesterday. But, Coffman’s opponent, Andrew Romanoff, was silent on the matter. And, now we know why – Schweitzer was in Colorado seven months ago stumping for Romanoff. ... Calling Diane Feinstein a prostitute-turned-nun is probably not the way to win friends and influence people, so we have to ask – will Romanoff denounce his fundraiser buddy’s comments? We’ve reached out to his campaign for comment. They responded with [drum roll] silence. ... They say you are who your friends are. Perhaps...

Leland Yee should be making national headlines. A Democratic state senator from San Francisco, a statewide candidate until this week, and a rising member of Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein’s Democratic political machine, was arrested on Wednesday by the Justice Department for wire fraud, corruption, and his alleged involvement in illegal gun deal between Chinatown gangsters and Islamist militants. **SNIP** Yet four of the most prominent news outlets in America — CNN, USA Today, Politico and the Chicago Sun-Times — made no mention of the Leland Yee scandal within two days of the story breaking. When Politico finally ran a...

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) released the following statement on California State Senator Leland Yee:“The allegations against Senator Yee are shocking. It has become clear he has lost the confidence of his colleagues and for the good of his constituents should step down.”###

We're workin' our jobs, collect our pay Believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away - Paul Simon, Slip Sliding Away Paul Simon wasn’t singing about our liberty in his song, but the words apply to what’s happening in the Senate and to our Constitution. While President Obama was poorly reading cue cards between two ferns for a comedy website, a battle was brewing in the Senate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., accused the Central Intelligence Agency “of ­secretly removing documents, searching computers used by the committee and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an...

Oh, now they’ve done it. They picked on the wrong people this time. The C.I.A. has apparently been spying on Congress. I know. Who would have seen that coming? Spies spying on people? That’s like lawyers legislating or something. Oh wait…. So, Congress is really, really mad at the C.I.A. now. According to a story by the New York Times, the C.I.A. snooped on Senate staffers in order to find out how the Senate got internal C.I.A. documents, some of which were critical of “agency’s detention and interrogation program. Parts of the C.I.A. report cast a particularly harsh light...

So Benghazi finally claims another victim. The knife sticking out of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s back was stuck there slowly by fellow pantsuiter, Sen. Diane Fienstein, (D-Kalf.) who chairs the Senate Intelligence committee for the gentleman’s club also known as the United States Senate. That knife means that Hillary is probably dead. At least as a presidential candidate. Oh, yes, the New York Times won’t give it up quite yet. But for Hillary, it’s o-v-e-r. The Senate report on Benghazi released by Feinstein’s office is largely a compendium of what you, I and everyone outside of the...

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) triggered controversy with a fiery floor speech in the Senate on Tuesday night, during which she declared that "we cannot let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war." Breitbart reports that the speech was made during a debate on a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran if it fails to comply with the nuclear deal that was reached with it in November. The bill includes a provision offering support to Israel in the event of an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran. Feinstein chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence and is...