Free Republic

The Holder DOJ stopped at nothing to convict five New Orleans police officers.In a shocking case of “grotesque” misconduct by federal prosecutors, a federal judge in Louisiana has ordered a new trial for five New Orleans police officers convicted for a shooting on the Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005 — in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — and for a subsequent cover-up. This is another black eye for the Holder Justice Department that the media have barely covered. Participating in the misconduct that the judge said had created an “online 21st-century carnival atmosphere” was Karla Dobinski, a lawyer in...

Dr. Ben S. Carson went years without ever having a run-in with the Internal Revenue Service. But his good fortune changed after his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in February, the former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon said Monday night at an event with business leaders and elected officials in Alabama. Alabama’s Yellow Hammer News tweeted Dr. Carson’s remarks from the annual Business Council of Alabama Chairman’s Dinner: “I had my first encounter with the IRS this year, unsurprisingly after the Prayer Breakfast.”

At an event in Birmingham, Ala. Monday night, former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson revealed that he had received a visit from the Internal Revenue Service following his much-noted remarks at a National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year. “I had my first encounter with the IRS this year, unsurprisingly after the prayer breakfast,” Carson told an audience that at the annual Business Council of Alabama Chairman’s Dinner, according to a report from Cliff Sims of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Yellowhammer News Carson’s February speech February made him a conservative darling for criticizing President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care reform law, while...

The National Security Agency has admitted that analysts have abused their authority to spy on love interests on several occasions. In response to a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the NSA identified 12 incidents since 2003 in which analysts intentionally misused their intelligence gathering powers. In one case, an analyst spied on a foreign phone number she discovered in her husband's cellphone, suspecting that he had cheated on her. She intercepted phone calls involving her husband, investigators discovered. The analyst resigned before any disciplinary action could be taken. On one analyst's first day of access to the NSA system,...

Complete Headline: How was Weiner's wife Huma Abedin allowed to 'double-dip' with private contracts while working for Hillary Clinton at the State Dept.? A new lawsuit presses for answers A government watchdog group has sued the U.S. State Department for records showing that Huma Abedin, the one-time adviser to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had a sweetheart deal that allowed her to keep her salary while cashing in on the side with a lucrative private-sector consulting contract that could have presented glaring conflicts of interest. Judicial Watch, famous for its litigation over long-languishing Freedom Of Information Act requests, filed suit...

Maybe its incompetence or maybe it's something more, but in the end does it really matter when dead is dead? According to State Department and military sources, dozens of highly armored vehicles called GMV's, provided by the United States, are now missing. The vehicles feature GPS navigation as well as various sets of weapon mounts and can be outfitted with smoke-grenade launchers. U.S. Special Forces undergo significant training to operate these vehicles. Fox News is told the vehicles provided to the Libyans are now gone. Along with the GMV's, hundreds of weapons are now missing, including roughly 100 Glock pistols...

Five minute handycam videos show crash of apparent SU-22 amidst AAA and surface to air missile fire. Presumably taken by FSA rebels, video clip collection shows six different views of the same event. First clip is totally inconclusive, however subsequent clips in the collection suggest the most likely cause was a successful MANPADS hit. Fire is visible from the aircraft tailcone as the strike aircraft arcs through the sky and strikes the ground in a huge ball of smoke, with no pilot ejection discernible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja9divCVW94 After the success of Reagan's post-Lockerbie Libyan air raids Gaddaffi went on a years-long...

In the wake of an unusual trading pattern after the Federal Reserve's decision to continue economic stimulus last week, Fed officials have contacted certain news organizations to discuss rules and procedures for the central bank's advance release of sensitive information, CNBC has learned. On Sept. 18, the Federal Reserve shocked the financial world with its decision not to scale back its level of support to the economy as most market participants expected. Financial markets reacted at the speed of light, pushing stocks dramatically higher in just moments. But it looks like the speed of light just wasn't fast enough for...

While reading from the teleprompter in front of the Business Roundtable headquarters in Washington DC, President Obama suggested that raising the National Debt Limit would not increase the Nation’s Debt. Well – actually – he didn’t suggest that. . . He simply said it: "Now, this debt ceiling -- I just want to remind people in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” Um. . . Ok. I mean, well, it has increased our debt every other time it’s been raised. . ....

Wow.. Ted Cruz is going off on the administration over Benghazi! Watch here: http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN2/

Prostitution. Bribery. Blackmail. Thuggery. Hypocrisy. Those were just some of the incendiary words thrown around the U.S. Senate last week, and that doesn’t count what people said in private. The Senate may still have a reputation as a genteel club, but lawmakers seemed to abandon rules of decorum completely last week in arguments about whether Congress should be treated like the rest of the country when it comes to Obamacare. Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has demanded a floor vote on his bill to end an exemption that members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get that...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he hopes the White House will act within a week to address the growing concerns that labor unions have over the new health care law. … Unions want members to be eligible for the same federal subsidies available to low-income workers in the new health exchanges. …

This is the first consecutive monthly drop in 14 months and the largest miss vs expectations on record. Printing at 76.8 (against an expectation of 82.0), this is the lowest in 5 months and points to the picture we have been painting of a consumer increasingly affected by rising rates and soaring gas prices amid stagnant incomes. As Citi notes below, this is the exact same pattern we have seen play out in the last 2 cycles and suggest significant downside risk to US equities. The economic outlook sub-index collapsed to its lowest since January. Biggest miss on the headline...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced resolution, S.R. 225, Wednesday to create a joint select committee to investigate the Benghazi terrorist attacks from one year ago. But after requesting unanimous consent to introduce and pass the resolution, Democrats blocked it from consideration.

At the same time the IRS harassed Republican nonprofit groups during the 2012 political campaign, it selectively advised black churches and other Democrat nonprofits on how far they can go in campaigning for President Obama and other Democrats. This raw exercise in political favoritism has not been reported in the context of the still-smoldering IRS scandal, in which the agency in 2012 audited big GOP donors and blocked Tea Party groups trying to obtain tax-exempt status as part of what House investigators suspect was an effort to re-elect the president. But that same year, top officials with both the IRS...

**SNIP** The ex-Chicago congressman is seen lounging by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel-- a popular outdoor gathering spot for the Hollywood Glitterati. According to an onlooker, Mr. Jackson was overheard singing to himself and talking with other guests on the veranda. When he was back in his room here, ABC7's Chuck Goudie had a conversation with Mr. Jackson about why he was in Beverly Hills, California. Jackson said: "I am covering my bases considering my near future."

NEW YORK – Before his death in a fiery car crash, Michael Hastings was preparing to publish a major investigative piece tied to the undercover agent who is suspected of sanitizing President Obama’s passport records prior to the 2008 presidential election. The mystery has only deepened since the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office ruled that drugs in his system at the time of the June 18 crash, including amphetamines and marijuana, likely did not contribute to the crash. Hastings, 33 years old at the time of his death, wrote for Gentleman’s Quarterly, Rolling Stone and Buzzfeed, reporting on national security issues....

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, former lawyer and Department of Justice whistleblower J. Christian Adams, explained how the agency charged with upholding the rule of law in America is behaving in disturbing ways.

A Texas-based watchdog known as True the Vote is staying one step ahead of Florida’s elections officials. The organization has identified 173 cases of alleged interstate voter fraud, or double voting, in Florida and Maryland, the group announced Monday. Each case represents a single person voting in both states during the same federal election cycle, dating to 2006. “The 173 cases does not mean 173 illegal votes,” said Logan Churchwell, communications director for True the Vote, a nonpartisan voters’ rights and election integrity group. “It means at least double that.” The group used updated 2012 voting data to cross-reference Florida...

A federal judge says the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of personal email accounts may have been aimed at skirting public disclosure requirements.